(Please do not attack any grammar issues as this is not a final copy.)

The Afterlife Stories

By,
Mitchell Leigh Shelton
For my mother, Anna Mae:



     There once was a wonderful woman named Anna Mae. Even though she lost her ability to walk when she was six years old due to polio, she went on to live a rich and full life. She went on to marry a husband and gave birth to three children, two girls and one boy. She had a rough and hard life dealing with money and health problems but she loved her family dearly and always put them first. She devoted herself to God and even though she fell away from God for a short time she never let go of her ideals and in the end she followed God and his laws and God saw that she was good.

     Her children on the other hand, while not evil, did not believe in God. The years went by and Anna Mae and her family all passed away yet this story is not over. The time of the resurrection came upon the Earth. Anna Mae was brought forth unto God and God saw that she was good. Likewise, her husband had also believed and he was allowed to join her in paradise. The children had no faith in life and thus God judged them evil and to the dust they returned.

     Only one week later in the world of paradise Anna Mae sat with her husband, surrounded by peace, love, and beauty. Anna Mae sat upon an amazingly comfortable rock and wept profusely. Jesus was tending the needs of those in paradise and heard her cries. He came to her and saw that she had been crying for a long time. A large pool of water surrounded her on the rock, a pool of tears. Jesus walked across the pool of tears and stood before her upon the water and asked, “Why do I stand upon a lake of tears, child of God?”
“I miss my daughters and my son,” Anna Mae responded in between her sobs.
Jesus waved a hand to focus her gaze upon the world of paradise and replied, “But here child in paradise not only is everything beautiful, but you can walk and if you wish you and your loving husband can now bear forth many more sons and daughters!”

     Anna Mae replied to Jesus with eyes lowered, “Truly it is wonderful here in paradise and more than I deserve, but no child can replace the ones which I have lost. I will dwell here for all of eternity within paradise but I will never be happy again.”

     Now Jesus felt great sorrow for Anna Mae so he brought her before God where, she again explained her sorrows. God listened to her plea and when she was done he replied, “The word of God does not change. Your children did no evil in they're life, this is true. But they denied me they're faith and devotion. There is nothing I can do.”

     Anna Mae fell to the dirt before God and said, “I am so sorry lord, but without my children.....I no longer wish to live.”

     God waited for what seemed like eternity. Finally God blew a gentle wind and Anna Mae became dust upon the ground and was no more. God then made it be so that her dust joined the dust of her beloved children and God did shed a tear upon the earth. Forever more at that spot four beautiful flowers grew, one for Anna Mae and three for her children. God gazed upon the beauty of the flowers that had grown and said, “It is good.”

Now the story is still not over even though I would have liked to have it end here. However dear reader, I feel I can extend the story more to give it a happier ending. Still, consider this being the end and feel the sorrow and wrongness of it all.

     Jesus went to the husband and told him what had transpired and the husband was filled with grief and despair. He demanded that Jesus take him before God immediately to plead for his wife and Jesus complied. The husband fell to his knees before God in tears and asked,”What have you done to my wife?”

God looked down upon the husband and responded,”She has returned to dust and joined her children, for she loved them more than she loved me.”

     Now Jesus stepped forward and spoke to his father, “Father, what if you were Anna Mae and I was dust upon the ground? Would you not move mountains and pay any price for me to be returned to you?”

     A violent storm cloud came into existence and bolts of deadly lightning flashed through the sky. The great white light was shadowed and darkness enveloped the area, but only for a moment. The clouds quickly parted and light returned again to the land. The darkness fell to reveal Anna Mae and her three children standing before them alive and whole.

     God looked upon the children and asked, “Why did you not believe in me in your life?” The boy stepped forward and fell to his knees before God and with his face pressed into the dust of the Earth he replied, “I think I speak for both me and my sisters when I say that we heard about you, but we could not see you, so we did not believe. We see you now Lord, and we know that we were wrong.”

     It took a while but eventually God spoke once more, “I am God. I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am the creator of all things big and small. I am God................and I was wrong. Your mother loves you as I love my own son and to sever this bond is not good. It is not right that the family has been split asunder. Go now, and be together forever.”

     They say true love conquers all. Who knew that even God had to acknowledge this great power.

Copyright Mitchell Leigh Shelton

Part of a compilation of stories showing us that the afterlife may not be what we expect and paradise may not be as perfect as we pretend it to be.

I would say that not everyone who follows Jesus subscribes to the idea that we are shut out of heaven permanently, or even against our will.  It is pretty common to have afterlife explorers report on the idea that 'like attracts like' - people end up hanging out with those they most resemble (spiritually) because they are the most like those and the most comfortable with them.  This would automatically sort spirits into communities that were hellish (selfish bands of spirits hurting others within the group for their own desires), or heavenly (selfless bands of spirits that help others), or maybe a whole spectrum of in between groups as well.  This proposition would satisfy a lot of problems actually:
1.  God clearly values our free will in this life, enough so that he allows evil (which is a big deal), and so it wouldn't make God out to be inconsistent on that point simply because someone has died physically.  In other words, God wouldn't suddenly stop caring about our free will because our bodies have died.
2.  It would resolve the problem of people in families who are loved being in more hellish realms; visiting family members or loved ones in more hellish realms would convey the idea that these hellish spirits want to be there to the heavenly family member spirits, and the presence of the more heavenly spirit pains the more hellish spirit by there mere presence (because the more hellish spirit is not as developed and that is very obvious).  The situation of course also brings pain to the heavenly spirit.  Over time, they end up separating, with the knowledge that each spirit is where they want to be for the time being, or maybe the more heavenly spirit is able to do a retrieval of sorts on the more hellish spirit.
3.  This implies that character progression continues in the afterlife, and that there are no locks on the gate to heaven so to speak; however one has to want to be with other spirits who are loving and giving.  A lot of what Swedenborg and Bruce Moen found supports what I'm talking about, and it isn't all that inconsistent with the new Testament and what Jesus had to say on the matter.

This reminds me of a quote from Bertrand Russel but I'm having a hard time finding it. It was basically saying that if he was in heaven and he knew that there were many burning in hell, then how could it possibly be heaven if he is weeping for his fellow man which burns in hell?

I have considered this for awhile and proposed it to Christians. I either got an indecisive answer, that "I don't think it works that way" or actually I proposed the question to a girl I was seeing at the time and it made her think, the next day she brought it up randomly and said "I think that when we die we lose who we are and our memories of the people in this life."

I then argued back that she just made that up in her own mind in order to reason with my question to her religion, and that if what she said were true then it was not so different from my own beliefs at the time that consciousness ceases existence in death...for if I lose my memories and what makes me an individual, I have died and simply been replaced. But if my consciousness and my personality no longer exists then it is truly dead. She didn't have anything to say after that.

Honestly Beau, I think we already are our whole self. Meaning the personality you have now is the personality manifested throughout your lifetimes. Even the environment you were born in played its role in preserving that personality in order to build from where it left off. If you would not agree that you are your whole self, perhaps this is the conscious way of understanding where you are in that completion.

This also should bring an understanding of the many alternate realities which exist on this planet. Each and every individual has a completely unique reality from their perspective. There is not another like it. Similarities could be drawn between people, but no two individuals are exactly the same. If we are to conclude that reincarnation of the soul is a real thing, then you pick up the personality you left off with and continue its improvement.

But your theory may be that every reincarnation is completely different and psychology is the only thing which plays into your personality, and thus your "higher self" is a personality which is inconceivable for your character but upon death the character is lost into the oblivion of the soul. I kind of imagine it like the soul being this being which sucks away people's personalities in order to better itself. In this case, the soul is my enemy.

OR we are indeed each a tiny aspect of the infinite personalities and conscious of "God."

I guess the reason why I keep arguing on this is because my mind can only accept the understanding through your explanation that I don't get to be me, and I become someone else. Not something else, but someone else. I do agree with the actor character thing, but I just think the actor and the character are one and the same. The actor is portraying the character as itself and not just a completely new character with each reincarnation.

Right. One more thing I want to add. We can both agree it is pretty remarkable that we can even identify the things we do. Essentially we have gone from the character to realizing or at least theorizing that he is the actor as well thus giving even more control and range to the performance, or in other words we have already increased our degree of consciousness, which will reach a peak with our deaths.

And I humbly agree with that notion on God. I don't think we can even imagine the glory of that being. The nature of god I think to the human mind would be very "psychedelic" as I would describe it.