Diagnosed Mortal #7
This post is about how we avoid darkness and what that aversion and prejudice costs us in terms of our dying with some sense of continuity, dignity and grace.
I'm certain that to some the above picture is going to elicit a certain amount of discomfort. That is an honest reaction. There is not much that supports embracing what is old, let alone what might be dead in our culture. In fact, we have a lot invested in vilifying what is dark and beyond the parameters of our daily designs as they are promoted as unsafe to us via social and spiritual acculturation and marketing.
Unsafe. This word should be alarming to us because one really needs to consider who is deciding the rules in this and respond accordingly. Often the dictators of what is safe and what is not safe for everyone else are going to be people with a very self-serving agenda that requires our cooperation in this. There needs to be education and discernment employed for a person to decide what their boundaries and choices are. In our current awkward state of social flux, there is not a whole lot of either being deployed in many matters of judgment.
Here is where we find a deep chasm when we die. If darkness and death are not to be recognized as being real, where is all of our time and experiences of our beloved or hated life headed? Some are happy with he thought of their death being nothing more than the flipping of a house, and that is fine. However, some of us inquiring types; we sticking-our-nosey-noses- into-possibilities types, don't believe this for a second. It is too contrary to the dynamic of life as we have lived it thus far.
Looking into this chasm as empty is as heart rendering as seeing it full....because seeing it full means that we have not done well by - that is, we haven't recognized and honored - those who have died before us. We have forgotten them and now we face the same fate. We become "a loss". What if they were around in our entire time of troubles? What if they were waiting to be asked to help and no one called them forth? What if we are, after dying, no longer utilized as a support ourselves...and that is an actual possibility?
...I have to die a little
Between each murderous thought
And when I'm finished thinking,
I have to die a lot...
Almost Like the Blues, Leonard Cohen
Our souls are energy and when energy is allowed to flow it can be received. If it is arrested or not recognized as valuable or important, it is blocked. I am an American and acculturated into a Judeo-Christian mindset...not even an educated one because, I've no doubt over the course of the last 2000 years, these types of issues have been addressed in these doctrines. My orientation is to "Christian Lite" and it frames good and evil on very easy terms designed for Sunday school and Disneyland consumption and mostly left at that. These ideologies are not complicated by deeper thought on the matter - and I go into this back in 2017 in this audio file - when we are up to our last breath we can find ourselves ill prepared for being forever forgotten by never taking the time to honor or even recognize the spirits of our ancestors, guides, angels, and benefic beings who always did what they could for us. Boom. Hard fall, that, before the final curtain...
This essay was written for the series Diagnosed Mortal, on January 6, 2017. Thanks for listening.
Music Selection: The title of this BlogCast is in reference to the lyric in this song. This song is in a tight rotation in my swimming playlist. I'm playing it here because every time I hear it, I think of my ancestors and all of that which I wear as skin, sinew, DNA and bone that I have inherited. I think of all of my lives I'm carrying and of how much help I receive, how terribly difficult it is to be a decent human being when there is so much terrifying hate in the world to navigate. I'm thankful. It is my intention to represent my ancestors well and bring us all healing that can be carried forward.
Here is Leonard in an almost cobalt blue flame...almost sky, almost water...almost here with us...
~For the curious: this Blogpost explains my motivation and intention for this series of 20 essays in the Diagnosed Mortal series~