Carol sat up in the early morning light and removed the head scarf she had on. It was lavender and matched her robe. She ran her hand over her scalp and felt a new growth of hair less than a centimeter long. She replaced the scarf over her head again. Incredible, she thought, this body is so much like the other one, even to the length of hair! She looked at her hands. They were the same light to medium shade of brown as before her passing, but they looked younger, healthier. The sick, frail body had dropped off, like the booster to a rocket, and this new body would take her to new heights, she believed.

She stood up and walked slowly along the trail in the same direction she had traveled the day before, east, toward the rising sun. She had a headache. Her steps felt jerky and uncertain. She sat down on a small boulder. I wish I had a cup of coffee! she thought. As she sat, she felt something brush past her calf. It felt familiar. She heard the purring of a cat, and looked down to see a black cat turning around to rub against her again. She reached for the kitty, held him on her lap, and petted him.
“Nice Kitty,” she said. The cat relaxed in her lap while she scratched and stroked him. She was able to relax, and the headache dissipated…. Eventually she resumed her hike, still holding the cat, until the cat wriggled to get down. The cat scampered up a wide tree trunk that leaned at about a 45 degree angle to the ground. It was a huge oak tree. She watched as he scratched the trunk with his claws.

Then she wanted to smoke a cigarette. She patted herself down looking for the familiar pack and lighter that would invariably be in her purse or one of her pockets. She did not have a purse, and there was nothing in either pocket of the robe. “Bye, Kitty, I hope I’ll see you again,” she said as she walked on, still feeling unmet desires.
She didn’t know where she was exactly, other than somewhere in a realm beyond. Maybe she was in a vivid dream and would wake up inside her physical body again. This body that walked on and on effortlessly, but was plagued by cravings, was a part of her being that was always her. But still she had lost a big chunk of herself.
Suddenly, she remembered the vision she had experienced in her trance state the previous afternoon, meditating on the Sermon on the Mount. She had watched her husband carry her limp corpse out of the house, in front of her damp-eyed adult children. He had laid her down on a stretcher that had been loaded into a hearse, which was then driven to a mortuary where her body had been placed in cold storage. No, she thought, I won’t wake up inside that body again! Where was she headed? The hike was the object. The movement of this ethereal part of herself along the trail seemed to ground her in whatever reality there was, a reality she didn’t know much about. I should have studied. I should have learned about death and the world beyond. I know absolutely nothing!
She walked through the day and thought as she went. Her death and transition were hitting her like a ton of sand. She remembered the instant her entire life had flashed before her. In that instant she had seen the forces that shaped her, and she saw her own acts, but she couldn’t quite remember the context in which those insights had come. She walked on and on through the mountain highlands. She thought about her husband, her children, her granddaughter, the job she had been too sick to do for about the last six months, the opulent lifestyle that her illness had begun to put a strain on. Joe was in good health, she believed, and probably would not join her for some time. Probably, he will marry again. I can’t blame him.
. . .
She continued down the trail, leaving behind the highlands and entering a desert. The mountain conifers gave way to a high desert with cactus and rocky crags. It was spring and the desert was in bloom. Beautiful wildflowers were everywhere. She now knew she was not in the San Diego area. She knew she was in a strange country, similar in some ways to California, yet completely different, and in a completely different world.

She saw the figure of a woman sitting on a rock down a ways from where she was. As she approached, she recognized her childhood friend, June. June had passed away a couple of years earlier, after a three-year battle with leukemia. June had received several courses of treatment but had continued to relapse and had passed away.

“June, is that you?” Carol looked into June’s dark brown eyes. June stood up and they embraced.

June’s arms were a little darker than Carol’s. June’s long black hair fell in tight ringlets. She wore a yellow robe with a gold blanket over her shoulder. She was also barefoot.

“Yes, it’s good to see you, Carol. How are you?”

“Well, apparently, I’m dead. I’ve wandered here for days. I don’t understand what happened to me. So good to see you!”

“Well, I’ve wandered here for a couple of years. Not sure how much help I can be.”

“I wished for a friend. Thank God for you, June!”

The two sat down on nearby boulders.

“Tell me about your death, Carol,” June said.

“Well, it was a lot like yours, only I guess mine went faster. I went for a check-up about a year ago, and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Of course they wanted me to stop smoking. I tried and couldn’t do it. I just went downhill from there. Had some treatments that did not help much, if any. After the treatment I would feel worse for a week, then I would have a few days of feeling better. Finally, I was in constant pain, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. The cancer treatments stopped, and I was on opiates. I fell asleep and woke up in this world, and did not realize it at first. I thought I had gotten better and was hiking on a familiar trail.”

“That was similar to mine, only mine stretched out longer. By the time I arrived here, I knew I had died and gone to the spirit world, or so I thought. But actually this is the soul world, the spirit world is higher and brighter.”

“Oh, so there’s another realm beyond this one? I know absolutely nothing! I got here yesterday. I thought I was on a hike near home, then in the evening a troll tried to scare me into going to hell with him. I prayed bullets, and fortunately, the Lord answered my prayer, and the spook went away.

“June, are you saved?” Carol looked at her friend. She saw an expression of fear wash over June’s face for a moment, followed by a look of determination.

“I – I’m not sure. I have to pray all the time, especially at night. It’s getting late, we’ve got another night to face.”
“Tonight we’re together, I hope that helps. Of course, we can’t stop praying.”
“We’re in outer darkness, you know. We’ve been cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. I have seen the mansions. From one of these mountains, I saw them off in the distance. You and I didn’t make it to the mansions.”
“No June, I don’t think this is outer darkness. This is some sort of an intermediate state, purgatory, or something. It’s not hell, it’s actually quite nice.”
“Yes, you have a point. There is a darker realm, called hell, that is completely black and devoid of air. But we are still in outer darkness when compared to the brighter realms.”
Carol and June watched as a levitating figure, clad in a pastel blue robe, sitting in a meditation position, slowly floated along the trail a few feet above it. He or she came from the direction Carol had come from earlier, and he or she approached the two women where they were sitting. Now the levitating meditator appeared to be a woman. She did not open her eyes as she passed Carol and June, and continued to move down the trail in deep meditation.
“Wow, June, have you ever seen that before?” breathed Carol, when the levitating figure had passed them and continued on across the blooming desert.
“Yes, I’ve seen it a few times before. Once I saw a group of about nine traveling together.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“No, I’m sure you have to have a well-developed spiritual practice long before you arrive here in order to levitate like that.”
“The troll, who told me his name was Adolf, told me I couldn’t pray to Jesus to be saved, that it was too late by the time I arrived here. But I did pray, and Jesus helped me.”
“That’s right, you can’t believe anything a troll says.”
“This is a completely different world than the one we left behind. It is not even in the physical universe, nor is it detectable with any of the scientific instruments in use there. Of course the physical laws here are different, even if there are some similarities.”
“Yes, that is true,” replied June thoughtfully.
“Let’s try meditation levitation!”
The two women found a sandy area free of cactus and each attempted to sit down in a meditation position.

“I took a yoga class once,” June said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t stick with it.”
“Same here. Enough of making pretzels out of myself after two class sessions.”
“Oh, my aching knees,” said June. “How can you hold this position long enough to levitate anywhere, I would like to know!”
“Yes it is hard, but worth a try. I think I would be more comfortable with something under my butt.” She mounded sand where her butt would go, pulling it from where her legs were to go.
“Yes, I can see that, I’ll try it too,” said June, and she did the same thing. On mounds of sand with their knees out to the side, ankles crossed, heels pulled towards themselves, and hands relaxed on their thighs, they sat….
After a while, Carol spoke. “My daughter, Sophie, teaches yoga. She said that in meditation, you focus on the breath.”
So the two sat and focused on their breath. After a few minutes they felt like they had had enough, and had not levitated a millimeter. “I do feel a bit of peace,” volunteered June. “I’m glad we tried. I will continue to meditate a couple times a day.”
“Me too. Right now I’m going to lie down for a little bit.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“June, what do you know about the realms after death?”
Before June could answer, a distant howling startled the two women. They lay breathing quickly. “I’m scared,” whispered June.
“Me too.
“Do you know any hymns?”
“Just, Amazing Grace.”
So they sang, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound…,” but the wolf howls and hyena laughter continued and got closer.
At last one of the creatures spoke in a growly voice. “You might as well surrender now. What does it get you holding out night after night? We’ll get you in the end anyway.”
A second one added in a spooky voice, “Come to Daddy, baby. We’ll take care of you!” Then he howled.
“I am tired of this nightly drama,” said June. Her tone sounded hopeless, and Carol thought she was close to giving up.
“No June! You can’t give into them! They are the devil, like ravenous wolves, seeking whom to devour!”
“Thank you, Carol, I don’t really want to be torn limb from limb.”
“No you don’t.”
The trolls continued to howl and taunt the women and circled a few feet away like wolves. “Listen, June, we have to deal with stuff from our past. I’m going to sit up, bow my head, let a memory come, and just deal with it.”
“I’ll do the same.”

Carol remembered a determination to succeed she had felt while in her twenties. It was just an empty ambition, she realized now. She had not understood that the earth is merely a spiritual proving ground for the worlds beyond. She had not realized that accumulating wealth would ultimately mean nothing, and that only kind words and loving deeds would last. She had accepted a job for the money and the prestige. Yet even at the time, she had known she was betraying deeper principles. She listened while her mind made the excuses it always made. I have to succeed, I have to prove myself…. She listened and began to hear the other side of herself, the side that would have put principle before success, the part of herself that had been suppressed all these years. The world is temporary. Wealth is temporary. I must live my life according to eternal principles! “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” She wept.
The circle gradually became wider as the women continued to pray. The trolls, ghouls, spooks, demons, werewolves, or whatever they were, still howled from time to time, but they sounded farther away. Carol discovered that she had been sitting in the meditation position. She felt that about an hour had passed as she sat. She looked at June, who was also in the meditation position. Their eyes met. “That was very fruitful for me,” Carol said.
“Yes,” said June. “It was for me as well…. How did you know that this is what we needed to do?”
“I don’t know. I just looked at you and figured it out. Turns out it was exactly the thing for me too.”
“A traumatic memory came up. I have a long-standing habit of pushing it back down every time that awful memory surfaces. This time I processed some of the pain.”

Carol sighed deeply. She remembered the anguish she too had felt for June when they had been just children. “Good for you, June.”
They both lay down, wrapped their blankets around themselves and prayed from reclining positions for the rest of the night.

Contents
1. The Hike, the Troll and the Lord
2. A Cat and a Friend
3. A Visitor From Heaven
4. Spirit Guides and a Child
5. The Date Grove
6. Rainy Day in a Cave
7. Jack and June Reunited
8. Three Men
9. Zen Bell
10. What is Truth?
11. Intention
12. Several Translations
13. Seance
14. Joe Calls Candy Carol
15. Landing by a Waterfall
16. Tara’s Funeral
17. Vada’s Crossing
18. Akashic Records
19. A Premonition
20. A Murder
21. Betsy’s Crossing
22. The Spiritual Robe
23. Totem Tiger
24. An Expected Birth
25. The Chakras
26. A West Coast Beach
27. Sin and Redemption
28. No Gender in Devachan
29. Cattle Pasture
30. Seeking the Great Teacher
31. The Sacred Shrine
Afterword
Print Book
Ebook (EPUB)

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