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The Space Between – Heaven on Earth is a companion podcast to Awakening – Heaven on Earth.
Through intimate, heart-centered conversations, this series explores the lived experience of awakening — the questions, integrations, paradoxes, and sacred pauses where transformation truly occurs.
This is the space between knowing and becoming…
where Heaven meets Earth through honest dialogue.
Welcome to the space between heaven on earth. This is a companion podcast to awakening heaven on earth created as a space for reflection, conversation, and lived experience. Here, we enter the pause between knowing and becoming, between insight and embodiment, between heaven and earth. These conversations are not about answers or conclusions. They are about presence, about listening, about reasoning together, about meeting one another honestly in the unfolding journey of awakening.
Jeffrey Aylor:I'm your host, Jeffrey Aylor. Again, welcome and thank you for entering The Space Between with us. Welcome to the space between. Over the past several episodes, we've explored unity from a number of different perspectives, unity with God, unity with the self, unity with others, unity with the earth, unity through the body, and unity through the universal spirit that seems to animate all. Today's episode is called the turning point, when the soul begins to remember.
Jeffrey Aylor:Turning points rarely arrive when we expect them. Often, they come through moments that completely disrupt our understanding of life. This episode is a little different from the others. I had hoped to record this conversation with Joel, Joe, and Sherry, but scheduling did not allow it this week. As I sat with that, I realized that perhaps this episode was meant to be more personal, because the turning point in my own journey came through the most difficult experience of my life.
Jeffrey Aylor:My wife Carol and I had two beautiful children, and our daughter Katie was a bright light in our family. She was full of life, full of love, full of joy and compassion, and even though she was tiny, everyone who knew her could feel her big presence immediately. She was highly intuitive, and she could read and see through people. They were like they were transparent. And like any parent, you know, we imagined that the future would unfold in natural order, that our children would grow up into adulthood, build their lives, and carry forward the love of family.
Jeffrey Aylor:But life sometimes changes in ways we can't prepare for. When Katie was just 16 years old, we lost her in a car accident. Unexpectedly, instantly, one second she was here, and the next second she was gone. Life was forever changed in an instant. There isn't any language that can fully describe what it feels like for a parent to lose a child.
Jeffrey Aylor:I can tell you it shakes the very foundation of everything you've ever thought or you thought you understood about life, about fairness, about god, about the world itself. To Carol and I, time and life just seemed to stop. In the days, the weeks, the months, and the years that have followed, I have wrestled with deep grief, confusion, anger, and questions that I can tell you had no easy answer. In those months that followed Katie's passing, two questions stayed with me constantly. The first was, where is she now?
Jeffrey Aylor:And just as deeply, the second, what is she experiencing now? To me, these questions weren't abstract. They were deeply, deeply personal. And I can tell you as a father, I needed to know that my daughter still existed in some way beyond what we could see. You know, I had been raised in a strong Christian household and in a strong Christian tradition, and those beliefs did give me foundation.
Jeffrey Aylor:But I also found that many of the questions that I had and many of the answers that I had previously accepted based on what I believed felt very incomplete in the face of such a profound loss. These questions remained. They nagged at me. And I did not begin studying near death experiences just out of curiosity. I personally began studying them out of love because I wanted to understand where my daughter might be and what she might be experiencing in this aspect of her life.
Jeffrey Aylor:Because I believe, and I still believe, and I know she is very much alive, very much alive. All she's done is transition, maybe unexpectedly, as I say, maybe instantly, but it was a transition. It's not an ending. And because I wanted to understand where my daughter might be and what she was experiencing, I pursued this study in order to try to find anything that could give me answers or some sense of relief. Now during that search, began reading about near death experiences, are often called NDEs, And these are accounts from people who were clinically close to death and later reported profound experiences of awareness, peace, light, and connection before they return to their body.
Jeffrey Aylor:I read books and studied the works of Elizabeth Kubler Ross, who spent years listening to patients who were facing death, and Raymond Moody, whose research brought many, of these near death experiences into much wider awareness and has made them something more mainstream to think about. I also researched many first person accounts from people who described very remarkably similar experiences, whether it didn't matter what their culture was, their backgrounds. What struck me wasn't just one story. It was the consistency across many of them. People described a sense of oneness or unity.
Jeffrey Aylor:They describe profound peace, unconditional love, and an awareness that consciousness continues beyond the physical body. Now many of them, in fact, most of them that I have listened to or read about, it it's not that they experience a what they would have perceived based on many of things they've learned from their religions. Although it could be that they would come in contact with the image or the person or the God that they worship, it was still striking that what they described was a sense of oneness, that the separation, that the division that we see and think we feel is real in this world was not real in that realm or in that environment, and that it was full of unconditional love, unconditional love, that they were not being judged. They were not being told in a judgmental way about bad or horrible things in their life, but they did see them, and they saw the impacts of them, and they were learning from those things that they were being seen. Now I can tell you all of that research, all of that study, all of those accounts did not eliminate my grief.
Jeffrey Aylor:They did not answer every question, but they did something incredibly important for me. They expanded my thinking, my understanding of what might be possible just beyond the physical world that we tend to sense with our human senses. I've come to understand and believe that that spiritual world is not somewhere far away. It's not somewhere out there. This spiritual world is right with us.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's it's things that are spiritual are not seen, but just because we can't see them or see the spiritual world does not mean it that it exists, and it certainly doesn't mean that it doesn't exist very close to us, because I believe it does. They opened a door to the possibility that life, consciousness, and the soul are far more expansive than we typically imagine. Over time I realized that exploring these ideas did not require me to abandon my Christian foundation. Instead, it invited me to look more deeply at the spiritual teachings I had grown up with. Teachings about love, eternal life, and the unity of all creation.
Jeffrey Aylor:What for me began as a search for my daughter slowly became a broader journey of personal awakening. As I continued to study near death experiences and reflecting on the nature of consciousness and the soul, something really unexpected started to happen. Instead of pulling me away from my Christian roots, this exploration actually brought me back to the scriptures with new eyes, a different paradigm, a different frame of reference than what I had read them in the past. And as I would read and reread, I would find that there were passages in the Bible that I had read many, many times before. But now they seem to carry a broader and a deeper, more esoteric meaning.
Jeffrey Aylor:These teachings about eternal life. The kingdom of heaven is within us, the unity between God and all creation, and the idea that love is the very essence of the divine. It is the very essence of the divine that dwells in all creation, in each and every person. And these beliefs began to feel more coherent to me, more interconnected, more they resonated with me, much more than they had before. And at the same time, I also started to notice that some of the questions people naturally have about life, about death and the soul, that many of those questions are not always explored very deeply in traditional church settings.
Jeffrey Aylor:That these difficult questions, these more complicated questions and feelings, many times would be somewhat dismissed because people didn't either have an answer or they didn't want to have an answer for some of those questions. Because if they did answer them a certain way, much of the traditional beliefs that they held would fall apart. And then sometimes these topics have been simplified or overlooked, whether on purpose or not, or they're interpreted in ways that align with long standing doctrines and traditions. In other words, the true meaning of the text is shifted to be supporting what this doctrine is teaching, and it's almost explained away in many cases. Yet sometimes those meanings that are true are so obvious, and they're so simple, and I can tell you they're beautiful.
Jeffrey Aylor:For me personally, the exploration of near death experiences opened up space within me, within my consciousness to consider those questions much more fully. Rather than weakening my faith, it actually helped reconcile things that once seemed contradictory. It gave me a much broader understanding of the spiritual teachings that I had grown up with. And as my my exploration into these things continued, another idea began to emerge that I had never really given serious consideration before. It was much dominoes.
Jeffrey Aylor:A domino would fall, and that domino would fall, and it would knock over another domino, and then another domino, and another domino, because I would have to say to myself, well, if that's true, then what about this? What about that? And I would have to pursue that as well. So this this idea I'd not considered before, the idea that the eternal soul, eternal meaning without beginning and without end, the soul is eternal may live more than one human lifetime. The concept of reincarnation had never ever been a part of my upbringing or the teachings that I had received, in the Christian denominations that I grew up in.
Jeffrey Aylor:You know, in fact, like like many people raised in traditional Christian settings, I had always assumed the idea didn't belong within a Christian story at all. But I continued as I continued to study near death experiences and revisiting the scriptures with fresh eyes, I began to notice passages and teachings that certainly seemed to hint at a much larger story of the soul than I'd previously understood. Examples would be the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, which teaches several different lessons about circuits, and the very first circuit that it speaks about is how one generation comes and another generation passes, and it moves generations move in a circuit. You also have the scriptures where Jesus is speaking about John the Baptist who came in the power and the spirit of Elijah. Then there's another story in the Christian scriptures that talks about the blind man who was blind from birth, and the question of the disciples to Jesus was, who sinned?
Jeffrey Aylor:Was it his parents, or was it him that sinned that caused him to be born blind? Well, you have to stop a second and say, wait a minute. How could he have sinned before he born? He was born. That he was born blind.
Jeffrey Aylor:Now Jesus didn't rebuke them when they asked that question. He certainly could have if Jesus didn't think reincarnation or that that gentleman could have lived a life prior to this life that would have created a situation where he may have been born blind at birth. So you can take those and process them on your own. I'm not here to convince anybody or to convince any specific teaching about it, even reincarnation itself. I leave it totally up to you to come to your own conclusions based on your belief.
Jeffrey Aylor:But I I certainly and personally believe the possibility that the soul continues learning and growing across multiple lifetimes, and and it began to make sense of many of the questions that I had once felt were impossible to reconcile. The idea that just because someone passes this human life, that when their soul goes on into that astral world, that next aspect of life, that they're not continuing to learn and to grow and to develop, and in some cases choose to come back and have other experiences that they need to have in order to continue their growth, their learning, and development as they move on this mystical journey to oneness, the return to oneness with God or source. So to me now, instead of life being a single brief moment in eternity, it began to feel much more like a long and beautiful mystical journey of awakening. Now around the same time, not long after Katie passed away, my work required me to travel extensively around the world. In many ways, and if I'm honest, I was running.
Jeffrey Aylor:And I can tell you that you can't run. You can't run from this. You can't run away from the pain and the grief that was enveloping me. It went with me everywhere in every circumstance. Although travel in many ways became a way for me to escape that heavy grief, to be alone.
Jeffrey Aylor:I am an introverted personality anyway. And those quiet spaces where I actually found that she was with me more. She was more a part of my thoughts. You know, before Katie passed, just like with any of you, I'm sure as you go throughout your day, you don't necessarily think of your children every second of every minute of every hour of every day. You're in your work.
Jeffrey Aylor:You're doing things. You're you're you're in whatever space or circumstance you're in, and you're focused on those things, and you're not necessarily thinking about them or anybody else in many cases. But when something like this happens where your child dies, I can tell you, and anyone listening who has had this experience will resonate with the fact that when they pass, they consume every second of every minute of every hour of your day, every thought, and that continues for an extended period of time. I also remember after Katie passed away that I in this research and all this work, I read book after book after book after book, trying to understand what is it that we are now going to be dealing with? What is this experience that we have been thrust into?
Jeffrey Aylor:And there was one book in particular that I read. A lady had lost her son, and she wanted to write a book about this experience, but she didn't want to write the book from the perspective of dealing with a child's death in the early stages, in the time when it's most raw and difficult and painful, but she wanted to interview people who had lost a child, and it had been five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, fifty years since the child passed, to to see and understand what was the experience the parents were having after all the years after. Now I can tell you it's been since 2002. Katie passed away on 08/27/2002, So it'll be twenty four years in August. And when I was reading this book, it became very clear to me.
Jeffrey Aylor:This is not something we're gonna that we're going to get over. This is not something you ever get over. This is not something that you you're going to deal with at the rest of your life. Now it becomes different. I often use an analogy with people that it would be like having one of your limbs torn off, a leg, an arm.
Jeffrey Aylor:You'll heal, potentially heal from that traumatic injury, and you may eventually be able to do many of the things you did before the injury, but you're always going to have to do them different, and it's always going to feel different because you don't have a limb. You don't have this part of your body that you were relying on or that you used to help you go through that experience. So you adapt. You adapt to it. Now the pain reduces.
Jeffrey Aylor:The pain is different. In many cases, you adapt to pain. But you do learn over time how to adjust. But the fact is is that you still don't have that part of you anymore with you. I think the hardest part for a parent that loses a child, unlike someone who loses a limb, is at least people can see that you've lost a limb.
Jeffrey Aylor:And if you're struggling to do something, they will understand why you are struggling because they can see you've got this handicap, this situation where when a parent who loses a child has to make those changes and adaptations to life, people don't necessarily understand it because they can't see. They can't see that wound, they can't see that pain or that loss that's causing you to approach what would be a normal circumstance in many cases very differently. Now, as I did these travels, I moved through a lot of different countries. I experienced many different cultures and languages, And I began to notice something that really challenged the divisions that I had always assumed were real. You know, despite geographical distance, cultural traditions, and outward differences, the people I encountered everywhere shared the same fundamental hopes and emotions.
Jeffrey Aylor:Parents loved their children. People laughed together. They struggled. They hoped. They worked.
Jeffrey Aylor:They dreamed. They cared for one another. And whether I was in a part of the world that was dramatically different based on outward appearance. If a mother or father there had lost a child, it was just as devastating to them as it was to me. I can remember a profound moment.
Jeffrey Aylor:I was working in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and over a middle weekend, I had the opportunity to go out into the city, and I was visiting the Petronas Towers. If you're familiar with Kuala Lumpur, these are the Twin Towers. They're massive skyscrapers connected by a bridge in between. And there is a mall at the base of those towers that I was sitting in just to get out and just to be able to experience the culture and the environment. And I'm watching families, and their kids are misbehaving.
Jeffrey Aylor:And even though they are predominantly a Muslim country, women were dressed fully covered head to toe. They they still chased their kids. They still would get on their children. They they would love their kids. The kids would be annoying, and they would, you know, run back and forth, and they would get in trouble just like any child does, But there was obvious love and concern.
Jeffrey Aylor:They were enjoying life. They were experiencing life. And all the differences that I thought might exist at that point faded into the background. We're not different. We really are not different at the core and the essence of who we are.
Jeffrey Aylor:Slowly, I began to realize that much of that separation we perceive in our minds is not real. Beneath what we perceive to be differences, humanity shares the same spirit, the same source, the same heart. That realization became another turning point for me. The idea of unity was no longer just a a spiritual concept. I had begun to see it lived out in the faces and the lives of people all over the world.
Jeffrey Aylor:In many ways, I feel that Katie had continued to guide my journey. Her life and even her passing opened the questions that led me down this path of discovery. And the deeper I explored those questions, the more I began to see that the divisions we often believe define our world are not the truth about who we are. Beneath them lies something much more profound, a shared humanity, a shared consciousness, and perhaps even a shared spiritual journey that unfolds across time. For a long time, I searched for answers, for explanations.
Jeffrey Aylor:But eventually, I realized that the deeper question was not why did this happen, but how would I respond and live after it happened? I can tell you there were many people and people even today who when they talk to us or they are in a conversation with us and Katie's passing comes up, will say, oh, I just I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you've done this. I don't think I could have done what you've done. And I understand the position they're coming from.
Jeffrey Aylor:I was in that myself before I experienced her passing. But I have to say, what is our alternative? What was our what was our alternative? I can tell you it would have been very easy to just roll up into a ball into the fetal position and just die. I understand depression.
Jeffrey Aylor:I understand trauma. I understand pain and grief. In the time just after Katie passed, my body groaned. It groaned audibly. This it was a it was a it was a noise being made from within my body that my mother, she would say, you're groaning.
Jeffrey Aylor:I hear you groaning. And I couldn't stop it. I couldn't do anything about it. It was just coming out of me, groaning. And I believe that was my soul, my spirit making intercession on my behalf at a time when I didn't know what to say.
Jeffrey Aylor:I did not know what to do. I didn't know how to pray. I didn't know what to think. I was totally consumed, but the spirit within me would groan. It would audibly groan.
Jeffrey Aylor:And my wife and I, as we dealt with these things, very early on, had to make a decision. We decided we could either be destructive in how we handled our grief and our pain, or we could be constructive, and we've chosen, and we chose to be constructive. Thankfully, we've been able as a couple to survive this traumatic experience because I know many don't, and I understand why they don't. I honestly understand because you can't help each other. You're both so broken.
Jeffrey Aylor:You're both so devastated by what you're experiencing, and you had such different experiences with that child and different relationships with that child that what I'm feeling and what she's feeling and what your other children are feeling about the loss is all so different, that you can't help each other. You provide the support the other person needs because you're in so much need yourself. And I know that as you go out and you start seeking others to help, sometimes that's the point where families will splinter and disintegrate, and I'm thankful that we were able to stay connected through that horrible experience. It's still a challenge today, because again, our experiences with Katie were so dramatically different, and our lives are impacted differently as a result of her not being with us here in human form today. But I can tell you she is with us constantly, constantly.
Jeffrey Aylor:We feel her presence with us constantly. We keep her a part of everything we do. We've taught our grandchildren and that have never obviously had the opportunity to meet their aunt Katie about her so that they can feel her, and that they can understand that she's a big part of our life and a big part of their father's life, and you have to consciously make choices to to do this and be constructive as you do. So what began as a father searching for his daughter slowly became a very deep and very personal spiritual journey. Again, one that invited me to reconsider long held beliefs, assumptions, and to explore the possibility that unity, consciousness, eternal life, and the journey of the soul is much bigger, much, much bigger.
Jeffrey Aylor:And I can tell you in many, many ways that search became the turning point in my life. It forced me to look so much deeper into questions, questions that I had only explored casually before, questions about the nature of life and the soul, and the possibility that our existence goes way beyond this physical world. So slowly, very slowly, something within me began to shift. I started to sense that life is far more interconnected and mysterious than I had previously understood. Again, grief didn't disappear.
Jeffrey Aylor:It never does. It never completely will. But over time, I began to see that even in the depth and mist of that loss, there could be growth. There could be compassion and a much deeper appreciation for life itself. Having gone through an experience like that, you now, I believe, have a responsibility to take what you've experienced and have come through to help others who are gonna go through it because you can offer them hope that they will be able to come through that absolutely horrible period just after a child passes.
Jeffrey Aylor:And this is true of grief, period. Whether it's a child, a spouse, any loved one, there's that deep fog of grief that it's difficult to navigate. And if you can be a light to people because you can show them through experience that you can come through this, you will give them hope that they need in order to come through. You know, Katie's life, her passing, they they really are a major part of the catalyst that has led to this work that you're listening to right now. This podcast, the entire awakening heaven on earth platform and project, so much of it is driven by the impact Katie's life has had on me, not just her life, but her life after this life.
Jeffrey Aylor:You know, Katie's human life was just sixteen years long, but the questions her life awakened in me have shaped everything that followed. I can tell you we have two periods in life. There was life before Katie passed, and there's life after Katie passed. Life before Katie passed and life after Katie passed, A pivot point. A turning point.
Jeffrey Aylor:What began as grief gradually became a journey, a search for unity, meaning, a deeper understanding of who we truly are. You know, most of us encounter turning points in life. Sometimes they come through loss, sometimes through unexpected opportunities, sometimes through moments of deep insight that quietly change how we see the world. If you're listening today, you may already know what your turning point was, or perhaps you're still in the middle of it. Now here's a few questions you might reflect on at this point.
Jeffrey Aylor:When has life invited you to see the world differently? Just ponder that for a moment. When has life invited you to see the world differently? What experiences have reshaped your understanding of what matters most? How have difficult moments changed the way you relate to others or to life itself?
Jeffrey Aylor:Turning points are rarely moments we would choose. Yet sometimes they open doors to deeper awareness, compassion, and connection that might not have appeared otherwise. Katie's life continues to inspire the work that Carol, Joel, I are doing through awakening heaven on earth. This includes the Katie Aylor memorial scholarship, which continues her legacy of encouragement and opportunity for young people. Katie had such a big heart.
Jeffrey Aylor:She was such a friend. She loved the underdogs. We believe so strongly that she would have followed in her mother's footsteps as a teacher or as a counselor in school or as a psychologist or a psychiatrist of some sort because she just cared so deeply about people. Her presence is still felt in her family and in the path that's unfolded since her passing. In many ways, her legacy is not only what she was to us during her life, but also what her life continues to awaken in us now.
Jeffrey Aylor:She continues to call us toward deeper love, deeper compassion, deeper unity, and a broader understanding of the sacred journey of the soul. If today's reflection invites you to look more gently at your own turning points, I hope it reminds you that even the most difficult chapters of life can become part of a larger story of growth, connection, and meaning. Thank you for spending this time with me. And with that, the space between continues. As we come to a close, remember that this journey continues in many expressions.
Jeffrey Aylor:This podcast is part of a family of partner podcasts. Awakening heaven on earth. The space between heaven and earth and Living Heaven on Earth are three companion podcasts exploring spiritual awakening from complementary perspectives. Awakening heaven on earth offers the core teachings and mystical reflections on unity, love, and conscious living. The space between creates room for dialogue, reflection, and lived conversation around those teachings.
Jeffrey Aylor:Living heaven on earth focuses on basic spiritual practices that help embody these insights in daily life. Together, they form a unified journey of understanding, experience, and integration. Inviting listeners to remember their connection with the divine, with one another, and with the living world. You can find all of them available on the same podcast streaming platforms wherever you listen. And if music helps carry these teachings deeper into the heart, The Unity.
Jeffrey Aylor:Awakening Heaven on Earth album is available on all major music streaming services as a musical companion to this journey. Wherever you engage, through listening, reflection, conversation, or music. May it gently remind you, you are not separate. You belong to the one life and heaven is already unfolding within you. Until next time.
Jeffrey Aylor:Walk gently, love deeply, and embody heaven on earth.