A True Experience by Philip and Rebecca Stevenson
James Peterson achieved his life long goal by making his calling and election sure about a month before he died. Rebecca and I had become extremely close with him the last few years of his life. About a week after he died, Rebecca and I were at his house in her old bedroom when he visited with us. We had had many experiences with our spiritual bodies by this point and were very familiar with recognizing and using our spiritual bodies in connection with our physical bodies. (Most people are only ware of their physical body and interact with the physical world unaware that they have and can use their spirit body to interact with the spiritual world.)
Because Jim was dead, he no longer had a physical body to interact with us physically. But we being both physical and spiritual beings had the ability to interact in both worlds, and so interacted with Jim.
He shared with us his new understanding as a recently deceased person who no longer had a physical body. To his surprise he was not able to see us they way he used to be able to because he no longer had physical eyes. He couldn’t hear the physical sound of our voices because he didn’t have physical ears to hear with anymore. He couldn’t hold us or touch us because he didn’t have physical arms or fingers to do so. He was aware of us and was only able to interact with us spiritually because he was alive spiritually, but not physically.
He said that he could see but not with his physical eyes, only with his spiritual eyes the same way he had seen spiritually when he was alive, which is the same way that we were seeing him. (There is a difference.) He said he could hear with his spiritual ears but not his physical ears, just as we could both hear him with our spiritual ears.
He explained that based on the pictures he was familiar with from church, spirit people look just like physical people and there was an assumption that spiritual people have all the abilities of physical people. He had never considered that spirits couldn’t see colors and light the same way physical people do. In life he thought that he spirit could do everything the body could do and didn’t see or understand why having a physical body was so desirable. And while in the physical, he desired to be more spiritually aware constantly trying to subdue the body as if it were a curse. But now he realized the great blessing his body was and how much he was missing because he didn’t have it anymore.
For the dead had looked upon the long absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage. - D&C 138:50
For as ye have looked upon the long absence of your spirits from your bodies to be a bondage, I will show unto you how the day of redemption shall come, and also the restoration of the scattered Israel. - D&C 45:17
For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy;
34 And when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy. - D&C
It seemed he felt limited or even like he was handicapped. He explained that because he had received his calling and election made sure in life as well as other spiritual growth that he was far ahead of the game when compared with others he could see who had died.
Copyright © 2019 by Elliaison – All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2019 Elliaison. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.