We are told by Zen masters to be mindful and present. After achieving this level of existence, I realize most humans could not even begin to live in this state. As you start to ascend levels of higher consciousness, you leave everything else behind that bound you. People do not like to let go of things any more than they want to let go of how they feel about everything! They love to remember and recycle the same old stories over and over again. When you are present, none of your old story matters. It doesn’t exist. It may have been, but it isn’t now.

Eckhart Tolle explains the stillness in being present better than any other explanation I’ve come across in The Power of Now. When you are present, nothing else ever can matter. What happened yesterday is nowhere to be found, and tomorrow will happen when it gets there. Right at this moment, do you have any problems? No, you don’t. Hold on to living in just this one moment, and your life will begin to reflect this new reality of peace and well being.

When you are present, none of your old story matters to you. It doesn’t exist. It may have been, but it isn’t now.

This is the stillness I’ve enjoyed for quite some time now. It’s impossible to explain what it feels like. When you are here, you realize holding on to memories, emotions, and life events were just roadblocks. Of course, I still have the memories; I just don’t think about any part of them. I am right here, right now. Nowhere else.

When you live in the right now, you realize you cannot say anything that is an untruth. You also discover the emotions attached to negative memories fall away, and you can’t access them any longer. If you look at the emotions chart, you see that exhilaration and serenity are at the top. Regret, pity, blame, and death is at the bottom. When you’ve moved up the chart to the very top, you can’t dabble down below enthusiasm! If you remain present, you will stay at the top of the chart. It’s that simple.

When people ask me about my daughter and her travels away from home for long periods since she was in high school, I tell them I honestly never missed her for a moment. When she went away to college, I said goodby and went about my day. I never sat down to find misery in her leaving. That would require me to ponder about her and what she might be doing. I raised one hell of a kid who has turned into one hell of a woman. I don’t worry or ponder for a second about her. I love hearing from her when she checks in to share what’s been going on. I don’t stew over anything. She’s good! No, I’m not heartless, just no longer broken. I am just present, and I simply love my daughter. She is here to create her world and find the path she will walk down. It has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Anything I might offer could sway her journey. Even worse, if I was a mother that worried and put my pain of her absence on her shoulders, she would definitely be affected by it. I have given her freedom to soar! She knows I will never do that; this is her trip around the sun.

Finding stillness was just the tip of the iceberg. So much has happened since I found peace. Parts of me are waking up that I didn’t know were asleep! People I didn’t know passed on or were about to pass have been coming to me in my dreams. At least one spent a few weeks turning on my nightstand light. I was recently visited by a high school classmate who I knew, but just a little. I had a very vivid dream of him looking exactly like he did back in school. I’ve been “friends” with him and many of my classmates on Facebook. The look he presented in my dream was the look no one has seen in decades. When his daughter posted yesterday that he just passed, it all made sense. I couldn’t figure out why he would appear for me. Now I get it.

Until my sister’s recent passing, I honestly didn’t know how I would respond to death. No one very close to me has died for a very long time. My mother died in 2009, but we hadn’t had any communication in well over a decade.

Finding stillness was just the tip of the iceberg … Parts of me are waking up that I didn’t know were asleep!

When my sister’s children started calling me to let me know she was in the hospital, and it didn’t look like she would ever come out again, family death was on the horizon.

Until my sister’s recent passing, I honestly didn’t know how I would respond to death.

When my sister was getting ready to cross over, three different times, my mother visited me. How do I know it was my mother? A song she played a lot when we were growing up was “Patches” by Browning Bryant. Out of nowhere, during my stillness, this song would start playing loudly in my head. I knew she was with me beyond a shadow of a doubt. I asked if she had a message for me to deliver to my sister. Using my pendulum, we communicated. Trying to understand the message was something I didn’t quite know how to listen for, but I had a definite “knowing” of what I needed to say to her, and I did.

Twenty minutes after my sister took her last breath, I was standing up when a swarm of energy enveloped my entire body. It felt like tingling energy swirling all around me, raising the hair on the back of my neck. I knew it was the essence of my sister telling me she was finally free of pain. I had chills throughout my body. It felt wonderful to feel her around me.

So, my sibling died. How do I feel? When I first heard she transitioned to non-physical, I felt excited that she could get back to the beauty and amazement of what it is like on the other side of the veil. Part of me felt a little envy, but I know we all will be back there again one day. I just know now what I couldn’t have ever known before. On the other side, everything is much more magical than our five senses as physical can allow us to experience. She gets to be part of all that is once again and is no longer in pain.

This is not how a “normal” human mourns; believe me, I am aware of this. Someone near me came to me, looking at me with their head cocked, a look of concern on their face as they said in a weird baby talk, “aren’t you sad? Your sister died!” The deal is, I cried for a considerable part of my life because I didn’t know how to experience a life of happiness. Now that the only tears I can cry are tears of joy, I realize it’s because I am no longer broken. No, I’m not sad.

Twenty minutes after my sister took her last breath, a swarm of energy enveloped my entire body. It felt like tingling energy swirling all around me, raising the hair on the back of my neck.

Today, I understand so many things that I couldn’t have known before. Most humans on this planet will go through life, not understanding what many of us now do. I was guided to a path of discovering who we are and why we are here; I unveiled the secret to life. Once you get a glimpse beyond the veil, there is an unexplainable knowing. You can’t go back when you know the truth. It is the most brilliant mystery you will uncover, and when you taste the bliss, all you want is more. Unfortunately, we don’t have words in our language to convey the magnitude of what it is I’m talking about.

With my new understanding of life, I realize my permanent residence is in bliss. Thinking back to that chart of emotions, I realize why I cannot “feel” how others think I should be expressing. They think I should be grieving and crying, mourning for my loss. When I was suffering from my own victimhood and living life in misery, no doubt, I would have been a blubbering disaster. Because I have only been at the top of the chart, even for other people, I can’t reach way down to the lower part of the chart to feel sorrow or grief. They don’t have a place within me. I am way up there; those emotions are down low. You can’t get there from here.

There is one area of my life I’ve had to give thought to recently. I have a beautiful white Golden Retriever. How will I react and feel when my little girl is ready to cross over? Yesterday, being with my dog and giving her a massage, the answer came to me. She is eleven and slowing way down. She still has lots of time left, but we never know.

What came to me is a reminder that animals are not human! They don’t experience emotions the way we do. They are present from the moment they are born! They live with instinct. What they don’t do is fear the end. They don’t fear anything. They don’t run from death because they don’t think about it. We see them aging, and we think about it way too much! One day, they may lay their tired head down on that comfy dog bed and go to sleep… and they won’t wake up. When that happens, they are on the other side where my sister and mother are. They merely slip out of their tired old shell and move on to the other side. Her tail will be wagging, and she won’t feel any more pain. They don’t worry about any part of death. This is just our human trait.

When my sweet girl is gone, I will miss her energy and spirit in the house. Her absence will leave a vast void. Not having her run to get me a toy every time I walk into the house will be a considerable absence. Will I cry when she leaves? I don’t know. I will know when it happens.

I am no longer a lost soul wandering around in a life of misery. I listened to my inner guidance, and I found the way. Others at this level of expanded consciousness get it, but we are few and far between. I will not feel any bad or sad emotion for not being the human people want me to be. They can judge me and feel whatever they want, but their reactions come from a place where they are seriously lacking something they wish they had. Meanwhile, I will be in peace.

I have found the gift of life in a way so few can comprehend. I’m not sorry for those who do not understand. I only hope you will find the time to quiet your minds long enough to listen for guidance to come to you. Once it does, you will be right behind me.