The Other Side of the Veil

By Elisa Novick

When I wrote about “last timers” two weeks ago, most of the responses had to do not directly with the subject matter, but with the experiences people have had with those who’ve died. So I thought I’d chime in with some of my own thoughts and stories.

In another previous article, I mentioned that as a child, I found myself turning away to hide an embarrassed grin whenever I was told that someone had died. I wasn’t a monster; I must have known something.

I certainly have not been untouched by grief and expect that I will be even more deeply touched as friends pass on before I do, (all of my close family are already gone) yet having worked with people before, during and after they’ve made that passage, I have a slightly different perspective. Rather than go into any sort of discourse on what happens when we die or where we go, I will just tell you some true tales from my experiences. (I won’t use full names though for privacy.)

Z. was a large, intelligent woman with a great sense of humor and a New Yorker’s blunt tell-it-like-it-is way of speaking, who had come from a loud Jewish family. She was a student of the Mystical Traveler, so she did not need assistance from me when she died. When I looked in on her she was doing well with all the Light support she needed. A short while afterwards though, I was sitting in meditation when I heard her voice say, “Yo! Take this down.” So I took out my computer and transcribed a letter to her husband. It contained reassurance to him that she was grateful for their life together and wanted him to be happy and remarry. Toward the end of the letter she said, “and don’t worry about the fucking door.” I had no idea what that meant but I dutifully took it down.

When I read the letter to her husband, he told me that in their apartment, the central hallway was very dark. I knew that because I’d stayed there in the days when I traveled to New York City to give classes in their living room. There was an inner hallway that had doors to the living room, bedroom and bathroom, and when all were closed it was a very dark center of the apartment. They had found a door with a glass window in it in the basement and were planning to replace one of the doors, but had never gotten around to it. The door was on its side hidden behind a piece of furniture.

As I’m sure you’ve already noticed, the great thing about this story, besides being funny, is that it does seem to provide proof that her consciousness, at least at that moment just a short while after death, was still fully her and functional. There was no way I could have known about the “fucking door.”

For a number of years, I have volunteered at a prison with men who, for the most part, are serving life sentences, and there were two wonderful men who I particularly cared for. I could partner with each spiritually for healing and being with them was a great joy and support to me as it was to them. They were friends and both were diagnosed with terminal cancer at about the same time, shared a hospital room, and died within two weeks of each other. One of them, W. died the night before I went into the hospital with an emergency appendectomy, though I didn’t know it. That week I kept having the same gloomy vision of statues under the sea with dark green water rippled with light from the waves above and seaweed swirling around them, which I attributed to the morphine flowing through me.

When I found out that W. was gone, I had a moment of revelation when I realized that what I was seeing was W’s death dream. Though he was quite peaceful knowing that he was about to die, his childhood fear of the sea had affected his experience. I knew about this because often I was asked to provide the opening guided visualization and meditation when the group met. When I took them to the beach in Mexico where I’d been, he had told me that, growing up in Puerto Rico, he had hated the hot sand on the beach and was afraid of the ocean.

I tracked his frequency, and found him in an illusionary world under the water. So I dragged him out and cleaned off the seaweed and showed him that without a physical body, he could also have fun. There had always been an attraction between us, expressed mostly through our eyes while he was alive. (A hug, if seen by the guards, would not only get you barred from the prison but would shut down the entire group for a period of time as punishment.) We spent the next few weeks flying and dancing romantically through the stars like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It was thrilling.

Most of the people I’ve worked with were easily available for three weeks and then moved on to where I could no longer make contact. W. told me he’d stay for a while, but after several weeks, he left. I felt him move on to be with his wife, who had died a few years before, and to other things he had to do. Once he was gone, I was unable to make contact again. This was another proof to me that this was not my imagination, as there was no way for me to make that pleasurable relationship come back.

Meanwhile, B. our friend, died two weeks after W. I was already out of the hospital. I’d been told that B. was very angry that he was dying. That was a bit strange, as that was not his usual way. He had once said that he’d never expected to come to prison (he was in for a murder he did not commit) as his path to enlightenment. But he had done a huge amount of work on himself and grown to become a fine man and many people in and out of the prison depended on him emotionally. Both he and W. were stalwart supports to everyone around them through their calm demeanor and wise words and advocacy. He felt he had much more to do.

My guidance had already informed me that the reason W. and B. were both leaving within a year of my arrival at the prison was that the increased focus of Light had helped them complete and their souls had decided that there was nothing more for them to learn after 40 years each in prison. I was happy for them, though very sad for myself, as they were highlights of my visits there. When I find people who seem particularly responsive to the work I bring it is very gratifying, and I felt so good when we were in the energy together, knowing that Spirit was flowing in and through us in service; one of the most wondrous sensations I know.

When we held one of the Godwork Meetings in Mexico in 2007, the men in the prison group set up an energy field of support for us that we could feel very palpably when we were there. B.’s energy was like a mountain of love. I was told later than W. would run the track at the prison, with his hands out in front of him, sending us love and energy. When I had asked him to assist us, he thanked me for giving him something to do this year, though his loving sparkling eyes and enlightened words already made him the saint and loving father-figure to all around him.

I was mystified that B. was so angry, but then I realized that his soul had already departed. When the soul leaves before the body dies, only the basic self or lower consciousness is left and that can be extremely childlike and unconnected to wisdom.

After B. died, I had a vision of him riding around fast on a bicycle, with a frantic or even hysterical tone, as if crazily making up for lost time. W. and I went to him and helped him calm down and I decided to show him that you could do a lot of other fun things without a body. I jumped up and balanced myself upside down on W.’s head to prove the point. A while after that, B. showed me some of his favorite places in Boston from his childhood and then took up residence on my right side. He and I did not have the kind of sensuous relationship I had with W. He was a quiet, loving presence for me, using the opportunity to learn by observing my life. He was there for several months, his personality fading over time, until I sensed him just as a deeply peaceful teal color that then turned to white and eventually slipped away without my noticing.

The recovery period from my appendectomy was one of the most astounding in my life. So many wonderful people came through with assistance and love, visits, healing sessions, house prepared for me, meals brought and dishes cleaned, flowers, songs, prayer communion, good wishes, that I was in tremendous joy. Yet in the almost unbearable suffering of the long nights, it was W. and B. whose love and joy kept me going.

I was good friends with my aunt Martha. She had ignored her intuition not to enter a supermarket and been hit in the heel with a shopping cart, which put her in agony for nine years until she died. She wanted to die earlier, but for a long time stubbornly held on because she wanted to be the last of her siblings to go so they would not suffer. When she had a chance and died on the operating table during a minor surgery, she yearned to go toward the Light she saw, and was almost there, but in the distance she heard a nurse upset that they were losing her and so she came back, “so the nurse wouldn’t get in trouble.” I told her that my friend’s mother had said she was going to die on Wednesday while watching her favorite TV show though she wasn’t sick, and on a Wednesday shortly after that, they found her gone with a smile on her face, in front of the TV. Martha wanted desperately to know how she did it. She even begged me to find a way to kill her, having read about Dr. Kevorkian’s work, which I couldn’t and wouldn’t.

It was a poignant and difficult nine years, but eventually it was time. A short while before Martha died, I came in and she was beatific, telling me that she had seen God. Since Martha was agnostic and looking forward to blipping out into nothingness when she died, that was surprising to me. When I asked what had happened I learned that she had not seen God at all, but just me in the soul. I told her that we all looked like that shining presence of Light that she had seen and that God was far greater than that. She also saw her family awaiting her.

The last time I saw her alive, I “saw” someone bend over and kiss her on the forehead. I asked my guidance whether that was the “kiss of death” and whether the presence I felt kiss her was the “angel of death.” To both questions I got a “yes.” I had thought those were just turns of phrase or metaphors, but it seems that they are real. I was an angel of death though; there is not just one.

Martha finally left the night after I had just moved into a new home, my car filled with the belongings one doesn’t trust to a moving van. I didn’t arrive until four hours later. There was great peace in the room. I found her soul and she introduced me to her sister, who had died before I was born. This sister had had an operatic voice and was a sweet person, but she died in her twenties, so this was the first time I’d met her, or so I thought. I actually recognized her as a rabbi I’d known in a previous lifetime, so it was a joyful reunion. Martha was what they called a “maiden aunt,” having never married. She had told me that there was someone once but he never asked her. She also introduced me to him; they were finally together. Shortly after that Martha left to go where I could not track her anymore. But interestingly, they say that the veils are thinnest on Halloween and she died on Halloween. I do feel her presence on those nights, a bit.

[Note: Before I get any more wistful comments from people wishing they could do what I do, or questions about whether I was born knowing this stuff — tracking soul frequencies, etc. — I do teach people how to do what I do. We all have these abilities and they are learnable.]

There are many more stories. Here are a couple of snippets. I was called about a woman who died in a car crash. I had never met her, but I can get someone’s frequency when another person speaks of them, so I located her and was able to help her come out of shock and move on. There was a man I had talked to about his imminent death from cancer during a healing ceremony for him. I was not invited to be with him since I wasn’t a close friend, but I felt summoned the day he left. So I just tuned in and found him, heavily dosed with morphine. He was logy and befuddled, as the frequency of the drug was still with him. I (with spiritual assistance) transmuted the drug frequencies until he was clear and watched him rise into a great column of gorgeous Light with bright beings surrounding him with love.

What I find most important in all of this, and something that has helped many of my clients and friends, is that it is so helpful to know that the person who dies is accessible for a while. We may be so bereft that we do not keep up the relationship, find out how the friend or relative is doing, assist when necessary, complete if there is completion needed. We have learned that death is a tragedy, a bad thing, a final thing. We may no longer believe that, but when it actually happens we can forget and think the person is no longer available to us, that the opportunity for completion or healing is gone. It is the cut-off, though imagined, that is the most painful. Even after the person passes beyond where you can communicate with her or him, that relationship continues to mature inside of you. When we stay active in the engagement, the energy doesn’t get stuck in unbearable grief, but can continue to transform, deepen, even into joy.

————–

To listen to and read past conversations with Elisa Novick on Planet Waves, plus her articles, please use this link. You’re invited to visit her website and Facebook page to view more photos of Bali and leave comments.

Elisa Novick, MSS does profound work as a healer, teacher, counselor, coach, minister, and facilitator of workshops and trainings in personal, professional, and spiritual development. She can assist you to clear personal, karmic and genetic patterns that have limited you and teach you exquisite attunement skills so you can become the magnificent master of life and Light that all of us are destined to be. Elisa has been assisting people in their growth since 1982 through her counseling practice and in facilitating over 1,000 workshops in holistic health, human development, family constellation, systemic constellation, organizational dynamics, planetary healing and spiritual awareness. You may email her directly at elisanovick [at] thrivingplanet [dot] org.

————–

Have you tried the Planet Waves premium membership? Sign up for a six-month membership and receive Eric’s amazingly precise weekly and monthly horoscopes. You’ll think they were written just for you.