Blissfully Dead: Life Lessons From The Other Side

humour.

Preface

Janelle and I first ‘met’ in 2010 when a member of her family came to me for a reading. At the time I was living in Western Australia, offering psychic and medium readings from home. After this particular reading I overflowed with compassion, feeling the pain of those who believe they have lost their loved ones forever. I said to myself: I wish I could do more, and Janelle’s voice answered loud and clear: Writing my story would help.

This is how my spirit friend and I started to write this book.

Even though I had never met Janelle in person, I had seen her on TV. She was a well-known Australian personality and a very pretty one too. She was only 29 years of age when she died, but she will tell you all about that herself.

It took us one and a half years to write the first version of this book. I would sit down with pen and paper and Janelle would pour out her knowledge to me. At the end of this process I typed my notes into the computer, then printed and bound it. However, when I reread it, I found the content too clinical and full of repetition. Janelle would give me the same information over and over again, each time in a different way, until I had completely understood what she was saying. This made my unedited text overly repetitive and lacking in intimacy.

I went in search of someone who could give the book a makeover. I found an editor who specialized in books of my genre, and we agreed on a trial deal, but her intervention did nothing to improve what I saw as 275 pages of information overload, so I moved to Plan B. I had found a website called 75 Books Every Writer Should Read and threw myself into an enlightening journey which left me feeling confident enough to give the draft the necessary makeover myself. The result – after five months of cutting, rephrasing and correcting – was 190 pages of information overload instead of 275.

Frustrated I put the draft away and didn’t look at it for six months, by which time it had been three years since I had first started writing. Then one day, after yet another meditation on the subject, I understood that in order to be able to like the book, I had to write a book I liked. But I didn’t just want to write a book I liked: I wanted to write an irresistible book, impossible to put down once you started reading it. I wanted to write a book I loved reading so much, I wished I had written it.

So I made a list of what my ideal book would look like and started all over again.

In order to protect the privacy of Janelle’s family, details of her former life have been changed, including her name. It took a while before the two of us agreed to every detail, but eventually we felt the new set of circumstances accurately portrayed the person Janelle had been. We were then ready to start version number three, and it felt right from the start.

Together we moved through her realm and her former experiences, she communicating and me listening and asking countless questions – how do you describe timelessness to someone who has never experienced it; how do you describe feeling without emotions, and so on.

Janelle still overloaded me at times, but I found a way to deal with it. One day when we were writing, I had a vision of Janelle opening a door; this door had a label on it, and all the available information on that topic came tumbling out towards her. In her realm, simply the intent to gain awareness on a subject is enough. The information comes and is rapidly absorbed. The moment she opened up to me, her newly-gained awareness would pour over me like a tropical rainstorm. Knowing this, I let the storm pass before writing and only used information that was directly related to Janelle’s experiences. Well, that was the aim!

When Janelle died, she needed answers. She had been a young woman who seemingly had it all, yet she had killed herself. Now, in spirit, she wanted to know about life, what it was about and why it hadn’t worked for her. She also wanted to know what mental illness was, and so she embarked on an extensive journey to understand the mind. Not just hers, but the human mind in general. She met other souls from whom she learned how they had dealt with their hearts and minds in life and how that had affected them after death. She discovered souls unable to move on, stuck in the negativity of what had been the focus of their existence. She learned how spirits can influence people in a negative way and how the living can return the ‘favour’.

On her journey to understand where our minds go wrong and how this can be avoided, she met a spirit who lived and died under circumstances similar to hers. Through this meeting she was able to explain how we can best relate to our deceased loved ones and that holding on to resentment can negatively influence them.

She was curious about the role of religion, wondering if those whose hearts are full of their God and whose lives are full of prayer and meditation become less influenced by their minds. When she met both the ‘good and bad’ in followers of Jesus she had an epiphany, and from then on she was able to focus directly on finding her Self, her Inner God, instead of being a spectator looking for answers from outside.

By being in service to people in need, she discovered why she was unable to surrender to permanent Bliss. This inspired her to further investigate until she was ready to let go completely. When she did, the stream of information that came from Janelle stopped, and our relationship as we had known it came to an end. It was my turn to find peace in the new situation.

Fast-forwarding to the epilogue: here, Janelle takes me into her new world and shows me the beauty of what spirit life can be. By then there is nothing left of the soul I had originally met; she had gone from being a spectator, someone who reported to me, to an ever-transforming soul, totally involved in the Self. Traveling with Janelle taught me that no one is truly at peace until they are free of the mind.

There is no physical nature to this story – no evidence of our communication, other than me and my pen and maybe that’s where the magic lies for me. I started to write a book following a request from someone from a different realm. Together we ventured onward until we found a common passion that lowered the walls and lifted the veils between us. Janelle’s journey became my journey and the path we travelled enabled us to find the way from the mind to the heart.

Eventually Janelle went home and I found peace. Until then, I had a voice in my head that questioned every thought I had. Few things in my life have been as dubious as co-writing a book with a spirit, but the mystery of housing the wisdom to understand its content and the miracle of having been able to express it has stunned my voice of self-doubt into silence.

In spite of Janelle’s journey taking place in a different realm, I found it easy to apply her discoveries to my world. After her suicide, Janelle is confused about the contrast between her state of peace, and the devastation felt by her loved ones. She asks: How come their nightmare started when mine finished? In life too, desperate people have to make radical changes in order to climb out of their dark space. In order to avoid killing their body, they have to kill the person they used to be. They might have to change jobs, country, marital status or even gender. Some may embark upon a spiritual quest, perhaps spending the rest of their days in an ashram. They too might ask themselves: How come my loved ones felt they lost me, the moment I found myself?

Janelle talks about stuck souls – spirits who reject their moment of Bliss and instead stay focussed on their former obsessions in life. For example instead of enjoying peace, they are still metaphysically at the horse races. Those in our realm also ignore the beauty of what life has to offer. We miss out on a beautiful day because of something someone said to us. We don’t enjoy our healthy bodies, because we find fault in how they are shaped; instead of appreciating the abundance we have in life, we focus on what is lacking.

Janelle talks about those souls who pester humans, filling their minds with negativity. I have seen people on this planet do the same job, just as effectively. As for Janelle meeting souls who didn’t live their full potential, we don’t have to go far for that either – sometimes no further than the bathroom mirror. The same applies to souls who have regrets when they realize who they have been during their life.

When Janelle moves towards the light she understands what stopped her from going home; this is reflected so perfectly here on earth, as we stop ourselves from being in the Self and the Heart, from being our Inner God.

Everything she spoke about is translatable in my own life and most likely in yours too. Therefore this isn’t just the story of a spirit of someone who killed herself – this is everybody’s story. This is the journey from the mind to the heart, even though, technically speaking, Janelle no longer has a mind or a heart.

Feel free to interpret the story however you like, however it comes to you. But more importantly, if you can, suspend belief, get past the mind, and feel the story.

This is the story of Janelle and me walking each other home.

Enjoy the journey with us.

Introduction

Hi, my name is Janelle and I would like to tell you my story. I ended my life by jumping off a cliff at the age of 29, yet an outsider would not have found one reason for my desperate deed: I was a young, beautiful-looking woman with a blooming career, and I was about to marry my high school sweetheart. I was famous as well, something I had aspired to since I was a little girl. I loved being in the spotlight; I loved my fiancé; I loved my family, my friends, my colleagues and my dogs. I loved the country I lived in. I loved my parents who had doted on me from the day I was born. Still I jumped.

Even now I can feel the despair and the terror I experienced at the time of my death. I was overcome with feelings of unworthiness and self-hatred. I thought I was ugly and a failure and that I put everybody who loved and believed in me to shame. These feelings did not come out of the blue. I had been taking antidepressants for years, ever since my late teens, when the bully in my mind told me that I was fat, even though I was skinny. But those episodes were nothing compared to what I experienced towards the end of my life. The pressure that had been building up from an early age became unbearable. I suffered from chronic ‘perfectionitis’ and this manifested itself in everything, including my relationships towards others.

I don’t have the feeling that it was me who jumped: I hardly remember anything of that day, besides the need to stop the torture in my head. It’s hard to recognize myself in the girl who jumped: me – the people pleaser, the perfectionist, leaving such a mess behind – that was unheard of, but still, I did.

From a human perspective I was a person suffering from depression, who had the misfortune to go to a doctor who prescribed medication that didn’t work and as a consequence I killed myself. The End.

Reactions to an untimely death vary. Some believe that those who die young are too beautiful for this world and God wants them with Him. Or life is nothing more than a game of Russian roulette and death is a consequence of unfortunate events. Others believe that our breaths are counted and all is predestined. My fiancé tried to make sense of my death by nailing down the ‘guilty’ doctor, while my mother became passionate about suicide prevention, so that my death would not be in vain.

But where was I when the world stopped for my loved ones and my picture appeared in the news media across Australia with shocking headlines like: Janelle Du Gard dies at the age of 29? Was I going through the Bardo, as the Buddhists say? Was I pleading my case at The Gate with Saint Peter? Did I gain wings on losing my body and was God content to have his angel back? Here is the story the media did not get hold of. This is my story from the moment I stopped being Janelle as the world had known me…

Afterlife according to Janelle

The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.

– Lucan

The first thing I became aware of was an intense wind, not passing around my body but going through it. I literally felt as though I was dissolving. I felt free; this was the best I’d felt in weeks, maybe even months. I noticed a deafening stillness and colours that, just for a moment, seemed to pass through me. I became aware of the lack of temperature: I was neither cold nor warm, I just was. I sensed I was being lifted up, but did not know by what. The first moment without a body was unbelievable, going from desperation to freedom in an instant. I knew that I was dead or at least in a coma by the lack of senses as I knew them.

I wasn’t scared, not for a second, but I was apprehensive of what would come. The people-pleaser in me still wanted to get it right, even after death.

I had felt alone during life. That wasn’t anybody’s fault; most people had gone out of their way to make me feel at ease. I felt alone because I felt different. During the last months and maybe even years of my life I felt isolated in my own (sometimes quite horrible) world. And in one moment all these feelings were gone and I was overwhelmed by a sense of belonging. It wasn’t so much that someone was waiting for me; it was more that the veil of separation had lifted and I had become one with all.

This blessed nothingness was not just the opposite of feeling lonely, detached and isolated; it was also the opposite of feeling haunted. During my life I had put stress on myself to get ‘it’ right. I would fret over my looks, my weight, my school marks, my achievements at work, and I’d worry what other people thought of me. All of that fell away in an instant. What remained was peace, pure and blissful peace. The closest I can get to describe the feeling is being in a warm bed on a cold rainy morning with absolutely no duties or appointments waiting. I felt full and fulfilled. I felt surrounded by love, love that was coming from others like me. I felt like I was back in the womb, completely taken care of. I felt nothing and therefore I felt everything. I had become a weightless sponge, a love magnet, soaking up the surrounding love so fast that I was totally replete. I didn’t feel I was ‘going somewhere’, yet I did feel I was in motion.

Later I learned that everything in our universe is movement: all existing particles travel, and everything is energy. I wish that energies had colours visible to the human eye. If that were the case I would probably still be alive, because people would have noticed how black my energy field (representing my thoughts and feelings) was. Confronting me with my darkness could have forced me to stop pretending I was OK.

The energies I became aware of after my passing were neither threatening nor invasive. They seemed to exert no influence on me at all; I simply knew they were there. What made it so peaceful was the lack of pressure: there was no time; no day or night, tomorrow or yesterday. I felt I could truly rest.

I have since understood that you can achieve this sublime state during life, that you can become free of anxiety on every level, even under torture. I had persecuted myself from childhood: my mind was full of crazy deadlines and achievements that had to be reached, otherwise… As an adult, I had not known what it meant to be alive and free. The last time I was free was as a child, and I didn’t experience that again until after I died.

After this initial state of Bliss I became aware of a frequency reaching me from life. I felt the word NOOOO vibrating through me with desperation and disbelief, coming from my lover. This puzzled me, because it was such a contrast to the beautiful experience I was having. This contradiction was a taste of what I, and almost all souls who have ended their own life, deal with. Would I have wanted to be saved? I was the luckiest girl in the world when it came to family and friends. I had a partner who would do anything to undo what happened. So yes, I would have liked to prevent all the pain people have suffered because of me, but no, I could never have been happy without experiencing this peace. How confusing! I concluded that I had a lot to learn.

My ‘sponge being’ seemed eager to connect with my lover; since then, I feel that my energy has connected permanently with his. You could say we have merged energetically. This means that part of my energy, and therefore part of me, is permanently with Peter. We spirits are comparable to light beams at a light show, where one big beam transforms into various smaller ones. We are as many beams as is necessary to stay in people’s hearts. Peter, like all people whose beloved has died, has changed. The experiences of life shape our character, and certainly something as big as losing a soulmate has an impact. But it isn’t just the loss that transforms our character – the fact that we live on in their heart causes changes too.

When Melita had difficulty relating to this on a practical level, I asked her what had changed within her after her mother’s death. To her surprise she found she