Hereafter

Hereafter: Part II Graduation Day, Chapter 20

20

IN THE CAPSULE my spirit was perfectly still and I finally got some much-needed rest. Here, it’s not the same kind of tired I felt on Earth when my mortal body would simply crash from complete physical exhaustion. It’s more about needing a pause in the constant flow of conscious activity. Perhaps that’s why even in heaven there is one day a week set aside for rest. What’s good enough for God is certainly good enough for the rest of us, but most useful lessons are learned the hard way and I was no exception. My life was crazy busy on Earth and I just continued that feeding frenzy of nonstop activity in heaven.

Once asleep in the capsule, my soul slipped into a trancelike peaceful place, my subconscious and imagination now in the middle of one lucid Technicolor dream after another. It was like seeing a series of my favorite films, but with the thrill of watching them for the first time because I didn’t know how they were going to end. It was sheer bliss.

I was passing time, waiting for my soul to be sent to Calidari, but it didn’t at all feel like that—you know, the unpleasant feeling when a train is late or a flight delayed—when you have something much better to do but you’re trapped in the boredom of inactivity. Heaven’s version of lucid dreaming was something I could get used to, addicted to even. Anyway, it was a beautifully serene period that ended abruptly when the screen inside of my mind went suddenly blank along with any conscious thought.

My once-formidable mind was now empty. From this moment on everything would be a brand new formative experience. The egg inside of my mother had been fertilized several hours ago. As soon as it implanted in the wall of her uterus, my soul was sent to inhabit the rapidly growing cluster of cells. Without mature intelligent consciousness, the only thing I could sense was the soothing soft warmth of the body fluids surrounding me. I was only the size of a dot on a piece of paper . . . a tiny period at the end of the cosmic sentence creating and recreating life, and yet an evolving galaxy of incredible physical and spiritual potential had been set in motion by the power of cellular Creation. In my new molecular world, complexity had nothing to do with size.

I was being held in the Hand of God’s genius as the remarkable biochemical intelligence continued to gather the raw materials needed to grow different tissues and position them in just the right place at just the right time. What began as a single cell would end up being more than a trillion and yet I would be completely unique from every other physical being. There is no notice of time passing inside the womb—only the sense of an extended present moment.

I hadn’t met my mother yet, but near the end of my gestation I began feeling regular melodic vibrations, my first experience with music, from some plucked stringed instrument, like a harp, perhaps. It was soothing, and I loved the way the waves of sound rolled through the still waters in her womb. When suddenly the fluids that had always surrounded me disappeared, I was sure my world was ending!

Next, the flexible, warm, secure muscular walls of my enclosure began to convulse violently—at first, once every five minutes or so. Over several hours they got more frequent and lasted longer. I knew this couldn’t go on forever. Whatever was happening was definitely going to rock my world. One last violent push, a series of screams, and I had been born!

That first breath didn’t come easy and was shocked out of me with a nasty slap that woke up my sleepy brain connections telling me to inhale. Just moments ago all of my needs were automatically taken care of. Now, it felt like I’d be struggling just to survive. Little did I know, a few minutes without a breath, a few days without water, a few weeks without food, and I could die. As things turned out, I could actually fall asleep and not have to remember to breathe!

During the first few years, my mother was always there for me. Then, for some reason my older sister took over.

Finally, I was old enough to be told the reality and reason for our difficult life on Calidari. More years went by. I was an inexperienced  never-been-kissed sweet 16 the morning I woke early because of a bad dream, and no wonder . . . it was Graduation Day.