November 11, 2025
Story # 48
Happy 11 11
Written by Bill Pautler
Is There Judgment After Death ???
“When you depart, you will hear and
see what you could not hear or see before.
The severe judgment you imagine will not exist.
You will be the judge. And your heart will be merciful.”
— Ibn Arabi
My Catholic Christian History & Religion
I was raised in Catholicism from an early age, and I was taught that God loved us deeply. That truth resonated with me then and still resonates with me today.
Side note on Resonance
And what does something ‘resonating with us’ mean? When we resonate with something, it means that something said on the outside matches with something we know on the inside.
It’s not that we learned truth.
It’s that we recognized it.
Resonance is recognition. Recognition means ‘to learn again’.
So, when we say: “This resonates.” What we are actually saying is: “The truth inside me has been spoken out loud, and I recognize myself in it.”
Your soul is not receiving truth — your soul is confirming it.
And the more spiritually awake one becomes, the more one trusts the hum.
Because truth doesn’t need to be argued, proven, or defended.
Truth simply recognizes itself.
My Catholic Christian History & Religion......Continued
But I was also taught that we sin, needed to be forgiven, and that the accumulation of our “good” and “bad” actions would be judged at the end of our life by an all-powerful God that would condemn us to an eternity of damnation or bliss. And there was also some convoluted purgatory doctrine thrown in there somewhere.
The idea of condemnation never resonated with me, even back then. Something in me quietly refused that version of God, but I was young, impressionable, and the community I looked up to, and was dependent on, were all singing out of the same hymnal. So, I trusted.
At some point in my awakening this question continued to plague me: “Why would a God of unconditional love, who has given me an eternal spirit, allow me to live on this earth for some fifty, sixty, eighty years and if in that span of time, I didn’t make enough of the ‘good’ choices, I would burn in Hell for eternity?”
That concept made no sense to me.
And to make it worse, Catholics believe we come into this world with ‘original sin’. Meaning I start off with a disadvantage. It's like this trip we are taking into the world is going to be really hard, and by the way, we are going to tie your hands behind your back also.
But we should remember this about all religions: religion is man's way of trying to formulate a system to point us to God. A beautiful concept, and much of religion is steeped in truth. But none of us has the full consciousness of God while we are here, so our actions are often less than ideal. And throughout all of history, inside and outside of religion, man continues to create institutional structures to serve his own ego and good. And the easiest way to control the masses is with the use of fear. Fear is the oldest form of control. The threat of eternal punishment is a powerful way to keep a soul small.
What Others Say about Judgement After Death?
1. Mystical and Esoteric Traditions
Christian Mysticism: Meister Eckhart and St. John of the Cross describe the return to the Ground of Being, where the soul sees clearly, unjudged.
Kabbalah: Teaches Cheshbon HaNefesh, which means the accounting of the soul, where you experience the effect of your actions from the perspective of unity.
Tibetan Buddhism: Explains the “Bardo” experience, which shows you your own mind reflected back—no external judge, just self-recognition.
Sufi Islam: Rumi and Ibn Arabi say that upon death, we return to the Beloved and see clearly what was real (love) and what was illusion (fear).
2. Modern Consciousness Science
Researchers studying non-local consciousness (meaning consciousness not generated by the brain) increasingly argue:
Consciousness likely continues after physical death
The universe is fundamentally relational and participatory
Our identity is a wave returning to the ocean, not a sinner awaiting a verdict
The late physicist David Bohm: “All things are enfolded into the whole, returning to the source.”
Or as Alan Watts said: “We do not come into this world; we come out of it, like leaves from a tree.”
3. Near-Death Experience (NDE) Research
This is maybe the biggest evidence bucket.
Thousands of documented NDEs across cultures (studied at places like the University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins, the University of Manchester, etc.) report some form of life review that is:
360-degree memory access
feeling not just your actions, but their emotional impact on others
with no condemnation or punishment
Instead, people describe it like:
“I saw how my choices either contributed to love, or blocked love.”
There is nearly always:
An experience of unconditional love
A sense of being known fully and still cherished
No external judge
The judgment is self-evaluation, but from the perspective of the soul, not the ego.
My Simple Thoughts
I have read and studied a lot on the subject of life after death and on our final judgement. I believe, because it resonates with me, that God is unconditional love.
Unconditional love means love without conditions.
Judgement is a condition...therefore, there is no judgement after death.
Our purpose on this earth is to learn how to love, emulate, and co-create with God. Would you punish your child for falling while they are learning to walk? Why would God do less than a loving parent?
After death, we will move to the other side of the veil, we will watch our life review. We will experience, in fast motion, our life and the effect it had on the All. In that experience, we will have great joy and great sorrow and embody our greatest lessons.
release fear
the spirit of God animates us
we are sparks of that flame
and sparks do not apologize for being fire
deep and sacred creating to you all
bill
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