Expansion: What's it Like to be Risen?

“To assert our individuality is to rise … into that more highly specialized use of the Law which brings freedom rather than bondage, joy in the place of grief.”

~ Ernest Holmes ~

It was recently shared with me about someone who had been advised by her son, who is still embodied on earth, about receiving guidance from his father and her husband, who had transitioned around seven years ago. Her son explained that “Dad’s alive” and that he and his father “interfaced … (it feels) like Dad, but expanded. Like he could see everything all at once.” While this may make sense to her on some levels because she is still able to maintain an awareness of her husband’s energy around her, it’s clear that it’s very intimate and experiential, making it difficult to explain much further, and so she’s wondering if anyone could suggest more about this expanded state of consciousness. Tim and I had actually been discussing what his life has been like in his current Risen state of consciousness, and so felt perhaps we could offer a little information that we trust might be useful.

The first thing we’d like to respond to is the idea of expansion, which applies to those of us still on the Earth as well. It’s quite simple, because all it really means is the absence of fear, and then the absence of resistance to the expansion. Fear is contraction, which you might notice as your body's breathing becomes shallow or stops. If you can imagine what it must be like to live and move about with absolutely no fear, you might begin to understand what our loved ones are experiencing. And if you can understand this, your vibration automatically becomes higher and finer, and thus begins the process of growth that will allow us to resonate with our Risen loved ones, and then the shared resonance becomes the transmission and receiving of information—primarily through feelings—which is the communication and dialogue we are hoping for.

The following is an excerpt from The Risen: Dialogues of Love, Grief & Survival Beyond Death:

      “Envision with your mind’s eye a world where poverty is impossible and abundance unavoidable. Because there are no needs there is no necessity to work. There is instant access to infinite sustenance, clothing, shelter, and anything else you might desire. This will be so for everyone there, for these elements will be freely available to all. Hence an economic system of any kind—which implies lack—will not be needed in this world, unless you might want it for yourself. The same will hold true for any social, psychological, political, scientific, and religious systems, which all inherently embrace presumptions of lack and need. The environment—the weather, the light, the mode of transport, and your homes—will continuously reflect your personal consciousness. 

     “Everyone in this world is free to do whatever they like and as much or as little of it. Work and play are indistinguishable from one another. You will work and play, and live and love with those who are most like you, for in this realm the Principle of Affinity is the guiding force of relationships. Those who are not like you will be with others who are most like them. (1) 

     “Most relieving of all, there is no judgment or criticism of any kind in this world, no matter how much we may think we deserve it. If that should be the case, we would be judging only our self and not prevented from such a desire. Rather than judgment, we can expect and welcome only adjustment. The Principle of Affinity will convey us into an environment that reflects our self-judgments. Although nobody will attempt to interfere with our self-judgmental behavior there will always be observant, compassionate Helpers waiting to respond to the slightest request to help release any such unkind intentions toward oneself. 

     “Because we will be able to perceive that there is love freely available to all in this new world the usual distortions from lack of it will not exist, and any falsehoods will vanish quickly when we allow ourselves to fall into love’s awaiting arms. This falling into love will be as easy as breathing, for we are designed to self-correct through change—that is, through intelligent transition. “Death” is also corrected through this loving process of transition, from which we will emerge and arise anew. 

     “This other world exists right now and awaits us at every moment. We already know this Home with great intimacy, for whenever our body sleeps and sometimes when we daydream we visit it and all those there whom we love. Each of us has been leaving our terrestrial body—rising from it—to travel in our spiritual body to this other world, this home, since the day we first arose upon the Earth. Very few of us remember these travels upon returning to our terrestrial body, so heavily does earthly life weigh us down. The sheer density of our physical body filters out the greatly finer vibrations of such memories. If we could remember even just a little bit, our burdensome grief would be tremendously lightened by the awe of such experiences, and further comforted by the sureness that the day will come when we will take our last step away from this Earth, never having to return.”

As reported in our first book, The Risen Dialogues, along with some additional reflections in the upcoming new book, Tim initially had the following to say, which was about five years after his transition and relocation to his new existence. I had asked him if he could explain how he moves through his world as a Risen person. He had apparently recreated his small and cozy studio apartment as well as the Greenwich Village neighborhood in New York City where he had lived when on the Earth, and tried to give me a sense of what this was like for him:

“I see you are wondering what lies beyond this tiny apartment where my cat, Bigfoot and I sometimes rest. Nothing and yet everything lies beyond it. When I go for walks through the old neighborhood it’s the same, yet so much more. Each and every thing is alive, suffused by glowing, pulsating, prismatic lights, filled with life and energy as the sun-filled trees in the parks, effervescent as the fountains which give forth music, their waters welling up and cascading down pieces of sculpture that are never the same. Birds, animals, butterflies, and flowers of exquisite and dramatic beauty populate this geography. It is all a manifestation of my mind, yet infinitely more. It is also a co-manifestation, for there are many other Risen here, drawn together by the resonance of our minds, united by curiosity and love and the never-ending desire to experience and share. Some of the people are familiar to me, many are not, but all are enjoying themselves and each other. Sometimes the landscape will gently change and appear as if several geographies exist in the same place, as many souls overlap here in similar ways of vibration of mind and emotion.

“Although many prefer to walk in this sort of environment, some float or fly. There are those who take pleasure in vehicles of every kind, from old Model T’s to trains, planes, and even boats on gentle streams, scaled down for individual use or for small groups of people. I’ve never seen anything like your giant jets that carry hundreds of people at a time although there is nothing barring such things, so I’m sure they must exist somewhere. It all depends on what we allow our minds to manifest.

“Many travel through the purity of thoughtful desire, meaning that the mere thought of wanting to be somewhere results in instantly being there. They prefer this method of movement to all others. We each choose our method of passage according to taste and need, whatever pleases us.

“I can seemingly walk forever onward but never come to an end, as if eternity is contained within a few short blocks. You and I have been shown and now understand, to a very limited degree, that one of the infinite truths about ‘forever’ is that we manifest it. Some might say we create it but to be nit-picky, everything has already been created and so everything already just is. We are the shapers and shifters of creation, causing it to manifest as it pleases us. There is no end to anything, no walls or boundaries. There are no finalities simply because wherever you go, there you are, something that people on Earth already intuit. On the Risen level we say, ‘As you go, you are.’ We could say that this going, this movement, is one’s manifested reality … it is the manifested realization of one’s immortality.”

Tim’s description is rendered here into understandable language of the material for terrestrial people, but still does not come close to truly describing his intimate experience of his spiritual reality. Essentially, he is saying that his experience of life—his actual world—principally arises as his consciousness arises from within any present moment. His world experience unceasingly unfolds in direct response to his thoughtful or even thoughtless presence—somehow even before each step he takes in any direction. Because there is only his presence he is always present; he is always now. This never-ending now is his immortality. It is the same for those of us on Earth.

His presence is his present, which is a form of mind, or “mind in formation.” While this mind information is similar to that which we terrestrials call “thought” it is not thinking as we know it. If I want to join him in some manner from my present moment, I must find a way to consciously be with him at the point where our presences intersect—which is always in the present and not in past nostalgic reminiscences, or in future expectations. The way in which I use my mind becomes of the utmost importance in this endeavor.

Without his former body’s dense material and its ego-mind, Tim’s lens of awareness is able to focus on a larger range of living than mine. So it might be said that he is waiting ahead of me, which for me would be foreknowledge. When we each focus our lens of awareness toward one another, the interception is where we meet and join in awareness. Because I now have knowledge that he is waiting ahead for me, I’ve achieved a bit of that which some might call faith and which I increasingly experience as knowing. Tim responds to my ponderings here from his Risen state:

“August, it’s not so much that I’m ‘waiting ahead’ for you, but it’s more that our movement within and against different backgrounds makes it seem so. I truly comprehend the difficulty there is in finding a way to compare our two very different experiences of awareness of self while living in different dimensions of space and time. Like space, time has a reality and its beauty is seen and experienced in differing realities, and in changing reality. We can see that change is rooted in Nature—that we are Nature, and change is time. But change is also space.

“Your geography is usually described on earth as an experience of Space-Time. Space appears to stand still while events are perceived to change by passing through it in a linear, timely way, manifesting impressions of past, present, and future. The Risen geography could be said to be an experience of Time-Space. Time appears to stand still while space appears to change as I move through it. As on Earth—and some of you are beginning to grasp this—the Risen interpret and utilize these appearances, which are actually thoughts, as movement or modes of transportation. All time events are occurring simultaneously, reflecting the Risen observation that Creation is finished and always available for manifested exploration. Space-Time and Time-Space, and other combinations of light and sound are the mediums of exploration, the finger paints of the cosmic playroom. You, the Yet-To-Rise, can and do experience Risen Time-Space via spiritual events and realizations—as well as altered states of consciousness, which also include pain and suffering.

“To get some feel for this, I’ll try to use an earthly experience as an illustration that most people can understand. It sort of works because it reflects the experience of an actual train ride you might take on Earth. It’s as if I’m sitting in a train which is moving along at a very fast speed—meaning a state of higher vibration. As I look out the window on the side where I’m sitting, those things closer to the train appear to race past me very quickly, as they would on an earthly train ride—so space appears to change as I move through time.

“Simultaneously, those things that are further away, which are the lower vibrating landscapes of Earth, also appear to move but much more slowly. From my train I can see the combined Risen and Earth landscapes as well as many of their details, but not all. Those objects in the middle ground also move but at a different rate. I can see these different-paced, different-spaced areas simultaneously through the one window, and I can also see them moving in different relationships with one another. Depending on where you are within that passing landscape, I can see more of your life than you can, while mine moves along at its faster pace which still keeps pace with yours. We might even get a brief glimpse of one another.

“Someone in another Risen train traveling alongside mine might see what I see, but in a different way, and from a different perspective. My present Risen State is a little like being in a train at times, although you can see how the analogy breaks down quickly if I try to move beyond this very simplified form. Rather like trying to walk through a moving train while having to pee really badly.”

My thanks to Tim! Any comfort we can find from even the slightest of ideas along the way is a sign that grief continues to transform and evolve. We want you to see that people still on Earth can form a new relationship with anyone who has transitioned, and especially after the grief they have both been sharing has eased.

I would also like to share a bit about my conscious forays into Risen geographies, albeit still in extremely limited ways. It is an enormously rare thing and it can be frustrating finding adequate language to articulate such non-word experiences. The following has been excerpted from a chapter in the new book, still in progress, The Risen: A Companion to Grief.

“After my body fell asleep that night I found myself standing on the top of the mountain behind the same Appalachian farmhouse, and could see the land stretching out far beneath and beyond me. The beauty of the green hills, flowers, and the clouds simply cannot be described—‘beauty’ even sounds like an unattractive word to use. I’ve always loved the term ‘Summerland’ that is often used in the older spiritualist writings, and while it barely does justice to this land I found myself in, I would like to use it here. 

“I was completely conscious and aware of where I was. Rather than try to describe the physical environment any further, it seems more appropriate to speak about the emotional environment—for that is really what it all is, manifesting in outer forms—an outward effect caused by my “is-ness” of inner reality. I almost fainted from the up-rushing of the fountain of feelings that lit up each and every cell of my astral-etheric body, and I could see my hands glowing, as well as light emerging from my fingertips, and even from my eyes. The feeling was one of ultra-intense longing mixed with relief, tinged with the fleeing of the grief one feels of having left a beloved Home, but now finally returned, where any other idea than feeling safe and sound could not possibly exist. My whole being wept—there are no physical tears in the Summerland, for water plays a very different role there—but if I had been on Earth, I would have been sobbing and laughing at the same time. This sensation of weeping was almost frightening in its intensity and there was an awareness that it would have literally melted my terrestrial body away in an instant. 

"I saw a familiar friend who had transitioned some years ago, who also notice me. He hardly gave me a glance and just waved a brief “hi!” my way as he resumed some task he was about. I realized that I probably appeared to him like a barely tangible ghost, transparent and perhaps difficult to hear. I then noticed another friend, who apparently was visiting from her sleep in her earthly bed, just like me. She emitted the same vivid but gentle light like mine. This is how visitors would see each other, even though the Risen would most likely see us as thin veils of energy, perhaps in the form of a person, but not necessarily. I’ve been made to understand that the Risen might see each other as glowing beings of light or otherwise, depending on their own dimensional viewpoint. 

“The three of us sat down in a nearby field and shared about our lives, intimate things which must remain private here. Then, eventually, slowly, I awakened back in my body in my earthly bed, both cats resting on my chest and peering intently into my face. When I realized that I was back in the terrestrial dimension, I began to experience the opposite of what I had felt when I had first entered Summerland—my whole being wept, but for a different reason. I felt lost, abandoned, and shattered. My first thought, was, “Oh god, no ... how can I endure another second of this? There is no way I can ever get out of this bed and start walking in this world of dismal gravity and shadows.” I began to feel overwhelmingly depressed, and if not for my guides who chanted soothing comforts in my ears, I don’t know how I would have made it. It took nearly two hours to get out of bed, and then almost the entire day of unceasing prayer to feel reconnected with Creative Source within and resume an earthly existence. Although I eventually felt fully grounded, for many days afterward I couldn’t stop thinking about that Summerland.”

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(1)  All of these experiences are potentially available to us while still on Earth, if we would let allow them.