I received a call this morning only to find out that a close family member of mine has been diagnosed with cancer. Patricia and I went off to a quiet café to be with our thoughts, and we discussed how it somehow felt easier to contemplate one’s own death than that of a close loved one, and this surprised us both a little. In thinking more deeply about it and in asking for help to see this differently, the following thoughts came to me. Although it might seem a little direct, maybe even harsh or upsetting, they brought me a great deal of comfort and clarity. I felt I was being asked to take things to another level, and the source of the thoughts felt very kind and understanding. I always express these types of thoughts in the first person though that is not really how they appear in my mind. Basically our question was why, if Love is there for us, does it seem harder to part with some people than with others.
Oneness is that state that calls us unceasingly to remember that we are all the same, all one, and this place of oneness is not physical but entirely spiritual. While we feel attracted to this vast horizon of perfect sameness and tranquillity, a part of us is deeply unhappy with the idea of losing the perception of differences. Why? Because in my world of differences, I feel alive.
The way I keep this world alive in my senses is by disturbing the sublime oneness-horizon with variations and changes. I add to this inner flat countryside with an event that shakes me up, leaving me frightened or ecstatic. And a hillock suddenly appears. A range of low hills manifests when a bodily condition takes over and leaves me on medication for a long time. Then an entire forest, deep and mysterious, emerges when I begin studying a special new field of thought or science. An ocean comes into view, waves rising and crashing on the shore when the stock market becomes the central focus of my life, and the world economy carries me into a vast whirlpool of fear and excitement.
But the most extraordinary and extravagant of all the topographical features in the landscape of my life are the vast and magnificent mountains that soar above all the surrounding flatness, causing all other events and circumstances to pale into relative insignificance. These mountains are my relationships. The people I cherish and hold in my heart and mind create the sense of life that I seek, that I live for. They give it meaning and substance. Without them, life would be flat, dull and hardly worth living. So speaks my individualized self.
When I feel the pain the disappearance a loved one might cause, what I am confronted with is my deep desire, even need, for this person to be vitally important to me. I weave their smile, their laughter, their support, their tears, their kindnesses, their heartaches – everything about them I integrate into my sense of ‘life’. And their passing away would seem to remove a firmament in life as I experience it.
In reality, this other person is not the source of my happiness, or of my inner stability. But this is the way it feels. Can I learn to see that I have a choice?
It is a challenging moment when we face that clear choice – what do I want to be true now? A life that can be altered, shifted and unbalanced under my feet, as the vagaries of health determine who lives and who dies? Or a Life that remains constantly embraced within an eternal Love that knows no change or blemish, no diminishment or lack? This is the choice between a pure and perfect, stable and all-encompassing horizon, and a chaotic and erratic landscape subject to violent earthquakes and destructive volcanoes.
My friends and loved ones are part of the landscape of my life, this is true. I love them, and I will miss them when they are gone. But perhaps I can learn to smooth out the bumps, knowing there is beneath these mountains and hills, these forests and seas, a perfectly calm and serene Ocean. I can rejoin with this Ocean whenever I wish, following the bright star of Jesus back to that place which remains for all of us our true Home, stable and perfect, eternal and kind. That is where we are all indeed joined as One, and not in this ephemeral world that leaves us sad and lacking.
Thanks Bernard: Really wonderful and helpful for me in this moment. I loved this: “I can rejoin with this Ocean whenever I wish, following the bright star of Jesus back to the place which remains for all of us our true Home, stable and perfect, eternal and kind. That is where we are all indeed joined as One, and not in this ephemeral world that leaves us sad and lacking.” Our life in reality is not the different events we all pass through but the experience we have of them, and certainly our experience with the ego in these cases is always sad and leaves us a sense of loneliness and unbearable impotence. It is really beautiful we have now Jesus to teach us there is another way to look at all this and recognize that in truth nothing is happening, that as you say all of us as One remain forever in our true Home. One of the most heartfelt teachings from Jesus that I had was one during a dream in a time that was specially hard for me. I was feeling really bad and guilty because I was feeling a lot of pain and although I practiced forgiveness my pain still remains. And then the beautiful thought, I am not asking you not to feel the pain, I am only asking you to recognize where it comes from, and certainly it does not come from where you believe. In that moment I felt such a relief, he was giving me permission to feel all the pain I wanted, he was not asking me anything I could not give, he was only asking really kindly that, please recognize where does your pain come from. I felt supported as never before and the pain that still remained completely lost interest for me.
All my love, support and big hugs for you and Pat.
Lisi
Bernard, Blessings to you and your family.
This is something that has been coming into my awarness slowly over the last couple months. I will use part of your sentence as a starting place, “…how it felt easier to contemplate one’s own death than that of a close loved one.” For me anyway this is because on the one hand I can be led down the “Death is The End of Suffering Path”. On some level I have always known that this world is hell but before my “Spiritual Quest” began in earnest I was depressed. Passive suicidal was the lable. What got me into the “Quest” was one day my then husband asked me one morning what I wanted to do that day and without warning this spilled out of my mouth ” I want to die and if there is life on the otherside of this and it is just another version of this then I want to die again and again and again until I hit oblivion cause I can’t take the pain of doing this shit anymore and if that is the only way out then so be it.” A couple days later I ended up in a 30 day treatment center. Even so for a very long time I would say that “I am not afraid of death but I am terrified of this shit they call life.”
Fast forward 20 some years. One of the notes taped on my computer so I can see it everyday to help undo the thought that death is an end to suffering ” The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth can be known by all those whom the Kingdom was created and for whom it waits.” T,3.VII.6:11
The ego tries to catch us coming and going on the death thing. RIP;rest in peace. Oh!, so death is where peace is. Said at countless furnerals “They look so peaceful”. “It really is a blessing they aren’t suffering anymore”. All this really is are culturally acceptable platuides to placate the guilt of being envious of the deceased while maintaining the contradiction that life is “sacred” and no “sane ” person is to wish for their or anyone else’s death under any circumstances. So while they are alive it is Terrible Awful to wish it but it’s O.K. to say it after the have “passed” becouse the you are just saying that “god” did the right thing by taking them Home.(and boy was’t it about time he got around to doing that. Hope he don’t wait that long in my case if I’m suffering like that.)ooops did I say that??? (:
Now on to some things that have been coming through and might still be a little fuzzy. I am the writer of the script. And I have scripted a smoke and mirror, dog and pony show illusion that keeps the death guilt trip in place. You and everyone that seems to die before I do sets up a precedence that physical life continues after one small part dies(hey my body survived that body so your body must survive mine) and that the physical is very real. Thus the “past deaths” setup a belief for me that is blantant and seemingly true that when my ‘death” happens that all of you that haven’t “died” before me will continue on in physical life without me. Thus while I am “alive”I can feel guilty about leaving you all behind, worry about whether I have set up my will correctly to provide an easier “life” for my supposed survivors of my death, I’ll have to wait for you to “die” before I can have direct communication with you again (unless you go to or become a really good medium) ect.
The truth is that when I “die’ the curtian falls, the script is done and all of you “survivors” stop acting in that particular play also.
If I have learned the “lessons” of that “play” and removed the blockage to my awareness of Love then I leave the “theater” never to come back again. If not then I pick up the “pen” and write another all over again.
Lisi, I am a very slow typist and you hadn’t posted when I stared typing. I really like the last part. “In that moment I felt such a relief, he was giving me permission to feel all the pain I wanted, he was not asking me anything I could not give, he was only asking really kindly that, please recognize where does your pain come from. I felt supported as never before and the pain that still remained completely lost interest for me.your last part.” especially the “..he was not asking me anything I could not give.”
Gentle, oh so gentle.
Thoughts that move me from Lisi’s pondering:
“I am not asking you not to feel the pain, I am only asking you to recognize where it comes from.”
“He was giving me permission to feel all the pain I wanted, he was not asking me anything I could not give…”
Pam, I really got a lot out of your thoughts. I have to say that I went through a pretty similar phase, though I was in my teens. Seems so long ago, yet like yesterday… Funny, but I’ve just been making contact with some high school friends and they remind me of that period. Interesting how Life and Love, and Jesus, were still present then, even though I didn’t see them. This reminds me… I went to a traditional Protestant high school, and though I was Jewish (by tradition, not religion) I was expected to get up at chapel service and read from the Bible. I started reading the passage that had been selected to me in front of 150 students, and suddenly I felt overcome with something really intense. In fact, in the chosen passage I had to read words that had Jesus spoke (I can’t remember to whom). I felt my voice take on a different quality, there was a presence there with me, and I had to stop myself from crying. By the time I sat down I had no idea what had happened. What was supposed to have been an ordinary, if not silly and looked-down-upon tradition, had become for me a full-blown spiritual experience. I felt that Jesus had been speaking to me, and yet I didn’t even know he existed.
Bernard, that sent chills through me: what a wonderful experience.
I would love to hear other’s stories too.
Pam, thanks so much for your thoughts. I can really relate to them. Before finding the Course I thought so many times death could be a better possibility than this awful life. But then crept the fear of returning to a not so loving god. In fact in my twenties a mad and retaliative god. So I read all sort of phycological and spiritual authors and really read a lot of Krishnamurti´s books, that now I know I did not understand then. The thing that I most want to find was something that could teach me how to deal with fear, because by that time somehow I recognized that everything I felt was fear. From one of his books about fear I read a phrase that accompanied me all my life, but one I did not understand until I found the Course. He says there: “The cessation of all desire sets you free”. In that time I did not know that my basic problem was that I did not who I was. If you are a mind the phrase is very logic, if you think you are a body is not.
Thanks Bernard for your story, such experiences when we did not have the Course proved us we were something more than just flesh and bones, as Jesus says, or at least we could put it in doubt.
Love Lisi
I just remembered something my brother remembered – him beign 8 years older…he told me that he remembered this so clearly: me sitting on the floor in a circle of sun, playing with something within the circle, and talking softly to someone/something.me being under two years old. The atmosphere was filled with God, he said, and only when he told me that did the image fill my mind again – there being nowhere else than this Lightfilled circle-presence, and the sweetness in it was allpermeating.
I love that he picked that up, and gave it back to me some thirty years later, when i really needed it.
Bernard, Lisi, Pam, Nina – beautiful. I am so not alone here.
Two days ago i was resting and humming my ‘default setting’ – “Thank God Is” which I do when i recognise i’m mind wandering and don’t want to, but no apparent foregiveness lessons seem to be in the offing so i just hum with Jesus … and i thought; ‘This will be all that’s left of ‘me’ when it’s all done – I’ll just be this thought in the Mind of God’ … and from somewhere deep in the caverns of ego came an Edward Munch-like scream: ‘Nooooooooo!’ I recognised for an instant how much i don’t believe that being this thought will bring true peace and happiness… and how much i still want to be a separated me, in control of my ‘life’and ‘death’ and gloriously, wonderfully different, unique, special. It feels like to ‘just’ be a thought instead would be a huge sacrifice. And yet … there is no question that this path results in greater and greater peace … and your post Lisi, helped me see more clearly how gently i am led to relinguish this fear … only when i’m ready, no rush, a smidgen at a time … gentle, gentle, gentle.
Al, I always think of being a thought in the mind of God as His/Her wanting companionship, creating the Christ in His on Image out of Love. I think the Course says the only difference between us is, God created us, we didn’t create Him, though some would argue the point. I know you know all of this, but you put me to thinking of being that thought.
Now, did God have all kinds of other creations before us? And, if He did they would become part of us I guess, something we can’t grasp until we remove the blocks to Love. I guess just like what we create with love, that is what stays with us. In my thoughts I look forward to that, because I know what is of God is Love.
But, the transition phase of it all, from what I think I am to what I really am is frightening indeed. There is a hell of a lot of pain I can do without. And not just physical pain, but the pain or hurt to those special people in our lives, our wives or husbands, children significant others. The weird thing is when my daughter Kaitlyn was about 90 pounds and fighting for her life with cancer, I knew if she passed it would be OK for her, but the pain she would leave in her wake would be devastating, and it scared me to death. But, we were blessed with a miracle.
I am scared of dying (though I always tell myself I’m not!) for the same reason. I know the pain it would create, not real, but real enough for those still on the journey without distance. So, it is damned if you do and damned if you don’t sometimes here in the dream. So, I will keep on with forgiveness and hope sometime soon I can accept the Atonement for myself. I hope I didn’t stray too far from the course and its teaching with my rambling.Al,Bernard, Lisi, Pam, Nina – beautiful. “”I am so not alone here. Al imitation (copying) is the sincerest form of flattery.lol
Love you all
Al, that was awesome. Goosebumps stuff. So exactly what goes through my mind at times. And I loved it, the Edward Munch scream! Strangest of all, somewhere in our little pea brains/hearts/minds, we know we really want this non-identity. It is Heaven, it is the only real state of what one could call true happiness, or bliss. I so relate to what you said and the way you put it in the context of “when all this is said and done.” Now, re-looking at what you said, I remember that it IS already done! We are already this non-personal identity the “God is” idea implies. And we don’t even see it. Well, that couldn’t be so bad, could it? I mean, if all this time I have been hanging around trying to make myself different, and all this time “I” have never stopped not-being there, that can’t be so frightening, no? It makes me laugh and chuckle sometimes, how I can be so afraid of something that has already happened so long ago. It reminds me that ever since I was little I had a fear of growing up and becoming an adult. I just always thought of myself as a kid, and looked up with reverence to adults as these mature super-beings. Even when I was in my thirties I was wondering when I would become an adult, if I was there yet, and concluded that I wasn’t. Then I divorced and celebrated my 40th birthday, and still didn’t feel an adult, and was wondering when the day would come. Now I get to wake up at age 46 and I still see I have the same question! But now I can see how funny it is! I’ve been an ‘adult’ already for ages, and that has been okay. Still makes me smile. At 90 I’ll be saying, okay, I think I’m leaving adolescence now. Loved your ‘default’ setting, too. I wonder if living “God is” isn’t like just smelling the flowers and not being aware of smelling the flowers…
Nina, lovely story of when you were young. I wonder how many of us are like that when we are small. Probably lots, and lots.
Lawrence, I would just make a small change to your “damned if you do and damned if you don’t”, and just make that “loved if you do and loved if you don’t. (-: I liked your thoughts.