What happens when we die?  Is it lights out……or do the lights finally come BACK on?  Will I have all of the experiences people report during a traditional NDE – a life review, seeing a bright and beautiful light, traveling through a long tunnel and meeting loved ones I’ve lost?  Or, is that all a bunch of spiritual silliness and new age nonsense that only the gullible believe?

Any of these questions sound familiar?  The truth is, even the most spiritually cynical and skeptical amongst us have at least a little bit of curiosity, or uncertainty about death.  After all…….it could be argued that NONE of us, even those of us who feel we are most sure, really understand the nature of human consciousness, and can every be 100% sure what we truly “know” to be true….really is what we perceive it to be.

What I can tell you with 100% certainty is THIS:

In my own 15 years of writing, research and personal adventures with psychics, mediums and extraordinary spiritual experiences from one side of the world to the next, I know that I’ve seen, felt, touched and tasted with my own spiritual senses…..and I’m 100% confident that in total, taken together, these adventures point to the incredible but inspiring truth that we are NOT our bodies, and that our true essence, and energy is freed after the human “container” is shed.

I want to offer you an analogy that I heard many years ago….that has always stuck with me as incredibly inspiring and insightful and illuminating, with the hope that it makes you look at YOUR true nature, and eternal essence, a little bit differently than most new age nuttiness……or spiritual mumbo jumbo.

Consider a bottle that houses a little bit of transparent gas.

It is closed with a cork – and never opened.

The bottle is see through….and corked, and the gas is invisible to the naked eye and even the most elaborately devised machinery can’t, as of yet….detect the little wonderful wisps that live within it.

To all who look at the bottle…..and who judge it, or make assumptions about the nature, the age and the condition of the bottle, look at the outside.  It’s cracks, it’s weather marks, it’s color and it’s age.

But that which makes the bottle unique – and different than other bottles, is the unique composition of what exists within it, yet can’t be touched, tasted, or described by anyone looking from the outside, in.

At a certain point in the bottles life – it becomes cracked, or broken or rendered too old or worthless to continue.

Someone, somewhere decides to throw away the bottle.  But first they pull the cork.  Or, if they are prone to treating old things without concern or care – they crack it on the sidewalk before tossing it away.

Either way, the bottle is broken.

But the true value of the bottle – the precious invisible gas within it – is free.  It is not touched, or tarred or tethered to the bottle once the cork can no longer contain it.  Nor, do the broken shards of glass effect it’s ethereal nature.

It’s truly free…..and floats up and away, melding and merging and morphing into the everything around us…….returning to the place from where it came.

I truly believe that the human spirit – that consciousness itself – is like that little bit of gas inside your body.

And when your body is broken – your true spiritual self doesn’t disappear – it RE-APPEARS.

And returns to a place and spiritual space where it belongs, and calls home.

Of course the science – and the specifics – of the actual soul may be a bit more complex – or creative – or hard to capture in words than the example above.

But the SPIRIT is the same.  That’s what I’ve learned through experiences both magical and mundane – mysterious and meaningful – miraculous and mystical and everything else in between.

And if you open your heart, mind and spirit to the same truth – so too can you.