I always used to believe that when you’re dead, you’re dead. But that was before I had been faced with the sheer intensity of loss…

A few years ago, my beautiful Nan passed away, and I was broken. I had never known a person to be so full of life, light and laughter – how could she be gone? I simply couldn’t accept the fact that she was no longer in existence – she had too much life in her to not be living. Many say that loved ones live on in our memories after they die – that that is their only ‘afterlife’. However, as I stumbled my way through grief, I couldn’t help but feel, in the very depth of my heart, that my Nan was also keeping her spirit alive – independently – rather than just through us as mere scribes for her stories and legacies.

A few months after losing my Nan, my childhood pet, my beloved cat Pickle, also passed away. I had not stopped grieving for my Nan (nor will I ever), yet I was once again being faced with the reality of loss. I was slapped again with this need to comprehend death, to swallow the fact that my strong-minded kitty, who loved nothing more than to stretch out in the sun, simply didn’t exist anymore. When I arrived home, she wouldn’t be sunbathing on the front step. When it got to 5pm, there would be one less cat to feed. When I dragged a piece of string along the ground, it wouldn’t be pounced upon. The whole dynamic of the house had changed. Because she had gone. Just like when I lost my Nan, I struggled to comprehend how a being so full of life could no longer be living.

So, I used to believe that when you’re dead, you’re dead. That, however, was when I had not been faced with the sheer intensity of loss. When you are forced to suddenly swallow the fact that you’ll never see someone again – that they’ll never exist physically again – suddenly, it’s not so easy to believe that they’re simply “dead”. It becomes far more complicated than that.

Discovering the Concept of Universal Energy

As I grieved, I continually struggled to accept that death could be the ultimate ending to someone’s existence. Yes – death stops our physical body from functioning, but we are so much more than our physical body. We may not have a physical existence after death – but what about the metaphysical?

While I do not necessarily believe in the typical, religious definition of a soul, I’ve always had a nagging, gut feeling that we all have some sort of spirit, living inside us. No, not a fairy or imp – simply an energy that is unique to us. You know how when you’re really close with someone and you can sense their presence before you see them? What if that is because we subconsciously develop an ability to track the proximity of their energy, because of how it communicates with our own?

As I started to think more about these ideas, I turned to Google, and came across the idea of Universal Energy. This is based upon the concept that everything in existence is made up of energy, all vibrating at a unique frequency. As Albert Einstein explained:

“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.”

This suggests that human beings are not composed of a physical structure as such – instead, they are composed of many repeating vibrational patterns of energy, all interacting with each other. If each person is made up of slightly different patterns or vibrations, this would essentially suggest that we all have a unique energy. Another thing about energy is that it can never simply disappear: it can only be transferred. Think back to GCSE physics – do you remember doing experiments with lightbulbs, and learning how electric energy is transferred into light and heat energy? No energy is lost: its purpose is instead shifted.

Well, what if this is true for living beings too? What if, when we die, our unique energy and vibration lives on? Perhaps it is dissipated and released into the universe – or perhaps the energy is transferred to the earth and used to grow new life – whichever way you look at it, this energy lives on. This would mean that our loved ones who have passed on will always remain in existence, for their energy can never die.

You may think I’m only telling myself all of this as a comfort – and maybe I am. But I believe that the unique energies of our lost loved ones will continue to exist, forever: their distinctive energies are too powerful to diminish along with something as mortal as flesh.

(~ Dedicated to all our lost loved ones, wherever they may be ~)

Disclaimer: I am still relatively new to spirituality and the universal laws. This blog post is just me telling my story of how I became interested in these concepts – I know that there is a LOT more to universal energies and laws than this! I’m keeping an open mind as I learn and discover more 🙂