Because I was curious to see what others would say first, I decided to wait for a while before sharing my belief about what is over the rainbow.

When I was a child I thought that HEAVEN was on the other side of the rainbow. I also thought that when a person died a rainbow appeared somewhere-perhaps not where we could see it, but in another place within that city or country...And that person who had jsut died would use that rainbow as a bridge to walk up through the clouds until tehy arrived at heaven. The rainbow would then dip back down to the ground so that another person could start the walk up to heaven from that direction.

It's funny how some parts of our childhood beliefs stay with us.
I still associate rainbows with my ideas about death, and dying and heaven. However, my basic ideas about heaven itself have changed.

I used to think that heaven was a place in the sky that where God lived and where angels dressed in white robes flew around all the time playing small harps..Thanks to books I have read on on auras and reincarnation and other such subjects, I have very much revised this image of heaven. Another thing that reinforced the ideas that these books provided about heaven was this psychic reading that I experienced when I was in my early twenties.

An acquaintance who I didn't know very well raved about this psychic reader that he had gone to and I decided to make an appointment with this reader. This was the first psychic I had ever gone to and wasn't sure what "a psychic reading" would be like. I thought that the psychic would be some New Age type women dressed in a flowing robe with a turban on her hair..Instead she was the epitome of what I imagined a very well to do White woman would look and dress like.

The woman greeted me in a nicely decorated room that had no incense, dim lights, crystal ball, or spiritual music playing. She then told me that she had to sit quietly for a few minutes to "concentrate her energy".

Then this psychic began the reading by telling me that she saw a man who had just entered the room. She then said that the man was from 'the other side'. She proceeded to describe him to me as a tall, distinquished, bald headed man who was either my father or my grandfather. She also said that the man told her that he had died in great pain. I immediately knew that the psychic was describing my beloved grandfather who was,indeed,THE father figure in my life.

The psychic then said that the man she saw {and I could not see} wanted me to be sure of his identity. He therefore imitated doing different things that I would remember about him-like pretending to take a coin out of his ear, and folding paper and then cutting it out in such a way that there would be a string of dolls holding hands. The psychic also repeated my grandfather's decription of a piano that he had in his parlor that played without anyone touching it..{As a child I thought that was very magical. Now I know there was some kind of paper thingys that you put in somewhere and these player pianos would play music..but I still don't really know how they work}

After he had established his identity, my grandfather then described being in a place of learning located in a grassy area. He tld the psychic that he wanted me to know that he was fine. He also made this "Hooray!" gesture that is performed by putting both fists over one shoulder and then over the next shoulder. In doing so the pyschic wanted me to know that my grandfather was saying that he was pleased with what I was doing and wanted me to keep up the good work.

Obviously I was emotionally moved by these words. And if that had been the end of the psychic reading I would have considered the session to be worth much more than the $20.00 it had cost. But the psychic proceeded to tell me some things that I knew already {like my time of birth. My mother had told me that I was born around 12 o'clock in the morning-this pyschic said that she saw a clock and the hands showed 11:27 PM changing to 11:28PM}. The woman also told me some things that have since come to pass {for instance, she saw a lot of Black babies in the sky smiling down at me..At the time I thought it meant that I was going to have alot of children..Now I think that those babies probably represented the work that I eventually did in adoption as well as the work that I did with homeless pregnant women and new mothers}.

Furthermore, the psychic gave me an explanation for some phobias I had at that time. For example, I always had a fear of heights and I had a recurring dream as a child about "pie face people" chasing me. When I asked the psychic about any of my past lifes, she tells me that she sees this scene of me as an Asian man who is running for my life away from these other Asians who are a different ethnic group than me..But, in my haste to get away from these men, I fell off of a mountain and died.

That psychic reading was such a profound experience for me..Thinking back it's interesting that I never went back to that woman for another reading. I have even forgotten the woman's name...Maybe it was supposed to be a one time thing. But there is no doubt that this psyschic reading reinforced my image of heaven as a place of rest & recuperation & learning for souls before they reincarnated again.

Since I still associate rainbows with heaven, I believe that it would not be off topic to ask others to psot on this thread their ideas about what heaven might look like or be like.

Anyone?