The day after Halloween is the Day of the Dead.

In the US people don’t usually think too much about that. For Americans, Halloween means trick or treatin’, jack o’ lanterns and maybe some good, homemade pumpkin pie with cider. And that’s about it. A fun time for kids. A good excuse to get together with the neighbours.

But in other parts of the world, November 1 is the Day of the Dead. It’s when you remember your dead, your loved ones on the other side.

People take flowers to cemeteries. They meet up with relatives to remember and reminisce.

Well, everyone has their own theory as to what happens when people die. I have friends who suffer, because they believe that the soul does not exist or that if it does, it is not immortal. They believe that their loved ones were just simply extinguished out of being, like a candle flame, upon their death.

Now, I am not a psychic medium. But I think it must be a most joyous gift, to be able to share such a faculty with the world, to be able to help relieve the pain of the bereaved with messages from loved ones who have passed on.

Not who have died. Just simply, who have passed on. To a new life. To “the West” as Tolkien liked to refer to it in his symbolic and unique manner.

I realize that probably a lot of people will not agree with me, or WANT to agree with me. They probably have their own theories as to what happens when we die.

Maybe they fear plunging helplessly like puppets into purgatory. Or worse, perhaps, like my friends, they expect to just become snuffed out and cease to exist, forever.

Well, for those who don’t like what I have to say or object to it, I can only remind them of what Shakespeare said:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Carlos Castaneda’s mythic Don Juan put it pretty nicely too, when he exclaimed: “The world around us is a great mystery.”

No, no one can claim to know it all.

But we’re all free to espouse our own beliefs. And I suppose it must have become quite clear, from this post so far, that I DO believe in an “afterlife”. I do believe in souls and that these souls live on, and just simply move into a different dimension, another world.

I believe that, as you can read about here in this article about unhappy earthbound spirits, ghosts and the happily fulfilled people who DO make it painlessly and effortlessly into the “afterlife”, souls reside temporarily in a spirit world between incarnation and incarnation – until, of course, they finally reach that happy, blissful moment where reincarnation is no longer a requirement in their spiritual evolution.

Life on earth, with its unpredictable and anguish-filled ups and downs, its passion and great joys, is a school. A place to learn what you need to know to become a better being, a greater soul.

And where do students go when school is out?

They go home, of course!

And that is what the spirit world is.

But you keep coming back to earth because, well, quite simply, you haven’t graduated yet.

But don’t worry. One day you will.

And so will your loved ones.

And then, at that point, you and your loved ones may remain together forever in the grand and mysterious spirit world, carrying out your work, enjoying “spirit” life, taking more classes up in those lighter realms. You can do this in the company of your loved ones, or not.

Or you may have different interests from your loved ones, and in that case, you can simply meet up together after “work”, or when “school” is out, up there in the etheric dimension. Pretty much the same way as you do with your friends here on earth.

But until that day arrives, you can still meet up with them and spend your time together, up there in the spirit world, between lifetime after lifetime.

And when you are temporarily separated, because they are dead and YOU are not, you can remember them on All Saints’ Day. On the Day of the Dead.