AT ENTRY OF HEAVEN CHAINS AND ATTACHMENTS ARE CAST OFF WITH GRIT THAT SULLIES GARMENTS
What is in you is what you will wear into eternity. That's right: the attire you will be given upon passage to the other side will perfectly reflect the brightness or darkness and shadows of your soul.
This we have heard consistently -- whether from saints, seers, or those who've had "near-death" experiences.
Just the other day, we wrote about a woman from Kansas named Gladys L. Hargis who had one such set of experiences (over the course of an eight-day "coma") starting on August 5, 2006.
Gladys recounted how when she died and was taken to a passageway by an angel, all the "chains" and attachments to the world were suddenly gone; she went from wearing a dull garment to a bright white purified one.
This is often accomplished in purgatory: the "washing" of our souls, which harbor the stains of sin. In Purgatory, robes are described as gray or with blots; in Heaven, there is no way to describe their consistency of purity -- like a cross between spun glass and spun cotton, but much more.
In Heaven, we become and are seen for who we really are. Some have said the robe was given to them by an angel; others have described bathing in incredible "living waters" from which they emerged with the new robe; one famous one described souls in Heaven fashioning the garments.
"A wall opened and there was a beautiful white light and it just sucked you in," Gladys, now 80, told us last week (8/16/2011). "It cleaned everything away. My gown had been off-white when I glided in. Now it was bright white. I have never felt so much love. All the grime was swept away."
That, says Gladys, was after she went through what she calls a bright "cleansing cloud." As she put it in her book, You Live Forever, "Immediately a bright light surrounded me, filling the area where I stood. It was beautiful beyond description, so beautiful that it took my breath away. I'm not certain I can find the right words to describe it. Standing in the light made me feel whole, pure, blessed, free, and loved. It was awesome. I wanted to bask in its energy and never leave. I felt I had just been born again into another realm, where I was completely at peace with my surroundings."
Through life, explains Gladys, we collect bondages and dirt as a result of the trials and temptations of a world that has more than its share of evil. This spiritual dirt can be why we resist certain people, or they resist us. If not purged, it accumulates. In Heaven, that is all vanquished. There is only purity -- and happiness. But we have trouble getting through the opening, that portal, if we have too much grime around us.
This accents the importance of Confession -- and also expiation: asking the Holy Spirit to cleanse us and let us totally atone for past wrongdoing before we approach the other side. After Confession, we must make certain not to repeat our sin -- and even our bad habits and simple "mistakes."
The Lord calls us all to perfection and one of the great chains of this earth, Gladys says she learned, are material things. On the other side, she said, they count for nothing. "You can't take your furniture with you," she stresses. "You can't take your money. You can't take your jewelry."
In fact, a preoccupation and an over-attachment to those things not only wastes valuable time on earth (where every moment is precious), but builds grime around us -- often so thickly that we can't just glide into the garden where Heaven starts but rather must go through levels of purification.
This goes right to what Jesus said when He warned that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24).
That's because money builds such thickness and hardness and blindness and ego that we are too thick to fit through that "narrow" passage. We also collect spirits. It is the grime of this world.
It is not wrong to be gifted with money (if it truly has been a gift); what's wrong is to hoard or use it selfishly (when it is meant, as are all gifts, to share as a means to give glory to God). In fact, we can thus see why -- as the Church has so often taught -- we should feel sorry for those whose focus has been on the material (no matter how lucky or "blessed" they seem).
Money is baggage and with great wealth comes so wide a burden that one cannot immediately fit through the passage.
The same is true if we have over-attachments to negativity, dislike, bad habits, sin in any form, or creatures of this passing world -- which disappears as with a wave of the hand.
It is simple:
Just follow Jesus.
Just do as He did.
Just read the Bible.
Just concern yourself with what He was concerned with.
It's the simplest and also the hardest thing in the world -- following the right thinking of Jesus -- but once accomplished, you'll be enhanced -- and glorified -- forever.
http://spiritdaily.com/gladys2.htm
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