I recently had someone ask me the question about what happens when we die — she had a close friend who had passed and mentioned she was being visited in dreams. I thought my answer may help others who might be wondering a similar thing. This also explains the meaning and purpose of life, to a degree. Here it is:

This is something I have learnt so much about through direct experiences, to reading a lot of books on the topic, and being coming across information via my clients when conducting past life regressions with Dolores Cannon’s QHHT method.

However, words are just words. So what I say is my truths and I do hope they help, but you can search and find your own, which will validate much of this below. Most importantly though is that you have direct experiences, so that may be through projecting out of body into the astral and beyond consciously, to having a past life regression and seeing the images flood into your consciousness showing you that you are more than the physical body.

If there is a strong emotional connection with someone back on Earth, the person that passed may return and visit occasionally for a period of time. This can occur in dreams, exactly like you are experiencing, and yes, that is the actual person/soul aspect/spirit/energy/consciousness of them. There’s different reasons as to why they do this, the more common is around comforting the one they miss who may be suffering from their loss, and they may want to pass on a message.

We can be contacted in many different ways by them. We might smell something that is not actually physically there. We may hear a whisper, or words, and have thoughts or images pop into our head. We might get a song just appear in our mind that relates to that person based on an event in the past. There could be knocking on a wall or door, as physical interaction with our world is possible and does occur. All of these things can be done by us, if we learn to project out of body while in this life too, but are advanced abilities to have if we did so.

I’ve used techniques to get out of body, consciously, and this is pretty much the same thing as a near death experience, except I induce it while either falling asleep, or using reality checks during the day to help me wake up in a dream, and then go out of body, out of the dream. This not only removed a lot of fear, but showed me that we continue on after this life.

While we have an NDE (near death experience), or OBE (out of body experience), a silver cord is attached from where we are at the time, to the energetic system—where the chakras are—that is part of the human vehicle back down here on Earth. This cord has been observed by people traveling out of body, and documented in some books on the topic.

What happens when we die is that we rise up, splitting away from the physical, entering into the same vehicle that we use for an NDE, or OBE, which has different names such as the astral body or emotional body. The silver cord is then severed. From there we need to shift away from the astral version of Earth, and that is where the famous light at the end of the tunnel comes up, as that’s a representation of the passage between one realm/plane to the next, and is also known as a membrane. We basically travel to a higher frequency in the 5th dimension.

We can have beings and helpers come to meet us, or sometimes we don’t need them because we have done it so many times before and/or are of a higher level in terms of soul progression.

If we had a difficult life, we might first go to a waiting area which has been perceived as a hospital for some people. There we heal and rest. Other beings are there to comfort and assist us.

After that we return to the spirit center — a label I give an area associated with the space/realm/plane/location. This exists outside of our time here on Earth as time works very differently up there. We will meet our soul group. We each have a group of souls that plan together with us the life we were in, and those souls play different roles in different lives; sometimes your lover may be your mother, father, or sibling in another life. Then we need to have a life review to understand the decisions we took in the most recent life.

Back here on Earth, right now, we have come in during a new cycle, which I call the shift in consciousness, but it’s basically related to the astrological age which has similarities to the information surrounding the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar and 2012 phenomenon.

This time period right now is unique. We can make more progress on the spiritual path during it, than any other time before in other lives, with a few exceptions based on how these cycles work. So we can more easily let go of the past, including karma from past lives. This takes a lot of healing, self-exploration and awareness.

Normally a soul has hundreds of lives before it graduates, aka ascends. Ascension is really a misused word as it is very rare that a soul will just ascend while still in a human body. The normal process is just to die normally, in whatever way we are likely to, as our deaths are also seen before a life during the planning stage. After death, we may then graduate if we have learnt what we came here to, which is also ascension, but not really. (I really don’t resonate with the way the word ascension being used in the way it is online as it doesn’t make much sense!)

So until we go through all the different experiences that our higher self has planned, we will keep returning to Earth to have lives.

If we graduate, or ascend (which really only avatars, gurus, spiritual masters can do, with a few exceptions), we then have the opportunity to move into other roles, such as being a guide for a human(s) back here on Earth, a navigator for other souls/individual consciousness’ in the astral and higher dimensions, looking after the akashic records as a gate keeper/guardian, and so on. There are a lot of different things we can do, including having a new life on another planets as a star seed in a different form, like a Sirian or Pleiadian.

The entire purpose of this though—the meaning of life—is to go through all those experiences, as each experience and each life helps us to grow, raising our vibration and helping us to return to our origin; that being higher self which is beside god/source. I call god source, which you are, and I am, it’s just we have all split off from our higher self, which split off from source, to have experiences. The higher self is a collective consciousness made up of many individual souls and over-souls.

I will also add that when it comes to being out of body, I’ve also experienced this with plant medicine, specifically ayahuasca and huachuma (San Pedro). These plants are very efficient and effective at healing our blocks and emotional links from the past (which is why we get sick), in addition to opening us up so we have a more pure conduit back to the spirit world and beyond.

This work also has the side effects of activating various psychic abilities too. With one of my experiences I raised my kundalini (which can be done multiple times). I recall with one session I opened my eyes, looked down at my arm and it was multi-colored and transparent, so I could see the energy flowing, such energy that made up me—further helping me to map out my reality and existence.

Like I said, these are just words, but so much can be experienced to provide us with opportunities to find such knowledge and understandings.