Hi Kim,

You wrote, "My understanding of the spiritual planes in the after life is that they are wonderful environments for the spirits who live there, so why is there a need to mature?"

I'm preferring not to talk about the afterlife, although we have to because that's the term everyone uses. There is no afterlife; there is only life. The Earth plane is just another spiritual plane, and we happen at this time to be together on this spiritual plane. After we finish our work on this spiritual plane, we'll transition into another spiritual plane.

After we transition from this spiritual plane into another, the new plane will be very much like the Earth plane because we will always be in an environment in which we're comfortable, that fits our expectations for the way things are. There are no abrupt shifts into some strange new environment. Everything in our eternal lives is gradual, motivated by our free will and our desire to grow. As we want to grow spiritually, we seek opportunities to experience, learn, and grow. We gradually change in our minds, just as we change from being a 5 year old to a 15 year old to a 25 year old to a 55 year old. We're different at each stage, but the differences come about gradually, naturally, and comfortably. So it is with our eternal spiritual growth. But just as a newborn couldn't conceptualize being a 55 year old, we can't conceptualize the future conditions of mind that we'll experience. We can look backwards, however, and know that we could have been spiritually primitive like a Neanderthal worshiping the wind and the Sun. I'm not saying we were all the extinct Neanderthal; I'm just saying we evolved from some more primitive understanding to where we are today. But a Neanderthal could never envision understanding the Higher Power or source, or how to be unconditionally loving. We can imagine those things now because we've evolved to where we are, but in spite of that, we haven't reached the point where we are unconditionally loving. We have to grow into that. And then, beyond that, we'll grow from being unconditionally loving into something we can't even imagine now, just as the infant can't imagine the 55 year old.

You wrote, "If The Higher Power loves all spirits equally and just desires to give experiences, as you have said, why is there a need to mature?"

That is the process we must go through because we have free will. We are, in that way, one with the Divine Source. We are able to create who we want to be and are never forced to be something else. Only through gradual growth from experiences and insights can we become. We exercise our free will, and it grows us, from a seed into a seedling into a sapling into a small tree into the mighty oak. We are the captains of our fate; we do the growing by choices we make using our free will. And as we make changes, we have experiences, and we grow. Spiritual growth can only occur over time, can only occur when we are making the choices and succeeding or having struggles, and are learning so we experience gradual changes of mind. That is the reason we are on the Earth plane. To be unconditionally loving, we must go through the stages of learning how to give up on self-absorption and become other-absorbed. That takes time and growth. That's how we evolve.

You wrote, "When and if we do reach the desired maturity level what does The Higher Power do with the mature spirit? How far can reality go?"

We can't envision that, Kim. We can see the horizon, but we're far from it and aren't like the person we'll be when we get there. We can imagine unconditional love, perfect servanthood, and perpetual joy and happiness that are on that horizon, but we can't live them yet. We have centuries of Earth time or millennia of sunrises and sunsets before we reach that horizon. But when we reach it, we will be able to see off in the distance another horizon. It will be very different, just as the horizon of unconditional love is different from where we are today. We can't conceptualize it. And when we reach that horizon we can't even conceptualize today, there will be another horizon. And beyond that a million other horizons. We can barely understand the horizon we can see today and can't at all conceptualize the one after that, so it is quite impossible for us to envision the thousandth or millionth horizon. We just need to focus on the horizon we can see.

You asked, "Is it just considered good to use your spiritual imagination?"

Oh, yes. Remember that our minds are spiritual. When you go into fantasy, imagination, communication with the afterlife, communing with the Higher Power, you are just allowing yourself to become open to the spiritual self that is who you really are. They are all just varieties of experiencing that eternal self.

Love and peace, Craig