Happenings Newsletter

Note: This fictional account is inspired by the author’s experience but includes themes of loss, transformation, and intense emotional struggle with regional dialogue all intended for storytelling purposes and not to reflect of the actual spiritual encounter. Alice is a retired associate professor of literature at the University of Nantes, France. Why me? Did I imagine it? Why can’t I get back? I don’t belong here any longer. Why me? Did I imagine it? Why can’t I get back? I don’t belong here any longer BEATITUDE Everything that made life worth living was shattered. My husband was no longer of this world. I could never get him back. And I was stuck— here with the other eight billion mortals, unless I could find a way back. Those were my thoughts, clear at first, but the more I tried to understand where I’d gone and how I’d gotten there, the less certain things became. It took years to piece together the ineffable experience that happened within a matter of minutes, maybe even seconds—a moment of perfect bliss. January 2020 I lay there close to my beloved Luc, desperately reliving the night he died, the journey I’d taken with him and the brutal awakening. Footsteps crunched in the snow, tramping in my direction. “Ma’am ya cain’t sleep here. It’s closin’ time.” I looked up. Above me, just visible through the swirling grey tumult of the blizzard, shone a patch of azure, pure joy—just waiting for me. But then I felt the grainy earth pressed hard against my frozen cheek! What had happened to my plan to return? I squinched my eyes closed and prayed for the tunnel of light to open up again. “I can seez you blinkin’.” A shadow loomed over me as the man crouched down to remove the frozen bits of snow on my eyelids; they stuck to his fingertips. “Open them eyes again. Ain’t no time for sleepin’ ma’am.” He shouted as the wind whipped by and tried to shield my face from the snowflakes, sailing down in all directions. “How long you been here? I did my rounds before I locked up last night, didn’t see no one. Did you climb over that brick wall over yonderways?” He sized up the six-foot-high wall surrounding the burial grounds and made a low whistle. “With that there cloak you wearin’ —it ain’t possible.” He tugged at my frozen hood. “Holy Jesus, you soaked in snow—ain’t even shiverin’. Lady! Lady! Ya hear me?” I felt bad getting this gentleman so worked up. I was fine, just fine, I wanted to tell him, I tried to speak, but not a word came out. Swirls of smoke funneled upwards. But I don’t smoke. Was it my breath? Was I alive? Or dead?” “Lady.” My armpits felt his hands groping for leverage as he tried to heave me up. “Got icicles stuck in your hair. So you did…you did spend the night here! What do you think this is…” He hadn’t said it yet but somehow, I knew what was to follow: “a campin’ ground?” “Lady, you could cost me my job. Just look at the state you in! Mud, mud, everywhere! You’re damn frostbitten, cain’t say a word! It’s gonna be my fault, lady, if you die.” The word I so cherished. I had found my way to that undiscovered country with light so dazzlingly beautiful it pierces the eyes and I thought I was still there, but the sky over my head belonged to the earth, not that miraculous place I’d ascended to the moment Luc died. I wanted to go back; I had to go back. It was my home now. That tunnel of light. Perfect bliss. Luc was beatitude. I was beatitude. We were reunited in beatitude. Then, another memory surged forth, crystal clear now and I knew why I had to come back, because of a contract, yes, I remember, a contract, a mission, to accomplish here in this life. But I didn’t want it any longer. “Ma’am. You must cooperate. Please cooperate!” I heard his voice, on edge. His snow hand brushed my coat up and down. “Come on now, git up!” If only I could open my arms and sail away into the sky, an open sea. I felt the warmth of the man’s breath on my wax hands—huffing and puffing as he rubbed them briskly. The tips of my fingers tingled as blood danced through my veins. “Ain’t gonna let you die here in my graveyard, lady. No way ya gonna pass away, not if I can help it, no siree bobtails! Lady, I give you to the count of three...” I blocked him out, reassuring myself: I was actually back home; I’d passed the pearly gates— none of what was happening could possibly be real. But the muttering grew louder. “Ain’t no way I gonna lose this here job cuz of some nut case!” Then, I felt him pushing at my side, it surprised me so much that I sat up instantly. “There ya go, now you listenin’ —one day, once ya get yo mind back, you’ll thank me, cuz you’d a likely died here next to this feller here.” He pointed, craning my head in the direction of the freshly engraved marble. Luc Jonson 1963-2019 “Gotta get that into your thick head!” I clenched my knees up against my chest, rocking back and forth, not knowing what hurt more, the frostbite, or the realization that I was not dead after all. “Trespassed didn’t ya? Waited for closin’ time last night and shimmied over that there wall where’s the oak tree is, that’s what ya did, go on admit it!” I felt the hot rage radiating from his being and drew back. “How’d ya fall asleep in such conditions? Well, cat got your tongue, or what, spit it out!” Then he started talking to himself. “Sedatives. Yep, must be in her handbag,” his eyes darted about in search of my purse. “So where the hell’s yo belongings lady?” I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t utter a word. I didn’t quite know myself. “Don’t ya have an ID or somethin’? Holy shit, lady, how’s I gonna get yo home?” “Home,” the other word I cherished. “Lady, it’s for your own good. Look, I’ll call 911. Ya cain’t just lay there on that slab of marble in these temperatures.” Then he went back to meditating while more snow piled up on his nose and melted into droplets. After a while, he grumbled under his breath: “It’s clear to me, the lady’s...” Again, I knew what he was about to say, lost her senses. That’s what they all thought. But they were all wrong. I wanted to tell the man, like I’d told my friends. Luc was ok. Better than ok. I was there with him, I saw it: sheer love everywhere, everything enveloped in it. Luc was in the best of all possible worlds now. …. I should have kept my shared journey into a benevolent dimension to myself; how could my friends understand, much less Josephine, my concierge, she stood in for family now and wanted to be my life support system. She knew that my only child had abandoned me, my adored daughter; I loved her as much as she hated me, and then my dear husband, both torn from me. Not sure I’d have been here to tell this story if I hadn’t been blessed with Josephine, who always kept an eye on me. Once the blissful memories of my experience began to fade, a tunnel of darkness swooned in on me. I plunged. That’s when I started the graveyard vigils, the sedatives and drinking. Ever since Luc’s passing, I rarely went out. I couldn’t even get myself to open up the front door to collect the mail that Josephine placed on my doorstep. One day, I heard the keys rattling against the door knob of my apartment—a waft of lily of the valley drifted into the bedroom, then the overhead lights came on. My eyes stung from the unwelcome glare and I pulled a pillow over my face. Josephine rushed to my side, trying to tug me up, to no avail. “My my, Mrs. Jonson, what’s become of you!” I sunk my face further into the pillow. “Now that your husband is gone, you’ve let yourself go.” Alarmed, I could hear her voice rising: “just look at you! Always so nicely groomed. A shame, such a shame. Mrs. Jonson, please cooperate.” She paused, trying to decide how best to help me. “Here’s what we’ll do, let’s get you a cold shower, you’ll be ok. But you must cooperate.” I finally gave in and took the cold shower, then I got back into bed and snuggled up with the pillows in my cotton velour dressing gown. Josephine came into my bedroom with a tray of hot tea and biscuits. After talking to me in the gentlest of tones, she explained that I must get out and socialize even if that meant only seeing a doctor. Clearly, I’d told her too much about joining Luc in the other dimension; her caretaking started to seem alienating. “Ginevra, your delusions about going to heaven with Luc have us all worried, please, just once, consider seeing a professional,” she slipped me a card, “he’s very good, I told him about you.” I was annoyed, Josephine was the one who couldn’t understand. I would never mention beatitude or Luc again— that was that! Josephine filled my friends in about my “state,” explaining that since Luc died, I’d become a heavy drinker and all those visits to the graveyard could only be the sign of some sort of mental disorder. I understood their point of view, but I wished they could understand mine. The alcohol was just a passing phase, the graveyard too. I needed it to forget and the graveyard to remember what I could never forget. Back in the world of waking hours, even after that graveyard morning had passed and the days rolled on, the memory of that place—of Luc, the light, the grass—haunted me not like a ghost, but like a truth too big to live inside my everyday life. I tried to forget it, but it wouldn’t let me go. Eventually, I realized that the only way forward was to understand—not just what I’d experienced, but why. To do that, I had to look back and piece it together, memory by memory. I’ve described the immediate and long-term effects of my journey to Beatitude. But you need to understand the journey itself to truly grasp the depth and breadth of my story. It’s a strange story to tell—this tale about a border boundary in the Afterlife that most people have yet to cross. It’s a transitional phase, an in-between state, hovering between life, death and eternity. That’s as close as I can get to a definition of a border boundary. Let me help you better understand this trip into the After-Death where you won’t need a passport or identification of any kind. I’m surprised that these experiences are so poorly documented because they have existed for centuries. Maybe it’s because it’s a real challenge to communicate what happens in the Afterlife where understanding is instantaneous. That means there are no language barriers, only direct communication without words, something akin to super telepathy. If you are still reading me either you are smirking, certain that I’m perfectly insane, or you actually kind of wonder, the way I did after the experience, could this possibly be true? Something so extraordinary, beyond human comprehension, “beyond,” I say, because the experience is beyond what us mortals can fathom. Especially in this part of the world that’s sold its soul to hard-core materialism; so many of us buying intangible fiscal assets: bit coins, real estate ventures, stock market securities; financial investments meant to bring happiness. To be honest, I used to run after some of those illusions: bigger this, shinier that, more comfort zone here, more there, everywhere, more success, trying on a new kind of happiness every day, but I never found the right size. Of course not, happiness is a lie you buy. And if Luc’s passing hadn’t somehow brought me along on the ride, I’d never have woken up. Hit me like a bomb shell. It made me understand that the finality of death is mere fiction. We transition, we don’t die. We belong to an ever-expanding universe of beatitude where all beings dwell in perfect peace, far removed from what we earth children know of life. Perhaps you think all of this sounds foggy and fake, but I’m getting to the core of my journey now. I may be earthbound at the moment, but the deepest part of my being continues to live on in the border boundary I crossed when I parted with Luc on September 29th, 2019. We were in two separate places that night; I, at home, Luc at a hospice, ten miles away. I put my phone next to the bed as usual. Not a peep came out of it all night. Naturally, I was on pins and needles wondering if the nurse would call me in, for an emergency of some kind related to Luc. That particular night, I had slept deeply and peacefully for the first time in ages. When I awoke, a feeling of inner plenitude radiated from deep within me; my unconscious mind was not quite reconnected with the earth and I felt intrinsically close to Luc as never before, not quite realizing the full force of what had happened to me/us. Just as I was picking up my keys to drive to the hospice, the director called me. It was 8:00 in the morning. “Mrs. Jonson, your husband passed last night between 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning. The nurses tried to call you, but you didn’t answer…” I hung up. An uncontrollable rage seized me as I thought—how could they? How could they lie about something like this? Overwhelmed, I raced to the hospital. First, I went to tell my husband goodbye; I opened the door and walked over to see him, he had the face of an angel, his lips slightly curved in a smile. A candle was flickering in the back of his room next to an arrangement of white orchids. I could feel the spirit of ineffable peace all around me. As soon as I closed the door behind me, the rage became all consuming. I spoke with the nurse in charge to understand why she didn’t call me. This next part is impossible to explain, but I’ll do my best. Madeleine, the nurse, looked me straight in the eyes and reassured me she’d tried several times to reach me, but no one answered. and I knew she was telling me the truth. How in heaven, could I not have heard the ring? I have overly acute hearing and nothing escapes me. That’s when it became clear. On reflection, I came to understand that Luc’s spirit body came to seek me in my sleep; my soul ascended with his and for the time that journey lasted, I was no longer a body incarnate, equipped with sensorial functions. I didn’t answer the phone because I was already with Luc; we made the journey together. How can that be? I surely can’t explain, but I can tell you about the extraordinary experience. I found myself alongside Luc’s spirit. We were accompanied by a man with glowing blond waist-length hair. We ascended an azure blue tunnel into the sky where we seemed to be thousands and thousands of kilometers above the earth, which was no longer visible to me. I started to see all the things I’d done in my life— Good and Bad—flash before me, and I was afraid, then a word came to me unfiltered: beatitude. I sensed a luminous warmth and felt immersed in boundless energy that cleansed any remaining wounds from my soul. Later I understood, I was experiencing pure unconditional love penetrating my entire being, so completely that anything within not of love was being removed, as if it never existed. During this process, I watched our guide still ascending together, wondering who he was, maybe a Saint, a guide, or could this manifest presence actually be— God? We stayed with the gentleman. I asked him who he was and he said he was our guide. He looked at me with a kind of knowing, like a parent guiding a child, sensing my longing to understand. He made it clear: to reach a higher state of awareness, one must raise and align our love. This love wasn’t just a feeling, it was a living force, something that awakened from deep within and moved through me, reshaping every part of who I was, it was like joy that wells up within exciting us in the moment and then radiating outwards to shape our words, actions, and even being. It was that whole process and it wasn’t abstract. It came both from deep within and yet also surrounded me, drawing me into this ecstasy, a union with the divine. I was learning that this mystical presence is already within us, though often hidden beneath the weight of matter where life tends to silence spiritual things. It was like learning a new word as a child and, upon hearing it, you begin to notice it everywhere. So too with this higher love: once this spirit is awakened, it revealed new layers of knowledge and truth seeing what I’ve never seen before in the things I’ve been looking at all my life. It unlocked something vast and luminous within. As we moved this realignment accelerated sanctifying impurities, many I hadn’t even recognized because they were so subtle in the instinct of my physical being, it just seemed to dissolve. In one sense I was losing myself but in another I was finding a greater version of me, not in isolation, but through the unity of us, where my individuality became crystal clear illuminated by and being connected within the whole. As we began moving through space, it felt like we were moving through higher levels each stripping away layers of imperfection like heavy clothes coming off; cleansing, refining, liberating and revealing an utter beauty within that I’m not sure I ever recognized was there. Then we entered into a radiant expanse: vast, brilliant, boundless. This cleansing had no sense of external judgment, but felt like a natural purification necessary for this place of paradise. Vast and ablaze with beauty, I saw a brilliant sta, a radiant giant, seemingly a million times greater than our sun; it was surrounded by a wide band of misty drops which were in fact spheres, or pearl orbs illuminated from inside each holding life and lessons needing to be learned. We were nearing the orbs, and as we drew closer, I was drawn to one in particular that spoke to me, what was inside them? Sensing my unspoken question, our guide shifted my consciousness into the orb nearby. Instantly, I found myself immersed in a scene of profound sorrow. A woman was weeping, overwhelmed by grief. Though I had no way of knowing it logically, I understood deeply and unmistakably that her daughter had betrayed her, and she was on the brink of ending her life. In her mind’s eye, she gazed toward her daughter, though the daughter wasn’t physically present only held within her thoughts. Then, something changed. The woman took a breath, and in that moment, she realized she was no longer bound to an earthly body. She was spirit, whole, luminous, perfect. As that awareness dawned, she was suddenly surrounded by radiant beings of light angels who enveloped her with a presence that transcended words. Now I understood that we were approaching what could be called the gates of heaven surrounded by pearls of wisdom in a living dance where life is learned and purpose gained for each of us, each one drawing me more deeply into communion with the place we were about to enter. We touched down on a terrain that felt like an earth made perfect, untouched by sorrow or decay. My body, no longer of flesh, but remade in what I can only describe as this radiant love energy that shaped itself into form with discernible features perhaps existing for this moment rather than being a permanent fixed part of who I actually was in spirit. When my feet touched the grass, each blade seemed to awaken and connect me to the whole. Through that simple contact, I was flooded with all sensations seemingly at once; sound, sight, touch, even taste, each rushing in with an intensity I’d never known. It was an explosion of sensations taking me higher and higher. It was as though the earth itself spoke in a language of light and emanating brilliance from within. Everything became a symphony and wellspring of love, of life, of light. I was utterly cradled in it, immersed in it, a benevolence so complete that I knew, without question, the light was God himself, the One who heals all earthly sorrows and exudes a peaceful bliss that yet soars behind comprehension. At some point I was back in space and noticed that our guide had a stigma on his thigh, something like fear made me want to remove myself from the sight of it and right away, I found myself descending (it seems I’d made the irreparable decision of coming back to earth). I found myself turned toward the earth, my earth, the place where physical life still pulsed below. It appeared beneath me like a dark tapestry, seething and sorrowful, as if painted by Bosch or Bruegel with human animal-monsters writhing in agony and it looked as close to Hell as anything I could imagine. I sensed a finger pointing down at all this and through instant communication within, I was made to understand that what was awaiting me upon my return was betrayal—lies and inauthenticity. I could not understand as the perfect bliss that I was enveloped by protected me during this spiritual journey; but coming back to earth was a huge shock. In retrospect, I tried to stitch together what all this meant. The guide seemed to be alerting me to the consequences of what would happen when I returned to earth without the loving presence of my husband who had protected me all these years and shielded me from the residual damage of life on earth which I would now be facing all alone, no holds barred. In other words, I would have to prepare myself, not only to be separated from my husband, my sole protector, but I would also have to forego the loving presence of Beatitude to return to the Sorrows of the Earth. And yet, this experience was inextricably infused into me perhaps for cause. It helped me greatly to have acquired the certainty that my husband was going home to Beatitude, the most peaceful dimension of being that can possibly exist. But it would not suffice for long. When I came back to earth, I would face unprecedented situations of betrayal and I realized the woman my guide showed me at the pearly gates, weeping profusely and overcome with anger and sadness because her daughter had abandoned her, was me. It took me a long time to fully understand that I would have to exit all this anger and low frequency energy. In giving, you receive even higher dividends. Everything is interconnected and resonates with living energy. Love is the strongest building block of the universe. Those are thoughts I brought back from the Afterlife with me that resonate with the solemn blessings in the Sermon on the Mount. By embracing truth and love for others in patient and good ways, we move closer to supreme blessedness and even if this hasn’t yet renewed all creation, it can surely help us move one step closer to being a better person. Maybe everyone is right, I’ve lost my mind. But if that’s the case, I have no desire to find the mind I had previously, since I’ve disowned it once and for all. After making the trip with Luc, I understood I had to change. And I’m still trying; the most difficult challenge is staying aligned with myself in order to be authentic, but what on earth is actually authentic? I think I’ll just start with trying to be the best of myself.