Re-posted: On death

Le bon mort

 

My dearest Baroness;

You are truly a wondrous joy to wake up to! And you need not worry.  I am as healthy as a horse.  When I was operated on my entire team of doctors was pretty much convinced of my immanent demise.  Except for the chief of staff and my surgeon, who didn’t believe it for a minute.   

During that time I was fathoms deep within a mythical drama and more concerned with the business at hand than with anything as utterly superfluous as what was going on all around me—  The business at hand was dying.  And having done it once, I can say with the absolute certitude and conviction of direct experience that I am even less afraid of going through it again than I was then. 

Indeed, dying is very much a part of life.  You deal with it like you deal with anything else that happens to you. Overall, I am decidedly proud of myself for how I handled it.  I was dying extremely well, and with consummate grace.  It was a powerful, peaceful and profoundly beautiful experience.  I went into it with surrender, lucidity, awareness and without regrets.  I had no concerns, physical, mental, emotional or spiritual.  I was in a state of absolute concentration.  The process engaged me completely.  I made out my will, selected an executor for my estate, and comforted my beautiful little circle of family and friends who had disconsolately gathered around me.

 

In those days I did a life review.  I looked back upon my life and counted it fulfilled.  I had lived a good life and was altogether pleased with how it had all turned out for me.  My life had been rich with tremendous blessings and with deeply lived experiences.  Nothing had been left undone.  My life had not only been beautiful but perfect down to the last detail.  I was completely unafraid.  Dying was an inseparable part of that life that I had been given to live.  It was in no way a termination, nor yet a transition, but simply a continuation of my life, although at an intensity of spiritual focus impossible to capture in words.   

I was given to surrender to my life.  I was given to embrace it completely and in a state of radical trust.  I was given to realize that I had done what I had set out to do—what I had been put on earth to accomplish.  I was at peace.  I new that I was loved—unconditionally—and that by the very process of dying itself.  And I saw that it (death) was truly an angel and that I was resting in her arms, enfolded by her lovely wings…protected and completely safe.

And then I died. I had talked it over with the nurses, and with my parents:  I would only accept palliative care.  And I would die at home.  And but as you said, my angel had other ideas.  I had made myself a promise years ago and was about to make good on it. 

  
Well, what can I say?  Dying is not something you ever get over.  Those people that have actually died only to return, and I am now one of them, live with this experience for the rest of their lives, even should they forget everything else.  Not everyone has a classical NDE, of course.  And by classical I mean an experience of dying which generally begins with an egress from the physical body into the environs of a long, dark tunnel at the terminal end of which is perceived to exist a beautiful, golden light.   


As you no doubt know yourself from the literature, it is reputedly better than any Hallmark card, what with rainbows and angels and or Jesus, spirit guides, relatives, a life review, pearly gates, poopless pets, bad music, flowery fields, Greek architecture, golden cities, friendly aliens, pink panda bears, devas, quartz crystals, burbling brooks, apple trees or whatever else.

 Not for me.  I had none of that.  Indeed, I would have instantly dismissed all such window-dressing as outright morphine induced hallucinations.  Which only goes to prove that you get what you pay for.  I did not go anywhere.  There was no tunnel either.  As far as I know, Suzie, I did not die into my astral body at all.  In fact, I had no bodily experience whatsoever, let alone the memory of ever having had a body to begin with.   It was very much like going into narcosis.   There was no transition of any kind.  I was in my hospital bed.  

 Then I wasn’t there at all, in that hospital bed in downtown Phoenix, nor had I ever been there since before time began.  Instead, I was acutely aware of myself as being within a psychological space of literally infinite extent yet of intensely concentrated awareness throughout, and although there were no objects within this space, neither could I say that it was any more empty than it was full. The terms simply did not apply. 

 The space did not, however, contain itself. Of that much I was certain, at the time, although I now no longer have even the slightest ghost of a notion as to what that actually meant to me.  Light there was, to be sure, which is to say that it was not dark.  The space itself was light and if I had to give it a color I would say light blue, although the coloration of the space was more the idea of color than any color 

What held my undivided attention was my immediate relationship to this space.  Within it I felt completely and exquisitely safe.  That, and I knew and understood myself to be absolutely and unconditionally free--not only free of pain, worry, concern or care, but free of even the very concept of freedom itself. The sense of sheer exhilaration that this engendered…the sense of ecstatic omnipotence…was nothing short of exquisite.   

 Being completely above and beyond the biochemical soup of the mind-stream, not so much as a single trace of human thought could disturbed my awareness of the absolute soundlessness.  I did not think.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that within the infinite expanse of myself I apprehended thought from the inside.  At any rate, not so much as a single conceptual truth held even the slightest validity.
  

I knew this without knowing.  In other words, I had no memory whatever of a state of consciousness wherein there could be experienced that which we call cognition, let alone conceptual truth.  And yet,  I was well aware of my actual condition, namely that I was dead, although this was of little interest to me for some reason.  The potent immediacy and clarity of my awareness held me enthralled.  

 I experienced myself as embedded within this beautiful space as though I were a cell deep within an organism. I experienced myself as distinct from this space, and yet I was inseparable from it in ways I could not even begin to describe.  I was supported by the space, which was and yet was not myself, and I could say that terms such as benevolence or malevolence simply did not apply to it (or to my individuality as I then experienced it).  It understood feelings abstractly, much as we would understand a mathematical formula if we could ever get to the essence of numbers themselves. 

As regards death…from the standpoint of consciousness (not from the standpoint of consciousness expressing itself as a particular physical organism)  I can only say that it (the infinite space) understood death in much the same way as we ourselves, generally, can be said to understand such biological processes as digestion and elimination.  In other words, we take such things for granted and don’t give such profound mysteries a second thought so long as said mysterious processes are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

Whether I was going to live or die, or rather, as to whether or not I would live again or remain dead was a matter of complete indifference to the consciousness within which I swam.  That was, evidently my own business. Besides, as far as the light was concerned, the actual state and condition of my biological expression was a mere technicality, unlike my consciousness, which was a deciding factor throughout the experience, but not in any way that I could ever understand let alone translate into so crude an invention as language.  At any rate, the space decided that the illness that had taken my life had served its purpose and that I was now well.  I mean this literally.

There was no time element involved, let alone a reversal of the condition—whatever it may have been-- that had killed me. The trajectory of the illness was, quite simply, stopped at a point prior to my decision (to accept this one particular death as definitive for myself). And I do mean, simply. There was nothing in the least bit portentous let alone dramatic or spiritual about what was, for the Space, as basic and elementary a mechanical operation as breathing is to us.  And yet, there was nothing impersonal about my return either. 

The unfathomably immense awareness, as well as the intimate presence of the Space within which I found myself, would not let any harm come to me—ever. It had my best interests at heart, if such a phraseology could even be applied to it in the first place.  The space was immutably supportive of me in every conceivable way, although, if pressed, I would have to say that it was not focused on my life specifically--was in fact only as aware of my existence as I am of the continuity of my dreaming self while not actually dreaming.

I wonder if all of this sounds rather bland and boring to you!? Nothing could be further from the truth though. Dying was about the least boring thing I have ever done, and I only wish I could dictate notes on the entire process the next time I begin to undergo it. So much is lost.  So many nuances of the experience escape us.   And but then, there was my resurrection, which was actually no such thing, because the very word itself implies a staged process from one condition or state of being toward another.  This did not happen.  

 I was dead.  I was not dead. I was gravely ill.  I was not.  Just like that.  For all I know I simply altered my focus of intent, and nothing more.  At any rate, it is completely beyond the capacity of the English language to describe simultaneity.  My intent was to be conscious within, and as, that particular physical body with which I was then associated both spatial and chronologically. With the intent, the actuality thereof.  I could as well have created for myself a duplicate body as re-enter my old one.  In fact, the non-experience of coming back to life was exactly like that of dying. If there had been a transition between being alive and being quite dead then I missed it.   

There was, and of this I am certain, no discontinuity in my consciousness, let alone in my awareness.  In other words, the appearance of demise is an appearance only.  There seems to be a cessation of life.  Naturally, the body ceases responding to stimulation of any kind, but this I now know from personal experience—there is no lapse in awareness for the deceased. Hyper-lucidity would be more to the point.  There is, however, a trickling down of cognitions and perceptions—not unlike after-images, or echoes—as the experience is partially assimilated into another frame of reference.
 

Well, I will not insist upon having died.  On the other hand, there is the unshakable certitude regarding the veracity of the event itself.  There is something about dying that is profoundly convincing, hmm?  Nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing, will ever convince you that you didn’t go where you actually went.  Indeed, it is far easier to doubt in ones own existence than it is to doubt the possibility of the continuity of consciousness after the death of the physical body once you have actually gone and bought the tee-shirt, if not the farm, so to speak only to return. 

Qualitatively, the state of consciousness of the recently deceased is as definitive and as distinctive as being hit by a bus.   It’s like Zen though. No matter how you try, you cannot describe it.  Not like this stops you from trying though.  See, we are so fine-tuned to the particular qualities of consciousness characterized by that strange attractor of that continuum referred to as human life that we are as aware of any alterations in it as we are aware of any deviations in that matrix constituting species recognition.   

Being dead is as different from being alive as being awake is from dreaming, and as dreaming itself is from induced hallucinations, and as these are from trance vision, and as visions are from sitting on a cactus whistling to the wind.  Despite my having been on morphine at the time, and hallucinating like it were going out of fashion, I was not hallucinating when my heart stopped beating, nor was I hallucinating when it began to beat again some time later.  As I said, I can’t prove that.  Proof is in the pudding.  

And where does this leave us?    That you makes me deliriously happy.

All my love and hugs and prayers and kisses,

 

Miss....

Listening to  Leonard Cohen just does something to the soul- for my soul anyway. It is such a wonderful feeling to hear his music; to hear his words wash over me like a soft wave bringing back so many ancient memories. Perhaps it reminds me of ages past, of lives lived, before-the good, the bad and the ugly as we navigate back to our source.

At times I feel so alone, yet I know I am not- just at times like this for a brief moment  I feel such a sense of loss, the feeling does not stay long, but it is certainly present this evening. It is like standing in quicksand at times, and the questions keep nagging at me-though I know that I  know and understand the answers. My soul understands but tonight my heart certainly does not. Hard to fight back the tears as my mind wanders along the path of my life. I so miss the past, I so miss home but  above all I so miss us.

Just musing

Today I took a long look at myself and had a serious conversation with myself about life; which I have to say has been sitting for sometime on my mind. Life, time, the minutes are so fleeing-moment by moment our lives seem to tick down and what do we have left? One forever questions everything. However the bottom line is that only the memories remain which form us. Be it real or illusionary, it always real to the mind for it knows no difference between "thinking" it or "doing" it. We often live within pages of books and feel more at home there than in the actual so called "present", for there is no such thing really, for all flow into each other-past, present and future.  So on this note I started to unravel my true reality.

How lucky, how blessed, how special my life has been I have come to realize. I have been to many wondrous places, been among so many pages and have lived a precious life; - for simply one reason only- I have been truly loved. Not many can say this with heart, soul and head, for often one may confuse love with infatuation or simply the physical manifestation of the actual act. That is absolutely not it. Love just "IS"- the  purpose of it has yet to unfold in an other non-linear reality which we are not privy to now. But one simply has to have faith in love which equates to God of which we are a tiny fractal of. If we accept this reality, then loss, sadness, fear is dispelled and one finds true happiness-or as perhaps Buddha would say" non attachment" or "nirvana" or perhaps "enlightenment"- I think it is self realization.

It is well known that every seven years we are totally renewed in every possible way- each cell every molecule and each atom re-groups. We become an entire new being-thus it has been with me, but with a special twist when real love is involved it becomes the "reason of being". In this space of time one becomes completely the other and this is the reason why things are where they are now- at a complete standstill. The term :"Coming in and out of your life"  does not apply, for we only come in, and stay in-and this is the purpose of existence. Sounds very odd, but if one looks hard into one`s soul  truly with unconditional love the answer is very easy to see. So-do you see what that first seven years have done? Do you understand? Do you comprehend its importance? It is the very answer to our existence.

Reflection on talent

I have a few wonderful friends who write, I know two poets and a number of people who are -writers. They all take their craft very seriously, whether they are up for the Pulitzer, Nobel Prize for Literature or simply for the sake of writing their life, heart and soul purpose that is expressed in their words. For them it`s a need like breathing; a choice between life and death as one put it. Sadly, most of them never get published, nor recognition for their hard work for numerous reasons-often not because they not good, but because they are at the wrong place at the wrong time.

One of my poet friends- who is an exceptionally talented poet expressed his deep frustration at being acknowledged by simply a "like " on Face Book and his delight when a person says a few kind word, or even criticism about his work  - he said that he needs nothing except to know that people are reading his work; no adulation, praise or fees are necessary. Yet he writes with the pen of an angel.

This is the fate of most writers as competition is fierce, bloody in a  dog eat dog world; and most are very tender spirits and are not up to the battle- and they have a hard time even putting bread on the table. This is not a reflection upon their talents, but upon society that seldom sees what needs to be seen; especially appreciate beauty in various forms of expression; especially in words. This has been like this forever regarding all kinds of art. Most great artists never sold one piece of their art, and posthumously they are sold for multi millions of dollars.

Sad reflection upon humanity and as to what we hold dear in the world- for it is the poets and writers they are the keepers and the story tellers of the human spirit,-they see with different eyes; without them we would  not exist  for through them come the message of our ancestors -their lives, loves and story of life itself. Sadly, they are greatly devalued, and sadly often they die in deep sadness, desperation, filled with regrets and  feelings of unfulfilled lives. Yet-they are the exceptional souls that see what the average human being fails to see; so then what is their talent?- a blessing or curse or  both?

The River

 This is "Duffin`s Creek"- your river.

Synchronicity works in strange ways, perhaps we create it or we live in parallel universes-all of us. You called me "River". Remember? I guess because of Leonard`s song .....now I see this beautiful river daily, and it is an extension of me. I see it from my living-room sitting in my armchair looking though the glass sliding doors - just about 40 steps to its mossy bank. This is my very own place-I even have a huge fireplace and a great bedroom. The place totally still and calm even during the day-only the ticking of my clock breaks the silence. You would love it. No, you would adore it as I do. You would sit on the river bank and just write, create, bring forth your deepest thoughts, dreams and passions;  become the prayer itself that rises up to God. This river would be your muse once more, as I was. The forest in the background, the silence, the beauty, the peace the fragrance of the crisp air would transform your spirit. The grandeur of nature revealed, the grand creation of God manifesting as beauty-even now with the bare trees it is an awesome sight to behold as the sun dances upon the water, it reminds me of liquid gold as it flows in silence.  It is like living in an other world: a magical world of beauty and impermanence which is ever unfolding and changing before my eyes. It embraces me entirely; heart and soul and body. Yes- nothing stays the same.

Lately being so down and all, I failed to realize how blessed I am for this gracious gift- I think you dreamt this place up for me- you with your magical alchemy. When I saw it for the first time, my heart was filled with joy and happiness as I had this vision of sitting on the bank and reading all your letters, thinking just of us. No, I haven`t as of yet. Actually a few days ago I had this urge to let you go,  I was going to let the pages flow down stream - page by page, like those Japanese paper  tiny boats they send of with messages  into the unknown; but I thought maybe somebody would discover our secret and our heart. I could never allow anyone to read our words-to steal them; they are sacred in a way- and there are thousands of pages literally. This river  flows into Lake Ontario, which is about  2 miles down stream, and it would have been full of our thoughts, secrets and dreams. Now, I am glad I didn`t-for I would now live with eternal regrets and sorrow of the loss of your beautiful words to me. Thank you my heart.
 

The answer

NOTE TO YOU from your OTHER SELF <<<<<
Did we not exist before in the annals of time? Were you not my Adam and I your Eve?

Out of the shadows

Time and time again we as humans cannot escape the lure of darkness, of the the shadows that circumscribe our lives- no matter whom we are, escape from it is futile. One simply has to plough through it; often this is in the form of deep sadness, depression, fear and tremendous anxiety. Generally we emerge from its clutches, but I think the end result is that it wins the battle for none of us gets out of this life alive. The battle is hard and at times the balance between light and dark is a blood sport almost as most often light loses, and it is hard to regain it once more.

This time I have emerged once more from the darkness victorious, as I was totally enveloped within its clutches -the past few 3 months have been one of the darkest places that I have ever encountered and visited, I just wanted so very much to leave and escape to a safe place, as I felt my life was useless, meaningless, worthless and completely futile. I cannot tell you why, or the reason or the lesson I have to learn from it; that is still unclear, but I perhaps my mission is not over yet. I am still not where I have to be, but at least I am in the shadow not the darkness any more.

I know you are in the same place at this moment, I feel your pain, your sorrow flowing from your heart- for you have been very quite many weeks now, so I know that darkness reigns also in your life; lost, struggling for air to survive. As we know, we lead parallel lives, we are so connected that it is impossible even to imagine. It reminds me-(us) of those photons that the physicists have discovered that work in tandem- through quantum entanglement, behave similarly and do the same thing, even when they are in a different galaxy-there seems to be this invisible connection that which we yet do not fully understand which is between us; where no distance exists. I suppose we are in simple terms-one spark of light or photon that has been split searching for very self.  We have been so very blessed that we have found each other.  Yes we have.Thus, we are the very embodiment of those very photons of which physics speaks of.

Death for us-you and I, is often a daily preoccupation, perhaps because we consider life as an illusion, as a dream; thus often the thoughts of the real world has strong lures and a deep want to return home once more- to be together, to be one, to be united,  to be in a place whence we came from, - back to our origin within God.

But for the time being- today is a good day, and maybe tomorrow is even better; finally I am able to pray again, which is a great gift and grace, which lately I seemed to have lost; my soul was heavy, empty and ached with some great loss that I was unable to explain- but now I understand. Now I realize it was my disconnect from God -and this condensed the sadness, the depression, the pain and the feeling of the  loss.

Praying for you sweetheart- always; and you`re always on my mind. I miss you so very much, yet you are always with me.