Christians Awakening to a New Awareness (CANA)

CANA was started thirty years ago as a group of “Christians Awakening to New Awareness.”  This was then shortened to CANA which, synchronistically, was the occasion of the marriage when Jesus transformed water into wine.  So the two tasks of expanding awareness and of transformation have been interwoven all along.  I hope that this article will both expand our awareness a little further and, at the same time, help us transform any fear we may have of either death or the convergence of so many difficult issues in life today.

We are living in a time of great change in which our horizons are expanding in many directions.  One of these directions is that our ideas about death are changing as we release the mediaeval ideas of death, the ‘dust to dust and ashes to ashes’ in the liturgy that is used, and the Victorian ideas of the black solemnity of grief.  Understandably an increased fear of death has been evident during the pandemic.  We mostly all love this life even if it has challenges, but in this talk I’d like to show how our ideas about death and dying are currently expanding.

We are beginning to see life as an ongoing series of big adventures which we can engage in whilst we are here in this material reality, as well as in the reality we enter into when we die.

I’m going to draw on three sources. The first is my own personal experience.

The second is my particular experience of afterlife conversations with my good friend Ursula Burton that started 3 hours after she had died and which are the basis of my recently published book: ”Awakening to a New Reality: Conscious Conversations across the Horizon of Death“.

Thirdly my key teacher, Sir George Trevelyan, who could see the future that we were moving into from a higher perspective than most of us and enlightened my generation during the 1970s and 80s until his death in the 1990s. He said “It is essential that we recognise that we are not our bodies but that as eternal beings we live through time ridden bodies. These in the end are shed like a worn out overcoat.“

So I’m writing about death itself and the entering into another reality that we call heaven, and then looking at the expanding of our ideas in general towards a more universal understanding.

​Ursula and I had written books together. Our first was published in 1984, “Christian Evolution: Moving towards a Global Spirituality “. It was quite a risk, as it broke through several fixed beliefs at that time, although it would be seen as ‘old hat’ now.  She and I sort of knew that we might write together after one of us had died.  She was ten years older than myself and developed an inoperable cancer, and had the diagnosis three months before her death when she was 69 years old.  When I heard that she had just passed I speedily packed a small bag, drove to Heathrow and jumped on a plane to Edinburgh where she was living.  I had scarcely settled in my seat when to my complete surprise she ‘appeared’.  I could see her with my inner eye clearly.  She looked younger and radiant and this is some of what she said. The rest is in my book.

” I can see what you’re thinking. I can see thought.”

“How are you feeling?” I asked

Fine, a bit shaky but fine. It’s freedom, glorious freedom. It’s all very new as you can appreciate but I’m glad we have established connection so early on, we’ll use this for the real work later. Meantime just be with it, the apparent separation I mean. Be with me or what was me, the part I’ve left behind, along with the body. I feel I’ve left my ordinariness, all those everyday needs and concerns which we all have which is so restricting but necessary. You know how I used to fret at the limitations, well I can see that that is exactly what they are, limitations imposed as part of the conditions of learning through what we have called life. But that’s a misnomer. Life is so much MORE. Can you imagine limitless breath, space, light, purity, freedom, knowing who one truly is? We’ve talked about how it might be but this is much, much more than we imagined. You have the possibility of freedom to be where you are now. This is what we were working towards. If you can be where you are and I know I am being where I am then the way between us is easy. I can’t quite focus on the writing as yet but I know that it will come and that you will be given time to receive.”

I have focused on this first conversation because I think a key thing I would like to stress is her words “I can see thought, I can see what you are thinking “and this is also what my husband said when I awoke and realised he had passed next to me in the night “I can see what you are thinking”.  He had been a wonderfully supportive husband and often typed up writing for me, giving it back to me saying “There you are but I don’t understand a word of it.“  But now he did!  A friend in Canada who was tuned in e-mailed me to say that she saw that he was now delighted to experience “what you women had been on about all the time.”  We have four daughters who were all on the same page as myself, so at times he must have felt a little confused. It seems that as our physical bodies drop away we experience another reality in an energy body of some kind which seems to them as real as our bodies seem to us now.

We kept Ursula’s body at home for three days, as she had asked, and Ursula said that her body felt like an anchor she could return to for a bit.  It was also lovely having my husband’s body at home for the first three days, and we took it in turns to be with him and support his ongoing journey.

My husband never spoke about what happens after death but I did ask Ursula and she said “Death is liberating. At first there’s a mixture. Bewilderment, slightly, even though one has been expecting it but then liberation, freedom. Even from a fit and healthy body I think you would feel this but from a sick or elderly body it really feels like true liberation from limitation. You can step and dance, breathe freely and feel joy all around. Then comes the adjustment. That bit is not so easy. There is a kind of review process that comes after a recovery period to get used to a new space. It’s like one relives every single detail of one’s life – details that you could not possibly remember on earth. At the same time you see reasons for things, how such and such fitted into a pattern, how one’s own lacks, limitations of understanding even downright obstinacy in my case, impeded a holy, natural flow.”

A key thing to say at this point is that there is no judgement from God or any place else.  As we go through this life review and can see all the things that we have done or not done and the effects for good or ill on others, there is a kind of self-judgement as we see the effect of some of the choices we have made. We are likely to be met by those we love who have already passed and are cared for in an atmosphere of love and forgiveness. It seems that intention is what moves us on to new experiences, so Ursula had a key intention to convey to me some of what she now understood and give a higher perspective on our life here.

As well as insights from after death conversations, many insights into life in other realms of being have been coming from those who have had a near death experience (NDE).  A lot of research has been done into the accounts of these people who have returned very changed.  A key book I would suggest if you are interested is “Proof of Heaven” written by Dr Eben Alexander who was a firm non-believer and then experienced a very terminal condition and spent several days of our time in what seemed other realms. Another person who had experienced an NDE whom I got to know personally was Jeff Olsen. I asked him what is heaven like and he said “It is like entering my mother’s kitchen, so warm and so welcoming”.

Elizabeth Kubler Ross who did so much to awaken us to the realities of death and dying also said of her NDA “It was simply an experience and awareness of a cosmic consciousness of life in every living thing, and the love that can never be described in words. I was in total love with all life around me. I was in love with every leaf, every cloud, every piece of grass, every living creature.“

It seems as if the world that awaits us is as real to those there as this one is to us and it is natural to wonder what heaven is like. Jesus said “In my father’s house are many mansions”. This is possibly a translation from the Aramaic that has been put into language that we would understand. Possibly for ‘mansion’ we have previously imagined dwelling places and today we may see this is referring to dimensions of consciousness or frequencies of being. Just as in this world we tend to relate to those people with whom we share things in common – in other words the vibrational frequency of our energies is a resonant match with theirs. So, as far as I understand it, in the life beyond, this tendency also applies. In other words, we are drawn to be with those with whom we are in harmonic resonance. Ursula also said “My work now is helping people to understand and to wake up and take directions that are in tune with God, to live in a way that promotes life in all its fullness. Why do you think you are writing this book! “

A key message she kept giving is “The centre of awakening is the heart.”  The heart chakra in a way is like the coordinating point of the others which is why the Christian religion talks about the birth of the Christ in the heart, and it is the heart that is the organ of the soul. So it is through the heart that we connect with our deeper self as well as with others.

I then wondered about the process of dying. I guess it is different for everyone. Elizabeth Kubler Ross has said “Death is the final stage of growth in this life, there is no total death, only the body dies. The self, the spirit or whatever you may wish to label it, is eternal. “

Ursula had three months to enter this challenge of growth.  She began to find that too often she had prioritised her sense of duty over what she had felt might be the right thing for her.  One of her messages was that whatever our role, we needed to move from ego to what she called ‘Essence’, from focusing on the third dimensional concerns to being authentic, holding to our own integrity, and that if we did do what seemed like duty, to do it wholeheartedly and with love.

It has been hard during the Covid pandemic when so many families were not able to accompany their loved one during the dying stages as this does bring a sense of completion, and of course some deaths are so very sudden so that the shock must somewhat detract from any sense of completion. The one thing we do know is that both the near death experiences and the after-death communications, such as the one I’m speaking about, do testify the great sense of love that pervades us both here and there .

We are realising that the Supreme source of all is not only the Creator of all life but is also Life itself, within all and sustaining all. The very ground of our being is both transcendent and vitally imminent, not only in humanity but in all living things, which is why we are realising that nature is also sacred and deserves our reverence and our care. Both ‘near death experiences’ and ‘after death communication’ are now sufficiently well accepted that they are the subject of academic research.  Both types of experience testify to the continuity of consciousness after death, the many dimensions of being that we can move into and the great sense of love that pervades us wherever we may be, in this level of reality or the next.

Go to CANA website here