By Annie Kagan
I grabbed a pen and began writing my brother’s words as he spoke. Nothing would have been odd about that had Billy been sitting next to me or on the phone. But my brother had died three weeks earlier after being hit by a car. At first, I couldn’t be sure if he was real or some sort of weird grief-induced reaction to make me feel better about his departure from earth.
When Billy was alive, he was far from perfect. My bad-boy brother did a lot of things that most people would consider big mistakes. But as Billy traveled through the afterlife, not only did he describe a realm of bliss beyond all imagination, he also taught me some interesting things about life on this illusion-filled planet called earth.
8 Things You Didn’t Know About Life on Planet Earth
1. JUST BECAUSE THERE’S A LOT OF PAIN IN LIFE DOESN’T MEAN YOU’VE DONE SOMETHING TO DESERVE IT.
Pain is part of the human experience, as natural as breath, or eyesight, or blood moving through your veins. Sometimes you fix one hole and another pops up. It’s supposed to be like that though, so don’t be too concerned about it. Pain is part of the earth deal.
2. SOCIETY TEACHES LIMITATION.
No matter what you’ve been taught, everything you ever need is already inside you. And who you really are is far beyond your comprehension. That’s why living squeezed into the human experience can be painful at times.
3. THERE ISN’T JUST ONE RIGHT WAY FOR THINGS TO TURN OUT.
Some endings are happier, some not so happy, but it’s not just the happiness percentage that matters. It’s the music of it. Most people’s lives don’t have enough music. And sometimes, darkness is okay. Don’t overlook the riches contained in the darkness. Life’s very temporary, so don’t let time just pass. Let the moments fill you, the ones you judge to be good as well as bad.
4. WE’RE MEANT TO ENGAGE IN ALL KINDS OF THINGS ON EARTH, THINGS THAT DON’T MAKE SENSE FROM A HUMAN POINT OF VIEW.
Take a moment before you judge your fellow man, or yourself, too harshly. You’re all dealing with circumstances you signed up to explore before you were born. But don’t be hard on yourself if you can’t master the attitude of absolute acceptance of yourself and others. You’d have to be a Buddha to be that advanced.
5. DON’T BE OVERLY CONCERNED ABOUT HOW YOU LOOK IN THE EYES OF OTHERS.
People will pretty much see you as they want to. People are fond of opinions that suit their needs. They’ll try to assign you various roles, and some of them won’t be particularly flattering. Play your part in the cosmic drama, but never forget: you choose the way you see yourself. Don’t let others do the casting.
6. LIFE IS ABOUT DRAMAS THAT CHANGE YOU.
Most people are scared of change, but changing is the double fudge frosting on top of the cake of life. To stay free, find the glory inside yourself, beyond the ever-shifting dramas. Then, you can dance the game of life with a little more rhythm, a little more abandon, a little more shaking-those-hips.
7. THE CONCEPT OF AN EYE FOR AN EYE, TOOTH FOR A TOOTH KARMIC EQUALIZING OF THE SCORE ISN’T THE REAL DEAL.
We aren’t acting out some type of I-did-something-wrong-to-you-in-another-life-and-I’m-paying-for-it-now kind of thing. It doesn’t really work like that. It’s more a kind of experiment chosen for soul-type reasons that humans have an almost impossible time understanding. And not understanding is an important part of the experiment. If you knew the workings of the experiment, it would lose some of its punch, and that losing of punch, well, that’s a little bit of what enlightenment is all about.
8. IF THERE’S ONE THING WORTH DOING ON YOUR PLANET IT’S DISCOVERING SELF LOVE.
It’s a matter of “discovering” instead of “learning” because learning implies you’re starting from zero; but the truth is, you already love yourself. When you’re born, when the amnesia happens, you forget your magnificence, and think you have to earn the right to be loved. How can you earn what already belongs to you?
Annie Kagan left her career as a chiropractor and her hectic New York City life in search of serenity in a small house on the tip of Long Island. When her brother Billy died unexpectedly and began speaking to her from the a fterlife, her future took a surprising turn.
She recorded her conversations with Billy from the other side and published them in her debut book The Afterlife of Billy Fingers: How My Bad-Boy Brother Proved To Me There’s Life After Death (Hampton Roads, 2013) www.anniekagan.com | www.facebook.com/AfterlifeBillyFingers
