Recently a beloved family member made his transition. We comforted each other for our loss; some of us also voiced our concern for the one who had passed on.
We the survivors -- not yet face to face with the reality of our own transition -- think of the next life as a misty shadow of this one. We fret that those who make transition will be deprived of the things and the souls that they are leaving, and will find on the other side only the ghostly remnants of those who have gone before them.
I suspect that such pity is misplaced. I would go so far as to say that those who have gone before us must pity our narrow vision of what lies ahead (or, indeed, exists just beyond our perception).
I believe that the truth awaiting us all is that it is this world that is a shadow, this existence that is an illusion. It is said we are spiritual beings having a human experience. We will undoubtedly return from this experience enriched -- why else would we have sought it? But I believe we will also be grateful to have shed the shackles of our bodies, the limits of our senses and our three dimensions, and the phantom demon of earthly time.
Only the mind fears death. The mind and its co-dependent, the body, are unable to imagine an existence beyond this material universe. The mind fears extinction; and yet, as it is only a construct of the body, it is already unreality founded upon unreality. The spirit must welcome the passing of the mind and body, for they stand between spirit and genuine awareness. How strenuously the saints and swamis, buddhas, krishnas and Christs must labor to overcome the restraint of mind and body and to achieve liberation and power. How effortlessly must the spirit soar, what depth and intensity of joy it must experience, once those bonds are loosed.
One thing that is certain is that the world we experience now is illusory. Not just the science of spirit, but also physical science, has established that fact. We see solidity where there is mostly emptiness; matter where there is only energy; separateness where there is only the underlying unity of the universal spirit, the Unified Field. We organize the world around us into the appearance of discrete objects because of the limitations of our senses. How can we believe that they are more than convenient icons that will vanish -- or rather, whose artificiality will be exposed -- once those limitations are transcended?
So, while I felt deep sympathy for the physical suffering that accompanied our loved one's transition, and I will mourn his passing for my sake and others', I do not pity him. He has done what he came here to do; it is now time for him to reawaken from the shadowy dream he shared with us awhile. When we too have accomplished our purpose in this life, may we have the wisdom to know it is our time to return to closer communion with the loving warmth of Spirit that is genuine Life. Then may we also have the strength to release our clinging hold on materiality, and fall trustingly into the loving, welcoming, comforting embrace of God.
We the survivors -- not yet face to face with the reality of our own transition -- think of the next life as a misty shadow of this one. We fret that those who make transition will be deprived of the things and the souls that they are leaving, and will find on the other side only the ghostly remnants of those who have gone before them.
I suspect that such pity is misplaced. I would go so far as to say that those who have gone before us must pity our narrow vision of what lies ahead (or, indeed, exists just beyond our perception).
I believe that the truth awaiting us all is that it is this world that is a shadow, this existence that is an illusion. It is said we are spiritual beings having a human experience. We will undoubtedly return from this experience enriched -- why else would we have sought it? But I believe we will also be grateful to have shed the shackles of our bodies, the limits of our senses and our three dimensions, and the phantom demon of earthly time.
Only the mind fears death. The mind and its co-dependent, the body, are unable to imagine an existence beyond this material universe. The mind fears extinction; and yet, as it is only a construct of the body, it is already unreality founded upon unreality. The spirit must welcome the passing of the mind and body, for they stand between spirit and genuine awareness. How strenuously the saints and swamis, buddhas, krishnas and Christs must labor to overcome the restraint of mind and body and to achieve liberation and power. How effortlessly must the spirit soar, what depth and intensity of joy it must experience, once those bonds are loosed.
One thing that is certain is that the world we experience now is illusory. Not just the science of spirit, but also physical science, has established that fact. We see solidity where there is mostly emptiness; matter where there is only energy; separateness where there is only the underlying unity of the universal spirit, the Unified Field. We organize the world around us into the appearance of discrete objects because of the limitations of our senses. How can we believe that they are more than convenient icons that will vanish -- or rather, whose artificiality will be exposed -- once those limitations are transcended?
So, while I felt deep sympathy for the physical suffering that accompanied our loved one's transition, and I will mourn his passing for my sake and others', I do not pity him. He has done what he came here to do; it is now time for him to reawaken from the shadowy dream he shared with us awhile. When we too have accomplished our purpose in this life, may we have the wisdom to know it is our time to return to closer communion with the loving warmth of Spirit that is genuine Life. Then may we also have the strength to release our clinging hold on materiality, and fall trustingly into the loving, welcoming, comforting embrace of God.
2 comments:
To Anonymous:
I respect your wishes and will not post your comment on "Transition" publicly. Thank you for sharing your experience. Grief and mourning are inescapable in the human experience. Separation is painful at all levels, including that of the soul. Buddhism teaches that suffering can be prevented by renouncing attachments and the ego. How does this apply to the loss of a loved one? Is this saying that love is an attachment that leads inevitably to suffering? I don't think so. I believe that love and attachment are different things and that love can exist without attachment. Attachment arises from the ego in various ways, such the ego's need for validation and its fear of death. When a loved one dies, the ego suffers from the loss of support and the reminder of its own mortality. The soul mourns the loss of physical connection also, but can recover by realizing over time that the truest connections, on a spiritual level, cannot be broken.
Another reason death is such a shock is that we live most of our lives in a state of egoic denial, expecting that our circumstances will never change. It is not necessary for us to wait until a death triggers our acute awareness of the transitory nature of physical forms to begin to understand the hollowness of this attitude. We can begin now to learn to embrace our friends and family not as the three-dimensional images we see before us, but as their full multi-dimensional spiritual selves. We can cherish not only their physical presence but their entire evolution throughout the history of past and future time: the time before they took this form, their brief passage through this existence, and their transition to another state. This will help us understand that we do not possess them, but merely share the Universe with them, and to take delight in this aspect of closeness in full knowledge that it will pass like all other forms, including our own.
The last saying of the Buddha
https://www.facebook.com/groups/brianweissplr/permalink/10153665051238122/
Post a Comment