Printed in the Winter 2019issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Holmes Scherini, Desiree, "An Energetic Journey of the Soul" Quest 107:1, pg 12
By Desiree Holmes Scherini
One’s views on death, dying, and the afterlife generally depend on what one is taught by religion, culture, and family. Some maintain their beliefs and viewpoint unchanged throughout life. Some, like me, find new answers through learning and exposure to events that challenge the status quo. Over my lifetime, my thoughts and beliefs about death have matured, as I have.
When I was a child, raised in a Catholic family, my naïve eyes would gaze at the effigy of Jesus on the cross, wounded and bleeding, limp with approaching death. This image of death carried the message of suffering and pain. Despite the resurrection that was supposed to be the reward (which I found difficult to understand), this image is what stood out in my mind. Death was a scary thing. I was taught that if I was bad, I would go to hell, and if I was good, I would go to heaven. If I was just a bit bad, I would wait in purgatory for an undefined amount of time to find out my final destination. That’s what happened when you die. I lived in fear that I would end up in hell, because so many things were sins!
By the time I was a young teen, I began to question the veracity of this doctrine. By the time I was eighteen, I decided it was too late for me: I was going to hell anyway, so I might as well go for broke.
Something changed in my college days. I began to understand that this life was a temporary state and came to believe that there would be more to come. Once I let go of the religious education I’d had, I began to see the light differently—believing that there was likely rebirth, but wondering too. Until years later, when my three-year-old daughter said, “Mommy, I love you. My old Mommy with the black hair was mean. She took me to the bad doctor.” She was too young to have made this up, and had never been exposed to a story like that. I felt I had my proof. I assured her that I was happy now that I was her mother too.
With later learning through transpersonal hypnotherapy training, I found that up until the age of five or so, children are still naturally open to their past lives, and I was further assured of my belief that death is a beginning as well as an end.
Having this knowledge provides me with a great sense of security. Although I don’t desire death, I don’t fear it either. The teachings of the Theosophical Society reinforce a sense of a greater purpose—a sense that life is not just here and now, in these few years of human time. Life is an energetic journey of the soul that is timeless. Existence never ceases; it simply transforms.
My sister died of cancer a few years ago. I sat in the room with her that day, after her body stopped, her warmth and color slowly fading. I felt a peacefulness and gratitude to be alone there with her as her energy transformed, unseen to me. It was an unusual gift to experience. I did not feel sadness, no tears, just a peaceful communion with her energy in a sun-dappled room. Since then, although I’ve been sad that her human self has left, I have never felt she is gone.
I had a dream of my sister some months later. She was healthy and happy and was dressed in a blue ball gown, on her way to a party. I couldn’t help believing that this was her way of telling me the state of her spirit, of reassuring me that all was well with her now.
The cycle of life is there for anyone who looks. From the seed to the fruit to the seed again. Water to cloud to rain. It’s even in man-made structures: buildings are erected, they decay with time and are demolished, and new buildings are raised.
Death is defined as “the cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism” and soul as “the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.” This body may die, but we do not. There is much yet to experience on our way to the One.
Certified clinical hypnotherapist and neurolinguistics programming life coach Desiree Holmes Scherini, CH.t., N.L.P., is the author of Journey to Joy: The Written Path. She is a wellness teacher on the Transformation TV online platform. Her website is www.intuitivejourneywithdesiree.com, and she can be found on her podcast “Intuitive Journey with Desiree” as well.