Originally Posted by mac

How you see spirits is not wrong because it's how you think of them - but it's not how I understand them. The subject is one which took me months or years to properly understand, not because it's difficult but because there is so much to the overall picture that without it, that picture is confusingly incomplete.

Let's try this. Think of your physical body with an energy source animating everything that keeps it alive and working - call that your 'spirit' but, for simplicity, think of it as looking just like you when you were or will be in your mid 20s. Your spirit doesn't get old like your body. Eventually that body is worn out, gets broken or whatever and you die - or rather your body does. That leaves your spirit free of the overcoat it wore in this dimension and free to return whence it came. I'm keeping this as simple as I can.

After death we're free to return as I say above. Folks often call it heaven and they might think that some go to hell. Those two notions are a huge topic but to keep it simple, our spirits are free and will head off somewhere. That somewhere isn't so much away in space somewhere as being very, very close but our dimensions don't interfere with each other. another huge topic.

So....we / they don't leave the vicinity but we don't see or interact with what we left behind. Talking in terms of near or far don't really apply as they can't be measured in the way we measure distance.

We may "roam" until we're settled and comfortable to what has happened when we've died. We may roam because we choose to do that. Some may roam because they've temporarily lost their way...

It's hard for me to make it simpler.