I recently had a question from a reader along the lines of:

“Why are there earthbound spirits to clear from spaces since everyone has guides and angels from birth — don’t our guides help us to cross over to the ‘other side’ after death if we get stuck?’

(In my last article, I wrote that the frequencies that are inside of our energy body are like the ‘code’ that ‘write’ what we see in our 3D reality. If you’re interested in my answer to this question, please go read that article if you haven’t yet as it will provide a lot of background.)

In the same way that our energy bodies provide the underlying ‘code’ that manifests our physical reality in life, what our energy bodies contain at death also provides the ‘code’ that manifests what we will actually experience after death.

This is the reason for souls not always ending up in the same place after death. We manifest our own ‘heaven’ or ‘other side’, just as we manifest our own life.

Tibetan Buddhists have many rituals for the dying process that aim to help a person pass away in a state of peace because they believe that the strongest energy that we hold in our mind and heart at the moment of death governs our next rebirth and the place we will find ourselves in the ‘bardo’ (aka the afterlife) after death.

I also believe in this to some extent because I’ve seen evidence that difficult deaths (especially deaths where a person dies in a state of intoxication, trauma, dissociation, or shock) can cause a spirit to leave remnants of their mental and emotional body close to the earth plane, rather than fully cross over. This is what we call an earthbound spirit.

Being earthbound does not mean that the entire soul is stuck. Our soul is like a tree, and it sends only part of its energy out (i.e. a small branch) into an earthly incarnation. I’ve also heard the soul described as an ‘octopus’ that puts the tip of its tentacle out into the earth plane during an incarnation.

But having a past life self that is earthbound does mean that a small piece of the soul is stuck, and this has consequences for the entire soul and its path from that moment forwards.

There are 3 most likely outcomes after we die:

1. A good death

The first is that we have a good death. We die in a way that involves peace, acceptance, or some other positive energy. We will be greeted by Spirit Guides, angels, ancestors and cross over to the other side fully. If this is a soul that has had many earthly incarnations and is confident in crossing over, the soul may even not be greeted by any being but just head straight to where it needs to go, with no help (because it does not need any). The soul in this scenario gets a life review. This is also the scenario that most spiritual people assume automatically occurs, and it is described in Michael Newton’s fascinating books Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls.

2. Unfinished business

The second scenario is that at the moment of death, we feel a strong negative emotion such as emotional pain, fear or regret. The negative emotion isn’t so strong that it causes us to remain earthbound with an inability to cross over, but it is usually a reflection of some unfinished business connected to the life we’ve just lived, and Tibetan Buddhists believe that this negative energy will be reflected in the next incarnation we are born into, to give us an opportunity to resolve it.

3. Remaining earthbound

The third scenario is that at the moment of death, we are in a state of deep shock, dissociation, intoxication, emotional torment or trauma.

Dying with these kinds of energy in one’s field is likely to be a reflection of a past life karmic complex. And this is the scenario that leads to an earthbound spirit.

I’ll give you some examples of the kinds of scenarios that lead to this. One of my past life selves was earthbound and died with a lot of unfinished business.

I had a female past life in 1920s Los Angeles. In that life I was an only child and my mother had died. My father worked for a telecommunications company and our family was wealthy. As a young woman in that life I was having an affair with a married man who married someone else so he could have his inheritance, although I was his true partner (or so I believed).

This man and I had 22 lifetimes together and most of these ended in disaster for me. In that life I went on a holiday with him to Santa Barbara and we were staying in the Arlington hotel (on the site of the present Arlington Theatre) when the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake struck. I was killed and he lost his arm. I took his arm with me into the bardo and held onto it for almost 100 years. That past life self also stayed in a little dark bubble in the bardo for almost 100 years in a state of torment over the loss of my life and partner. I had to find the soul of that man in this life and give him back the soul fragments that I had stolen from him (his arm that he lost in the earthquake). This is why I came to Wellington, New Zealand 4-5 years ago. Then I had to close the door on him and our soul contract because it had run its course (I achieved this using the Deep Memory Process method of past life regression.)

That past life self was an earthbound spirit. These spaces in the astrals where souls get stuck are superimposed over our physical reality so these spirits can be perceived when we encounter them and they are replaying their traumas, and retracing the same steps over and over. If a psychic had ‘tuned in’ at the Arlington Theatre, they perhaps would have found a woman wandering in a state of grief and that would have been my past life self.

These past life scenarios live in our energy fields and attract our lives, and this will be why I went through another earthquake in 2011 that impacted me deeply.

I believe that life is a simulation that is created by the soul.

We create everything in life, and we create everything in death. All of it is coming from what is already in our field. If we live and then die in a low vibration, we can’t perceive our guides and angels inviting us to cross over.

This is why I believe it is important to clean up one’s psyche, including any complexes and trauma, while we are alive, because the level of the bardo we find ourselves in when we die will be a reflection of what we are carrying in our energy field at death.

Tibetan Buddhists also believe that the level of the bardo we will find ourselves in after death will be quite similar to the types of dreams we often have in life. So, if you have a lot of nightmares in life, this is a sign you have psyche ‘clean up’ to do and trauma to release, in order to die well.

This is also why I believe it helps to die with a sense of trust in the spirit world since if death does happen suddenly and we’re not expecting it, we’re more likely to cross over rather than die in shock and fear.

My upcoming Evolutionary Manifesting course helps us to identify any parts of our soul that are stuck or unresolved in this way and find ways to clean up complexes.

Having an affair with a married man who does not really choose me is a karmic story that has been following me around for centuries. I came into this life having thoroughly learned my lesson from the Santa Barbara death and I was not open to this experience this time around, but the opportunity has presented itself over and over partly because I had an unresolved piece in my field that was seeking resolution in this way. I had been broadcasting ‘affair energy’ my whole life.

I had to clean up this karmic complex in order to get well.

When we have unresolved pieces of our soul that are stuck in the bardo like this, we can also come into an incarnation tired because a piece of our soul is unavailable — it’s woven into the events of a past life, and that represents a loss of vitality. It is what shamans refer to as soul loss.

And since these earthbound spirits can wander and be perceived in spaces, clearing them from spaces can help them to cross over, too. One of the things I love about space clearing is that releasing these spirits from our spaces not only improves the feel of our space, but it can even help to downgrade the karmic complex that the earthbound spirit died with and make it more likely that the soul will be able to clean it up fully in the future, when they are incarnated on the earth plane. It is healing for all involved.

In my Energy Clearing for Spaces course, I provide a technique (1 of 10 techniques for clearing spaces) that releases these spirits with love, rather than banishing them with fear.

We can also help our ancestors who are earthbound in this way and affecting us with their issues, and that is something I am currently working on adding as a process to my Intuitive Healing Program. I will announce it in my newsletter when the process is added and it will be available to all past students of that program.

I hope this gives more background on earthbound spirits and how they get stuck, and how we can help them (and ourselves).