The Way of Knowingness. Kim O'Neill

as your soul effortlessly escapes the narrow confines of your physical body. Pain, suffering, and illness have been left behind. You feel an immediate rush of intense, restorative energy. All of the worry, confusion, and anxiety of your earthly life have suddenly washed away. You are consumed with a sense of euphoric abandon. With peaceful detachment, you gaze lovingly at your physical body that has now become an empty shell.

      Your attention is focused on a beam of radiant silver light that floods from the opening of a long, beckoning tunnel. The exquisite light coaxes you toward the passageway, which you enter with eager anticipation. Galvanized by sparks of exploding spiritual awareness and warmly cocooned inside the radiant light, you swiftly and deliberately journey through the tunnel.

      It is only a matter of seconds before you reach your destination, which immediately seems secure and familiar. Your senses have never been so acute. Colors are lustrous and intense. Scents are divinely intoxicating.

      A potent energy force flows from your fingertips, empowering you to heal, recharge, and strengthen any living thing you touch. Every subtle vibration of nature resonates within you as your sense of sound is remarkably amplified. You possess the keen ability to clearly recognize the whispering flutter of butterfly wings, the lilting rhythm of flower petals as they take flight in a soft spring breeze, and the ethereal splendor of an angel’s voice providing solace to those in need throughout the universe.

      You possess a sudden clarity of each facet of your just-completed lifetime, allowing the prevailing confusion over relationships, life’s work, health, and financial issues to unravel. Feelings of anger and hurt painlessly disappear, and you willingly forgive everyone who has ever caused heartache or disappointment. You rejoice to discover that you’ve left behind all turmoil and melodrama. You bask in a sense of peace that is absolute and eternal.

      As the dream continues to unfold, you are embraced by a caressing breeze that gently focuses your attention on the physical environment. A silvery mist clings to distant mountain peaks whose majestic heights are partially concealed under a thick, pristine blanket of snow. Lakes, rivers, and oceans flow clear and unpolluted. Flowers grow wild and profuse in brilliant hues. Resplendent fruit and shade trees provide a refreshing canopy for the sweeping expanse of emerald highlands. Spectacular sunsets splash the horizon with ravishing, illuminating color. All species of animals peacefully share this existence and roam freely, bestowing a magical companionship for those who wish to interact with them.

      The beauty of your surroundings begins to inspire an intense longing for a relationship with another being you could love with all your heart. Instantaneously, you have the power to manifest your soul mate, who is the embodiment of unconditional love. If you begin to yearn for a child, you may call upon the same ability to manifest by simply focusing on what you want and then wishing for it to appear. Friends and family members who also exist in this place soon emerge to join you as a part of your new life in supportive, joyful relationships.

      Before you made the journey in your dream, creating this level of complete spiritual peace on the earthly plane would have been an impossible fantasy. In your dream, however, you’ve discovered the ability to find true paradise, and you have the profound desire to remain there in everlasting happiness.

      The “dream” is but a tiny glimpse of what you will tangibly experience when your physical body expires and your soul makes the journey back to heaven. The process by which the soul journeys between heaven and earth is called reincarnation.

      Heaven and earth make up the two realms of existence in the universe. Our true home is actually in heaven, where we spend much of our time. We are simply visitors to the earthly plane, which some refer to as the “boot camp” of the universe because it provides the friction, challenge, and adversity necessary to inspire a human being to spiritually evolve.

      The true essence, or core, of your being is the soul. Your soul is like a very sophisticated computer with an unlimited memory. The soul records the experiences of each earthly lifetime, including all of your thoughts, intentions, words, and actions.

      Without exception, every single one of your experiences, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, is recorded and maintained in the soul’s memory bank. The soul’s memory bank also contains information about your current lifetime, including the exact nature of your life’s work, the issues you are meant to resolve, and the purpose of your important relationships.

      Your soul is very similar to computer hardware. All of your experiences in heaven and in each of your earthly lifetimes write your computer software.

      Unlike other computer systems, the soul’s memory bank is never temperamental, nor does it abruptly lose data, lack room for more storage of information, or become obsolete. It is not sensitive to extreme temperatures, viruses, hacking, or unexpected power outages; nor is it necessary to try to decipher a bewildering manual in order to use it. The soul’s memory bank is by far the most user-friendly computer system in existence.

      Impervious to disease or injury, your soul never loses power—or life. Your soul is immortal and remains fully alive and functioning on both the heavenly and earthly planes of existence. During the process of reincarnation, the soul is the part of us that makes the journey between heaven and earth and from earth to heaven, over and over again.

      However, it is a remarkably different experience for the soul to return to the heavenly plane than it is to return to the earthly plane. Unlike being reborn on the earthly plane, returning to the heavenly plane is the easiest, most comfortable journey you will ever take.

      It is ironic that so many people fear relinquishing their physical bodies at the time of death, allowing their souls to once again make the transition back to heaven where they live in peace, harmony, and fulfillment.

      You’re probably thinking that the existence of a delightful afterlife is a truth that you can’t be certain of until you actually make the trip, and then it’s too late to change your mind about the departure! If you’re like most people, you might also be questioning the fact that if heaven truly exists, and you’ve actually lived there and found it to be such an unbelievably fabulous place, how could you have possibly forgotten? The very idea of forgetting something that brings you so much joy seems utterly impossible.

      The reason we forget everything we know about heaven and the afterlife is that we lose touch with our soul’s memory bank while still in childhood, triggering the onset of what I call “spiritual amnesia.”

      Very young children are the most spiritually aware beings on the earthly plane because they still embody the heavenly attributes of relating to others with honest emotion, open affection, and total acceptance. But soon after arriving back on the earthly plane, we are exposed to dysfunction that causes damage to our spiritual sensibilities and awareness. When this emotional and spiritual upheaval occurs, many children start to become withdrawn, confused, and full of self-doubt.

      As a child is exposed to dysfunction, he loses more and more of his spiritual awareness. This loss of awareness triggers the spiritual amnesia that eventually causes him to forget his real home in heaven, his ongoing relationships with guardian angels, his ability to communicate with departed loved ones still living in heaven, and the specific nature of his earthly destiny. In order to escape the daily assault on his delicate awareness, a child often develops spiritual amnesia before the age of ten in order to “fit in” with the rest of society on the earthly plane.

      We receive information from the soul by way of our emotional feelings. Most likely, you know people who are analytical, or left-brained, in terms of how they make decisions and relate to those who are around them. Individuals who have more mental tendencies than emotional tendencies may be very uncomfortable around others who openly express emotion or affection. They are threatened by emotional displays because they learned as children to deny or hide their natural emotional feelings, affection, and intuitiveness from the negativity they encountered when they tried to share these emotions with parents, siblings, teachers, peers, or other key people in their lives. As the leading cause of spiritual amnesia, negativity is a disabling cycle that many people don’t even realize exists.

      If a parent is uncomfortable expressing emotion, through ongoing example he is teaching his children to discount their emotional