I wasn't ready to die.  Even at age 104, I was always eager to see what the next day would bring and to find the little joys the world constantly offered.  But the pain and pain-killers had gradually worn me down to the point that I simply couldn't hold on.  I drifted.  Eventually there came a day that I drifted too long and my body gave out before I could focus back onto keeping it going.

Darkness came, then disorientation.  But I still wanted to LIVE.  And somehow I could feel the threads of life as I found my soul being drawn in towards...something...

But as I was being drawn in, I could also feel threads around me and knew, somehow, what they were.  My "oversoul" was leading other lifetimes, many of them, and in some mysterious way, they were all "ME", we shared an identity at some very profound level.

I had always had a background inkling of such a process, reinforced by my reading of "The Nature of Personal Reality" in my youth.  And my dreams had often included such content - other lives I was leading in other realms of reality.  

I knew that if I let myself go through the entire "death process" it would essentially dismantle the identity I had always thought of as myself.  I would still exist, of course, but would be cycled through to another life with only the basic concepts of my previous experiences retained.  I didn't want that.  I LIKED my current ego-self and the memories and personality I had formed over so many years.

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So I came to a halt and looked around.  I was almost certainly on the "astral plane", but with no "silver cord" connecting me to a physical body.  The "higher self" drawing me in indulged this, I even felt a kind of approval.  It had been an offer, not a command.  There were other offers on the table, and I was now free to look them over.

I was able to go back and see Earth, watch my funeral, even send a sense of empathetic well-being to various loved ones.  I could explore the many layers of the astral, but nearly all the souls I encountered there were either dreaming or "stuck" in meaningless loops.  Some of those loops were heavenly, some hellish.  I tried my hand a few times at helping people out of their loops, but I didn't really have the calling to be an astral guide.

I wanted to be IN an active life story taking place in one of the physical realms - but without letting go of who I was.  As always, in the spirit, the answer was there if I allowed it to happen - so I trusted and let myself drift into a dreamstate.

I woke up - sort of.  I recognized my situation quickly from my half-forgotten otherworldly dreams.  I was a ride-along soul in a living body, with another ego in control.  I could see him, but he couldn't see me.  I was simply constantly aware of his surface thoughts (it didn't matter at all what language was in use, that part is handled by brains, not souls).

Without knowing it, he had called on me - this was a fantasy world and I was his magic.