Awesome Vini asks: “I want to ask you about how LOA would work for a person providing care. I have read your post about maintaining a high vibration and seeing the other person as they truly are. But what if the care giver is a family member? My hubby is spending time with his father who is battling a terminal disease. So while he tries to think positive, his father is not too co-operative and set in his ways. He refuses to follow the diet/regime prescribed to him by the doctors. So my question is, how can my hubby maintain his positive outlook while caving in to his father’s demands and seeing the condition getting worse because of his father’s resistance? He definitely wants to see his father stick around for long.”

Dearest Vini,

You and your husband are in a difficult situation. Your father in law is getting ready to make his transition, to move to a purely non-physical state, free of all doubt and fear and pain and fatigue, where he can be like a kid again and play and romp and radiate joy more effectively than he ever could in his human life. Your husband is trying to stop him and is frustrated because his dad won’t help him do it.

Nothing is going wrong here. Your father in law isn’t leaving you, he’s taking the next step, moving to the new phase of his eternal existence. But unless you truly understand that, it can feel like something terrible is happening.

Understanding death

Most people have absolutely no real understanding of death. We’ve been taught that it’s the end of life, that it’s a tragedy, that it’s something to be avoided at all costs. We’re afraid of death and, especially in the West, we will go to great and often torturous lengths to stave it off. We’d rather suffer than die.

But death isn’t the end of life. Life doesn’t end. It changes, it morphs, it evolves, but it doesn’t end.

Let me give you an analogy that may help:

When you see a new baby being born, do you consider it a tragedy? Do you lament the fact that it’s left the non-physical and come into the physical, where it could have experiences that weren’t available in the other realm? Do you think that there are a bunch of non-physical family members standing around a bed on the other side, wailing “Please don’t die! Please don’t leave us!”? There aren’t. Because, from our non-physical perspective, we get what death really is. If we, in our physical states, truly understood death, we would celebrate it just as much as we do every birth. It’s a moving on, an evolution, the next step in our paths (all our paths. We can’t avoid death).

Your father in law has done what he wanted to do here. Note, I didn’t say what he NEEDED to do. We don’t need to do anything here, but there’s loads we want. He’s tired of this dimension. He’s ready and hungry for new adventures that this physical plane can’t provide for him. The closer he gets to his transition, the more you’ll see the joy and peace and understanding come over him. This will be more apparent if you allow yourself to understand.

Guiding someone through the transition

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to speak with a woman who was in the midst of “losing” her father. During our session, I was able to connect with her dad’s energy and it was absolutely fascinating. A large part of his focus had already receded into the non-physical. I could feel his disinterest with his own physical body, like he was sloughing off an old pair of pants. I could also feel his anticipation and joy about the new leg of his journey. He already understood that this was not an ending and that he would continue to be able to communicate and have a relationship with his daughter and other family members. He wanted his daughter to know that it was all right, even if his body could no longer help him communicate that (I believe this is why she found her way to me, so I could deliver the message). By talking her through what her dad was experiencing (and what he wasn’t, for example, he was in no physical pain since his focus was almost completely out of his body), she was able to make peace with the process and let him go.

A couple of days after our conversation, this woman’s father made his transition. I spoke with her again a couple of days after that, and through her, was able to connect with his energy once again. What I felt nearly rocked me out of my seat. The utter joy, the thrill of it, the absolute giddiness of the non-physical was overwhelming. And keep in mind that I could only experience as much of that energy as my own body could allow. I’m convinced that the actual experience is exponentially more awesome. The biggest feeling that came through, though, was this childlike wonder and urge to play. Her father wanted to play with her. He had no worries, no pain, no doubts, no urgency, no stress, no fear, no limitation. He just wanted to play! And he did. He sent her several messages, intuitive urges to notice little things that only she would know were from him. When I told her to look for these messages she admitted that she’d already seen several, and that they’d felt really good, but that she’d dismissed them in her grief. Her father didn’t need her to understand that he was still around, he was going to be happy either way (unconditional happiness, y’all), but the thrill he felt when she recognized his signs nearly made me start laughing out loud. It was one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever had.

Letting someone “go”

You asked what your husband could do to help. Well, here it is: He can help the most by not hanging on to his father in this reality. We can actually slow someone’s transition down by not wanting to let them go. Those who love us will often stick around until we’re ok. Right now, your husband is fighting his dad’s process. He may be angry with him, he may try to bully him into eating or following the instructions of the doctors who have been taught to fight death instead of respecting it. But, is this really the wise choice? We hook people up to machines and force feed them through tubes to keep them from the inevitable. Now, I’m not saying that modern medicine can’t also help people manifest recovery when they’re a match to it, but there are those times when we know that someone is moving towards death. Often, they’re much more at peace with it than their loved ones are. They begin to remember how it really is.

We fight death and we ask the dying to do the same. We don’t respect their right to do as they choose, to move on, to go and play. Why not? Because we don’t truly understand what death is. And, because we’ve decided that what we want is more important than what they want.

But we can’t really understand death unless we’ve experienced the process of dying. Our loved ones often give us the perfect opportunity to do just that – to feel the immense discord that comes from thinking that they are leaving us, and that this is a tragedy. They also give us the opportunity to make peace with it, to listen to their wisdom, to make the decision to let them go and to hear their joyful messages from the non-physical. Because only then can we truly understand that there is no death, and through that understanding, finally truly understand life.