The Nature of the Soul

There are many experiences of the truth of who you are: \"The Authentic Self is the part of you that lives before and after this lifetime, that is eternal…When you leave [your experience here on earth] you have a lot more power. It won’t be ego-based power. Rather it will be beyond ego, beyond good and evil. In fact, ‘evil’ is just a label as everything is intermixed. The pendulum just appears to swing back and forth.\"-Kuan Yin My initial experience of the cosmic portals of birth and death was during my pregnancy carrying my first child. In my third trimester, I remember having cried profusely; worried by a series of health concerns. Would the baby be OK? Would I be OK? I felt alone and depressed. Suddenly before me, I saw a vision of a young boy. Platinum blond hair and blue eyes, he appeared to be about three years old. “Don’t worry mother! I’ll be OK and you will be too!” Then, as quickly as he had appeared, he disappeared. Reassured by my vision, I knew there was nothing to be frightened of. Indeed, a few months later, a healthy baby boy was born. Realizing it was similar to a door opening to a formerly in-perceivable world, the pre-birth vision of my son was my first conscious experience with the ‘other side’. What about animals? Do they possess souls? Judging from my own personal experience, I believe that they do. Indeed, Kuan Yin states “the earth teaches that everything is spirit”. The year I went off to college in Southern California, my parents had planned a trip around the world. Knowing that they would be gone many months, they decided to rent our house. Leaving our beautiful Persian cat, Snowball, with the family who was renting the house, my parents and I took off our separate ways. When I came to visit the family during Christmas break, I saw how wonderfully they were taking care of Snowball. Feeding her liver and cream as treats, the family constantly made sure that she was well fed and loved. While they mentioned the kitty sometimes seemed morose and to miss her owners, everything generally appeared to be going well. Later that year, I received an emotional letter from my mother, (sent from France) explaining that she had just learned that Snowball had been hit by a car right in front of our house and had died instantly. I realized that no matter how well our beloved cat had been cared for, she likely missed us so much that she might have even been deliberately careless in her actions. For, all the time she’d lived with us, I never knew her to even cross the street. Additionally, there wasn’t much traffic in front of the house and the cars that occasionally did go by usually weren’t speeding. One afternoon during the summer everyone had returned home, my mother told me an interesting story: “You know, shortly after I learned of Snowball’s death, I had a strange dream. In it, I saw that she had come and sat on my lap as if her soul wanted to reassure me she was doing OK and not to worry.”