What to Expect After Death

from The Luminous Landscape of the Afterlife by Matthew McKay, Ph.D.

I have loved Jordan for thirty-four years in this life. But for much of that time he has not been here; I haven’t been able to hold and kiss him. At age twenty-three, on the way home from work, he was accosted by men who probably wanted to steal his bike. They all fought, and as he was breaking away, Jordan was shot in the back. When my boy died, I had no belief that the dead could talk to us. At best, they seemed gone in another world, separated by loss and the deafening thunder of our grief. Perhaps, even worse, their passing spoke a truth far more dire: that they ceased to exist and that these sweet, ephemeral spirits lived only in memory.

But then Jordan started speaking to me—at first only in dreams—but then through mediums, through a process called induced after-death communication, and through the gift of channeled writing he told me he was here. He was with me, and he could teach me what he knows about the afterlife. He has given me something I could never have hoped for: a window into the world of spirit, an invitation to listen at the curtain between worlds, and a clear awareness that death is neither an end nor even a loss. It is merely the time when we finally remember who we are and where our home is.

I have grieved deeply for Jordan because I can’t touch him, sit in our kitchen to enjoy a long, rambling conversation, or watch his life unfold. His spirit, or the spirit representing him in our new book The Luminous Landscape of the Afterlife, doesn’t take his place and can’t speak for the young man as he would have spoken if he had continued to live on this Earth. The voice speaks for a larger entity that was there before Jordan was born, even as it is there after death. Jordan’s voice has been added to that being, but the entity is timeless and views the universe and its own existence from that perspective.

The solace I get from my conversations with Jordan comes from the knowledge that the love between us is still a real and active force, and it opens the bigger picture. The things he conveyed as spirit have a larger meaning than the personal relationship between us. A greater spiritual realm has been revealed. It has an eternal wisdom that doesn’t depend on the relationship between Jordan and me but instead depends on the soul knowledge that discarnate beings can convey to the living.

That said, there is no direct speech or even a common language between the dead and the living. Meanings pass from Jordan’s spiritual field, where he is now, to my spiritual field, where I am now. And then they pass through my brain into written language. Of course, that language is mine, but it isn’t mine instead of Jordan’s. It is a language generated out of our living relationship. Jordan can only communicate his radically different experience in terms humans would understand, and I can only translate it into terms that I understand.

There is still the question: How do you know these words are really from Jordan and not my own projections or wishful thinking? There are two very different answers to this basic question. The first is: I know Jordan so well that I recognize his voice, the participation of his separate and special ego in language, tone, style, and humor. I also recognize the voice as not my own at the same time that I feel it as Jordan. He is saying things I don’t know, or even come close to knowing, in the way Jordan would say them. There is a gut “dead reckoning” to our exchange. In addition, numerous psychics have independently told me about their own communications with Jordan and the book he was writing. Their information matched the text I received.

The second answer is: it isn’t Jordan, meaning it isn’t only my son who knows himself as Jordan. The voice is a larger soul or spirit being who knows himself as many things, one of them being Jordan. That is the part that’s speaking to me, and that part has dimensions that Jordan as I knew him didn’t, not because Jordan lacked something, but because he was engaged in living the life of a boy and then a young man in California. The soul speaking to me includes Jordan in its own field of identities, lifetimes, and knowledge.

I respect Jordan’s integrity as much as I respect and love and miss him, so I wouldn’t assign this new book to him if I didn’t experience the authenticity of his signature. I am simply saying to take this afterlife guide as an expression of our love for each other in continuing to work together on a common project. It is a gift to you so that you may know death as mere punctuation in the eternal life of your soul.

Our first conversations via channeled writing took the form of reassurance that Jordan was happy and in a good place. But that quickly changed into deeper explorations of the nature of time, the reasons we incarnate, the purpose of a physical universe, the relationship between individual souls and the Divine, and many other subjects.

Jordan told me that the fear of death and the struggle souls frequently face as they transition can change. Souls need support, knowledge, and reassurance as they contemplate death and what awaits them. Knowledge and preparation, Jordan says, could fundamentally change how we view and experience our transition to the afterlife.

The fear of death changes our actual experience of death. The fear makes us deaf and blind to what exists in the afterlife. Fear eclipses love and our relationship to all the souls who died before us. Fear can cause us to hallucinate terrifying scenes of judgment or hell and miss what’s really present after death.

At the moment of death we lose our senses, our nervous system, and all that has anchored us to the world. We lose our families and goals in life. We find ourselves in a place where a thought creates visions, where a mere idea projects images that can capture and overwhelm us. The physical world is gone, and for a time we may not be able to hear or recognize the spirits that have come to help us. The love we feel for our soul group and guides may be masked from us.

In this confusion, souls struggle to get their bearings. Some don’t yet recognize that they are dead. Some are so attached to the people and things of their past that they cling to the physical plane. Some are filled with emotions—fear, anger, grief, shame, greed—that obscure the life of spirit. Some souls expect an afterlife that doesn’t exist, a picture of heaven painted from pulpits and religious training that prevents them from seeing what’s there. Some souls expect nothing, an extinction of consciousness, and can’t understand why they are still thinking and aware outside of their bodies.

The time immediately after death is disorienting. This is because a soul who has newly crossed over is still an amnesiac. They don’t know what they know. How we communicate and navigate in spirit has been forgotten. How to focus our energy in spirit has temporarily been lost. All that we have learned in past lives remains a vague dream. For example, we “see” in all directions. We move by intention rather than physically walking. We “hear” telepathically rather than listening to sound and words. We connect through the medium of love rather than touching or holding or conversing.

At this moment, having been separated from our body, we need to remember who we are, where we are going, and how to get there. That is one purpose of The Luminous Landscape of the Afterlife. It is a navigational guide to death and the afterlife. It is a resource so you will know what to expect, how to prepare, and what to do as you move through the primary early phases of life after death.

Jordan channeled the book to offer four things every soul needs:

• to know why we’re here
• to know what to expect at death and transition
• to know how to navigate without a body
• to know our work in the spirit world

Learning why you are here and why you entered this body is another reason for our book. Death cannot be understood unless the purpose of life is also recognized. We are not here to be redeemed, proven worthy, or to earn a high station in heaven. We are here, Jordan says, to love and to learn. Death merely facilitates moving from the physical dimensions into the world of spirit. Our life as a soul has the same goals—here and in the afterlife—to evolve and to grow.