Anchored Down

Aaron listened to the questions, and began to answer in the order they were asked. She turned towards Caleb and had a soft smile, "Before you can gain the privileges of this existence, you must complete the stages of understanding and letting go of whatever ties you still to the Earth. To put it in visual terms, we call those ties holding you down 'anchors', and you will need each others' help in order to release them. Once everyone has lifted their anchors, then you can be away from everyone and everything if you choose."

The next question from Camilla caused Aaron confusion because usually people's illnesses go away after they die, but once everything clicked Aaron turned to Camilla and said, "Yes, they will go away. What you feel right now, or what all of you should be feeling right now, is an echo of how you died. Everyone has one, some more severe than others, but I promise they will go away. Technically speaking, the inability to breath because you were strangled to death, you don't need to breath. You don't need to eat. You don't need to sleep. Some people do it in memory of life on Earth, the most common of that being food, which is why I had it set up for anyone who wanted something." She motioned towards the tables and then continued, "But the memory of how you died stays and you feel those effects. But the more meetings you have, the more you lift your anchor, the less your echo should affect you. It will help eventually lead to everyone feeling at peace."

"I've got a question."

Aaron looked over at George, who looked more awake at this point and looked her straight in the eyes and asked, "What if we don't believe we should feel at peace?"
"Beg pardon?"
"I mean, is there a Hell? Somewhere where those deserving of eternal suffering go?"

Aaron blinked and explained, "There is no Hell. No one, no matter what they may have done, deserves to feel suffering for eternity... did you want to suffer for the rest of your existence? Did you want to go to this made up Hell humans created to scare people into conforming to a group ideology?"
"I just don't-" George cut himself off and let out a sigh, "Never mind."

Aaron blinked and then looked over at everyone else, "So are there any more questions?"​

 

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"I have one. How will we know what our 'anchors' are?" Ken questioned, leaning back a bit in his seat. So he was here because something was keeping him tied to earth and that was why he was here. Interesting. This made him wonder just what it was keeping him tied down. He tried to think of just what it could be that was keeping him down and he was coming up with nothing. It certainly wasn't any of his many foster homes. He better ones he'd left early one and the latter one hated his guts. Which was fine, he hated theirs too. "Is there any hints that could give it away?"

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"You said that there's no Hell, does that mean that there's no heaven as well and this is it? Or is there a paradise for us once we're done here?" While Leo wasn't a very religious person, being dead and having someone just outright say hat there's no hell would open up a few questions. At least for him it did.