Are We Ready To Map The Other Side? Are We Ready To Map Heaven?
Cover Photo By Simon Rae
By Bruce Davis, Ph.D.
For many the debate whether there is an other side, if Heaven is real, is over. There are now studies, Near Death Experiences shared in best-selling books, popular videos, and the many who have come forward with stories of spiritual awakening. Consciousness continues after death. We each continue. We have a life in eternity.
Now it is time to pay real attention to those who have come forward and listen to the uniqueness and commonalities of their adventures. Now is the time to begin mapping out the other side including as many realms as we can in Heaven, realms beneath, above and beyond. Perhaps the map of the other side is as large and challenging as the physical universe which is ever growing in our exploration. Unlike finding distant stars, mapping the other side will have many practical effects in this life on Earth. This mapping is not an avoidance of the life before us. It will empower and embolden the steps we take everyday. With less fear about the future we can be more open and joyful in the present. Knowing the love and gardens awaiting in an afterlife can brighten our path now including the love and gardens around us here. Knowing about the immeasurable peace and acceptance on the other side, can inspire us to open to this peace and acceptance which is available within the heart of each of us.
Someday we will look back upon this time, like we look back upon the time when people thought the world was flat and the sun revolved around the Earth. Our simplistic ideas of Heaven and Hell will be like flying a jet plane with a computer on our lap wondering what people thought about when riding horseback and reading an occasional book. Mapping the other side will give this life an entirely new perspective about what is important and what is real. We will have a much fuller life including a deeper understanding and sense of purpose.
We should now map the other side because we can. This is enough reason to begin. There are enough first person accounts of people who have died and come back, of others who have had spiritual awakenings that we can begin to map the truth about life after life. Perhaps more important, we should map the other side for the lessons it provides about expanding our awareness. It is time to grow beyond the mind being a place only for thoughts, analysis, memory, and some feeling. Mapping the other side can open us to the important possibilities of love, devotion, humility,emptiness, inner peace, compassion, service, gratitude, and much more. It is in the depths of these experiences that we will know more about the qualities of being that await each of us in the life to come. In the depths of these experiences Heaven draws closer. As we explore and develop these qualities within ourselves, this life becomes more Heaven like.
As we journey in our heart, we discover what is a real spiritual practice. We can test and see for ourselves the prayers and meditation that reveal an expanded awareness, the love soaked being of who we really are. Mapping the other side should be no more difficult then mapping distant galaxies or the human genome. The tools for this mapping are just different. Instead of technical tools, analysis, and deduction, we need to put a side our judgments, bias, and limited thinking. We need to go beyond our fears and step out of the box of our limited imagination and experience of love.
Ultimately the laboratory for mapping the other side will be our own awareness. Instead of loading our minds with lots of information, we need to learn to empty our mind, to have no thoughts and enter the laboratory of the silence of our heart. We need to unplug from our daily culture and make a retreat into silence, simplicity, simple peace where we can explore the culture of the other side. Looking within ourselves, underneath the clutter which normally grabs our attention, will give us much of what we want to know. In an awareness that is clear and clean, we begin to see and understand. In the laboratory of our own awareness is so much for us to discover as we realize what we imagined to be far away is no further than our heart. When our awareness is not overcrowded with all the things we are normally busy with, we notice another self, our being naturally expanded into a great vastness. As we receive the most pure place in this inner vastness, the stories we hear of other side begin to connect to our own experience. As we are not filled with so much preconceived opinion, we can look into our hearts, the hearts of others, into nature, the sacred with an unfiltered and unclouded view. There is a multidimensional map for us to begin to draw.
As in all new discoveries it takes time and training. People go to school for many years to learn computer science. Where are the schools for people to learn to clear their awareness and explore the landscape of the heart? Where are the classrooms where people who have died in heart attacks or accidents, went to Heaven and came back are invited to speak and share their story? Who is listening to the incredible love and acceptance that has been found? On the other side, people discover the ability to think a question and immediately it is answered, completely. Where are the opportunities for people to go inside themselves and learn to download the answers to their questions here in this life?
How is the mud like realm, the tunnel of light, dancing flowers, and God intimately knowing each of us related to our thoughts and actions in this life on Earth? How do we clear our awareness of impressions which hold us captive in negativity and doubt? What on the other side is a projection of our own mind and strongly held beliefs? What does the unconditional love of the other side say about all the conditions we set for love here in this moment? How do we access this love without having to die or nearly die to experience it? So many questions and there are many more answers. Are we ready to map the other side? Are we ready to map Heaven?
