Between Death and Life: Conversations with a Spirit

by Dolores Cannon

I think it would be very reassuring and comforting to people who have lost loved ones in a violent, horrible way, to know that they probably did not even experience the most traumatic part of the death. It makes a great deal of sense to realize that the spirit would not want to remain in the body and experience all that pain. Therefore the spirit removes itself and the body is merely reacting spontaneously.

lifetime. Another thing that causes confusion when you cross over to the spiritual planes is that your memory starts opening up to your past incarnations and your entire karmic picture. So you’ll recognize those souls. First, initially in the relationship you knew them in the life you just left. Then you’ll start remembering other relationships where you’ve known them. That’s part of the process of remembering all of your karma while you’re on that plane, so you can understand what you’ve just completed and what you still need to work out when you return to Earth again.

After learning what it needs for its next lifetime, it consults with the spiritual masters and starts preparing for its next incarnation.

Have you ever heard of the resting place? S: Yes, if you are referring to what I am picturing, it is a special place for damaged souls to go to rest and restore themselves before they can enter the company of other souls or enter the plane of incarnation again.

people, if it is a traumatic death, go into a period of deep, deep resting until they can handle the experience of knowing that their body has ceased to exist. And the awakening will be very slow. We don’t need people who are wandering around in a daze. They can cause themselves harm and others also.

But something that you would think of as a traumatic death would not always be considered traumatic on this side. You would perhaps consider many soldiers to have died traumatic deaths. Yet sometimes they are some of the most accepting of what has happened, more so than perhaps someone who died in childbirth.

Death is necessary in order to progress.

New surroundings are very important to progression. Reminders of the past inhibit looking to the future.

That is what the human soul is—nothing but energy. For the soul is not merely a thing which is residing within the physical body. It is an energy. And as an energy, it can propagate as energies are wont to do. The correct perception of your personality would be as energy, for that is the essence of the truth of creation—that all is energy. Some forms are on lower levels such as the physical world around you; but they are energy and can be demonstrated as such by simple conversion processes such as fire. All matter is in reality, energy. It is simply manifested in a lower, baser form. And so you can see yourselves as pure beings of energy, nothing more, nothing less. There is no such thing as matter. This is simply a connotation which has been given to describe that which is apparent around the “physical” world.

That is one reason why so many of them have problems with depression and such. Because they feel they’re screwing up their only chance. If they realize that they have a multitude of chances, they could do their best each time and not feel bad for the mistakes they make. They can work it out the next time.

Whatever is in your mind sometimes comes about. Your spirit knows what things you need to learn and then it creates situations without you really being aware of what’s going on. But it all happens for reasons. When I’m there on Earth I won’t really know, I won’t really decide. I’ll just think they’re happening by chance. But they’ve all been thought about and planned out for purposes.

Do you make any decision as to when you come back? S: When I find someone who I feel will fit my need, then I have a choice. You get involved with other people. You build ties and emotions. You are open, you feel, you sense, and their lives affect you. D: Is it all planned in advance? S: It has to be because there are so many who wish to return and so few bodies to return into.

Can you choose the type of person you will be? S: You have certain characteristics. You are the sum total of everything you have ever been or done. You are a person. You may be slightly imprinted through your childhood by the people you’re around but that is more of an added element. It doesn’t really change you. You are what you are, what you’ve done, what you’ve said, what you’ve thought, how you’ve lived and handled every situation. You are a sum total of all these things. D: What about free will? S: Part of that is … each soul has a personality. Because of that there is free will in the fact that we know how that person will decide in any given situation because

Then apparently they do have a great deal to say about it. Do you think it’s already planned out who you are to meet and the people you will have association with? S: To some extent, because you have some type of a previous bond with most of the people that you meet throughout your life. You will have things to work out between two or maybe more individuals. Sometimes you come together in a trio, sometimes you come together in a whole group, with the things you have to

work out with these people. Sometimes you’re born among them, which makes it easier. This also explains why some parents and children cannot stand each other, because they hated each other previously. They decided they wanted to try to at least work something out, but they just aren’t handling it very well.

Then a young soul would be one that has not had much Earth experience? S: Yes, or just experience in the other realms because Earth is not the only realm of consciousness.

Have you ever heard of something called the Akashic records? S: Yes, the records of life. There are those entities who are the guardians of the records and they are allowed to read them. Some, who have studied and have practiced for years have small access to them. But there are very few, and none that I know who are incarnate, who have full access to those records.

A resting life can be defined as an insignificant life,

It

is one where the entity appears to coast through a dull, seemingly meaningless life where nothing really extraordinary happens.

We should realize that we cannot judge. We cannot know what type of life the person is resting from or preparing for; what their accomplishments may have been in other times and what they may accomplish the next time around.

The resting place is to completely erase everything up to that point. And the resting lives are just—perhaps they have just come from a stressful life and they need the rest but not necessarily to forget the personality because that is easily done. The resting place is for those who have problems forgetting the personality that they were or the problems that they had, and keep identifying with that facet of that entity. That personality would be too strong of an influence on the following lives. This is the type that you go to the resting place to forget.

It depends upon that particular soul’s capacity to handle things that will be thrown at them—the problems that they will face. Some need more time in between existences to be able to cope with going from one to the other, or to just forget.

The souls that are sick and damaged need stronger guidance than those that are healthy. To an extent they have lost their responsibility to decide these things.

It’s so easy for people to have the tendency to think of themselves as other people see them, which is not so. You are different things. You are what you really are, then you are what you think you are, then you are what other people see you as … and then you

change. But when you’re handicapped you are given something that you must overcome. And one of the things you must learn is not to be affected by the ridicule. You can’t take other people’s cruelties personally. That is something they have to deal with themselves. They don’t understand or maybe they’re frightened. What people don’t understand oftentimes frightens them.

Now the guardian is explaining that every life that has ever been lived is represented as a thread in this tapestry. This is where all the threads of human life, the souls that incarnate are connected. It illustrates perfectly how each life is interwoven, crossing and touching all these other lives until eventually all of humanity is affected. The absolute oneness of humanity is represented by the tapestry. It is one but composed of all these many parts. Each cannot exist without the other and they all intertwine and influence each other.

No, all life has a thread in this tapestry, but only advanced souls are able to understand the concept of the tapestry, and to have access to it. Lesser developed souls have Akashic record books they can look through. It would be like a child going into a college library. They should go to the children’s section of a local library instead.

He sees the silver thread that lies behind me. D: Oh, he knows you’re still connected to a body. And that we are doing this as a kind of experiment. J: Yes, he understands that. Most of the other people don’t have silver threads coming

The scriptorium is a different part in the library? J: Yes. It’s for people that are not very advanced souls. They’re medium advanced souls that still need the written word to make sense to their consciousness. D: They wouldn’t understand the viewing rooms? J: Well, they would understand them, but this is how they choose to learn, by reading from the book. D: In that case they can take the books and sit there and read them, and also write? J: Right. Write in them too. Some of them do.

lower astral is just terrible. He says, “We pray for these lower entities, but it’s as if they are tied to earth. They’re not in human form but they’re still on the earth.”

says this is why it is necessary for people to pray for their loved ones because that will help them to see the light. It is like their own personal Hell that they live in. But, he says when they sense that they’ve had enough of this, guardian spirits come to them. After they have learned to say, for instance, “I’m tired of looking at all these people doing this stuff that I can’t do.”—Then the guardians come and conduct them and start showing them ways that they can make a transformation for themselves.

We make an effort to attract the attention of individuals that we feel are capable of handling the knowledge and the information that we can give them. There are only a certain amount of people who are open to those on the seventh level. There are more who are open to those on the sixth. But we are trying to open up the ones who are, for instance, the spiritual leaders or the inventors. And those who many people would not consider to be important, in the extent that they won’t be remembered for the next 200 years. But they are doing something that is important. Maybe being a father to someone who will be known, or maybe guiding or teaching such children.

invention. I think those on the other side do not really care who does the actual creating, as long as is done when the time is right. This would account for the cases of many people all over the world working on the same thing at the same time and rushing it toward completion. Many famous inventors and composers have claimed that their inspirations came to them during dreamlike states when they would naturally be more psychically open to these helpful influences.

Do we have to live more than one life in order to advance? S: You need not live any lives at all if you so desire. It is not necessary to incarnate; it is simply more efficient.

Angels are the assistants who do not climb but merely serve. Our purpose is to start at the beginning and run until we get to the finish. However, there is

no first or last place. All who cross the finish line are winners in that race.

The level of the Earth is considered a fifth level. There are several levels below that. There are the elementals, who are some of your lowest, on the first level. That basic plane is composed of pure emotions and energies. They are but a basic energy, and you progress upward from there. They are life forms which have no individual personalities but are merely collective life forms waiting for their time, as humans waited for theirs. Elementals have a future where they will become personalized. However, they are in their waiting period at this time.

There is the second level which are protectors of the trees and the hills. These are different from each other. Elementals usually deal with places.

Every single entity has said that our language is totally inadequate to describe what they see. Often they try to compensate by using analogies, but even these are woefully ineffective to portray the whole picture.

is because the spiritual planes are here too, but the vibrations involved are of a different frequency.

Many lifetimes must be lived to enable you to completely understand those lessons which you yourself assigned to yourself.

death is nothing more than rearranging molecules on a physical level, and displacing consciousness from a vehicular enclosure to one of a free nature. Life has always been and life always is. There is no such thing as taking life, for life simply changes to another form. We

there

is not simply the breaking of the contract, the individual’s soul energy is thrown into complete disharmony.

To take the life of self is the only thing that can truly be considered upon this side to be sin, because life is so precious. These people are confused and mixed up about what life is really all about and what they need to accomplish.

Suicides normally do not go back into the body quickly. Usually it is too traumatic. They can’t solve the problem that caused them to commit suicide quickly enough to go back into the body that soon. They are talked to and helped. They have to learn why they did it and what brought them to that point. It usually takes a long time before they are ready to face it. If it is extremely bad they are taken to the resting place so they will forget the trauma of why they got to this stage in life, to the point where they would contemplate the taking of one’s own life. Suicide brings upon that soul much bad karma that will have to be erased by much good in preceding and succeeding lives.

But all problems are eventually dealt with. You can’t avoid it. The best way to handle it is to come back into a life that will have its fair share of problems like the last life did. And the suicide is paid back by working out these problems and hanging in there and being viable and living to a ripe old age and having a good well-rounded life. It may take several lives like this to pay back the suicide and to help balance the karma. You get on the right track by working out the problems that you gave up on before. A suicide must face the same situation and problem again until

Each soul does not learn at the same rate as the other. It depends upon that soul’s confusion and feelings of worthlessness and loss, more than any other thing. Suicide is not forgiven lightly but it can be worked out. It is not impossible to be worked out, like some would have you think. Nothing is impossible to work out; it’s just that some things take longer than others because some things are more complicated. Yes, the killing of self is the ultimate wrong because that throws the karma out of balance. Killing yourself, murdering yourself, that’s not working out any karma. That’s creating more karma.

Before someone comes into a life they meet with their spiritual masters and they figure out, in general, how much karma they can work out in this life if