Death and the Astral

So there I was, wandering around the graveyard again. Why? No one’s there to bug me. The energy in such a place is calm and restful. The perfect place to meditate for me.

My thoughts, which are always spinning around in my head like a mouse in a jar, turned to death. Do I still fear death? Sure, it’s a change, a permanent change, and I’ve always been nervous about change. But I feel I’m getting closer to accepting it.

I remembered the conversation I had with a good friend of mine on death. Being a free thinker, and not one to accept beliefs that have been force-fed to most of us since birth, he presented his own beliefs to me. It caused my mind to spin with new thoughts, and ever since him and I became friends, he’s helped me to start thinking for myself, as well.

So what do I think happens to us after death? Well, at first I considered the energy in the graveyard. I felt like everyone was at rest, like they were in a type of deep sleep. I thought to myself, “That”s it? We sleep?’, but I thought about what happens to us when we sleep. We dream.

In a lot of the New Age teachings, they talk about the Astral realm, where our energy, our thoughts, creates the environment there. And that there’s seven levels of the Astral realm, the highest being where Deity resides, the lowest being where evil takes up residency. They’ve taught that when we die, our soul, or our energy, travels to one of the seven levels, according to how we lived our lives, the energy that we’ve created. Also, we travel there in our dreams. I’m not speaking for all of the New Agers, mind you, but that is a popular belief among a lot of them.

What happens when you’ve had a bad day? Your dreams may reflect that bad day with a nightmare. Did your negative energy create that environment in the Astral? The same may go for a person’s life. Perhaps that’s why a lot of religions and spiritualists preach to you to be kind to others, to create positive energy in this world and in your own life. They may be on to something, there.

In theory, ancient peoples may have thought dreams and the afterlife might be linked, as well. What would you have thought, had you been in primitive times, if you didn’t understand why your mate lay down, seeming to be dead, yet they would waken later and talk of visiting other places and speaking to loved ones that died before?

But these are just my opinions. I hope I got your head spinning, as well.