[The following is a channelled communication from Maitreya, spokesperson for The Ascended Masters, in spirit.  These higher spiritual beings offer guidance to those who are ready to hear these messages]

Maitreya:  I wish to speak to you of passing over into the spiritual realms.  So many souls are afraid of dying.  Yet, it is the most simple of things.  With so many souls coming home in these Earth days, through terrorism and natural disaster, many are becoming frightened. 

When it is your time to come home, before you actually die, you will leave your body.  When you do this, you step out of the (Lower) Self into the Higher Self.  Then and only then can you see all that has been an illusion until that moment of passing.

You never pass over alone, someone always comes to help you over, either a family member, or a friend from spirit. 

There are some souls who do not want to leave, and often they are left for a while because their fear is so acute.  However, these souls are assisted by 'rescue groups', who work in the area of assisting souls to pass over.

Once you are free of the physical body, you then come home.  Your true home, our place of residence in spirit is in another dimension.  Here, once you have passed, you rest for a while before taking the steps to look at your life and at what you learned from it.  For each life is a teaching experience.

There is much joy when you return home.  Much celebration.  Yes, there are some who have difficulty because they become so involved in the Earth plane, they cannot let go, but eventually these souls let go and move forward.  There is nothing to fear in death, it is a transition, how you make that transition will assist you in your journey.  Fear will slow the journey down.  Look upon it as a journey, and a return home for that is what it is.

There is no status in the spiritual realms.  It does not matter who you are, or what you have done, each soul on passing into the spiritual realms has to go through the same ritual.  That ritual is to be welcomed back home, to rest after life's journey, and to then "face the Hall of Mirrors".

Many souls are of the belief that because they have done good in this incarnation, or given money to good causes, it will pave an easy path for them in the spiritual realms.  Yet, no soul is given perference or status.  Each soul is treated the same, the murderer and the king!  They both stand side by side, waiting to return home.

Yes, it may seem very strange, but that is the way it is.  All souls chose their own way of learning their life lessons, and all at the end of their life, stand side by side, no different, to each other.  All souls who have achieved their destiny and who are ready to return home.

However, the level of vibration you have achieved on the Earth plane is very important to you.  The higher you have raised your vibration, the easier it is to adjust to the world of the spiritual realms, and return home.  For those who have lived the illusion their entire lives, they find it very hard to let go of that illusion. 

Because of the close proximity of the spiritual realms and the return 'home' from the Earth plane, many souls find it hard to believe they have actually died.  For many souls the illusion still exists and it takes some while before the illusion wears off, and the truth is finally revealed.

The spiritual world when you pass over is so like the Earth plane!  It is the true world of illusion on a higher level.  Whatever you believed on the Earth plane about life when you die becomes a reality.  If you believe there is a man sitting at a gate, waiting to judge you, it is so.  If you believe in the devil and have such fear of this, it becomes what you see on your passing over.

If you believe there is no life after death, then the shock for you is even greater.  These souls cannot believe they ARE dead, and for them the passing over is even harder.  There are a team of many, many souls, who work in this area, who are there to help those that pass over to our side.  They are loving souls who only have compassion and love, and who very gently assist these people to let go of the belief, whch has permeated their soul memory, their spiritual consciousness.

Only when one has faced the Hall of Mirrors, can one finally move into the higher realms of dimension where there is only awareness and where all illusion is gone.  It is truly a wonderful place.

When a soul passes out of the physical body, there is no (Lower) Self (ego) anymore.  When a soul arrives in the world of spirit, usually they are quite confused because our world is very much like your world, the difference being that our world is more real!  It is normal for the soul to have a period of rest when they arrive because many souls have a traumatic death and find it difficult to believe that they are indeed alive in the spiritual realms or as many believe it 'Heaven'.  After a period of rest the soul is taken by their Guardian Spirit to a Hall of Mirrors.  This is a room where the soul stands in front of a giant mirror and has to face themselves.  Their whole life is shown to them, they not only see what they did to others, but they also feel the emotion and trauma that the other person felt.

It is at this time that many souls become extremely saddened and ashamed because they see all that they have done, the good and the bad.  Usually, at this stage, the soul does not want to move on and will make a request to contact one in the physical world whom they knew, family member, friend, etc, to give a message or to say they are very sorry for what they did.

This has to be arranged from spirit, and a medium or channel found to act as the messenger.  But it is allowed.  The soul usually cannot rest until it has made its apology or given its message.  Once it has done so, it can then rest and return to spirit in its fullness, before it returns to the Earth plane by being born again.  It then goes over into spirit fully.  While it is waiting for the channel/medium to be found, the soul usually works in the reception areas in a humanitarian way.  This is one way of repaying karma.

Nobody escapes the Hall of Mirrors, nobody.  I will tell you now, there are often totally devastated souls when they return from this place.  Much comfort has to be given to them afterwards for many cannot believe what they have done.  One cannot go further into the true realms of spirit until one has been to the Hall of Mirrors.

Visit www.maitreya-teachings.org if you want to know more. 

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