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Make yourself at home. Put your feet up. Grab your favorite beverage and prepare to enjoy the reads.
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Showing posts with label beliefs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beliefs. Show all posts

Saturday

If You Could See Me Now

Perhaps there is nothing supernatural about death.
Perhaps there is.

Some believe that when it is over, it is over. The body dies, there is nobody home.

Some believe that the soul or spirit of a person leaves the body and moves on to another place. Heaven, or the next life, or some ghostly realm or into the ether as molecules, or ???

Obviously, we don't have all the answers. For me, it comes down to personal choice of what I want to believe, regardless of what someone else tells me that I should believe based on their interpretations.

Found a website some time ago where a woman wrote a letter or poem to her sister. It is a Christian oriented site and it is beautifully done. The song accompanying it is, "If You Could See Me Now" by Kim Noblett, and the lyrics are the first part of the web page. The second part has a letter written to the caregiver of the woman who died (I think).

I like the part that says:

"Speak often to me, for I am just a whisper away and I will hear and answer you."


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Dedicated to three beloved people who passed away last month, and their bereaved families.

A Change of Mind

A dear friend died recently and it hit me right between the eyes that my attitude about our customs surrounding death might be necessary. I realized I needed to re-think my attitude about the whole concept of how we handle death in our culture. Because of the long distance between us, I was unable to attend any get together with others regarding the death of my friend. I felt alone in my grief.

I'm sure that my bereft loneliness could have increased, except for the fact that the internet connected many of us who loved this person. We were able to share our bereavement in a social network. I saw wonderful comments about my friend, I learned how others experienced him in their lives. I saw another side of him, and I smiled. I watched a slide show presented by his dearest loved one, pictures I had never seen before. Pictures that showed my friend in happy times with his friends, including me, and in beautiful scenery he had once enjoyed.

I ranted not too long ago about death and funerals, about how some cultures celebrate death, how our culture treats it differently: death is a sad, bad thing, to be avoided, to be made more acceptable by making things pretty. I ranted that I wanted my death to be celebrated, that I didn't want flowers and you better give me flowers now, not when I'm dead.

Because of the death of this dear friend so close to the timing of my rant, I have had a revelation which has given me a different opinion, nearly a full turn around on the subject.

It doesn't seem so unacceptable to me anymore. I can now truly say, with all my heart, to the family and others who loved my friend, "I'm sorry for your loss. Please accept my condolences."

Rest in Peace, my dear friend. I shall miss you immensely, though I believe from the depths of me you are just a whisper away.

Negative Positive Polarity

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Negative

I dislike that word immensely when it is used to suggest that it is not acceptable. We do more harm to ourselves by putting that connotation upon our thoughts and actions.

Sickness, struggles and dying are a natural part of life. If we call that negative, then we are negating ourselves  and all of humanity for experiencing them.

It is okay to say that cancer sucks.

It's okay to say the pain (physical as well as mental) is unbearable.

It's okay to say, "I'm afraid".

It's okay to say, it is time to call hospice.

It's okay to say the truth of what you are feeling without any shame, remorse or guilt. When other people judge us as being too negative about our cancer experience because we aren't fighting hard enough, or succeeding in being healed, they don't know what they're talking about, even if they are our nearest and dearest beloved one.

The worst thing anyone ever said to me during the times when I was barely hanging on, was "If only you believe it, you will be healed!" Not only was it unkind, but damaging.

It made me question whether I had a right to survive, because maybe, I was not trying hard enough, not doing it right, not keeping myself positive, not praying hard enough.

When I see people I care about struggle with these concepts I cringe. Dealing with the diagnosis, and bearing the treatments is enough for us to experience the totally of our humanity.


When we are in the pit of despair, it is okay to say it out loud. "I am in the pit of despair."

"I don't know what else to do."

"I'm not giving up. I'm just facing reality."

Keeping the "negative" feelings stifled is like a cancer in itself.

Shedding myself of these beliefs gave me the right to live whatever life I was to have in freedom. I was released from worrying about other people's judgment on how I was coping with my cancer, and relieved of the guilt I felt that somehow I deserved the cancer, that somehow I wasn't doing things right. That I was wrong to my core.

Once I accepted it's okay for me to voice my personal feelings, first to myself, then to others, whether they agreed or not, that heavy cloud of self-doubt disappeared. Accepting my real feelings, understanding them as a natural part of life, just like falling in love and giving birth, the sun shining and rain falling from the sky is what helped me to cast off the concept of judging myself for what I was experiencing.

I have had four people in my personal life, who have dealt with cancer in the past few years. One of them died. She fought for her life valiantly, and she was very good at expressing her emotions, whether anyone thought she was being negative or not.

And I daresay, anyone who could possibly believe that one dies of cancer because of expressing one's true feelings will one day understand the error of their judgment, if they should happen to be diagnosed themselves.

I like this definition of Negative:

Electrical polarity (positive and negative) is present in every electrical circuit. Electrons flow from the negative pole to the positive pole. In a direct current (DC) circuit, one pole is always negative, the other pole is always positive and the electrons flow in one direction only. 

Both are needed for the circuit to be complete, to be whole, to flow.


Those who attain perfect wisdom are forever inspired by the conviction that the infinitely varied forms of this world, in all their relativity, far from being a hindrance and a dangerous distraction to the spiritual path, are really a healing medicine.

Why? Because by the very fact that they are interdependent on each other and therefore have no separate self, they express the mystery and the energy of all-embracing love. Not just the illumined wise ones but every single being in the interconnected world is a dweller in the boundless infinity of love.

-Prajnaparmita
From "Buddha Speaks,"
edited by Anne Bancroft, 2000.