(Editor’s note: This is a rewrite of an article I posted yesterday, then removed because it was too personal. My reasoning to post it initially was this ITC message from the Ethereals: “Children of Earth, people of Terra! Often, when we come to take you home at the end of your earthly lives, we notice that you are in great haste. Like someone who unexpectedly has guests coming, you dash to and fro and try to get some order in the chambers of your spirit and your heart. You quickly get things out of the way which you left lying around carelessly for a long time. You hide other things under the furniture and the carpet because you are ashamed that you neglected them. Dear people! We come only to greet you, not to judge you. The pupil is not being judged after an hour of testing, but only after his entire period of learning…. Once you get back to us, you will feel like the child who sits smiling and securely on its mother’s lap. Therefore, do not make this time of your transit unnecessarily difficult for each other. Lighten your hearts and take off your masks in front of each other and you will be prepared on the day we take you home.” But soon after posting it I realized it was still a bit too personal. So, here’s the polished version. —MM)

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When we die, we carry a lot of baggage into the next world.

What’s inside the baggage helps determine where we end up in the astral afterlife and what adventures we experience… whether in the drama-rich shadow worlds, or in the more blissful paradise realms.

Read more on the shadow worlds…

Read more on the paradise realms…

In this article we’ll look inside our baggage to get an idea of what we’re lugging around, then consider ways to lighten the load to make our voyage into the next world as pleasant as possible.

What we’re talking about mostly, in terms of baggage, are roller-coaster emotions… turbulent feelings that spin out of our day-to-day dramas and get caught in our subconscious mind, waiting to be processed.

Most of our dramas revolve around sex or fear or anger, thanks largely to each other’s pheromones—molecules that most animals secrete unconsciously to arouse or alarm those around them.

Read more on pheromones

Since this series of articles is about gender, romance, and sex, those are the dramas that get the main thrust here, even though volumes could be written on fear. Maybe in another article series….

This story is about how to inventory our baggage and do a little housecleaning… with such techniques as hypnosis, meditation, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, and dreams.

Bear in mind, though, that it’s not necessary to completely purge our baggage to get to paradise. Nearly everyone who arrives in paradise after leaving the Earth goes through a healing process that polishes up their nature. Even then, when we settle into the “third level” of the astral world, we continue to enjoy things we did on earth, even though there’s no real need to do them. We absorb all the life energies we need for sustenance from our surroundings, but we can still eat. In fact, there are feasts and elaborate buffets for those who like to eat… and they don’t get fat. Nor do women get pregnant on the third level, but people can enjoy having sex with willing partners. It’s not until we move to the fourth level that these old earth patterns begin to lose their importance to us… as we become more ‘spiritual’ and less ‘human.’

Still, some housecleaning of emotional baggage before we die can help us adjust to the afterlife more smoothly.

In Your Dreams

The most common way to glimpse our buried anxieties and compulsions is through our dreams, since we all have them every night. Dreams are essentially excursions into the afterlife as the astral body tiptoes away from the sleeping physical body to go out and party… and the types of parties we’re drawn to are determined largely by the emotions trapped in our subconscious. If we don’t process our feelings while we’re awake and conscious, our spiritual mind sometimes gives it a go while we’re asleep. We dream about it.

Most dreams are quickly forgotten the moment we wake up… but the more we pay attention to dreams, the easier it gets to remember them on a routine basis. When you wake up from a dream and it starts to fade away, try relaxing into a calm, daydream frame of mind… and the dream might suddenly swell back into consciousness.

I have a lot of dreams about being in nice, light places among friendly people. Years ago, when I was doing ITC experiments, I’d dream about being in a lab with super-hi-tech communication equipment, observing the work of engineers.

No drama in any of those dreams, just interesting perceptions and nice feelings. That suggests a lack of emotional baggage.

I’ve had some high-drama dreams too, some dealing with sex, others with fear or anger, and they’ve ranged from exotic to bizarre! Those dreams tell me I still have some emotional baggage that I might want to deal with before I die.

I think it’s safe to say we all do.

Our ITC spirit group told us, through computer contacts in the 1990s, that most people who die on Earth arrive in their world with issues like these, and they’re usually treated the way diseased and wounded people are treated on the other side. Many people arriving on the third level are accompanied to hospitals and clinics where they lie in tubs of healing water and are tended to as their minds and bodies gradually adjust to their new surroundings—a world where people in the prime of life interact calmly and peacefully, with a sincere interest in each other’s well-being.

Read more about the healing tubs

On the other hand, some people awaken in those paradise worlds fresh from earth and just can’t shake off the drama. They don’t stay there long. They go to a shadow world, where dramas persist. It’s not as though they’re “kicked out” of paradise for being too rowdy or too frisky. It’s more a resonance issue. They just don’t fit in vibrationally, so they migrate to environs more appropriate to their attitudes.

I can imagine a sci-fi script writer weaving a yarn about a team of dead special forces guys coming together in the shadow world with a mission to conquer paradise. It might make a fun movie, but it’s nonsense. Dramas simply don’t endure in places of fine vibration. Things don’t fall upward on Earth, and drama doesn’t endure in paradise… at least, once we rise above the ‘third level.’ Resonance is a law just as unbreakable as gravity.

So, if you want to go to heaven to raise a little hell, your best bet is to go to a sci-fi movie and pretend… or maybe listen to country-western music. Once you leave the Earth, it ain’t gonna’ happen. Drama and paradise don’t mix in the subtle worlds beyond the Earth. On the third level, we can enjoy some of Earth habits, as mentioned earlier, but most of the drama has been removed.

Beyond Your Dreams

There are other effective ways, besides dreaming, to inventory our emotional baggage, though they’re not foolproof:

Hypnosis depends on the hypnotist’s skills and our ability to surrender to them. Still, we often come back from a good session with insights into ourselves.

Meditation and self-hypnosis take time and practice to master and are arguably the best ways to take personal inventory.

Near death experiences (NDEs) typically aren’t planned; they just happen. More times than not, an NDE advances quickly to a DE… as in DEAD. Those lucky enough to return from an NDE often have a new, more noble perspective on life. It’s as though the experience actually removed much of their emotional baggage!

Out of body experiences (OBEs), or astral travels, are planned journeys out of body, often quite profound.

Robert Monroe, the well-known astral traveler and founder of The Monroe Institute, once saw something that looked like a mound of maggots crawling over each other. Approaching, he realized it was a mound of naked humans involved in an orgy… one of many strange things he encountered during his adventures through the shadow world.

Read more about Robert Monroe

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So, lots of dramas are unfolding in the shadow worlds beyond… this side of paradise. To make our post-mortal adventure as nice as possible, it’s probably a good idea to inventory our emotional baggage… and to detach from most of the worldly drama before we die.

The Gender Dramas Series: 

1 Opposites attract   –   2 Riding the wild ride and getting off   –  3 Packing light for the final journey   –  4 Minding that bulge in your genes   –  5 The difference between love and sex