A few weeks ago I had a very vivid dream that I just can't forget. In my dream I died and went to heaven.
When I entered heaven, I was truly puzzled. I looked around and all I saw was Earth but it was not the same Earth that I had just left, it was a pristine, unpolluted, breathtaking, awe-inspiring Earth! There were beautiful mountains, white sandy beaches, amazing foliage and most surprisingly, really beautiful houses and buildings. Surrounding me were many of the people I knew from my life and, of course, all the people I dearly loved like close friends and family...and oddly enough there was a disproportionate amount of children! Unlike the teachings of the Church, these people were not sitting on clouds playing violins, they were actually doing normal, "human" work like tending the gardens, building structures, taking care of animals, etc. It was Earth in its un-ravished, unpolluted state being cared for and maintained by people who were happy, content and completely at peace. The best way to describe how we all felt in this "heaven" is to have you to close your eyes and imagine the times in your life when you were the most at awe....whether it was watching a sunset, or listening to beautiful music or looking into your babies eyes...that is just a glimpse of the fullness, wonder and love that filled me when I arrived.
I turned to God, who was just "one of us" in appearance and started asking a million questions but he (or she, can't remember) just sat me down and explained.
"You see, what you see in front of you is Reality. Before you 'died' you were in a pre-reality state and when you 'died' you left that temporary state and started living. Everything you knew before, that you thought was reality, was actually just temporary place where your true character was being discovered. As you lived in that place you made lots of choices and while you thought you were making choices for that moment, what you were actually doing was deciding which reality you wanted once you left your temporary life. All of what you knew as 'life' was actually just a testing ground to see if you really wanted to come here or go to the other world." (By the way, I didn't see the other world, but I assume it was just Earth devoid of all the goodness.)
It suddenly became crystal clear to me. Everything I thought I knew before about life and the "hereafter" was exactly opposite. I didn't live and then die, I pre-lived and then lived! My "death" was just a transition from pre-reality to reality. It dawned on me that the Catholic Church had it wrong when they said that when you die, you go to Purgatory, i.e. a holding place where your fate is decided, what I knew as "life" was actually a Purgatory of sorts where I made choices that determined where I truly would live.
Now, to be clear, this was just a dream but honestly, it was the first time in my life that heaven made any sense to me. I completely understood how the choices we make now affect where we go when we transition over to our new lives. It also gave me such a different view of death as being not the end of anything but the beginning of everything!
Finally, in my dream I understood that when a child dies for whatever reason, it's actually going to a beautiful, safe, caring place where it will never experience pain, hunger, sorrow... it's just doing it sooner than those of us who live longer. And since children are born pure of heart, when they "died" they automatically went to this beautiful "heaven" to continue their lives. That is why there were more children than adults.
When I awoke from my dream, I felt a weird mixture of awe and sadness. Awe at the dream and sadness at the fact that it was just a dream. I'm not even the slightest bit arrogant enough to think that I truly did get a glimpse into the "hereafter" but with all my heart I wish my dream was true. When you boil down many of the religions of the world, at their core they encourage caring, love, understanding, respect, truth, benevolence and tell us to stay away from pride, anger, killing, cheating, etc. In the context of my dream, religions are simply saying "choose wisely now and you will choose your life." I wish religion was this simple...
I wish...
