There is no one answer to this chapter’s question. But there are some aspects of the soul to consider as we look at the various possible answers.
What to Do
When the Soul Leaves the Body
The soul is made of energy and can go in and out of the body quickly. If a portion of your soul has stepped out of your body, you will feel physically tired and be mentally spacey — as in the expression “the lights are on, but no one’s home.” It’s a different feeling if your soul is completely out of your body. I hear many stories from people who say they woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom but couldn’t open their eyes or move their arms or legs. These people often think they have had a stroke, but they haven’t — their souls have simply taken the majority of their energy to go do something important. The best thing to do in this situation is not panic but stay calm and send a thought to your soul that your body needs to get up. It may take a few seconds, depending upon where your soul is and what it’s up to, but it will come back.
The soul does many things at night while the body sleeps. It communicates with spirit guides and visits loved ones who live far away, such as in the military or abroad. The soul also visits with deceased loved ones and goes to its favorite places in the world.
You can tell if a person’s soul is in or out by observing their breathing and body movements. When the soul is in the body, the body moves around, makes noises, and breathes normally. When the soul is out, the body displays no movement and breathing is shallow. The person makes no noise. They almost appear dead, except that their heart is still beating and so their chest moves.
For those whose death is a long process, the soul goes in and out frequently. When the soul is out, it’s best not to try to rouse the person or make them talk. I’ve been with people at the bedside of their dying loved one who have shaken and tried to wake up the dying person in an attempt to prevent them from dying. The soul can feel someone yanking on its body, and this can be very irritating if the soul is in the midst of doing something important. It’s also annoying to the body to be awakened when the soul is out, because the body is missing a large portion of its energy and that makes it difficult to communicate. If you ever find yourself in a situation where it seems as if someone’s soul is out of their body, wait until they start to breathe normally again and it becomes obvious that their energy has returned before trying to communicate with them.
The Soul’s Activities
When the Body Is Physically Dying
The soul does different things during physical death, depending on its age and wisdom. Young souls tend to stay in the body until it takes its last breath, whereas older souls often leave beforehand, especially if the impending death is the result of an impact to the body such as a car accident, plane crash, drowning, or heart attack. As the soul grows in its spiritual understanding and development, it realizes that feeling the impact of physical pain is unnecessary.
I met the soul of a skydiver whose body died after his parachute didn’t open. This soul stayed in the body, watching as it fell to the ground and broke into several pieces upon landing. He was a younger soul who hadn’t yet learned to leave the body before an accident occurs. Some young souls lack knowledge about death and think that staying with the body will ensure that it will live, but that’s not the case. On the other hand, older souls are spiritually aware and know to leave their body before death occurs and head straight to the white light. This skydiver’s soul was so intent on staying here on earth that he stayed with his body for hours after it had been taken to the morgue, hoping that the town coroner could put him back together and he could go on living. Later in the evening, his soul even went to the home of the coroner and rousted her out of bed to go to the morgue and attend to him. The coroner was one of my students, and she related this sad story to me when I was visiting her morgue and could feel the presence of the skydiver in one of the drawers.
An older soul can inhabit a young body. I once tuned in to the very old soul of a twelve-year-old boy on life support in a hospital after a skiing accident. The soul had left the room and was already on the other side with his deceased grandparents. This situation showed me that when it is time for a soul to return home, the soul may subconsciously do something to facilitate death and that return. In this case, the young boy had tried skiing an expert hill though he was just learning to ski.
In 1999, after the high school shooting in Columbine, Colorado, I checked in on the souls of the teens who were killed. While one girl immediately went into the light, one boy promptly went to his mother because he knew she would be devastated and he was worried that she might commit suicide. I saw his soul sitting on the side of her bed, trying to comfort her, for days after the shooting. Some souls were in a state of shock, not understanding what had happened or where they were, while other souls understood that this was part of their life plan. Many deceased relatives, particularly grandparents, tried to comfort the souls and encourage them to come over to the other side. Whether death happens suddenly or we linger in our dying process for a while, departed loved ones always show up to help us on our journey home.
When death is not a sudden occurrence and the soul has time to prepare for the ending of its life, the body sleeps more, so that the soul can come and go without disruptions. The soul sends the conscious mind thoughts of things to take care of. The soul listens as family members discuss what’s going on. It listens to what the medical team has to say, and throughout the experience, it sends thoughts to loved ones of how it would like things to unfold. When the loved ones are sleeping, the soul talks directly to the loved ones’ souls, giving them guidance about what’s to come. Those messages come through in dreams, and you can tell the difference between a soul communication and a regular dream because soul dreams feel very real and stay with you throughout the following day.
Even closer to death, souls are very active, as they must let go of a body and a life they have created and, in most cases, lived for many years. Souls regularly go back and forth between heaven and earth, which helps in their letting-go process. They see many of their deceased loved ones eagerly waiting for them to arrive in heaven, and at the same time, they see their living loved ones sitting by their bedside on the earth plane, praying for a miracle. It’s an emotional roller coaster on both sides of the veil! (When we are being born, the scene is similar, except things are reversed. During birth, our loved ones on the other side are sad to see us leaving for our new life on earth, whereas our new earth families are ecstatic about our arrival.)
I have two more sweet stories to share with you to help you see the soul’s various activities before the person’s actual death.
On the morning my minister died, I was in my kitchen baking cookies, when suddenly the curtain fluttered a bit, I felt someone take my hand, and I heard a male voice say, “Thank you.” I stopped what I was doing and wondered what in the world had just happened. A moment later the phone rang, and it was a friend calling to tell me that Reverend Clark had just passed away. I had been channeling healing to Reverend Clark for quite a while leading up to this day, but recently his body had taken a sudden turn for the worse. I believe he visited me immediately before going to the other side and took my hand because the healings had given him the energy to accomplish all that was important to him before he passed. I’ve seen this in many healing clients. Healings may not “save” the earthly life, but they do give the body the energy it needs to accomplish the things that are important to the person’s body, mind, and soul.
One Friday evening I felt a strong intuitive nudge to visit my friend Sully, who was in the hospital dying from colon cancer. When I arrived, her soul asked me if I would please rub her feet and then asked me in a very clear, audible voice if I would take her to the other side. I was a bit taken aback by the question because I wasn’t certain how she wanted me to do that, but I told her of course I would and to let me know when she was ready to go.
The next morning I was supposed to be up and out of the house by 9:00 AM to do readings at an event, but when I tried waking up at 7:30, I knew that my soul was completely out of my body, on the astral plane — the space between our earth dimension and the other side. I could barely move to call my business partner and tell her I would not be able to make it to the event, but I managed it. I slumped back into bed and slept hard until 4:30 that afternoon. As I was slowly waking up, I heard a voice say, “Go mow the grass.”
I was in a total daze and it seemed to take forever for me to regain consciousness, but once I did, I immediately went outside and mowed the grass. As I walked around my yard, my soul slowly came all the way back, as mowing the grass helped to ground my body. When I became fully conscious, I could see clearly what I had been doing all day.
Sully’s soul and my soul had met on the astral plane. She took me to all her favorite places. We went up north where she grew up, where she went to school, where she had hung out with her friends. We moved slowly and took it all in. She was very excited to show me all the places that were special to her. Then we made our way into the white light and through the tunnel to the other side. Both she and I were in recovery from alcoholism, and the first person we saw on the other side was our old AA sponsor, Bill M. He came to greet us, and we were both blown away to see him again! Sully was smiling from ear to ear. We had lost many friends to alcoholism, and one by one they came to this meeting place to greet Sully. It was a wonderful experience for both of us, and I felt so grateful to be a part of this reunion.
As I continued to mow the grass, my body began to feel stronger, and I was soon able to clearly remember that the mission was accomplished and Sully was now on the other side with family and friends. Before I had left her, I asked if her body had shut down yet, and she said that she had a strong heart and it would take another day for the process to be done. Twenty-four hours later, she passed away.
“What Is Taking Them So Long to Die?”
As I’ve said, I often hear this question from family members who have been doing a bedside vigil for days or weeks while their dying loved one is lingering in their process. People often ask me why God won’t let the person die and end their misery, but it’s not about that. Although it may seem like the person is taking forever to die, the truth is that they need that time for one or several reasons, and it’s not our place to question the timing. The dying process is intense for both the body and the soul, and we need to allow dying people to take all the time they need. We need to trust the wisdom of the universe in the timing of everyone’s death, no matter how hard it is. Somehow, some way, good will come out of it at some point.
Also, believe it or not, it isn’t necessary for us to sit by a dying loved one’s side morning, noon, and night. Some people feel that they should do a round-the-clock bedside vigil until their loved one dies, but I want you to know it’s really okay with the soul if people are not there at the time of death. In many cases it is easier for the soul to leave when there aren’t people sitting around the bed crying and praying for a miracle. The dying person knows you love them whether you’re sitting by their bedside or home in your easy chair sending loving thoughts.
In reality, the soul is seldom in the room at the very end of life. In medium readings, people often ask me if the deceased person was okay with the decisions they made regarding their health care at the end. When I ask souls this question, they usually look at me with a blank expression, as if to say they have no recall of what was taking place those last few hours before their death.
I got a call from a woman whose husband seemed to be stuck in his last stage of dying, and she asked me if I would come to the hospital to help him cross over. When I arrived, his soul was nowhere near the hospital, so I waited for him to return. When he did come back, he was agitated about what was going on. His deceased mother was very excited about his soon coming home, but his wife was so deep in grief about his dying that he was very torn about what to do. His body was shot. He wanted nothing to do with it. He was tired of having emphysema and struggling to breathe, but he loved his wife very much and couldn’t imagine being without her.
I asked him if there was anything I could do, and he said he didn’t know how to disconnect his heart from his wife’s heart. He had been with her for forty years and never accepted that this day would actually come. Ultimately I asked him if he was ready to go, and he said he thought he should get on with it. Next I asked his wife if she was ready to let him go. She said, “No, but yes.” I then prayed for guidance as to what to do next. I got an image of me cutting the emotional cords between their hearts, and ten seconds later, the man took his last breath and I saw his soul soar toward heaven.
When It’s Time to Let Go
On another occasion, a young man called and asked me to come and do healings on his eighty-three-year-old grandfather who had been in a very serious car accident. He said that his grandpa was his whole life and he couldn’t live without him. As always, the first thing I did, before finding out all that was wrong with the body, was to locate the soul. I found the grandpa’s soul standing in the tunnel (the gateway to the other side), talking with his deceased brother, who was strongly encouraging him to let go of his body and come home with him.
What was interesting was that the grandfather’s wife had been killed in the accident and the guides would not let him talk to her. She was already on the other side, and they were keeping her there because they said he needed to make this decision on his own rather than having others make it for him. Grandpa looked anguished about leaving his grandson. I asked him what his plan was, and he pointed out everything that was wrong with his eighty-three-year-old body. He was black-and-blue from head to toe, had broken bones all over, and was developing pneumonia. I told him I would give him some time to talk with his brother, and I would talk to his grandson about what was going on with his soul.
The grandson wanted to hear nothing about how hard this was for his grandpa. He just kept telling me to heal him and make him better. After a few minutes, I checked back in to see what his grandfather was thinking, and he told me that he had made the decision to go home to heaven but would not be leaving for seventeen hours. He said to tell his grandson he was very sorry but just didn’t have the energy or desire to continue living in his worn-out body. Seventeen hours later he died.
Most of us, like the young grandson, want to hold our loved ones here so that they won’t die and leave us, but when the body is worn-out and the soul needs to move on, the most loving thing we can do is let go and visualize them going to heaven.