Last month kept me busy with life and death, with little time to blog.
However, these experiences have enriched me with things to share with you.
Immersed in and surrounded by 800 super-positive business people for a week in Los Angeles, it struck me that for all their positivity, even they stopped short, with the belief that, “everyone has ups and owns,” due to what happens to them and the people they are around.
And there we have it, the happiness lie. (The belief that things, people, or events “make” you happy, and unhappy.)
The shared “pack” mentality, group agreement, mass unconscious belief that this is a real and fundamental truth about experience, and that we need each other to help us out of it, embeds the lie into the psyche, and ensures continued additional unnecessary suffering.
But I know that in truth, nothing and no-one can drag you down, except yourself, with these very thoughts and ideas.
Does that mean that there is never a sad moment for me?
No, they do occasionally arise, like at the internment of my Grandmother’s ashes–but they are fleeting, don’t stick via story or identity, and it is quickly realized that their root and source is love–which immediately transforms the experience into overwhelming love, where and when the tears of love flow yet more.
So what is key here? Mindfulness of the stories that habitually arise, and the time, attention, interest, and especially your power of authority you invest in them.
Because… that which you say is true and real and important will appear to be true and real and important, even if it is untrue, unreal, and unimportant in Truth and Reality.
The less of your powers you give them, the less they will habitually arise, the less you will suffer, the calmer and more subtle your mind will be.
If feeling better or good is not enough incentive, then know that Awakening or Realization can only happen in a quiet, subtle, available mind, not one that is busy spinning the illusory dream.
My Grandmother passed peacefully, surrounded by loving family. Like my father’s passing I was present, and that it was utterly a “non-event” is the best way that I can describe it.
Near death, the out-breath lasts longer and longer until the last one, and my attention was drawn by a particularly long pause.
So I called everyone’s attention, and watched the pulse, and saw the last four.
It was not a loss, just another change, and the end of suffering and pain. Everyone was quiet, and full of love, embraced.
Remember: Not suffering does not mean that you didn’t love, it means you still love; you just haven’t swapped love for the idea of loss.
Death is not the opposite of Life. Birth is. Life has no opposite.
The value in directly experiencing birth and death without shrinking from them is to value Life, moment-to-moment.
Cindy
“I’ll love you until the rivers run still, and the
four winds we know blow away…” were lyrics
in the love song we heard played over and
over at Granny’s as children. We sang it back
for her, before she passed on her 95th birthday!
(Sept 24, 1921-Sept 24, 2016)
We’ll love you beyond that, Gran, because death
is not the opposite of Life; birth is, while Life is eternal.
With gratitude for your loving guidance and presence, Cindy
“Mourning is not the index of true love.
It betrays love of the object, of its shape only.
That is not love. True love is shown by the
certainty that the object of love is in the Self
and that it can never cease.” ~ Ramana Maharshi
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