Do our souls live on when the body dies? It’s one of the biggest questions widowed people will be faced with on their journey… and anyone who has been faced with death. We all find our own answers in our own ways to this. For some of us, it is our belief in a religion or faith. For others, it is confirmation from a medium who brings us clear signs of our loved ones. It may come to us directly through signs and synchronicities. For me, it was a very strong feeling, and direct messages from my fiance after he died. They were simple things in the weeks after his sudden death… like “go eat something”. He was gently nudging me along, reminding me I didn’t need to figure it all out, I just needed to take a deep breath and take care of myself today.
Months later, those feelings and messages from him became further confirmed by my first reading with a medium. She told me things that she could have never known. Things only he could have told me. It was then that I was certain, the feelings and messages I was getting were not my imagination… but were in fact him. It was then that I was certain of the answer that our souls do live on when our bodies die – and his was very much well, happy, and full of sarcastic humor as always.
I’ve had a dozen or so readings since then, and it never ceases to confirm for me that belief, and strengthen that connection I have to him. But there is still that lack of scientific evidence about all of this that leaves the entire subject feeling a bit taboo for most of us. A bit like we have to be careful who we talk about it with. Understandably, a lack of scientific proof still creates many skeptics. Had I not had the experiences I’ve had, I wouldn’t believe in any of it either. This is why I am feeling completely in awe of the presentation I just witnessed today.
This weekend I’m attending the Afterlife Research & Education Institute’s annual conference in Arizona. It’s a place full of mediums and intuitive folks, of grieving people who have lost a loved one, and scientists interested in the afterlife. I’ve just heard Gary Schwartz present some unbelievable findings. Gary is a parapsychologist, author and professor who is conducting scientific research with spirits. I’m not joking people, this is an actual thing happening. He has conducted basic experiments by asking particular spirits to show up, confirmed by a medium that is blind to the setup, with several other mediums to confirm them. They ask particular things of the spirits… to show up at a certain time to the medium, to sit for a medium who does sketches of them, and various other tests using electronic means to measure their presence.
Through hundreds of hours of running through every imaginable variable of these… they have found that 100% of the time, the spirits came through exactly as requested. So when they were told to show up early to a particular session, the mediums picked them up early. When told to show up late, they did so. When they were told to do a series of actions recorded with electronic devices measuring audio waves, they did exactly as instructed. I don’t have to tell you that every person in the room was blown away by what he is doing.
I know this stuff all sounds totally out there. I always come to these sorts of things with a healthy dose of skepticism, but his research left very little room for any doubt. And I couldn’t help but let my imagination run wild right along with his ideas. If this stuff can begin to be recorded and proven scientifically… What if signs and messages from our loved ones didn’t really have to be so random? What if you really can expect them to show up, at a particular moment in time? What if somehow this could expand our ability to communicate with them? What if they could be shown how to alter our technology in a way that allowed them to type messages to us? What if we could begin to collaborate together to learn more about all of the many questions we all have about life after death? And most of all, have a deeper connection to our loved ones that have passed on. This sort of thing could alter our entire collective view of death, and bring comfort and confirmation to so very many.
I guess it’s the dreamer in me, I’ve always loved to imagine seemingly impossible things. Life on other planets. Time travel. An ease of communication with spirits is certainly on that list… and it’s pretty exciting to me to think that maybe, just maybe, this research will one day lead to a revolution in how we think of souls after death, and of death itself. Just maybe this will change everything about how we communicate with that other world. I know it’s pretty out there for some folks, and that it is not by any means what everyone believes in or supports, but you can’t deny, it’s a pretty amazing idea to explore.
What if…?
