I’ve been reading new thought books, which teach that people are divine in origin, that our nature is god manifesting itself through us. In other words, god experiencing life through and as each of us.

Before I dropped off to sleep last night I was thinking about my cat Tiny who died a couple years ago. We knew each other 13 years, and I cried for her loss. Does she remain a cat after she leaves her body? Does she continue to evolve in intelligence and come back as something else?

I’ve read in psychic and life after death literature that our souls survive death. There are even people on this side who communicate with people on that side via phone, fax, computer, tape recorders. It’s a pretty fascinating subject. But if we are differentiated divinity, if we are a drop in the ocean of god, as it were, when we return to the ocean, do we lose our unique “dropness”?

My Dead Neighbor Appears in a Dream

For ten years in California I lived next to a woman named Sandy and her five cats: Billy Bob, Smokey Joe, Whiskers, Dot and Oscar. We grew very close in that time. I had six cats at the time and we served as catsitter for each other. Our doors were only a few steps from one another so we were always in each other’s apartment. When I was late coming home from work, she would go into my apartment, turn on my lights, turn the TV on for the cats. She was a true people person. I loved living next to her.

Sandy and I left California around the same time. I moved to Oregon and she died of cancer. And in the six or so years since she’s been gone, I’ve wondered why I never dream about her. But I dreamt about her last night. She looked great and was very peaceful.

We were sitting at a table and I asked her many questions. I asked her how many times she had come to earth to visit, and she said she’d only been back three times. I asked why so few. She said she didn’t like it here. It was painful for her. She was very happy where she was. I asked about her body, and she said, “We don’t have these there.”

Somehow I managed to ask her about what I had been wondering, about the survival of personality. Do we disappear into the great ocean and lose our individuality? Or does our soul survive? And she said, “Oh, yes, we’re still people over there.”

I think I’ve dreamt about Sandy twice in six years. Odd.

My auntie Darlyce called me on the phone in a dream. She said, “Do you know where I am?” I told her yes. She said, “We’re at your mansion. I’m with the others.” I asked her who she was with, feeling that I was overstepping a boundary. I heard her conferring with someone, but couldn’t make out the words. And then the line went dead and I woke up.

When I was a little girl I lost a dog named Zeus and my first and favorite chicken, Mathilda. They both visited me in a dream to assure me they were all right and to not cry for them. Zeus came three times, and on the third visit he said, “I won’t be able to come visit you anymore.” And that was the last I saw of him.