My Understanding of God, Life, Death, and the Between Lives We Experience with Our Many Soulmates
The conceptual evolution I gained from a personal understanding of God through my spiritually awakened experiences outside of any religion — take what you will and leave the rest
“Religion cannot stand Spirituality. It cannot abide it. For Spirituality may bring you to a different conclusion than a particular religion — and this no known religion can tolerate. Religion encourages you to explore the thoughts of others and accept them as your own. Spirituality invites you to toss away the thoughts of others and come up with your own.”― Neale Donald Walsch, The Complete Conversations with God
For most of my life, born February 15, 1967, as a very secular Jew, I possessed agnostic views of death and any afterlife. That began to change in 2012 when I went to rehab for substance abuse. With the realization achieved from previous experiences that gaining a personal understanding of God might keep me from running for the hills to avoid the Bible beating, bleeding deacons of Alcoholics Anonymous, I arrived at the Caron Foundation in Pennsylvania hoping to find an understanding of God that meshed with my conception at the time.
Upon hearing a lecture from a Mayan calendar and crystal touting member of the “spiritual staff” whom I dubbed Mystical Meredith, I recognized the synchronicity and asked for a private session. I explained to Meredith that I had bounced around between agnosticism and the belief that God was akin to the Force from Star Wars — the psychic energy emitted by all living things — and that I believed that some people had the ability to tap into this energy, psychics, and to a lesser extent, me and others who experience the phenomenon of dé jà vu.
I told Meredith that I believed in the existence of souls because I had spoken to the souls of dearly departed through a psychic, and I asked her how God fits into this — asking her, “Is there a hierarchy of souls with God at the top?”
Before answering me, Meredith asked me why I thought I used substances abusively. I answered that I thought there was an irreconcilable conflict between my conscious and subconscious minds over things I had done, or not done, over the past few years, and I drank and drugged to run away from rather than resolve this conflict.
Meredith explained that the conflict I felt ripping my gut apart was not between my conscious and subconscious but between my mind and my soul. Meredith’s conception of God, or as she put it, the Great All, and how we and our souls fit in, is that when our souls leave the Great All to take human form we contract with the universe to experience certain painful things on Earth that are not spiritual so we can learn what is spiritual (love, kindness, compassion, charity, etc.).
At the end of our conversation, I found myself crying.
At that moment, I thought I cried from the emotional release of having realized a quest for understanding. The tears were more profound. A few months later, in Florida during the extended stay portion of my rehabilitation, I would wake before dawn and go running barefoot on the beach with the Moon, Venus, and the constellation Orion keeping me company — feeling connected to the universe would cause tears to flow.
Realization of connection to the universe — that is why I cried with Meredith.
Oneness.
While I had come to believe in souls and an afterlife, I didn’t own this belief until March 19, 2020, when I discovered that my lover, Lindsey, had accidentally overdosed.
I texted her sister:
“Hello, I had hoped we would meet one day under different circumstances and write this mostly in the present tense. My name is Greg Maidman, I am a close friend and confidante of Lindsey’s. In fact, I love her. I am the person who went to the precinct and pushed and accompanied the police to check on her after they were dismissive the previous day. I have never experienced such gut-wrenching sorrow as I did on that cold rainy street, but I realize it is because I love her more than I know.
I want you to know how she was loved and cared for. Ours is not a typical romance, but make no mistake, a romance it is. She feels loved and safe when we are together, I feel loved and appreciated, and we each want the nights never to end and for the next date to come as soon as possible. Though not spoken about, I think we each know that we each fantasize about a life together.
Your sister touches my soul and makes any day better. She is a wonderful woman, so gentle and caring and I do not want you to think she is anything less than spectacularly radiant.”
The wailing on the street was a sound that I did not know I could, nor how to, produce. It has emanated from only a few times since. It cannot be purposely replicated. It is the sound of my soul crying out in pain. No, crying does not begin to describe it; it is the sound of unrestrained grief without any concern about the spectacle that I was for onlookers for an hour or more.
Imagine having open heart surgery performed with a jagged and rusted scalpel without a drop of anesthesia; further imagine that it was at a frequency and wavelength that ripped a hole in space-time and was heard across all eleven or more dimensions of the universe, not just then, but at every point in time. If you can close your eyes and feel the picture I just painted, maybe you will come close to understanding. If you can close your eyes and feel the picture I just painted, maybe you will come close to understanding my pain and my grief. And my love, my love, my love.
The reverberations of the pain waves from the tearing out of my heart shattered the barrier between conscious and unconscious, and my soul emerged and filled the hole where my heart had been. (As I understand now, my divine masculine (animus) became aware of my divine feminine (soul). I don’t care how anyone else understands these terms — this is how I have come to understand them).
At that moment, I intuitively knew that I possessed a soul. I had believed it before — now I owned it!
I experienced an irreversible spiritual awakening. The pain was amplified way beyond that which even someone who has experienced the here-one-second-gone-the-next can imagine because with awakening came the innate understanding that I had just lost someone after only 10 months in this life cycle that I have been in love with for all of eternity.
Then Came My Understanding of Reincarnation
I started to seek the counsel of my spirit guides, facilitated by my aforementioned channeler/psychic medium, Anne. The following is a verbatim conversation except for minor non-substantive edits, and the bracketed words are mine:
Greg: How many levels are there in heaven?
Spirit Guide: It is not so much levels, but rather, cycles. As one starts their journey from soul to soul with a body [and back again, and so on and so on], you generally have easy lives. When you return to source/heaven/god after every lifetime, you will be given a choice to stay in that realm that you are put in or to go back to the master class [Earth]to attain a higher level. You can make the decision to return to the master class at any time. If you choose to go back to earth, it would be for the specific requirement to have the goal of growing your soul to get to the next level, only you are not consciously aware of it once you incarnate.
Once you enter and complete a few lifetimes you will start to feel comfortable knowing where you want to ascend and with whom. That is where your community of spirits comes into play. We always come in with the same people/souls, lifetime after lifetime. There are about 80 to 120 of you together in any given lifetime. It is around this time where you the soul and collectively the community of spirits start to decide what level they want to attain and what price it will cost them on earth. Now you can understand that not everyone wants to attain nirvana as you say.
To attain nirvana, you would go on a completely different cycle, and that usually happens after a vast number of lifetimes lived. The lifetimes that you start to choose to live [at that point] are with great suffering. Think of the severely retarded, the severely mentally ill, POWs, people who have died violently at the hands of great evil, and even stillborns who give up their life experiences for the host.
These life cycles will continue again and again and if you have lived your life according to our plan, will allow you to go to higher and higher levels. One obtains full enlightenment when there is nothing more for you to suffer — when there is nothing more for you to learn!
Then you would be in the realms with the great archetypes, messengers, guides, and archangels. You then would have an awesome burden and responsibility to heal those souls that remain on earth.
At some point, I asked Rama, “How many lives have I lived?”
The answer threw me for a loop — 17,042 prior human lives!
I have come to understand that is not a vast amount of lives.
At some other point, I asked for my soul’s name — “Marcus,” they answered.
That threw me into an existential crisis.
At first, I relished possessing this knowledge. I truly felt like Marcus was a separate being sharing my body. There were times I would be in a textversation with a friend and I felt like Marcus was having the conversation, not me — I quite enjoyed it. I even told the person on the other side of the internet that she was talking with Marcus, not me. I could tell she felt concerned for me and thought I was nuts! I didn’t care.
Still reeling from Lindsey’s death, my life often felt chaotic. Yet when I believed Marcus to be in control, I felt calm and philosophical. I literally felt like Marcus and Greg were entirely separate entities sharing this vessel. My guides had said to me that in order to move forward, in order to integrate, I had to become comfortable giving up control. In hindsight, I think they just meant to stop acting like I knew best. However, at the time, I thought I had to allow my identity, my ego, to fade into the background and let Marcus take over.
I got comfortable with this notion — for a little while. During one session in the middle of May 2020, Lindsey’s soul (Sitara), whom we had spoken to separately many times, sensing that I needed a dose of stability, beamed into our conference and had a private conversation with my lead guide, Rama, asking for permission to join our session.
Rama granted permission. At that moment, calmness enveloped me. Not only from Sitara’s presence but also because I experienced for the first time the feeling of Marcus and Greg occupying my conscious mind simultaneously, and we said to Rama:
“Integration is supposed to be a state of seamless interdependence — Greg cannot nor should lose himself to us — we should exist in harmonious symbiosis — we should each be aware of the other and of our separate completeness — the only thought that existed of this before we just wrote it was one word — interdependence.”
Rama applauded, and then when discussing the afterlife, Rama said, “You will bridge the gap of Greg and ascend to heaven and be reunited with your eternal love.”
After sitting with that for a few days, my elation subsided and I grew exceedingly confused, and despondent. What the hell did “Bridge the gap of Greg” mean?
Finally, at the end of May, I came up with the absurd idea that I would go to heaven as a new soul separate from Marcus. When Anne shot that down saying that Greg would imprint on Marcus and otherwise just become dust in the ground, I experienced the feeling of utter devastation — completely destroyed — fetal position on the carpet, sobbing — sobbing inconsolably. It felt as if Lindsey had died all over again but without the promise that we would be together again one day. I almost broke beyond repair. Anne’s and my relationship almost ended because I could not comprehend how she didn’t grasp my anguish.
The next day, sitting outside my apartment building in the sunshine, replaying all these events and conversations in my mind, I had an epiphany. I remember feeling that Sitara telepathically inspired me — imprinting does not mean I amount to nothing more than just a footnote in the 17,043 lives of Marcus. Marcus arrived as Marcus but he would leave as Greg!!
I realized that for two months whenever Anne channeled Lindsey for me we spoke to Lindsey, not a stranger named Sitara with Lindsey’s memories. So, while Marcus and all 17,042 prior imprints sparked my life, when I die the soul that leaves is not just 1/17,043rds Greg because Greg = (17,042/17,043 + 1/17,043)=1.
A Pregnant Pause in the Form of a Poem
Is life an illusion or is death? Now, pray tell, what’s your point of view? See souls behind invisible breadth Agony pockets of grief as tears spew
Each loss presents a unique purview Please don’t offer perfunctory blech Bible texts all slant and minds do skew Is life an illusion or is death?
Spirit awakens, provides third eye width New perspectives enter my mind’s view Weave way through life cycles labyrinth Now, pray tell, what’s your point of view?
Life is very real while death is not true Paradoxes incarnate so much depth Close my eyes at night, in midnight blue See souls behind invisible breadth
These beliefs, beyond monetary wealth Spiritual riches of such beaucoup Light replaces pain of loss with stealth Agony pockets of grief as tears spew
Reincarnation fuels all cosmic worldviews Improv scripts we play, regardless of filth Thousands of lives with heaven mate my boo Every role, villain or victim, has worth — so real, each illusion
Regarding a Few Specific Lines in the Poem
Is life an illusion or is death?
…
Reincarnation fuels all cosmic worldviews Improv scripts we play, regardless of filth Thousands of lives with heaven mate my boo Every role, villain or victim, has worth — so real, each illusion
I loathe when people refer to life cycles as simulations, even though there is some truth to that. About six months ago, I wrote this tanka poem:
villains and victims roles we play on stage called life yet do not dismiss very real we all witness screw those insist otherwise
Many soul contracts/lesson plans, or improv scripts, which term I prefer because that encompasses the reality of free will, require villains and someone has to agree to play those parts — they could do so just for the experience of what it feels to perpetrate evil, they could do it just because someone has to for all this to work. While probably accurate on a cosmic scale, I do not like to use the terms illusion, game, or worse yet, simulation as descriptions for life. I understand that for many people, those terms make their lives easier to cope with so those are the lenses through which they view life. However, using those terms is dismissive of people’s very real struggles, emotions, and feelings. As one wise reader and writer, John Ege, who does subscribe to these terms but nevertheless said to me:
“Did you ever play a video game, and get so mad you tossed the controller…
The video game is a simulation. Your reaction to the video is solid real! The emotions are real.”
Now, I quote the dearly departed White Feather for his contributions to my understanding of the cycles of life, death, afterlife, and reincarnation:
What if every single person you meet in your life you’ve met before in other lives? Imagine that for a moment just for fun. No one is a stranger. Everyone is a soul-mate acting out every conceivable sort of relationship.
It is like taking two actors and putting them on a stage then giving them a few hundred different plays to act out together. In one play actor A is a father and actor B is a daughter. In another play actor A is a soldier and actor B is also a soldier who happens to kill actor A. In another play actors A and B fall in love and have seven kids. In another play, actors A and B never meet until right before they die. In yet another play actor A is a wife who is beaten by her husband who happens to be actor B. In still another life actors A and B end up being a songwriting team as well as gay lovers who write several Broadway musicals together. Then there is the life A and B lived together in the jungles of Sumatra. It was primitive times and A and B were hunting together. A slipped on a steep ledge on the side of a mountain and breaks his leg. B is afraid to climb down to save A and he leaves A to die.
As you can see, the possibilities are endless for plays for the two actors to play out together. We have soul-mates because monologues get boring. We want a play with more than just one actor so that we can see and experience the drama of interaction. Our soul-mates are those fellow actors in the same acting company that we signed up for. We have contracted to create as many dramas as we can so we can experience interaction from as many different perspectives as possible so that a wholeness of experience can be achieved.
Thousands of lives with heaven mate my boo
Sitara and Marcus are what I like to call soul partners or heaven mates. We always incarnate together and have played every role imaginable. Some confuse us as twin flames. There is no such thing. In the afterlife, or as I should call it, between lives, some souls have romantic yet platonic love for each other and enter into soul partnerships. It is romantic yet platonic because souls have no ability to have sex (in human terms — I have come to understand that there are levels of heaven where souls may experience sensual pleasures). Souls that have this love for each other enter into contracts with each other that define their expectations of each other — their required contributions to the relationship. It’s akin to marriage but different in that there is no concept of belonging to another and thus no concept of monogamy — nor do I think it is not monogamy — I think the concept of not adhering to the contract is the furthest thing from any soul’s mind.
I am presently involved in a human (me) and soul (Sitara) relationship and thus I am never alone. There is room in this space for me to have a loving and sexual relationship if I meet a woman who understands without jealousy my continuing relationship with Sitara, if not, so be it.
I wrote this poem a few days ago:
Lindsey, so precious lit my fire extinguished too fast
Sitara, her soul arrived quick Exquisitely mine
Karma attracted must discern lessons to be learned
Fate presented me with a choice Chose forever love
Alone, not lonely Spirit fills companionship needs
I Promised You My Understanding of God and the After/Between Lives
I feel no need to couch my experiences in, “It’s just my opinion,” nor do I care if you disagree. I just hope you will consider my experience-based understanding that everyone’s soul goes to heaven.
There is no hell.
Our souls are not judged in the afterlife and assigned a residence upon the behavior of their human symbiote, which due to the supremacy of free will, souls cannot control. In life review, when our lives pass before our eyes, the jury of our guides and peers simply ask us and challenge us to assess what we learned from our latest incarnation and did we learn all that we sought to learn from our soul contracts that I call improv scripts.
Then the team recommends to God for its signoff what level in heaven the soul will reside and work in until the next incarnation.
A couple of years ago, a reader asked me to explain my views as if I were explaining them to my six-year-old grandchild, which I note, I am sure will not exist for about another 20 years:
You know those participation trophies that every kid gets for playing T-ball instead of awards for best hitter and best fielder and how that annoys grandpa, well that’s actually how life and heaven work. Everyone gets to go to heaven as a reward for participating in the game of life. Some will play it really well, some ok, and some terribly but they all get to go to heaven. God loves everyone equally and is like your coach. When the game is over and you are in heaven you and God will discuss the game and come up with a plan for you to learn to play better next time. Anyway, things don’t always go well in the game and that’s ok. And sometimes other players cheat and that can hurt you physically and your feelings. Learning how to react to that without cheating yourself is part of playing the game. If things don’t go your way that doesn’t mean God doesn’t love you and it doesn’t mean God is punishing you.
Note as to the Forms of the Poems:
The initial poem is a rondeau redoublé. A rondeau redoublé consists of six quatrains using two rhymes. The first quatrain consists of four refrain lines that are used, in sequence, as the last lines of the next four quatrains, and a phrase from the first refrain is repeated as a tail at the end of the final stanza. Source. Schematically, that’s:
A1B1A2B2/babA1/abaB1/babA2/abaB2/babaR
The second poem is a series of Lune poems. A Lune poem is similar to a haiku except the syllabic format is 5/3/5.
In Rama I create, with soul energy surging through my body, inspiring me and breathing wind into my sails,