What is it like to be dead?
Your body turned to wood then mush then bones then dust?
What is it like to be just a soul up in the great heaven?
It’s fine.
I was worried I wouldn’t have any thoughts or feelings because I’d be without my brain and my body. I’d thought that the brain/body did reasoning and feelings. So that left me with pure awareness. I thought maybe I’d have that, and I’d just be like a goldfish: always watching but not remembering anything, just watching but not holding any experiences. Or actually, worse than a goldfish–at least they get to see the watery wonderworld. Without senses and without ideas and feelings, I thought I’d be just watching emptiness. Doubtless–I figured–it would be great enlightenment because without all the distractions of ideas, feelings, and perceptions, I’d be constantly aware of what really is: that everything/nothing at the back of one’s conscious experience that–like water to an ocean-going goldfish–holds all experience and yet you can’t quite stand back and notice. I was worried–can you believe it!?–that it would be boring to sit all day in the bliss of pure awareness of the True Good that exists prior to all specifics, that creates them and shines through them and rescues them from themselves.
But it isn’t like that at all anyway.
I have no physical form, but there are other ways to think and feel, and my naked soul hooks easily into them. I am smarter, more deep-feelinged; gentler; calmer; more at ease as I drift through the years always still and yet casting my mind anywhere I please so long as it pleases God, who turns out to be rather lenient with us dead people.
Born again?
Into another body on the old world or a new one?
Well, yes–I’ve been putting off those offers for some time. I just can’t see the point.
Granted, it would allow me to work on faith better. Here it is obvious. Here I clearly perceive that honest joyful creative kindless is the only way to go. Once in possession of a body/brain that truism becomes less obvious, so you’re forced to either realize it deep within better and better each day, or slouch around town with a yucky taste in your mouth. Here it is I suppose a little too easy, a little too pleasant, a little too obvious. I guess I really should go to earth again. Hmmm, well–
I could just wait for the endtimes, when all souls melt back into God, which is a happy ending anyway. Of course, one endtimes just hiccups up into another reality, and in the deepest sense, there’s no time anyway and all happens at once. I’m pretty sure no matter what I do, all will be well with my soul and all other souls. Because God’s all set no matter what and just creates and sustains realities as a joyful little bonus. Not that God can choose to do otherwise; God must follow God’s way, which includes infinite creation and caring. But it also includes the knowledge that that’s just for fun, for delight, for the sparkle on the water mirrored in the gull’s eye.
Still, I should make the most out of my existence. I should push myself to become as wise and good as possible. That’s my calling, as a soul afloat in God, which of course I am with or without a body/brain.
Ah well, let it pass, let it pass; I’ll stop in on some old friends and talk about the good old days, maybe even remembering wine so well that we seem to have a couple glasses around an old oak table in a well-lit tavern a thousand years ago.

BW / AMW