What Happens At and After Death
What happens at and after death is something I’ve learned from working with the spirits of dead people in all phases of progress after death, as well as the guidance team of some of them and the ascended master I channel, Djehuty (a.k.a. Thoth, St. Germain, Merlin, Hermes).
Consciousness separates from the physical body at the moment of death. There is an opportunity for a release of the emotions and physical sensations surrounding the physical death, but not all experience such release. The categories of those who do not include:
- Those who died suddenly or traumatically and did not understand that they were dying. Sometimes these individuals are later found “wandering” the Earth plane, trying to make contact with living humans. They are often lonely, not understanding why the humans in their lives and others they encounter and reach out to do not acknowledge them. This might sound improbable, but it happens. Sometimes they are stuck in the moment of trauma that accompanied their physical death, and sometimes they are simply dissociated due to the confusion of experiencing the transition they did not expect or prepare for. Some of these individuals also have identified so strongly as their physical bodies during life that this new situation simply does not or cannot compute.
- Individuals who judge themselves for how they lived or died are oriented toward pain/fear frequencies. Consider those who treat others poorly or abandon loved ones for any reason, or those with some sort of addiction who judge themselves for it. Often these individuals believe that they have lived awful lives, or are terrible people and not possibly redeemable. Due to their self-judgment, they might not believe they are worth loving.
- Individuals who are attached to Earthly outcomes. This can include a parent who is holding out for his or her child to marry “the right sort of person” (or, at least, get away from the current partner the parent never approved of in the first place). anyone who is attached to the disposition/passing on of his or her assets, and those who feel they are not ready to let go of their attachments to living loved ones (or, sometimes, their enemies). Any human outcome that would unfold after their passing could serve as motivation to resist letting go and moving on.
Tied into the opportunity for release of human attachments right after death is the appearance of loving guides and helpers, including ancestors who have died before the individual and have gone through the orientation process. For some people, these include ancestors they did not know during life, spirits who hang around to help support and guide generations of the family after they’re gone.
While such a loving team is always available to each spirit at the moment of passing (sometimes revealing themselves just before, as deathbed stories of the veil parting and deceased loved ones appearing are commonplace), being able to see and connect with them requires that the newly departed spirit is open to loving frequencies.
In the case of those who died in self-judgment or -hatred, or with deep regret, guilt, or shame for their choices or actions toward self or other, they may be at death locked into fear-based frequencies. For all metaphysical and spiritual work, it is important to remember that spirit guides, ascended masters, angels, and other disembodied helpers operate only on loving frequencies. When clients and students ask me how to learn to channel any of these kinds of beings, I tell them to work on their relationship with fear, as being able to open to loving energy is the only path for such communication to develop. It is true that your spirit guides and perhaps other kinds of helpful beings are with you always, but how open you are to receiving loving energy and being supported will determine how much and often you find you can communicate and receive support from them.
As a medium, I’ve been guided now and then to help a spirit who is stuck on the Earth plane transition into orientation, the natural next phase for a consciousness after physical death. You can think of it as “spiritual counseling,” as I share with the spirit an image of what is available to him or her next while offering to work with him or her on the outstanding issues that have been keeping him or her from transitioning. This is done with respectful compassion as, again, the goal is to help the spirit release tension, pain, guilt, etc., and move on.
I’ve done this with individuals who during life were drug addicts and died with deep shame, parents who are concerned one child will cheat another regarding the inheritance, those who did not know they were dead (including some who had been locked into trauma), and those who had been so identified during human life with their physical existence that they found themselves buried in a cemetery, stuck in a wooden box. Wherever the individual is and whatever he or she is experiencing, there is one goal to this counseling: Teaching them what is happening, what can come next (orientation, which is explained in detail on the next page), and supporting them in becoming willing to be open to loving energy from their team so they can release the human attachments and move on.
Never is any of this process forced. Never are threats made, ultimatums announced, or gauntlets thrown down. A spirit who has been stuck for whatever reason still has free will, and it’s imperative that this is always honored. As a result, when I go into a spirit counseling or rescue and release scenario (this is a term for helping stuck spirits cross over), I don’t know what will happen at the end. I offer the information I can, I listen to the spirit’s concerns, and I do all I can guide him or her to the right resolution for for him or her.
Sometimes they need more time to process what I’ve shared with them, and sometimes they want to go back and visit their living loved to either test out what I’ve told them (that the living are continuing with their own lives and grieving in their own 
way, that the departed had an important impact on others and others learned from him or her) or to say goodbye, apologize, forgive, or any other communications meant to resolve their human connections. There are times when the spirit is eager to release and move on and he or she does so during the time I spend with them, and at other times I leave them with everything they need to know to move on when they feel the time is right.
A note regarding time: While we are human, we experience ourselves as unfolding within it. After death, this attachment can be released. For those who do not transition out of attachment to Earthly issues and outcomes, they may perceive time in the way that living humans do. After a spirit goes through the orientation process (explained in the next section), his or her relationship with time changes as the consciousness relaxes into a state more aligned with the natural state of the soul. When that happens, the person’s spirit can come and go into this dimension to make contact or be a helper for a living loved one, but no longer feels tied to time as one who has only recently passed and not opened to the next step in the process.
Shedding Our Conditioning
Those of us who have been exposed to the entertainment industry’s fear mongering about dead spirits, which is rooted in age-old mythologies and folk tales based in fear of judgment after death, may find this compassionate approach new and refreshing. The truth is that humans are not in danger when spirits are around, and an astonishingly small number of spirits floating around have any ill intent toward the living. When those that do make contact, we can know with certainty that there is unprocessed pain, fear, anger, resentment, and other difficult emotions. And in remaining aligned with loving frequencies and staying in our hearts, we can both disarm any negativity and give them an example of how a person can elevate themselves above fear, pain, and anger.
What most people don’t know is that each individual is an expression of soul, which is Divine consciousness. This matters here because when you set a boundary and confidently say “no” to a being, that being has to listen. But there’s a catch: You have to believe you have the right to say “no”. You have to know it, and with absolute certainty.
In the next section I’ll explain what I call “orientation,” which is also often called “going into the light” or “crossing over”.
Keep reading: Orientation
