The Grief And Belief Connection

"Grief is healing: To take away our grief is to take away our healing. And learning about life after death helps us heal with greater hope, comfort and peace." ~ Bob Olson

In approximately five years of investigating the possibility of life after death, I have discovered convincing evidence that there really is an afterlife, that we really do continue to exist after death, and that our loved ones continue to watch over us and guide us in the spirit world. But this is just the beginning of my discoveries.

More recently, after sharing this evidence with thousands of people around the world through my books, websites and articles, I have recognized a direct connection between one's level of grief and one's level of belief in an afterlife. I call it The grief And Belief Connection.

I didn't always believe in life after death. In the past, whenever I would lose a loved one to disease, tragedy or suicide, I would always wonder if an afterlife existed. But thinking about the possibility of life after death never eased my grief because I was a skeptic. In fact, I was the worst kind of skeptic- a cynical one. This didn't mean my mind was closed to the idea of life after death, but I needed evidence. Yet the intangible and mystical quality of the evidence for an afterlife only instigated my cynical skepticism even more.

As a private investigator with a degree in Criminology, evidence was my world. When I investigated murders, the courts only cared about the evidence I uncovered that proved or disproved the accused's guilt. When I handled domestic investigations, clients hired me to obtain photographic and videographic evidence of their cheating spouses. And when I investigated personal injury cases, lawyers hired me to obtain witness statements, photographs and material evidence to present at trial. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that I was suspicious, to say the least, of the vague metaphysical evidence that exists for an afterlife.

The strongest evidence for an afterlife consists of the following (all of which I found critically lacking in credibility): psychic mediums who claim to communicate with spirits, individuals who believe they had a near-death experience, hypnotic regressionists who declare a method for past-life travel, and individuals who believe to have experienced an after-death communication from a loved one in spirit. Such outrageous claims appeared less as evidence of life after death and more as nave nonsense from people who either need extra attention in their lives or need something supernatural to increase their faith. To this P.I. the evidence amounted to a bunch of hooey.

Then I visited a psychic medium who turned my life upside-down. My brother-in-law had insisted she was legitimate, so I became fixed on proving her a phony. I booked an appointment for a one-hour reading. The one hour turned into three, me sobbing like a lost child for half of it. The evidence was too overwhelming, the details too accurate. My belief that such evidence was unbelievable rapidly crumbled.

The spirit messenger delivered names, dates and memories about my life she could not possible have known: that I played a saxophone solo in my middle school band concert; that my birthday was in May and that my father died during that month, that my mother's name was Carol, my sister's name was Bonnie and my wife's name was Melissa; that I was considering getting a dog, specifically a yellow lab; and that I had a brother named Brian who wasn't really my brother (Brian was my cousin who moved in with my family when he was ten and I was thirteen because his parents died in a plane crash). And yes, she knew about the plane crash, too.

To this