"I learned in the Garden that the core of a person—the soul—survives. A handicapped person, a sick person, or a person suffering from mental illness in life becomes a soul without limitations in the afterlife since they have shed their physical body. We are all equally whole there.
"However, what we do while we are
here matters greatly in determining what our afterlife will look like. It has
to do with an individual’s expectations, actions, and thoughts. It was
surprising to me to learn that my thoughts here played a role in my afterlife.
If a person has led a good, loving, clean life in which they helped others, then
that person knows at a soul level that they are good. But it is also important
that a person’s thoughts are good, loving, and charitable, as well as their
actions. God hears us when we pray to him, out loud or silently.
"I learned that God knows what’s in our minds and hearts, as well as knowing how we act as a person in our life on Earth. A person who knows they have led a good life will expect Heaven to be beautiful. And it will be—partially because the person has “earned” it, partially because it will meet the person’s expectations, but mostly because God has a hand in this, too.
"Fortunately, since in this
dimension we are all flawed humans, God is benevolent and forgiving. It is
through a combination of God’s love, our own thoughts and actions in life, and
our own expectations, that our afterlife is shaped and becomes a uniquely
personalized experience for each of us."
Elizabeth
G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death
Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic
Books, 2018).
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