I looked down and saw bare feet; I had toes, fingers, hands and arms. I slowly reached out one hand to touch the other - whatever I was, I was real, tangible in some sort of intangible way. I had a body, yet it was not the body I had just moments (was it really moments?) before. I had no mirror, yet I felt that if I had one, I would recognize the mirror image of self.

My mind began to wander ... this can’t be the way everyone arrives here, wherever here is. I felt no aftereffects of dying. What about those who die horrible or otherwise unexpected and traumatic deaths? What about those who die without having had a belief in an afterlife? They don’t just appear here all alone, do they?

On earth there is a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Not just on earth ... I begin to ask self questions and from nowhere a being is standing here before me. We are both clad in identical white. His (if it is a "he") bears no emblem or insignia or name tag; the thought comes, this is the Teacher.

Before a single word is spoken, I am taken back to an earth memory, to a little booklet my Aunt Dot, gave me to read one evening as I prepared for bed. It was a "channeled" piece about a soldier horribly killed in battle in WW-I. At the time, I did not know why she gave it to me to read. But I read it and its story stuck with me. A few years later when my daughter Ginger took her life, I recalled the story and was comforted by it. Standing here before the Teacher, I recalled how the "dead" soldier awoke in an all white hospital-like setting, laying on a "cot" surrounded by scores of others recently killed in battle. (There were no bandages, no slings, no tubes or IVs, no oxygen masks.) Each one was tended by a loving, caring, compassionate figure in white. So the story went, they were being nursed through the trauma of their dying and death. This, I understood, was a place of healing and preparation, before moving on into ...

It was as if the Teacher had reached into my mind and revealed to me what I already knew.

I am unnecessarily impatient (that thought just came to mind). When you are ready, I thought. When the questions cease, the answers will come. The key that opens the mind to the answers sought is wonder, not questions. Questions demand answers; wonder is the gateway to the infinite.

I wonder (I thought) who or what am I, really? I still have a sense of Jim, of my flesh and blood earth identity. Am I not more than that? On earth I believed that I had a heavenly counterpart ... I called it Soul and for convenience I called my Soul, Amos. Where was this Amos, this other me? No, I’m not demanding answers, just quietly wondering. I am momentarily awash in the realization that this is my place of healing and preparation. I am being ministered to by the Teacher just as surely as were those who died in that long-ago war.

Do I want to see Ginger as whole and complete ... like I never saw her in real life? I don’t want to see her as she was - as she was contemplating her death. No, I’m not ready to see her ... I’m not ready to see any of them, not with these eyes ... With these eyes I see only through veils of memory where reality is no more than the past’s illusions. Is this the "here and now" where illusion ends?

The definitive sense of purpose I so longed for in the flesh has no place here. All around me, featureless white light; no hint of form or shape. No shadow, no place brighter or darker than any other. No illusion, nothing to misconstrue, no place to start, no place to end ... no place. This, I think, is a part of the healing process ... the process of letting go, letting go of yesterdays, of tomorrow, letting-go-of-self. What will I see when I can no longer see "me" ... What will I be when Jim, Jimmy, James is no more than a memory? As I step from the who, what and where I was and into timeless Eternity, what will I be? Why will I be?

My mind wanders to the mythology of the "afterlife." It was said by John that the New Heaven, the Holy City of the New Jerusalem, was a city made of things like "pure gold like clear glass." There is no such city here, nor even a hint of anything other than white light, Teacher and me. The thought impresses upon me ... John described the Holy City descending from heaven as being constructed of the purest elements of planet earth. With rare exception, when prophets and seers spoke of heavenly things and beings they were described in earthly terms. Of course, that was all they could relate too. Jesus spoke of God as Spirit, something clearly other than of this earth. We understood that God and the stuff of God was something other than the purest elemental earth, something other than star-stuff. I’m beginning to think that the Holy City - being not at all of this earth could only be expressed to human beings in human terms. I no longer know what to expect! The Teacher’s thoughts resonate inside my being - "You are making progress, letting go of expectation." Hearing those words, I begin to realize that I must let go of seeing things through human eyes, I must let go of quantifying and qualifying everything according to earth-based criteria.

I am clearly more than "me," in fact the idea of me is beginning to feel somehow strange, somehow foreign. There was a time when I was a shoe salesman, a day-laborer, a parts department manager, a safety coordinator, an Eagle Scout leader, an Elder in the LDS Church, a New Thought minister. These were no more than ever-changing masks that I wore. Is being a human being of flesh, blood, bone a brain no more that such a mask? I am in the process of shedding that mask and becoming ... what? I don’t know what to call myself anymore. I am not a man, am not even a dead man. I am a ... being ... but I don’t know what I am being.

No, I am not a being, I am a becoming.

I look around. The Teacher has left; left me to my thoughts and my wondering. I remember wondered why I had not yet met anyone else and wondering who it is I would like to see - greet - embrace. Is there anyone else here? My mind says there must be. Are they as anxious to see me as I am them? Or, having already gone through the awakening process (whatever it is) do they patiently wait my transformation? Do I want to see them as they were or as what they have become? I am beginning to sense that we will meet, but not as we once were. Yes, Teacher, that’s what I want - to fully let go of the old me, to become more like them so that we can indeed be One. I feel more and more of my old self peacefully slipping away, each earthly memory giving way to new awareness. I have died to the flesh and now I die to the ways of the flesh. I am beginning to understand the truth and in truth am being set free ... eternally free.