Do Dead People Watch You Shower? (8 page)

Well, I didn’t
exactly say that the dead didn’t have a sense of humor about the body and being in the flesh. They may touch someone or push someone, just to show that they can do it. I’ve twice had a spirit actually try to make love to me. Very strange, but not scary—of course, I can’t speak for everyone on that count. But I’ve heard many stories about spirits touching someone. I had one client whose beach house down at the Jersey shore had a very playful resident ghost. He seemed to live in their shower and delighted in pressing up against anyone who used the shower—not every time, but often enough that the whole family was aware of it. When they had a guest at their beach house they’d get a kick out of it when the guest would use the shower. The person would come out of the bathroom with a weird look on her face and say something like, “You’ll never believe this, but…” and they’d all go, “We know. Charlie!!!”

The dead are just having some fun with us. They like to joke about the body. We’re in it, so we don’t always get the joke or think it’s funny. It’s a struggle here on earth, being in physical form. We have good days and bad days. But I think you’ll all agree with me when I say that when it’s good, it can be pretty freakin’ good!

They certainly do
remember!

And that reminds me of a story: A couple of years ago, two women came to see me for a reading. They were old friends, either in their late seventies or early eighties, and had made their appointments together. They both wanted to hear from their husbands, and without any problem, both their husbands came through. Of course, they all knew one another and both husbands were joking around about their “date nights,” which was really a euphemism for their night to have sex with their respective wives. So the one husband is talking about Wednesday night and the other is talking about Friday night. The one mentioned a restaurant. I asked his wife, who was there for the reading, “What about this restaurant?” Turns out that this couple used to go to the same place a few nights a week. Everybody knew them there, and they knew them so well that they knew about “Wednesday night.” The waiter would always ask at the end of the meal, Do you want any dessert? But then he’d catch himself and say, almost winking, Oh, no, I know you wouldn’t want dessert because I just remembered it’s
Wednesday
and you’ll want to get home! Her friend was laughing, until her own husband started talking about
Friday
nights and how she’d leave her hairnet on when they made love! So this got the first woman laughing, like, “At least I didn’t wear a hairnet when I had sex!” It was so funny, like they were doing a comedy routine together with their dead husbands!

I am under
the impression that they don’t miss their bodies, but they remember the flesh as enjoyable. They remember eating, they remember having sex. But they have a sense of humor remembering their earthly desires and pleasures. In all honesty, it’s probably hard for most people to even relate to how it is there, because as spirit, we’re not even male or female. We’re completely asexual. We reincarnate as either gender because there are different lessons to be learned from each role and the spirit holds those memories. We’re so identified with male or female, whatever we are, even if we’d identify ourselves as gay or bisexual. It’s hard to get our heads around not having a body, not being either.

Another part of this is, during my readings, very often depressed or sad people will say that once they die they don’t want to come back. I hear it all the time: “I want to stay on the Other Side” or “I hope this is my last time around.” But once we’re there, something makes us come back into the flesh so that we can learn lessons. I believe that everyone’s ultimate goal is to become a spirit Master or spirit guide and to be a divine spirit who is close to God. To do this we have to be worthy. In the soul form, there is nothing more important than being worthy and being close to God. On this side, we want to be married and to have kids: we want money and beauty. In the energy form, nothing physical matters anymore; we care only about being close to God.

Partly yes and
partly no. We will get the body that we need for whatever our mission is in this lifetime. All our attributes—our beauties and our flaws—will be selected both for us to learn lessons and also to enable us to succeed in our purpose. So it’s such a combination of things that I don’t think anyone could describe a formula. Each individual’s case will be unique. For instance, if we are to be some kind of leader, we might get strong, attractive facial features, we’ll be charismatic in some way, maybe we’ll be tall. Not everyone who is a leader is tall and good-looking, of course, but it is likely that those who lack those qualities will have other items on their karmic agenda that they are working on this time so they’ve accepted the challenge of being a leader with fewer of the conventional attributes. Maybe someone like physicist Stephen Hawking is so focused in the life of the mind that the body is less important to him. I cannot imagine anyone choosing to be born with his degree of physical limitation, but he may have agreed to this lifetime’s severe physical restraints knowing that he’d be able to accomplish his work, his mission, and also get to burn through some serious karma like rocket fuel—and then again he might not be able to imagine being born with what he might consider
my
limitations and restraints! Perhaps if we are here to learn humility, we may be born with certain flaws that would cause us to be humble. On the other hand, maybe you get extra points for looking like Audrey Hepburn and still being humble—I don’t really know how these things go, I haven’t seen the scoring system. Bottom line, I think, is that we might not get what we want, but we will get what we need.

Well, it isn’t
physical so to call it a “place” probably isn’t accurate. It’s more a “state” or a condition—it’s
paradise
. It’s like here except that it has a completely different quality to it. It’s difficult to explain, but try to think of the worst thing anyone ever did to you your whole life. How bitter you are about that, how you might still, deep down, hate the person who hurt you so badly. On that side, that intense feeling of bitterness is completely gone. I have heard this over and over again from spirits. It’s really unbelievable; it just doesn’t exist. All is forgiveness, all is love.

The Other Side, of course, is not physical. But it does have many attributes that can
seem
physical. From what I have heard, anything we have here is also there, only more beautiful, pure, vibrant—somehow more real than what we know as reality even though our assumption would be that, when comparing physical versus spiritual, physical would be “more real.” I’ve heard that there are plants and gardens just like here only the colors are more intense. Our pets run around free and we never have to worry about them being hit by a car. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard about grand cathedrals of crystal and light. I know that there are many levels and since we do retain our personalities we will naturally gravitate to one area or another and likely our experiences will be different.

The first time my father came to me after he crossed over, I asked him what he did on the Other Side. He told me that he and my brother Harold went for long rides in the mountains. This implies to me that he sees the mountains and he feels the mountains. There is no question in my mind that They have the ability to do that. I don’t know how, because I am limited, but I do know that God is so grand and so great that it would not surprise me that God would give the souls that cross home the rewards they deserve.

Yes, there is
color and it is brilliant. They say we have true beauty on this side of creation, but this is nothing compared to what’s on the Other Side. To understand why that might be, just remember, we have a hand in things on this side. God creates it and we destroy it. We pollute it. We litter it. We bulldoze forests or we ruin rich farmland and then we have climate changes and dust bowls and floods; we have the loss of entire species of creatures and all sorts of other consequences that destroy the original perfection. We do have heaven on earth here if we can just let it be that, but we don’t. Just imagine if we could see the world “as is” from God, without people messing it up, and you might have some sense of the brilliance of the Other Side. I think this may have answered more than the question, but I feel better getting that off my chest.

No, there is
never a space problem over there. It’s paradise, it’s perfection—plenty of parking for everyone. Everyone has a big apartment, no lines in the grocery store or waiting to get a lane at the bowling alley. How could it be paradise otherwise? Nobody has to leave to make room for anyone else—we all are pure energy. The Other Side is a dimension of pure energy. Space, in the terms we think of it, is virtually meaningless there.

That old myth
is not really true—at least not in the way that it’s usually portrayed in scary movies and books. I know that sometimes souls are connected to places they love, but I don’t think it’s like that in most cases. Most of the time, the dead will be around their loved ones, wherever they may be, not attached to a particular house.

Sometimes a soul
has a story to tell. For example, in historic places like a Civil War battlefield. Gettysburg is one of the most “haunted” places I’ve ever visited. There are just
so
many spirits there. In these cases, there is a story about an incomplete life being cut down. Our history books tell only the smallest part of the story. We will never understand the real experience. And sometimes the dead do linger in these places in order to tell their stories. In a way the souls here are “stuck.” They might not understand that it was their karma to die at that point, and might feel they’ve been prevented from completing their purpose. Think about it—when we’re stopped from doing something we want very badly to do, we get really frustrated. Maybe we feel it wasn’t our fault and we get caught up in making excuses, telling our story, so others will know it wasn’t our fault. In the case of these souls, if they would cross, on the Other Side everything would be explained and they’d be encouraged to accept God’s love. But if they don’t cross and get their life review, and perspective, they don’t have a clue. They literally are lost souls. This really doesn’t happen a lot. If it happened every time someone was murdered there would be a thick painful energy all around us. But where the story is important, some souls move on and some stay. In any case, they forgive the minute they go into the Light. In the Light there is no room for anything but forgiveness and love.

As I understand
it, limbo is a state of frustration due to not understanding. A soul does not understand what is expected of it, what it has done wrong, and cannot go forward; it can’t get to the next level in its spiritual development.

To escape limbo the soul must be willing to listen to and heed the spirit Master or guide—like a guidance counselor. For example, maybe a kid thought it would be a good joke to get all the students out of class by setting off the fire alarm. He’s reported and he’s expelled from school. But he just thought it would be funny, no big deal, he doesn’t understand why he’s in trouble. So the guidance counselor maybe gives him an example of why his actions weren’t quite right. Then the kid gets it. He has understanding, realizes what he did was wrong, even if he didn’t intend anything bad by it. He can apologize and get back into his classes. If he doesn’t get the understanding, and he’s let back into class, he may do the same thing again or something worse. But with the understanding he’s able to move on. In spiritual terms, it’s the same thing. We can’t get to the next level without gaining the understanding of the level we’re on. Once we do, we’re given a new chance, a new mission that we can set off on with an improved attitude.