Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.
Mark Twain

“It’s a blessing and a curse to be a light sleeper,” he thought.

The aging wood floors and the steps leading to the second floor in his Victorian home had secrets to share, and so did every guest that booked a room in his family owned bed and breakfast. He had heard more than his fair share of tales, truths, gossip, and secrets over the last twenty-four
years so nothing surpri sed him anymore. Nothing but the sound that death makes when it rings the bell of silence.

Robert William McGann's bell rang a couple of weeks before the official close of winter in 2013, but his mind was still functioning as usual, or at least he thought it was. Rob, everone called him Rob, slowly turned his greying Fu Manchu bearded face toward the nightstand and looked at the
clock. It was five in the afternoon. It was time to get up and finish one of his computer programming projects before he had his signature tomato gravy over pasta dinner with his wife, Dottie. But, something was wrong. He got up, but his two-hundred and fifty-five pound body stayed in bed. He was floating around the room in what felt like a body, but it was not the same body. He immediately thought about the line his two-year-old nephew C.J. used when he visited Nashville the year before. C.J. watched Rob take his usual afternoon nap on the family living room sofa. The boy smiled and looked up at Dottie as they put Lego's together on the hardwood floor in front of the sofa. C.J.'s next words would be forever etched in the minds of all family members.

“Uncle Rob forgot to wake up.”

Dottie laughed out loud and woke Rob up. Dottie caught her breath and grabbed C.J. and hugged him.

“Uncle Rob’s just taking a longer nap than usual, honey. He didn’t forget to wake up.”

C.J. looked at Rob again and smiled.

Rob knew that C.J’s words sure fit his current debacle.

“This can’t be hell.” He thought. “But it sure doesn’t look like heaven either.”

He felt a presence but wasn’t sure what it was. He tried to get a handle on his mental state, but he was confused. Was he dead, or was he still alive? Suddenly the answer flowed through him. He felt peaceful, alert and joyful. Then he heard a familiar voice, and it was coming from his own mind.

“I guess you know why they call us Man’s best friend, now. Even death doesn’t stop us from being close to you. You never thought you would have us as guides on this side, did you?”

He tried to identify the voice, but he couldn’t. The voice came again.

“It’s us, Rob. It’s Wagon, Train, Brando and Dante. We’re here to help you make this part of your life comfortable just like you did for us. You might say we’re angels in this state of being.”

Rob’s mind was twirling around as this inner-voice spoke to him. Suddenly he was gone from his room. He was sitting at what appeared to be his desk. He sat there and wondered why his dogs were speaking so he could understand them. Their past habit of barking was replaced with cohesive thoughts.

Somehow he focused on the images of his dogs. They were standing right in front of him wagging their tails. He just wasn’t sure where this front was.

“God! My life certainly included a series of dogs. I didn’t realize how close you guys are to my maker, I guess I should have fed you better. By the way, where is my maker, and what are you guys doing here? You’re not lying around anymore, are you? That was your job when you couldn’t
talk, right?”

“You always said that a dog’s life was the best life, especially when you moved to California. You said you wanted to see us on the other side and here we are. You don’t have to worry about diddley squat anymore. We’ll answer all your questions with some help. First, we’re here to tell you that your maker is within you and all of us.”

“Where are we, guys? Can I be with Mom and the rest of the family now?”

“We are in the area called the region of choices, Rob. It is a reality where you can make your transition and adjust your focus. There’s a bunch of realities to experience. We call some of them over-here and over-there. They are conscious environments where different laws apply. These laws are far less limiting than man-made laws. It’s our job to help you understand them so you can use all your new-found freedom.”

Rob tried to laugh and then talk, but the dogs continued.

“Your family is with you. They are in your mind or consciousness. That’s where they have always been. You will interact with them. You can relive any past experience or you can go back and change experiences if you want. After all, you are the one that created all that stuff in the first place.”

“Is this my first annual over-here meeting? This is an annual state isn’t it?”

“This is an eternal state, Rob. It is a state of becoming. You can continue and live other physical lives once you adjust your focus, or you can use your focus in other systems of reality. But for now you will remain in this transition state. In order to adjust your focus, you will examine the physical existence you left behind. You will learn that all you experiences were the result of your own emotions and thoughts. You will sense how the electromagnetic energy in those actions affected others. When you realize the meaning and the significance of your beliefs, you will be ready to experience other actions within various regions of consciousness.”

“I’m not sure I know how you’re going to do all that, and for that matter I wouldn’t know what I could do about it if I did. Okay just tell me what I look like now, will ya guys?”

“Well you look like Rob, but your image is not the same kind of image here. You see us as dogs now, but we are really much more than dogs.

We are a gestalt of consciousness, which means we are connected to the wisdom and knowledge within all consciousness. There are others you know and don’t know here with us. We are all here to help you.”

“That’s comforting. I guess looking like Rob in this state does have some perks. Are you saying I don’t have to change my old image, but I can change that image if I want to look different? I guess there aren’t any mirrors in this state, so it really doesn’t matter, right?”

“You can look like the young Rob again, or you can choose another image. You just can’t use that image in the physical world anymore. You can even choose to experience heaven, but it gets pretty boring in that state or you can visit hell if you believe you need it. But, those experiences are temporary. Remember you are in a state of becoming. Death is not a final resting place. You must use your abilities to expand and face up to the abilities you didn’t use while you were in that old body. Heaven and hell
are for religious folks. They will learn that doing nothing or suffering for the sake of believing in sin is an old wives’ tale. Most folks move on to other experiences very quickly. Remember quickly is not measured in time here. It is measured in the action of your consciousness.”

“I guess I should have believed all those California bumper stickers that said: If you can dream it you can do it. It seems like I’m dreaming and I’m doing IT now; whatever that IT is.”

“Just like in the dream state there is no hypocrisy here, Rob. Whatever you do you will do in truth. Communication through the inner sense of telepathy functions without distortion here. You will deal with your friends and family using complete truth. Your motives in life will be shared without judgment.”

Suddenly the voice of the dogs was silent, and in the flash of a nanosecond, Rob’s birth was front and center. He felt the loving arms of his mother as she laid in the stale looking hospital room in Philadelphia. The first five years of his life played with him in the same manner. He relieved every
experience, and every person in his young life was alive again.

Rob watched his five year old self hold his puppy, King, and he felt the warmth of his new friend and thought, “I wonder if King is in that voice.”

“I’m here too, Robbie.” The family called him Robbie when he was a small boy.

A puppy stepped in front of the bigger dogs.

He suddenly remembered where he heard the sound of the dog’s deep voice. It was at a George Carlin concert. The voice of the dogs was George Carlin’s voice. Rob loved Carlin and his views about life. He used a lot of George’s ideas in his own life.

“Is George Carlin in that, what did you call it, gestalt with you?”

The voice tone changed.

“I bet you never thought we would meet. We were friends in a few other lives. You just don’t remember them yet. We have always shared the same opinion about things especially when religion and politics are discussed as well as other man-made bullshit.”

Rob felt George’s connection.

“Hey George you can’t use that kind of language here can you? I thought this was a sacred place or some kind of holy area.”

“I know. You’re just caught up in that old establishment game of good words and bad words. I’m using telepathy to talk to you now. You are translating my words based on how I talked when I was pumping oxygen. There are no good words or bad words. They are just thoughts that produce perceptions and ideas. You still have that ability here. The only difference is you don’t have to judge what you think because the truth will be front and center.”

Rob hesitated.

“We did have the same ideas about a lot of crap they tried to make us believe, but I guess I got more conservative in my older years because of the girls.”

“Yeah, you defected as you got older. When you were younger you hated the establishment. But that religious crap was always a thorn in your mind. You know those fanatical freaks can make a 911 operator not want to answer the call.”

“Am I making you say all those words? You sound like the old George not a gestalt of consciousness whatever that is. I thought the dogs said this was a place of acceptance and joy. What am I missing?”

“You wanted to meet your dogs again, so we formed an image of them for you. It was our way of welcoming you to this state. If you saw me first, you would have freaked out. We created a mini gestalt for you. That’s called diversity of action. Diversity is what we use to expand and grow physically, and you still have some of that in you because of your beliefs. The contrast stimulates your expansion. If we all wanted to be caterpillars, the butterflies wouldn’t exist. That’s why we created all these religions. Just
when you thought you knew the meaning of life, religion changes it. Mass religions give man a purpose and a plan. But most of those poor lemmings don’t know the plan is filled with bullshit. Yes, I said bullshit again. They don’t understand they can experience several different realities in life, and
they sure don’t want us to know we can experience different environments after death because the church gets paid for promoting sameness not individuality. The only thing they get partially
right is the angels, but even then they paint them with judgmental brushes. We are all angels. One man’s Jesus may not look like another man’s Jesus but the Jesus consciousness is in all of us. Religion wants us to fight about men like Jesus, Mohamed, Buddha and the others. But when you look at the truth, you realize all the stories about those guys are basically the same. We make shit up and then we believe it. Then we turn beliefs into a man-made truth. You are about to learn what truth is my friend, and we will help you along the way even though the actual teacher is you.”

The next thirty-one years of Rob’s life suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He watched himself experience his grade school and high school adventures once again, and he began to see how he changed as his beliefs about his experiences changed. Then his short naval experience, his years
living in Florida, his early work efforts with his father, and his love for computers and their programs appeared out of nowhere. His marriage, the birth of his daughters and buying his first home were front and center in his mind, and his best friends were around him this time. Every person he ever had contact with was there, and every physical experience was captured exactly the way it happened.

He thought about Carlin’s words. The truth was before him now. He watched as he lied, cheated and played with other people’s emotions. He felt a twinge of remorse.

“I guess I died because I swallowed too much egotistical spit over the last fifty-eight years.”

“That’s sounds like one of my lines, Rob”

Rob felt the humor, and continued to watch himself love, hate, rejoice and fear as each experience played in front of him. He was there in every scene, and he began to accept what he created in a non-judgmental manner. Each scene was filled with the brilliant intensity of life. He realized his life was packed with messages.

A sense of calm and contentment wrapped him in a bubble of knowing as he continued to watch the physical side of his life. He was beginning a new chapter in his life, in this region of choices, and he was surrounded by the feeling of joy.

“Can I be a dog now, George?”

Carlin’s voice responded.

“You’re already wagging your own tale now, buddy. Get ready for where it takes you.”