Annie Kagan: Insights of the Afterlife
One of the most detailed and profound after death communications ever recorded, Annie Kagan’s book, The Afterlife of Billy Fingers, takes the reader beyond the near-death experience and answers one of life’s most elusive questions: “What happens after we die?” Billy’s vivid, real-time account of his on-going journey through the mysteries of death will change the way one thinks about life, death and our place in the Universe. Now an international bestseller, her book is comforting people around the globe and her Facebook fan following has reached over 100,000 in just over a year.
Annie Kagan: Insights of the Afterlife
Special Interview by Shelly Wilson for OMTimes Magazine.
In his foreword, Dr. Raymond Moody, author of Life after Life, explains the phenomena of walkers between the worlds, known to us since ancient times, and says that Dr. Kagan’s thought-provoking account is an excellent example The opportunity to interview Annie Kagan for this issue of OMTimes was one I gratefully accepted. Afterlife communication is a topic that is near and dear to my own heart, especially regarding my own work as an Intuitive Medium. During our conversation, Annie conveys Billy’s experiences about the Afterlife as well as his thoughts and insight on the topic of living. According to Annie Kagan, “the book is really very funny, very uplifting and very light-hearted.”
Even though the book is about death, it is really about living and allowing us to live our lives fully in this present moment. A young singer and songwriter performing in New York City cafes and clubs for over 10 years, Annie Kagan returned to college and became a chiropractor with a private practice in Manhattan. After a chance meeting with a spiritual teacher from the East, she began an intense meditation practice that eventually led her to leave her career as a doctor and her hectic city life in search of serenity. This effort to alleviate the stress from her busy life significantly heightened her own sensitivity. Reconnecting with her brother after his whereabouts were unknown for several years, Billy died unexpectedly from a tragic accident and began speaking to her from the Afterlife.
Three weeks after he died, she heard his voice while she was sleeping, “Annie get up, it’s me, it’s Billy!” Of course, she thought she was dreaming. Billy instructed her to get a notebook, and she began transcribing his words. That experience was the beginning of an amazing journey – his journey into the Afterlife and Annie Kagan’s journey along with him. The culmination of this experience became the book, The Afterlife of Billy Fingers: How My Bad-Boy Brother Proved to Me There’s Life After Death. Although she doubted it was possible and was skeptical at first, Annie was visited many times and received confirmation in ways that she couldn’t ignore. Annie Kagan doesn’t think of herself as a medium or channel because she always thinks the energy is coming through the medium. In her own instance, she sees that Billy is outside of her. She is just having a conversation with him.
She acknowledges that although Billy had challenges in his own life, he was a very happy, joyous loving person. He lived life fully no matter what his difficulties. According to Billy, “The Other Side is so blissful, beautiful and healing and is something our minds cannot even fathom.” Touching on the topic of life reviews in our conversation, Annie responds that Billy reports seeing his whole life around him like a hologram. He is able to focus on whatever part he wants to focus on and is also able to see the different paths that he didn’t take.
You get to really experience what that particular life would have been like.
Billy refers to Divine color glasses – a very Buddha-like way where you understand why you did the things you did and you are not moralistic or judgmental in any way. You are just observing.
Looking back at the life I lived is not as fascinating as being in the moment.
Through this experience in writing the book, Annie has learned so much from her “bad boy” brother. She learned about the importance of living in the now. She conveys, “The present moment is really the creative moment, the creative opportunity and more interesting than what we left behind. It’s really about now.” Through my own experiences as an Intuitive Medium and Spiritual Teacher, I recognize that living in the past or planning the future is not allowing us as individuals to be in the present moment. Choosing to see each experience as an opportunity for learning and growth allows us to see things from a Higher soul perspective.
Annie Kagan offers Billy’s thoughts on this topic: It’s all about viewpoint. What you consider mistakes is okay – it’s just part of living on Earth. Sometimes you do it one way; sometimes you do it another way. It’s all just experience. Perspective is everything. You can take the same situation and view it one way or view it a way that makes you feel better and empowers you. Look at the things that have happened or look at the moment even though it’s extremely challenging. View it in a way that empowers you and enables you to move forward feeling your strength and not feeling like a victim.
From my own perception, there are two ways to view everything – through the eyes of love or through the eyes of fear. Depending on how we view those things is how our experience is going to be. Seeing things from the higher vibration of love and allowing ourselves to recognize that we are these spiritual beings having this human life experience, there may be things that we question later. Releasing the judgment of ourselves and others is very important, in my opinion, to which Annie agrees.
Annie Kagan states, “Two things – There is tremendous freedom in choosing your own viewpoint, tremendous freedom in seeing things the way you want. Billy always says, ‘Don’t live your life by what you think others think.’ There is tremendous joy in really looking through your own eyes. The other thing is that we think we can stand in another person’s shoes and that in a way can make us more judgmental because ‘oh, if I was them, I would do this.’ The truth is you never really, really can stand in somebody else’s shoes. You don’t know what their soul is doing here. Like he says, ‘so many people judged him while he was here for his problems with drug addiction.’ The drug addiction was one of the things he came here to explore. In our human mind, that is crazy. Why would anybody do that?”
Continuing further, “Why would people come here to deal with addiction problems? Why would anyone come here to deal with a disease problem? Acknowledging we came here to explore this life circumstance that certainly doesn’t make sense from a human point of view, it takes a lot of the shame and the blame out of what we deal with on a daily basis. It’s not that we’ve created something negative. This is in my life, and how can I deal with it? How can I use my wonderful creativity to deal with this challenge? It’s a very kind way of looking at things.”
On a soul level, we plan our experiences and lessons for this lifetime, but our humanness doesn’t remember. We don’t always understand why we are having the experiences that we have. When we work on raising our vibration, heightening our awareness, paying attention, and seeing these experiences as opportunities for learning and growth, the more we are able to go with the flow and not get caught up into another person’s vortex so to speak. Allowing ourselves to be present in this moment, for me, is why we are here; why we came to Earth school to begin with. Annie Kagan agrees and affirms,
“Nobody can really understand all of the different aspects and all of the different facets of our life. I judge people a lot less. It also doesn’t mean that I have to like them or that I have to agree with them. I can let them be more. Also, of course, I’m human. I have feelings about things people do. I’m not happy when people hurt other people. That’s a really difficult one for me to accept, and that’s something I have to say that I don’t understand with my own human mind. What I’ve learned is that Divine consciousness is not the same as the human mind. I am limited, and that I don’t understand. There is so much that I don’t understand and that not understanding, in a funny way, is a gift because I don’t feel like I have to figure the whole thing out.”
Continue to Page 2 of the Interview with Annie Kagan
