My latest assignment from my blueprint, to tell the stories of the In-between, felt a bit like being asked to scour the inside of dumpsters with my toothbrush. Over the years, I've learned to trust that even the most outlandish assignment serves a greater purpose, whether I can see it at the outset or not. Experience has taught me that the assignments I resist most often contain the lessons I need most.
The two names I received this week have left me shaking my head in confusion. If someone had asked me to predict who might be waiting in the corridors of the In-between with a story to tell, these two would never have appeared on my list. I've also learned not to rush for answers. Somewhere beyond my understanding, pieces are moving into place. Connections are being formed, doors are opening and stories are gathering themselves. For now, I have two names, a mountain of questions, and the quiet certainty that neither arrived by accident.
The In-between is filled with what some would consider unlikely inhabitants. Some are the guardians of religious ideology and scions of theology, souls so certain of the righteousness of their earthly convictions that they remain bound to them long after death. They defended doctrines, judged transgressions, waged spiritual battles, and proclaimed themselves servants of a God of piety, law, and judgment. Yet in the stillness of the In-between, certainty can become its own prison.
As a human, I am more than willing to allow some of these souls to languish within the prisons of their own making. There is a part of me that looks upon the suffering they inflicted in the name of righteousness and concludes that they have earned their confinement. Their certainty wounded others. Their judgment diminished lives. Their actions, wrapped in the language of virtue, often produced anything but.
I have stood in places considered holy, their stone walls preserving the memory of torture chambers used to exact God's vengeance upon men and women whose only crime was their uniqueness. I have watched through time as holy men whipped themselves into states of ecstasy, convinced that the agony they inflicted was proof of devotion and suffering a currency with which to purchase divine favor.
Imagine arriving in the afterlife expecting a parade, you anticipate choirs singing your praises, saints welcoming you as a champion of the faith, and a throne set aside in recognition of your lifelong service to holy law. You arrive carrying a resume rife with doctrines defended, heretics corrected, sinners judged, traditions protected, sacrifices endured, battles fought in the name of God. When you proudly present your accomplishments, they smile gently and ask you to leave them outside.
Titles have zero sway; accolades carry no weight. Power does not open a single door, and no amount of wealth can buy absolution. Medals fall from the chest of heroes and flags become rags littering the ground. The victories, the authority, the suffering, the certainty, the reputation painstakingly constructed over a lifetime, all of it must remain. Nothing may be carried into the Light.
Confused, you explain that these achievements are proof of your devotion. They are the very evidence that demonstrates your worthiness. Surely, they must count for something. Again, the answer comes. "Leave them at the gate."
The greatest shock awaiting some souls is discovering that the Light is not impressed by accomplishments. Not because the accomplishments are meaningless, but because they were never the point. The soul that spent a lifetime defending God suddenly finds itself standing before a Presence that requires no defense.
The In-between is a place of the greatest level of enlightenment. Enlightenment is easy when you sit in the lap of Love. Most imagine enlightenment as something found only after crossing fully into the Light. Yet the In-between is often where the deepest revelations occur. In the Realms of Light, truth simply is. In the physical world, truth is obscured by circumstance, emotion, and limitation. But in the In-between, souls stand at the crossroads between what they believed and what actually was.
The In-between is a place of the greatest level of enlightenment because it is where illusion becomes visible. A king discovers he was never his crown. A priest discovers he was never his doctrine. A victim discovers they were never their suffering. A persecutor discovers they were never their cruelty. A saint discovers they were never their virtue. Everything a soul has mistaken for its identity is laid before it for examination. The Light does not demand this reckoning. The soul does.
In the In-between, there are no distractions, no armies of supporters, no institutions to reinforce old narratives, and no enemies upon whom blame can be projected. There is only truth, often arriving in layers gentle enough to be survived. This is why some souls pass through quickly and others remain for what appears to be centuries. The difference is rarely worthiness, it is willingness.
Imagine discovering that the God you spent a lifetime defending never required your defense. Imagine learning that divine love was never conditional, that many of your certainties were simply interpretations, and that the people you condemned carried the same spark of the Creator that you did.
That is why the In-between can be more enlightening than Heaven itself. It is where every false certainty is given the opportunity to die, so that only truth may continue the journey.
As I walk the corridors of the In-between, gathering the stories, I find it is me who is changing. When I first began this work, I believed I was there to help the lost. To locate those trapped within their own grief, fear, guilt, resentment, or certainty and assist them in finding a path forward. I imagined myself as the collector of stories, the witness, the messenger.
What I failed to understand was that the In-between would turn its gaze upon me. Every soul I encounter holds a mirror, the victim teaches me about victimhood, the angry reveal the cost of anger, the fearful expose my own fears. The zealots challenge my judgments and the self-righteous force me to confront the places where I still believe some people deserve exclusion from grace. I arrive to tell their stories and discover fragments of my own.
The In-between is said to be a place of enlightenment, but not because it contains answers. It is because nothing there can hide behind illusion for very long. The stories strip away certainty with the precision of a surgeon. Beliefs I once carried confidently are examined from angles I never considered. Opinions that once felt immovable soften under the weight of deeper understanding.
With each story gathered, I become a little less certain of my judgments and a little more certain of the Light hidden within every soul, including those I once believed least deserving of it.
In the category of be careful what you ask for, I have been on a journey seeking enlightenment for many lifetimes. Like many seekers, I imagined enlightenment would be found on distant mountaintops, in hidden temples, sacred texts, or among perfected beings who had transcended the struggles of human existence.
Instead, I find the greatest opportunity for enlightenment in what may be the least enlightened place in the Universe. The In-between. A place populated by souls clinging to grievances, certainties, regrets, identities, and beliefs they cannot yet release. A place where fear can masquerade as truth and where suffering often echoes long after its original cause has been forgotten. By all appearances, it should be the last place one would go seeking wisdom.
Yet as I walk its corridors gathering stories, I find my compassion expanding in ways I never anticipated. It is easy to love the kind, easy to forgive the wounded easy to see the Light in those who already radiate it. The greater challenge is finding the spark within the soul who has buried it beneath centuries of judgment, anger, dogma, pride, or self-loathing.
The In-between offers endless opportunities for such practice. There I encounter souls I likely would have condemned had I known them in life. Men and women who caused harm while believing they were serving a higher purpose. Others who became so consumed by their own suffering that they could see nothing beyond it. Still others who cling desperately to identities that no longer serve them, terrified that without them they will simply cease to exist. And yet, when I look deeply enough, I inevitably discover something familiar. A fear I have known, a wound I have carried, a certainty I have defended, a blindness I have shared.
The distance between "them" and "me" becomes increasingly difficult to measure. Perhaps that is the true gift of the In-between. It does not teach enlightenment through perfection; it teaches enlightenment through understanding, through witnessing, through the gradual realization that every soul, regardless of its choices, carries a fragment of the same Light.
In the end, the greatest revelation of the In-between may not be what it teaches us about the dead. It may be what it teaches the living about themselves.