Why We’re Really Here: Karma, Grief & The Soul’s Purpose w/ Hans Wilhelm | EP 458
31 Oct 2025 · 63 min
Spiritual teacher Hans Wilhelm discusses karma, reincarnation, and grief with host Brian D Smith. Wilhelm explains that souls come to Earth primarily to undo past-life karma through love and forgiveness, and that grief often stems from unfulfilled expectations rather than actual loss.
Chapters
You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Hey there, everyone. I'm Brian D Smith, and welcome to Grief 2 Growth. And whether this is your first time joining us, you've been with me for a while, I am so glad that you're here. This podcast is a place where we ask the big questions in life. Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? What happens when we die? All those types of things. And most importantly, how do we navigate the challenges of our life with hope and with resilience? And so today's episode is one you're not going to want to miss. My guest is Hans Wilhelm. He's a mystic, a spiritual teacher, and the creator of the wildly popular YouTube series Life Explained. For more than 13 years, Hans has been producing visually engaging, thought-provoking videos that bring the spiritual laws of the universe to life, literally, by drawing them out on the screen. With over 170 short videos watched by more than 20 million viewers, Hines has a gift for simplifying deep metaphysical truths in a way that resonates with seekers of all backgrounds. He's also the author and illustrator of over 200 books for people of all ages, with over 40 million copies sold and translated into 30 languages, including collaborations with Byron Katie. But today, he's not here to talk about his books. His mission is to go deeper, to help us understand the spiritual framework that underlies our lives, particularly when we face loss, when we face grief and questions about death, dying, and the afterlife. So in this conversation, we're going to explore questions like, what is the true purpose of our life here on Earth? How can understanding spiritual laws help us heal from loss? What happens to us after we die? And what role do grief, suicide, and mourning play in our soul's evolution? So whether you're grieving, whether you're spiritually curious, or you're simply looking to make sense of your experiences here on Earth, Hans brings a gentle wisdom and clarity that may just shift your entire perspective. And after this is over, after the episode is over, you're done viewing it, go to grieftogrowth.substack.com to continue the conversation there. And with that, I want to welcome Hans Wilhelm.
Brian, thank you. Thank you for the great introduction. Yeah, we will have talk a lot of interesting stuff. Looking forward to our session together. Lovely to meet you personally. And I admire the work you're doing and helping all those people who suddenly are confronted with something they didn't expect and how to deal with it and very few people are actually prepared to handle situations like this, if at all.
Yeah, well, I'm one of those weird people that have always had these questions. I arrived on the planet about 5 years old going, what is going on here? Why am I here? What is the deal? I know for a lot of us, we don't ask those questions until we're kind of shaken out of the stupor it seems like we've all fallen into. So I know you got these hugely popular videos. But the one that really caught my eye is like, what's our life purpose? Because I think it's really interesting, right? Most of us go through our whole lives and we're like, why am I here? So how can you help us answer that?
Well, I'd just like to mention that also, like yourself, I went through many spiritual paths. And for the last 40 years, I've been very much attached to a spiritual path that was given to us by a woman in Germany. Her name is Gabriele, and you see all the blue books behind me. She has got a huge library in Germany which is called the Sophia Library. And this material, which really resonates resonates with me after having done so many other spiritual paths. But this one works because it's in today's language and it comes from the highest level of, uh, reality. And, uh, it is absolutely ingenious and simple. That's what I'm using for my videos. And in my videos I illustrate basically these laws, the spiritual laws, like here the law of karma, like somebody's hitting someone and it's stored in the soul and the body, in the Akashic Records, in the planets, from where eventually returns in this or future lifetimes. When one sees this, it becomes so much clearer. Mm-hmm. And it is In this search, of course, I find also the answer for me, what is the purpose of my life or purpose for most lives? And Gabriel is very clearly, for the majority of people, we are here on planet Earth to undo our karma, which we have created in past lives. Now, it's not for everybody, but for most of us, because reincarnation is not a myth or whatever, it is a fact. And there's also something what Christ had taught in great detail and which was been taken out of Christ's teaching in the 5th century by Emperor Justinian. So we have reincarnation, which means we have lived many lives before and we will probably live many, several lives after this. And our time here on planet Earth is very limited. Earth is not our home planet. It is a school. It's an amazing school where we can learn in very short time the lessons that we have to learn, like love, compassion, and undoing our karma, which means basically to either expiate the pain we have given others and ourselves,— all through forgiveness and undoing our karma through that. That is our big purpose. And then we have also individual purposes, like we want to learn to love or compassion. But I think the main purpose in my life at any moment is to deal what is right before me in this moment. My main purpose in life is to speak now with Brian D Smith. There's just no other purpose in life for me right now. And if I focus on that one and the next moment and the next moment, I will automatically be guided to always fulfill my purpose. Does it answer your question?
Yeah. And it's really interesting. I love that. Because, you know, we sometimes think of our purpose, like, it's this big thing. It's something that's way off in the future. I love that, like, let's focus on the moment. What can I do right here in this moment? And your purpose, our purpose right now, is to communicate with each other. And as we take those, those small steps that lead to that bigger purpose, if I understand you correctly.
Absolutely. Because when we think about this big purpose, which should be what we dream of, want to become a great inventor or something like this, something big, or we all have a mission that very often comes from our ego. We want to be somebody important. We want to be somebody admired, respected, et cetera, et cetera. So these big plans of purpose very often come from not our highest self. Our highest self is here very humbly trying to do the very best to undo mistakes and help and serve others. That is a very simple but very powerful and not easy to fulfill kind of task, which all of us have. But when we have got these big pictures or big ideas of what we want to be, and, uh, when I achieve this, I want to be famous and so on, that usually comes from our ego. But we can always return back where we are right now. Am I fulfilling my purpose right now by sitting here and scrolling through the computer and trying to avoid something like this, et cetera? Or am I fulfilling doing something purposeful? And there, these are the smallest things. Washing the dishes can be the most important purpose of my life if that is what needs to be done right now.
I love that. I think it's beautiful. Let's talk about the idea of karma, because karma means a lot of things to a lot of people. And you talked about the idea of, I guess, maybe undoing some karma. So tell me what karma means to you. How would you define karma?
My understanding is that we are the children of God. And whatever you imagine God will be, I will not go into this. Everybody has a different image. Let's say that's God, whatever it is, energy, God, Father, whatever it could be. But We are his children, and God is perfection, and God is love, and we are thus love and perfection in our true origin as well. Mm-hmm. Whenever we have deviated from our true essence, which is love, through thinking, acting, speaking, feeling against the law of love, we have basically vibrationally removed ourselves a little bit from divinity. And that is like a shadow we have put on our soul.
Mm-hmm.
The soul shadow, and that is basically the karma. So we have burdened ourselves every time we are not loving, kind, and yeah, not acting against, and reacting against, or speaking against the law of love. And therefore we have removed ourselves from source and we feel lonely, separated, but we have done it ourselves. God hasn't removed itself. God is in us anyway. But we think we have removed ourselves by continuously thinking, speaking, acting, and feeling against the law of love. And so basically karma is all these kind of unlawful, unloving words, actions which we have done, which are, which have to be undone one day because they are there. So how do we undo our karma? So the two things, either we do it through forgiveness, we forgive the person who has hurt us, or we ask for forgiveness for the person who has hurt us. Christ said, "Ah, 70 times 70, we forgive," and so on. It's a very important thing. Forgiveness eliminates the karma. Or if we can't do that, then sometimes we have to expiate the karma, which means it may flow through our body as an illness. It may come as a loss of job, a loss of something painful, a blow of fate. That can be karmic things which are coming back to us from the planets because all the karma that we have uploaded over time is stored in the planetary system. That's where astrology originally comes from. So when these planets move or in a certain constellation or full, —then they download like on a computer the stuff back to us. But they always download it very carefully dosed. We never get too much. It's always in accordance to what can our soul bear at this moment. We may think it's too much, but it's never too much. But it is just carefully calibrated to what we can deal with right now in this lifetime. And there we have to either feel the pain that we have given others, ourselves, or nature, Mother Nature, or we can, through forgiveness, asking for forgiveness, for remorse, can undo this as well. That is basically my understanding of karma. Okay.
And the system that you're talking about, the books that you've studied, the system you've studied, is that— I hear some similarities to Christianity in there. Is this channeled material or where does it come from?
It is channeled material. Like if you— this is one of these books here, for instance, is Christ Himself, the Great Cosmic Teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, His Apostles, Disciples Who Could Understand Them. This is a free teaching, which means there is no organization, there are no teachers, there are no priests. This is material which came for anybody who is interested in it. So you don't have to join anything. Mm-hmm. You just get the books or via, or the CDs or whatever you like if you want to listen it. And that I liked because most other spiritual paths have got some kind of membership or you have to sort of, you buy yourself into higher stages and so on. Uh, this is totally free because the message here is freedom. Freedom, freedom. We want to become free from everything that binds us to this world. This means also become free of any organization and things like this, which sort of try to control us. So this is really the path of freedom. And Christ is, of course, here the center figure as well, and to set us free here. And because he is not the church Christ, which is different, because here he talks about reincarnation, and he is also the Christ who is in us. Spark, and who can help us and comfort us and also can give us healings. And over the many, many years I have used this information and also used it whenever I feel not— felt not well, it was quite amazing how this healing energy immediately penetrates the body if we know how to focus on it. And it can really— it's just— I just have amazing— to me, the proof is in the pudding. I've used this material. See, I've done a lot of other spiritual paths, and they were very interesting, wonderful, but they never really made me change much. Here, for the first time, through the application and the simplicity, I felt I've made really changes in my life.
So you talked about Christianity and you mentioned the fact that a lot of Christians are gonna like hear the word reincarnation and like, no, no, no, that's not Christian. Explain to people why, when that was removed from the Christian teachings.
Well, anybody who's interested in this can see my video on Christ's Reincarnation that goes into great detail about— did speak reincarnation. It was a common belief with many Jews at the time. Christ mentioned Matthew and so on, several questions, what do people say I am? And says you are born different prophets and so on. There are several quotes in the Bible referring it to. Christ spoke about reincarnation indirectly, but never so clearly.. And that was a profound part of the early Christian origin and so on. All the teachings which we have clearly mentioned that they talked about reincarnation. But it was Emperor Justinian in the 5th century who wanted to better control. He considered himself as the ruler of the church. It wasn't the Pope Vigilarius at the time, it was Justinian who thought he was the king and everything. So he ordered to take reincarnation out because he wanted total control over the people. The moment you take out reincarnation and and say the only way to God is through me, through the Catholic Church, you can bind the people. And that was the idea, to bind people. Because with a reincarnation makes you understand, I don't need an organization. I basically have to work on myself and I can free myself with God and with Christ if you choose to. So it was an important thing to control the masses. And that was done in the year 555 on the 8th of December when this was signed as a law that the Catholic Church could no longer speak about reincarnation. And then they had to create all this nonsense. This is the sin or eternal damnation and all this stuff, which is not never mentioned in the Bible. A lot of stuff which was created because now suddenly they could no longer explain where do we come from, why we are here and where we are going, why somebody is rich, why somebody is poor. The only explanation they could give is, oh, it's a mystery of God. And so everything changed. And that's why I could never really believe the teaching of the church because this important element of reincarnation was taken out.
Yeah, I, I, you know, I learned this, um, about 30 years ago, I guess, at this point. I was raised as a Christian and taught to believe the Bible was, you know, perfect, etc. And I started doing some research and I found out, uh, for me it was the idea of eternal damnation. It just never made any sense to me. So I started doing research in that, and I realized for the first 500 years of the church, it's not what the church taught. Right. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. My, my eye-opener was, you know, Edgar Cayce when I, I was 20 and I read the, and for the first time when we had reincarnation, suddenly everything made sense to me. Suddenly understood why my neighbor was rich, poor, was sick. And in moment everything makes sense to me the moment I fully grasp and accepted the law of reincarnation, which Christ has taught and which was taken out. So there are no incidences in life. Everything what happens to us has a purpose. Basically, we are on rewind. Everything what we experience in a way is something that we have sown in a previous lifetime. And basically we are reaping from moment to moment what we have once uploaded into the planet. So when we now go into the streets and we meet somebody who upsets us, who cuts us off in the traffic, somebody gives us a phone call which is very upsetting, et cetera. These are no coincidences. This is all little karmic things which are coming back to us. Mm-hmm. And now we have the opportunity to transform transform them into love, into kindness, through forgiveness and moving on from it. So everything that happens to us is exactly— it doesn't mean that we don't have free will. The free will is how we respond to it. What comes to us, we have also through our free will, misuse of free will initiated. We have acted, spoken against the law of love, karma coming back to us, not as a blow of fate which God gave us, but we ourselves have sown the seed and now it comes to fruition. And suddenly I feel what I've done to someone else in the past. But now it's up to me to again use my free will. What do I do with this negative situation? Do I collapse? Do I cry? Do I feel condemned? Or do I just use the path of love? So it's all in our hand. We are no robots. We have total free will from moment to moment of how to respond to any situation life gives us or we give ourselves, basically.
Yeah. Now you mentioned, you mentioned Christ a few times. Um, and who, I'm gonna ask the question that Jesus asked, right? Who do you say Christ is?
Well, Christ is, uh, Jesus was the, the, the, the human form of the Christ energy who came here as we will call the Son of God, Christ. And he incarnated here on planet Earth. His goal was, his intention was not to be crucified. That was only, uh, came later. But he, it was quite clear that the people at the time were not ready to take his lessons. And there was so much negativity that they had to crucify. And he did not die for our sin. This is another thing what the church has invented. But he did give us this Christ spark through his death. He gave us a spark in every soul in the lower purification spheres, which helps, which we call the Christ spark. And anybody interested, watch my video on the Christ spark, which is this spark which stops the chakras return, revolving backwards, which means undoing creation. We were so low, fallen so low that if the Christ spark wouldn't have been given to all the souls, that would be eventually would be an undoing of creation. So all chakras had to be stopped before they reversed. And that was what Christ's work was by But still, he said, you still have to carry your burden. I help you. You can put your negativity into my light and I will help you and I will burn it off and I will change it from a negative to positive. But the step has to come from you. Not only believing in me doesn't help. You have to do the efforts. You have to forgive someone and ask for forgiveness. That is your step to do. And when you do this, I will do the rest. I will let you have— I will clear as much as I can from your soul burden. But the step is up to us. Plain, only believing in Christ does not bring us anything closer, does not help us to undo our karma. Interesting.
So are you, are you familiar with Swedenborg? Yes. Okay, so what you just said reminded me a lot of what Swedenborg talked about when, when, when Jesus came, that we were at such a low point where like the hells were out of balance with heaven, and that, that Jesus came to kind of reverse that whole thing. So is that something you're familiar with?
Um, in, in that detail, not, no. I've read a lot of Swedenborg. Um, but yeah, this is basically, uh, yeah, I just have it right on my desk. Heaven and Hell. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, uh, that's, that's the fact. We have, um, well, very simply speaking, we were all in the absolute reality, and the Bible then speaks of the fall of angels. This certain number of, of highly evolved, perfect spirit beings decided to make their own creation. And that's where karma came in. We make the own ego. Ego came in, became negativity, negativity, negativity. It became to the point of a dissolution of creation. I don't know how, in what words Swedenborg uses, but yes. And Christ was the one who stopped it. Okay. That's why he is so very, very important and misunderstood. And the churches have totally turned this around to just only believe in Christ and you are saved. But yes, there is, it's interesting that you mentioned that too. Yeah. I'm just making a video on the afterlife of children, and I'm using many books. And also Swedenborg spoke a lot about the children's spheres. Oh, okay. The afterlife. And that's why I'm just having this book here lying. Yeah. Coincident. Yes.
Let's talk about these different spheres or realms. I did watch one of your videos where you talked about the ultimate 7D realm, I think, that we all come from. Yes. And you talk about what we call the fall, which was, I guess, the exercise of free will to say we're going to go do our own thing. So what's your— what's your interpretation of the fall, for example?
Well, you said it already in a few words. Yeah, there was— there were— well, we have got the 7-dimensional reality. It's very difficult for us to grasp. So we speak symbolic things like the demonic energies came and wanted to have their own kind of heaven, create their own heaven. And let's just leave it like this. Gabriele explains it in great detail of how, why it happened. But there were souls in the— there were spirit beings who wanted to have their own kind of kingdom and they left. And they left simply by no longer being loving and no longer being of service, because the highest form of love is service. And they wanted just their own thing, their own thing. And as they removed themselves more and more, they were not aware of it, but they constantly became more and more selfish, selfish, selfish. And they started to fight with each other. And the more they fought with each other, the more they've removed themselves from the absolute reality, from the highest vibration. Because we have to understand, it is all only energy and vibration. There is no real thing anywhere. Nothing is here. It's only vibration. Even God, even the absolute reality, even this glass of water, it's all vibration. Energy is no real substance to it. And you and I are also nothing but vibration. We are speaking about changes of vibration frequency. And that is basically what it is. We have removed ourselves from the highest vibration, which is selfless love, unconditional, unlimited, all-inclusive, and we have become selfish love. And that caused a crystallization to the point of matter where we are now living in. That's in a nutshell. And there are many videos I've explained it in greater detail. When you— when I draw it out, it becomes much, much clearer than when I use my, my limited English. Yeah, the illustrations are beautiful.
They're, they're actually— they are very helpful. Yeah. You know, it's interesting, this idea of, of the fall, um, because I have a good friend who's, who's Jewish, and we discussed this many years ago, and he was saying, well, you know, the, the myth of Adam and Eve, you know, leaving the garden— we talk about that— was really like man just not, not so much a rejection of God, but more like, like when your child leaves the house, we're just going to go out and do our own thing. So is the fall, is it a negative thing, um, as it's been portrayed in some traditions, or is it more of a just going out on your own?
Stay with us, we'll be right back.
You know, one of the hardest things about grief, most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper, thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast, essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it, the community that showed up, people who are doing exactly what you're doing, listening, learning, trying to find their footing, readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become—a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief growth. I hope to see you there.
Well, I think what he is referring to is what a lot of New Age teaching says, that we are incarnating here to planet Earth to experience suffering and pain so that we grow as a soul. I'm sure you heard that. That is not what, what Christ said here. No, says, because, um, that basically means if you follow that thought pattern that we are coming from a source we may call God, who is not perfect, who has created children, imperfect children, who now through trial and error have slowly and through a lot of pain and torture and war and suffering and hunger become a more better, better soul. That is a lot of New Age teaching, and that is not what I can grasp, understand, because that is not love. Mm-hmm. A loving father would not do that. And if my God is perfect, He can only create perfect children. And in my video all about animals, we see how we evolve from the mineral kingdom, etc., to the perfect spirit being. We all have been, or in our essence are, perfect spirit beings. We do not have to do any suffering like a lot of these teachings are. And I think what your friend meant, refers to, is that God wants to experience himself because it's another New Age teaching, because he does— he is not— he is everything, but he isn't aware of how powerful and how wonderful he is. And therefore he creates all these difficult situations to surprise himself. I think that is not the all-knowing God I'm referring to. And I'm— I know. So that is a teaching which comes from the fall region. My understanding is we are perfect beings. Through our own self-will, we have removed ourselves from the perfection. And all we have to do now is to become perfect again. We are inwardly already perfect, but now we have to undo all this garbage. None of us has to suffer, has to go through wars and pain so that God can explore his magnificence. That, I think, does not work for me, and that's not what Christ taught either. No, God doesn't want us to suffer. There is no suffering in the absolute reality. There is no duality. There are no contrasts in the absolute reality. There is not even past and future. There's only the permanent now, which is not easy for us to grasp, but that's where it is. And that is only beauty. Now people say, well, I maybe got bored and that's why they left the spiritual reality. I don't think so, because people forget, when you are highest loving, your main goal will be service. And when you feel and give service like you do it with your work right now,— that is so rewarding. It is so wonderful. You wouldn't want to leave this behind. Being of service is— gives in itself is the reward of being alive. So I think that is the answer, that the highest form of love is not sitting there strumming your harp on a cloud. Yeah. No, it is really you help the other, the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, and so on, and the constant expansion of creation because they're continuously expanding and morphing itself into one new elements of, of new stars and planets and universes. And the spirit beings, the perfect spirit beings are all involved in this continuous expansion of joy, of ecstasy. This is where you come from. This is where I come from. And this is where everybody will eventually go back to. The choice when we want to be there is with everyone individually. Do I want to do it now or do I want to hang around here and follow my ego, my vices, and my pleasures. Yeah. Great answer.
So here we are. We're on Earth, and we're in this, in the muck, I would say. We're in these lower realms. How do we find our way back? Is it something— do we have to go through thousands of lifetimes, or how do we get back?
No. Christ is very distinct. Do not reincarnate. He said that. I mean, if you have to, if you want to, fine. But it's not the purpose, this continuous incarnation, what we have done over thousands of years, and some people have been here a thousand times, that is not the will of divinity. Because Earth is new only as school. It's like you want to go to college again and again and again. Doesn't make sense. And this is college. This is a very unique and intense, amazing school and college. So you come here, you do what you have to do, and then you move on into the higher spheres. Now, many people don't use the time here, and some even get so even more involved in negativity and in the and the temptations of this world, that this may become more difficult for them. But it's not the goal for us to incarnate over and over again. So he makes it very, very clear to us, do make sure that this can be your last lifetime. And Christ and God is here to help you to find out from moment to moment, is your sensing, feeling, speaking, acting really in line? And in line with what? What we have been given for thousands of years, the Ten Commandments, Forgiveness and the Sermon on the Mount, which includes the Golden Rule. This is all what the Blue Book say, nothing else. There is no big secret in it. God is, as I said, ingenious simplicity. The Ten Commandments, everybody knows more or less. Ah, the Sermon on the Mount, some have got an idea, but at least help those who are less fortunate, et cetera. And forgiveness, very important. And the Golden Rule. So it is nothing difficult. It's nothing unknown. We know the laws. It's maybe difficult to follow them when our ego is so strong in the opposite direction. Yeah.
So I've heard people say that it's really interesting, like when we die, like, don't go toward the light because that's a trap. That's a reincarnation trap. What are your thoughts about, like you said, choosing not to reincarnate? Is it just a choice that we get to make, or how does that work?
Well, whenever we die, um, there, then we will be guided by, through our own vibration to the spheres we have to be. Now, I, people, I, I always say, look, when people says, oh, I heard about, no, don't go right into the light, you could reincarnate, you get trapped. I always say to one of the things, look at the person in the video or where you got it. It's YouTube information. Look at the person's, into their eyes, and would you trust that person with your soul or with your money? And would you follow their advice? Because that is not the highest advice. Mm-hmm. Uh, light is there. Trust your own thing. People are always projecting what they fear. It's the fear of the person who brings out this information, right? If you have a close connection to divinity, to Christ, to God, whatever you may name, or even have it to your guardian spirit, if that helps you, um, then trust that more so than some kind YouTuber who has heard it and who wants to get higher rating by spreading more fear. I do not see any danger in this not going into the light. I think that is the personal fear of people who have shared it. And also, when before we incarnate, nobody is here against their own free will. We are shown usually in the pre-birth process, and I have a video on that one, um, how our future life will be. Mm-hmm. So all the difficulties, what will— the ups as well as the positive, the people we will meet. Some of the other souls may reincarnate with us together. So we will be shown more or less Yes, not to the detail, but what are the possibilities in this lifetime? And we all agree to it. Nobody is here against their own consent. So that is it. But we can skip it. There are some souls, and this is absolutely true, it has nothing to do with the white light, but there are some souls who are so in love with this worldly life they've got. They are famous, they are rich, they've got pleasure. They can't wait to continue that life and they skip about this whole spiritual stuff. The next chance they see another birth somewhere, they force themselves to incarnate again. That is possible. Wow. There are quite many, many souls which incarnate as well, very fast, and they usually are landing up in a very sad situation. So follow your inner guidance when you are moving on into the higher spheres. Connect with divinity, with Christ if you can, with God, with the guardian spirit. Watch out for those light beings. They will guide you and let them follow you. But don't be afraid about the white light.
Yeah. Thank you for that. It's really interesting that some of the crazy teachings that are out there and I wanted to just look at the teacher.
Look at the teacher. Then you find out and then ask your soul, do I trust that person? That's all.
Yeah, I think it's really good advice. So people that listen to my podcast, a lot of people are here because they're going through grief. They're going through— they've lost a loved one. They're And that just brings up all the questions we're talking about. Why am I here? Where did they go, etc.? What would you say to someone that's here, that's in grief? How can this be of help to them?
You are the counselor, you know, find the right perfect words for that. I have never not been in that situation. It's very difficult. What my word comes from, more from my understanding than from having gone through it myself, like you have gone through it. So, yeah. Yeah, I'm happy to share that what I know and understand, and hopefully it may be of work for somebody. But I believe that everybody dies right on time, which means whether you needed 3 weeks, 6 years, 60 years, 110 years, everybody knows before we incarnate when we will die. This can be a very big surprise for the surviving family. In many cases, they are not— they don't know that a certain person is dying much earlier than they expected. And of course that causes a major disappointment, major pain and suffering and grieving and mourning because it is against what we expected. We make— do remind us that all our pain and our suffering is basically unfulfilled expectations. If we really look at this, we had an expectation that the person we are with, my partner, my child, should be there all the time. And suddenly it's no longer there. We expected I thought that the job I had is always done. Suddenly I'm given notice. Suddenly I'm getting sick. Whenever we upset, we are basically dealing with unfulfilled expectations. And there was a wonderful book in the '60s came out, it's called, uh, Handbook for Happiness by Ken Keyes. And he says, if you can change the expectation over to preference and the sting is taken out of it. Yeah. If we can say, I would have preferred that my son would have still be alive. I would have preferred my husband by my side. The whole energy shifts in us when we really understand that. And of course it's very difficult to accept that. And there is this grief quite naturally about a loss. A person is gone. We have to adjust to that. That is naturally. But the mourning is something different because the mourning comes often from our head. This is also often related to the life the life that we imagine we could have had still together, the life we should have had together. We imagined where the person or soul is, where I will be. So mourning is something different, and mourning works in our head. And there we may want to eventually come to the conclusion that all mourning is basically about ourselves. It's all about us. Because we don't know where the soul that has gone is. Most likely in a thousand times better place, most healthy, young, vital, alive. But we are thinking about ourselves. We have been left behind. And Christ speaks over and over again, do not mourn, do not mourn if you can, because if you would know how much you hold on to that soul, that soul cannot move on because they feel the suffering of the mourning person. They feel it deeply and they want to say, look, I'm I'm fine. I'm in the spiritual world. I don't have a body, but look, I can dance, I can move, etc. I'm young again. And you are standing here at my grave and you're mourning and mourning. You're feeling sorry for yourself. I understand that. But I can't really move happily on into my future path because I have always to think about you who are left behind and you are suffering so much. I have a wonderful letter on my website, lifeexplained.com, an email which a woman sent me from England, and she said she was very close to her father. And her father, when her father died, she had— she communicated with him all the time. So whenever she wanted to do something, buy a new dress, go out, she always closed her eyes and she could communicate and they spoke with each other. So one day the father said to her, why don't you go to the computer? Computer and you type in— and she says, now go to YouTube and type in the name Hans Wilhelm. And she has of course never heard of him, and she thought it was an opera singer because her father loved opera. So she typed in Hans Wilhelm, and immediately my video on mourning and grieving comes up. Oh wow. And she looked at that, and that was his way of saying, let me go, let me go, I have to do my own life.. And that I think is a very, very important point. And of course, if something happens right now, if somebody just suddenly for the first time faces grieving and mourning, it's difficult to hear. But it is a goal to have, to let go, to understand that this mourning is really about ourselves. So we want to be— and something else which my dear friend Dr. Kübler-Ross said, um, the excessive mourning is very often nothing but undeclared love. Hmm. The person who excessively mourns is somebody who feels he or she has not said I love you to the person who has died, has not verbalized it. Hmm. It's a very important point to realize that. And, uh, and, and I checked it. I made it my, my first book, I Will Always Love You, is based on her teachings. It was a big seller. And it still is. And it is the important message to say, I love you, verbally say it. And it's to tell you another little story. As a German, of course, we do not say I love you to Everett. Yeah. These words are not used in our language. We love everything in America. We love our ice cream. I love the computer. I love you. We say that easily, but we could never do this in Germany. So when I was doing my first book on this subject, I Will Always Love You, I realized that I never said that to my father, to my parents. So at the time, that was before the internet. So I have to do this, otherwise I can't send out the book, tell everybody what to do and I haven't. So I wrote a long letter and somewhere in there with lots of work and thinking, I worked it in telling them I love you, sort of very smart. At least I did it. So I sent it off and then 2 or 3 weeks later I got a reply back from them and says, thank you so much for your letter. Very interesting. But we were not quite sure what you were after. After. But that doesn't matter. I have said it. So when my parents died, I have said it, and that was all which matters. So I think that is another key element, to use our time together to verbalize love. I love you. And realize that the other person is not our possession, whether it's our life partner, our spouse, our child. There is this wonderful— of course you are familiar with— Kahlil Gibran, From the Prophet: "And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, 'Speak to us of children.' And he said, 'Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you. And though they are with you, they yet don't belong to you.'" These are very hard words, of course, it continues that one, but there is truth in this. And when we can make this separation and understand and respect respect the other soul's message. That's good. And also when we learn that the love which we suddenly can't give to that person anymore, we now can give to a new world, to a new universe. So this is what you have done by becoming a so— a grief counselor. You now have used the love and now you share it with lots of other people and your energy. This is a typical positive development of something. You could still sit on your couch and feel sorry for yourself, but you have I can now use that energy and now share it with other people. And I think that is another goal which one wants to consider. Where can I now share my love, which is no longer possible to share with the person here and next to me, maybe to other people in a different way when we— I focus it to someone else.
Well, it's interesting you said you didn't have a lot to say on that. I'm sitting here smiling. That was a fantastic answer. Um, you, you said a lot a lot of very, very big, big things there that help people, I think, can help people in grief. One of the things we always ask— there's several things, so many things you said, you know, it's not fair. I expected more time with them, whether it was in my case, my daughter was 15 when she passed, or I have a friend that just lost her husband suddenly, he was 59. You know, whatever that, that age is, we always feel like it's that unfulfilled expectations. You talked about. When we can really understand that every soul has its own life path. It's not ours. They don't belong to us, whether it's our child, our spouse, our parents, whatever. They don't belong to us. They all have their own life path. It may be 5 minutes, it may be 5 years, it may be 100 years. So that's a very big thing. The other thing that you said I really, I really appreciate is I tell people there are basically two components of grief. We grieve for what we have lost, and we grieve for what we perceive the other person has lost. And I'm like, let go of the grief for what you think they lost. When my daughter passed at 15, her existence did not end. She, she didn't— she's not missing out on going to prom. She's not missing out on getting married. She's not missing out on all the things of this earth. She's living a better existence. So when we understand that the concepts you're talking about we can let go of that part of grief. We don't have to grieve for the person that we've lost. We still grieve for ourselves. The, the grief is for ourselves. It's for that, that expectation that we had. And understand again that our, that our children— I forgot where that came from, but I say that all the time, what you just read, that passage— our children don't come from us, they come through us. Us. They're not our possessions. So I think those, those things can be very helpful to someone in grief. Doesn't take all the pain away right away. It's a— it's taken me 10 years to get to the understanding that I just, you know, explained to you. But I think your words are very, very helpful.
Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. And there's something else Christ spoke very clearly about it, but particularly when a young person dies and so on. And they only— he said, some souls only have to incarnate for very small little soul burden and then they're done. College is over for them, so they move on. And remember, if they would stay on in this lifetime, like you probably would like to, they could in this lifetime find new ways of burdening themselves in this future life. They can go into drugs, whatever it is. This is all taking away from them. They no longer have the, the, how should I say, the temptation —of the earth pulling them back. They are freed from the temptation. So they are actually in a way better off than you and I, because we can continuously— we are still tempted with all this kind of stuff. So it is a blessing for the soul as well to no longer be in this world, because this world is not easy. Of course, you think of all the wonderful things like graduation and things like this and prom and so on. But life is not graduation and prom. For the majority of people, life on on Earth is very, very difficult. We're living here in a relatively pleasant environment here in America, but the rest of the world has got a lot of difficult, uh, lives to go, and life is very, very tough. So, and some people, uh, many souls are better off not having to go through all this pain. So when it dies early, it— if we really see it as a blessing, because in the absolute reality, on the higher spheres, all these things, these heavy things are not there to that degree.
Yeah, that is an excellent point. Another thing I try to point out to people, there's a movie called The Butterfly Effect. It was made many years ago. And in that movie, something bad happens, something this guy doesn't want to happen. And he finds that he can, through journaling, he can go back and change the past. So he says, okay, I didn't want this person to die, so I'm going to go change change it. But every time he changes it, some unintended effect comes up and it ends up being worse. And so I tell people, when our loved one passes, like my daughter at the age of 15, I have this, this vision of her life from then till 85 being perfect. This is the way it would have played out. But my daughter had terrible rheumatoid arthritis, which was, was under control, but I don't know how that might have affected her. I don't know if she would have gotten caught up in, in drugs. You know, we don't know what that person's life would be. So as you said, they're spared the, the difficulties of this earth. Um, this earth is— it's really wild. It's, it's so beautiful and there's so many blessings, but there's also so much pain and suffering. So to, to tell somebody, you know, I, I— people say, well, would you bring your daughter back if you —no, I wouldn't bring her back, you know, because I wouldn't do that to her. So I said, well, that is—
that's where the growth comes from. Yeah. When you reach that point, that is true. I also remember very interested in one of these spiritual teachings, the teacher, I don't know who it was, who says, all right, you think that person didn't die and should live longer and so on. All right, I want you now to look at the person next to you who is a stranger and look at them and says, I said, tell them exactly what in your mind, well, at what age should they die? Hmm. So think about it. We suddenly realize we can't do this. Right. We can't go to someone else and says, you should die at 110 or 55, et cetera. So why are you doing this to your family members? Um, we can't do this. This is not for us. It is totally in the hands of divinity and the soul itself. They have made that agreement prior birth that they will only live that number number of moments here on planet Earth because it's a college. This is not our home. And in college there are some great times, some fun times, but usually it's the good college, the Ivy Leagues, it's hard studying. Yeah, my college was hard.
My degree is in chemical engineering and I tell people I would never go back and do that again. So yeah, we remember the good times, remember the football games, but we don't remember the finals or the exams.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
So I wanted to ask you about suicide. You know, it's something that a lot of us struggle with. You know, we've lost a loved one to suicide. We think there's maybe punishment for someone who takes their life. What are your feelings on suicide?
In the whole universe, there is no punishment. There are only consequences. But there is nobody punished. There is no God punishing them or anybody else. So punishing is this is definitely not possible, but there are only consequences. So suicide has consequences, and suicide means that I will cut off my prearranged time here on planet Earth and make it short, for obvious— for mostly for the reasons because I don't want to cope with what I have to— what I have think I have to cope with right now. And so it's a— to, to, to avoid the difficult situation I'm in. And, um, There are many, many reasons. Now, some suicides I understand are predetermined before, but for the most part it is not. We are cutting it off. We are thinking this burden which comes to me, what is this, my illness or whatever, is too much. I can't handle it. Um, and therefore I think if I don't exist anymore, then this would be over. And this is where a lot of these souls make a big mistake because there is no nonexistence. The moment we do something as drastic as that, we exist on the other side. Late. Mm-hmm. There we suddenly realize, wow, I blew it. I just sort of should have stayed longer in college, then I would have graduated, be over. Now I have to go back to college to learn the lesson again. I have to become a baby again, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I have to redo this whole lesson, which I cut myself off. So I really suffer from that point. Then can also be that some souls, after they realize what they have done and how they have hurt the people be left behind, who can't understand. And they feel other— the people behind always feel awfully guilty. I should have seen this, that he's suicidal. We know it. What could have done? The guilt is enormous of the surviving family members and friends. And when they see this from the other side, how their family members and friends are suffering from their suicide, they feel so guilty, so guilty, so guilty that they don't even see the angels around them to try to help them. And they can remove themselves into a very lonely space and isolated space because of their own negative feeling. They feel so low for them. They don't— they feel they don't deserve the love which still the spiritual beings around them want to give them. And they do stay there until the originally officially, uh, planned date of death happens, and then they are more or less released from that moment. So they can remove themselves into that kind spheres. But there are always helpers on the other side. And it's just not something to do because we basically— what most people want, they just want to sleep for a while, for a few years until this problem is over. But God, life gives us only problems which we all created ourselves in the past, which we can handle. And we are stronger than we think we are because We are not alone. That is the important thing. We always have with us divinity. And we— I leave this as a big name. We can call it God. We can call it Christ, our guardian spirits. We are never ever alone in life. Christ and God is in us. Christ says the kingdom of God is in us. So we have got this powerful thing in us. And when we ask for help from these divine sources, Ah, so much more is possible. And we ask for guidance and rely on that. Um, it comes out of loneliness, feeling isolated, feeling removed from everything. And I, I will not mark it as something negative, but it does have consequences. And if we think through it carefully, it's not worth it, because the moment you're on the other side— and every suicide person says it, it wasn't worth it because you have to redo, you have to relearn the lesson still, and you left so much pain behind of your relatives and your friends and unresolved situations there. So it is something which is very sad. And, but again, also the people who survive, the parents and, and family members of somebody who committed suicide, it's very difficult for them to go through this period. Now that is a real heavy loss because here comes in an imagined guilt very often, which sometimes when the child dies in an accident, you may not have that, but you definitely feel guilty, like you haven't seen the signal, you should have done something and so on. And that's very difficult to overcome. And I don't have any clear answer to that. Uh, but that's something which these souls have to deal with, these human beings left here to deal with. And that can be long, long-lasting pain and suffering. Suffering, which again, only Christ or God can eventually help them if they take that heavy burden to the Christ and divinity in them in a prayer, in a meditation that may help. Does it answer your question, I think? It does.
And I think it's a very compassionate, very thoughtful answer. It's one of those things that we struggle with, that there are some schools of thought that says, well, there must, there has to be punishment. You know, they have to go to have to go to purgatory, have to go to hell or something. And I don't, I don't believe that. But I do believe that there, there could definitely be, as you said, consequences, because it's just, it's just, there is, you're creating so much suffering for the people you've left behind. And we, I believe, and I think you believe that we've planned these lives, we planned some of these difficulties. And, you know, if you, if you bypass them. I don't think anybody's going to send you back, but you're going to say, okay, well, I didn't, I didn't do what I want to do, so let me go do it again. And the last thing I want to do is to do this again. So, um, you know, for people that are in there, you know, as you said, there's always so much help, there's so much spiritual help that we can get. And, um, yeah, so I think that's a very, I think it's a very thoughtful, very compassionate answer to understand that we are never ever alone, ever ever ever ever alone.
Can say it over and over again. That is the key. And the only way is really when we get calm, to— when we take a moment and get calm in ourselves. And, and if it's difficult and you think you're still feeling lonely, speak out loud. Speak with divinity, God, whoever you feel connects closest to you, Christ, and say what you feel. Make that dialogue, or even write it down. Make that dialogue slowly. Let it come, let it flow out, and speak it, about it, what you feel, what you sense, and see whether resonance comes back to you. And I remember one, on one of my, when I was young, one of, I had an emotional low and so on, and then I really didn't know how to deal with a very difficult situation. And I really tried everything to manipulate the situation the way I think it should go, and it didn't work. And finally, I was basically in tears and it says, and suddenly remember the word, I can't do it. Thy will be done. And I meant it. And the moment I said these words, it flooded through me enormous energy, peace, and strength like I have never experienced before. And so instantly. And from there I knew it, everything was fine. I suddenly was totally surrendered. We surrender, not giving up. We surrender over, giving to God. And thy will be done are very powerful words. And when we surrender to these words and mean them and know that from God's side everything will only work for us, everything in life is basically working for us, is here for us, and it doesn't happen to us, then we are relaxing into that tremendous stream of energy which is in us and that surrounds us and wants to help us. Divinity's highest goal is service, is love. They want to serve, to help us, et cetera. Think about what is a guardian spirit. Most of your listeners surely know about it. I mean, guardian spirit is a soul who's dedicated their life for another soul like you and me to be there as guardian, watch over us like a mother over a baby, basically, in many ways. Not that it can protect us from everything or give us everything we want, but keep an eye that more or less our life goes according to our original plan. So there we have a spirit being who dedicates their whole entity, time for us. Mm-hmm. That is love. And the energy is much bigger from Christ, much, much bigger from God. That is the love, divine energy. It is here to serve us, help us to serve everything in nature, everything around this earth.
With. Awesome, awesome. Or for, for, excuse me, Hans, for people that are just discovering your work, you've got so, so much out there. How would you, how would you suggest someone get started to, to go through your catalog?
What I would say, just go to my website, lifeexplained.com, or go to my YouTube channel there, because both are the same videos but in a different order. And then you just click on the videos and then just look Forget it. You, your inner guidance will show you which is a video for you. May it be on animals, may it be on death, may it be on forgiveness, may it be on the law of cause and effect, whatever the, the subject is, your inner soul will guide you to the right video. So the step number one, go to the websites either on the YouTube or lifeexpand.com and let your inner guidance touch on that video you, which you think you would like to see right now, and let that speak to you. And if it works for you, fine. If it doesn't work, it's also fine. I have zero interest in convincing anybody about the truth of what I believe. That is my belief. I merely share it, and I will not try to convince anybody about this one. I do not have a need to missionize around here. I just want to share it, and I think this works for me. If it works for you, great. If it doesn't work for you, it's great too. Yeah, I love that.
I love that. So, um, is there anything that you would like to have spoken about today that, that I didn't ask you?
No, I think, Brian, you did great with your question and so on. And, uh, yeah, we touch on very important stuff. But yeah, the message is that we are never alone. And I think if we also want to come into a more positive space in our mind, I always feel the number one is to feel gratitude, to really think about, well, what am I grateful for? I have a body still. I have got here my computer, I've got a glass of water, I've got food in the fridge, I've got a roof over the head, I've got clothes on. Many billions of people don't have that. Yes, I am very grateful for that. And feel that gratefulness, and out of gratefulness comes more and more. Gratefulness is one of the most important energy to bring us back to who we truly are, because we are very— we are the children of God, and God gives us continuously, but we don't see all the gifts around us. We hardly acknowledge —and we sit here and acknowledge the immense gifts, which can—material gifts like the computer, like whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Uh, it just makes us aware that we are much closer to divinity than we ever thought, because we are surrounded by gifts, our body included. Every cell of our body is a gift, and every friend and every person in our life is a gift. And we are never alone, even if we do not have friends. We are never alone. Ever.
Yeah, I think that is a fantastic way to wrap up. So thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for sharing what you share. Remind people, it's lifeexplained.com, where they can find you. And it's Hans Wilhelm. Thank you so much, Hans.
Thank you, Brian. I wish you all the best. Thank you so much. Have a great show.
Hi there, I'm really excited to tell you about my latest ebook. It's 4 Lessons That You Can Learn From a Near-Death Experience Without Going Through All the Trouble of Dying to Learn them. I've been studying NDEs for several years now. I am completely convinced that not only are they 100% real, but that there's some very universal wisdom that we can get from the near-death experience. And I've distilled that down in this book into 4 short lessons. And I've also given you all the reasons why I believe that NDEs are absolutely real. So go to www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons to pick it up for free free. www.grief2growth.com/NDElessons. I hope you enjoy it.
More from Brian


John Promised He Would Come Through in Music. Then Marcie Heard Him. with Marcie Dean | EP 499


Healing After Suicide Loss: Breaking the Silence That Keeps Survivors Stuck | Jayne Madigan EP |


Empath Energy Protection: How to Stop Carrying Everyone Else's Pain | Lisa Campion


Remembering PMH Atwater: The Near-Death Experience Pioneer Who Died Three Times | EP 496






