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Death - it's not what you think


Photography © Mikhaila Stettler

The topic of death came up twice yesterday and it inspired me to share my experiences of helping the newly dead understand their transition. Generally, I just keep my mouth shut whenever people talk about death. It’s such a highly charged subject and most people aren’t interested in having their belief systems challenged.


I was talking to my brother yesterday about my elderly mother’s declining mental and physical health. He wondered why God would put her through this experience. This was the second discussion of death yesterday and I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “God’s not doing anything to Mom,” I said. “She is living out her own beliefs and created this experience for her own soul purposes.” That kinda stopped the conversation in its tracks and he quickly changed the topic.


At the soul level, we choose the timing and circumstances of our own death.

The truth is that at the soul level, we choose the timing and circumstances of our own death. Same with our birth. This is a fact of the human physical reality experience many are unwilling to accept. No outside power or being chooses your birth or death, not God, not the Universe, not Spirit or any other conception of some supreme power. The divinely granted power of freedom of choice applies to our birth and death. It’s not imposed on us against our will, but it’s also not in the hands of our conscious mind. (Suicide is a special situation, but won’t get into that now.) I’d like to share how I came to this understanding.


When I was born – an event I remember in complete detail – I retained full multidimensional awareness. This included all kinds of abilities, like telepathy and the ability to freely move between waking 3D reality and inner planes of activity with full consciousness. I kept this awareness for the first few years on my life, until it got too difficult to sustain it all by myself, a tiny dependent child with no one else conscious in my environment. Eventually, by age 5, I shut it down until it began to spontaneously reawaken when I hit puberty. The point of telling you this is that it gave me an undeniable frame of reference, vivid memories and an irrefutable inner knowing that this life is just one of infinite dimensions and timelines of existence each of us is active, “alive” and engaged with.


During my late teens, I went through a 3-year period of helping newly dead who were stuck understand that a) they were dead and b) it’s not what they thought. For the first year, I was in training. The second year, I operated independently. The third year, I trained others. The people who needed this help were stuck in some hallucinated reality because of their belief systems, which they rigidly held onto after leaving their bodies and Earth life behind.


My job was to make a connection, find a way to reach them through their self-generated reality, and then to break the news that they had died. Once they accepted that fact, and accepted the after-death state wasn’t at all what they thought, that they were still “alive” and their consciousness was intact, and I got them re-oriented, I passed them along to other beings who arrived to take them to their next stage.


The most difficult to reach and help were those who either believed that 1) their consciousness was annihilated at death, that there was no continued existence, they were just obliterated or 2) they had been sent to hell.


In the first group, these people basically shut down all their awareness, as though in a state of frozen suspended animation, complete nothingness, all perceptual capacities closed for business. You wouldn’t believe some of the crazy shenanigans I performed to catch their attention. No communication or help was possible until I got them to even notice my presence. It was hard work, believe me!


The second group was challenging in a different way. Their hallucinated hell state was so intensely fear-based that is was tricky to connect with them without falling into it. I need to explain that I performed this work while in the dream state. I’m not sure now why people still living Earth life were assigned this kind of work in the dream state. Maybe because we were closer to physical life and could relate more easily to the beliefs and fears of the newly dead? In any case, nothing could happen until I got the person to connect and relate to me. In the cases of those stuck in a hell state, I had to enter their experience with them in order to help them out of it.


Many was the time in the first year of training when, overcome with terror, I was unceremoniously hauled out of someone’s hell state by my teacher, having succumbed to the hallucination along with them, even though I knew it wasn’t real. I remember feeling shaken and embarrassed, while my teacher politely gave me time to collect myself, before trying again. It required a very specific quality of focus and attention, a certain kind of strength, to relate to them where they were in all the intensity of the terror, while never forgetting the truth: there is no hell, except what we ourselves conjure up.


The after-death experience is as unique for people as the in-physical-life experience. Some do it one way, some another.

What I learned from those years is that the after-death experience is as unique for people as the in-physical-life experience. Some do it one way, some another. It all depends on their soul themes and purposes and their level of awareness and development. For sure, everyone will have some sort of after-death life review to assess their creation and understand their journey. From there, the avenues open to the newly dead soul are pretty much unlimited. They have support and guidance, but it’s really up to them. For highly aware people who integrated much of their experience while still in a physical body, they may go through a relatively minimal debriefing before fully engaging in their next chosen field of experience.


One more story to tell you before I wrap up. I was twenty-seven when my father was dying from colon cancer that had metastasized to his liver. He was often asleep or out of his body during those last weeks. He was in his own bed, at home. I knew he was in a lot of fear, and the rest of my family was in fear and grief, too. I would sit in meditation with him, and try to tune into him and follow him to where he was going on the other side. I spoke to him, both telepathically and if he was awake, verbally, telling him that it was perfectly safe, there was nothing to be afraid of, and he was already spending most of his time on the other side so he was already familiar with his next stage. I reassured him that he wouldn’t be alone. Someone would be there to greet him and help him.


A year after he died, my father began to visit me in the dream state. One of the things he communicated to me was how much he appreciated my help while he was dying, that it really calmed his fear and made the entire process much easier.


I’ve taken only one other person (so far) through their death process from my waking state, my beloved ex-boyfriend. Wise and awake as he was, Izaac insisted that after we die, we’re just absorbed in Universal love and oneness, no more individual existence. We had a good laugh after his death over that one and I couldn’t keep from telling him, “I told you so!” when he shared with me the new plane of existence he was happily enjoying and exploring.


All this extra awareness does not make me immune to grief, nor has it made me immune to fear (still working on that one). Losing a loved one’s presence still hurts and I miss them. But I don’t have any concerns for their well-being or doubts about their continued existence after they leave their body. My purpose in sharing these stories is to perhaps trigger your own inner knowing and remembrance of the eternal nature of your existence, to reassure you dying is perfectly safe, and your loved ones live on pursuing their own agendas after life, just as they did while in a body.


I’m happy to assist if someone near and dear to you is close to making their transition or if you want to connect with the truth of your own eternal reality.


As always, sending love and blessings,

Mikhaila

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