"Earthbound" Spirits - What Are They Really?

Let's start by saying that anything anyone tells you about "the other side" is always going to be from their own experiences, and often beliefs will cloud experiences – as spiritual workers, we do our best not to let this happen, but it's human nature and even the most objective of us still have hidden belief structures that form who we are, and I'm no different. As always, please trust your own experiences and intuition as they will lead you on the path that is meant for you.

The below points are based solely on my experiences and understanding of the other side, and not information I have read about or repeated without having a "knowing" of it in some way.

• My definition of earthbound spirits are human souls who, for whatever reason, have not crossed over to the other side yet after having died – call the other side whatever you like: the Afterlife, the Summerlands, the Otherworld, Heaven, whatever.
• Out of everyone who dies, very, very, very few remain earthbound, and the reasons for being earthbound are as individual as living people are.
• Earthbound spirits are NOT evil and most of them do not have negative intent towards other people. Having said that a very small percentage of earthbound spirits can and do have heavy, dark intent towards people, just like living humans.
• All earthbound spirits are kept an eye on by certain guardian spirits and all of them at any given time have the opportunity to cross over.
• It is more common for earthbound spirits to only stay earthbound for a short while after their death, and after their funeral they will cross over (the funeral being a very important energetic rite of passage and a portal).
• Reasons human souls remain here (on the earth plane) are varied and most often include: time needed to process shock (see example 2 below); psychological blocks to transitioning (see example 1 below); or very heavy energies like anger, rage, and envy which have not been processed and they refuse to let go of (these form fewer people than you might think because everyone gets a very clear pathway to let go of these heavy emotions at the point of leaving their body).

Below I'm going to give you two examples of earthbound souls I've had encounters with.

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Example 1

The Lonely Jewellery and Costume Designer

About 3 years ago a lady’s soul came into my shamanic space. She told me she had passed in the 1970s even though I connected her with the 1920s. She told me she was a jewellery and costume designer and her favourite period was the 1920s. She was very sad — heavy grief — I asked her why she was here in my space and she explained she had no family or friends. She was depressed in life but her work kept her going. She sold many pieces of jewellery to richer folk in New York area (Broadway clientele and so on). But she was incredibly lonely and sad and she committed suicide (if I remember right, she jumped in front of a train). But because it was suicide and she had no family or friends, she had had no funeral after her death (or nothing resembling a proper funeral — she might have been of Jewish lineage, but I can't remember for sure; she didn't keep in touch with her family anyway).

After then speaking to my angel guides about it, it turned out there was something in her consciousness that prevented her from moving on without a proper funeral (maybe religious conditioning in her early upbringing, I'm not sure). I was guided to perform a funeral for her (or my version of one from a shamanic ritual point of view). I did this a couple of days later after calling her and her own guides and/or angels in. It was quite a surreal experience, and I felt it worked and she was able to move on. I’ve not seen her again anyway.

Example 2

The Motorcycle Accident

This one was about 13 or 14 years ago. I had actually stopped seeing clients for anything as I had just had a baby and had started writing fiction for a living instead. So this was totally unexpected and I was not prepared. I was not in my own house. A few of us were sitting in a room, and someone starts to talk about how sad it was that a friend’s boyfriend had died in a motorcycle accident just 3 days ago or so. The person mentioning it seemed quite affected by this, and suddenly he was right there in his leathers with his helmet in his hand. I had no idea what to do as I didn't think the person talking was generally open to stuff like this, but the motorcyclist was clearly lost and very present and I felt he was in need of grounding. I could feel he was still in shock and not 100% comprehending his own death. (This was before I properly started working with angels, and I had not gone into depth with my shamanic work as in more recent years.) I ended up cautiously acknowledging him and just repeating what he wanted me to relay — giving the message — which was just that it was so sudden. “It was a very sudden moment — I was alive and then I was dead.” It was as if he needed to say the words over and over, or have me say it, to come to terms with it. He did also say he could not feel any pain and didn’t at the time either — one minute he was in his body, the next he was out. If there was anything he wanted to convey to those still here, it was that he had felt no pain. He eventually left.

This was the first time I had ever felt a soul so close after (an unexpected) death. And his confusion was very palpable. I still don’t know if I did right by him, but I was much less experienced then than I am now.

I personally felt at the time he would automatically cross over after his funeral, and just first needed the time to ground himself and get used to his new state of being. He would have been looked after during that whole transition by his own guides.

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I could and will write more – there is so much more than can be covered in one post. But I really wanted to come on here to say that there is nothing about death or the afterlife we have to be afraid of, nor about those who have passed. As for the very dark/heavy souls who don't cross over (these souls really are rare) they are not on the same frequency as you or most people, so you don't need to worry about them. You are naturally protected from such energies and just like stories of the vampire, they cannot cross private boundaries without your permission. Just don't go looking for them specifically, or calling them into your life through any doorway.