I just lost my most beloved pet, a cat who was always by my side for the past 5 years, to renal disease, and got over it in about a week. This is due in part to the fact that I still have 6 other animals in the house but it is also due to my metaphysical views, because with prior views I used to hold it would take me like two years to get over something like this.
So I will explain the metaphysical part. I will break it down into "what this is" and "what we are" according to my current view.
1. What this is: This has to do with what the universe/reality is. Metaphysical materialists say only the material world is real, so when your cat dies, you'll never see her again. Metaphysical dualists say the material world is real and there is also an immaterial spirit world, Heaven, which is real, so right now you and the cat are separated but you will be reunited with her when you die.
Those two metaphysical views are incorrect. The correct metaphysical view is metaphysical idealism. There is only an immaterial spirit world, which we cannot observe, but the deceased can. The living are not experiencing a material world. The world we are experiencing is made of information, just as much as your surroundings when you are dreaming are, except that the perception of a common 'real' world is shared by us all and consistent.
2. What we are: at a deep level of reality there exists something we can call, loosely, consciousness itself, knowing itself, awareness itself or observation itself, and that is where all things and beings are one. We are only individuated at a surface lavel.
Here is an analogy. People and animals are like sentient waves on an ocean. So a metaphysical materialist wave would say only the surface (of the ocean) is real. The surface is self-existent and there is nothing under the surface. When a wave crashes into the beach, it is gone forever. A metaphysical dualist wave believes the surface of the ocean has its own existence and could conceivably exist without there being anything underneath if a creator put it in place. But this wave believes there also exists a secondary world below the surface. In this wave's view, when a companion wave crashes into the beach it goes "Below", to be joined when this wave itself crashes into the beach.
But both types of waves are mistaken about their true identity and the nature of their reality. Ultimately, they're not waves, they're the ocean itself. Ultimately, we're not people or cats, we're knowing itself.
The illusion of being an individual does persist past death but from what I have heard, the dead are able to access the interconnected shared being of all things in a way the living aren't. For my cat who died, I don't see her as being a separate being from me who is in Heaven watching me. That idea makes our "separate being-ness" very real, but it is not real. What is actually going on is that both the cat and I are under the impression that we are mammals but she is also very in touch with the interconnected nature of all things since she is dead, whereas I can't see it.
For this, here is another analogy There is a tree growing by a stream and twigs are dipping into the water. In this analogy, the living are like fish under the water. They see each twig as an individual and can't see the tree growing above the surface. The dead are like frogs who have risen and breached the surface - they are still aware of the twiggy individuated aspect of things, but they can see how everything is connected and can look at any part of the tree from their perspective above the water. I believe my cat has access to any bodily sensation or emotion I or anyone else experiences or has experienced or ever will experience (due to the illusory nature of space and time) and just thinking that she has the option to tune into my experience, or maybe is even acutely aware of my experience at all times even more than I am, makes me feel really close to her. Like now in death, we are sharing life in a much more complete way than before when both of us were experiencing the limitations associated with the perception of embodiment.
