Friday, December 31, 2010
Fear of Death
Here it is, the last day of the calendar year. If humans are going to mark the progress of time, it seems to me that we should use planetary events as our guide. Therefore, I prefer to think of the winter solstice as being the dividing day between old and new year and not midnight between December 31 and January 01.
I am presently reading through Joel S. Goldsmith's book, Beyond Words and Thoughts. It is available for exorbitent amounts of money from Amazon.ca sellers. I found my copy in a wonderful Victoria bookshop called Russell Books and it was extremely affordable being less than $5. Russell Books is on Fort Street and is one of the places I visit whenever I am downtown in Victoria. They sell used and new books and carry a huge selection of metaphysical, spiritual, and new age books. Anyway, it turns out that Beyond Words and Thoughts is the perfect read for me at the moment as it addresses some of the spiritual issues I am wrestling with: a good bit of the book is about surrendering to the universe which is something I am not always good at and need to improve upon.
Today's reading is about the fear of death and overcoming it; how even those of us who think we are not afraid of death or say we are not afraid of death, actually are. Many years ago, I had a dream of another past life. What was so interesting about this dream, despite the fear I experienced during the dream, was that it took place in the final hours before I was killed and continued for a short time as I experienced the first few moments of death from that life. In this dream, I was a young man living in England, and based on my dress, it took place about five centuries ago. I knew I was to be executed the following day for something I never did. I spent my final night experiencing a gamut of emotions and thoughts ranging from terror to disbelief, to hope, and back to terror. At one point, I became curious and logical about death, realizing that it happens to everybody eventually and this caused me to wonder what it would be like. Just before I died, I was filled with choking grief because I suddenly realized that there were all sorts of experiences I was looking forward to having and now I would not be able to have them: an important lesson that I have tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to apply to this life; finding time amongst my duties for activities I am passionate about.
Right after I died, I found myself floating in the air in a state of such peace that there are no words to describe it. Imagine being totally free of all emotion and thought. At one point, I had the idea to look at my dead body, but I had no care for it. I couldn't even remember the name that people called me by when I was attached to my earth body. It was many years post-dream before I finally understood just how necessary and influential the human body is when it comes to experiencing emotions: according to the experience in this dream, once I was no longer connected to a physical body, I was unable to feel fear or love and I certainly didn't care about anything. I am certain that the emotional vacuum that attended this experience and the lack of a physical body were the reasons why I felt so at peace. I think I now understand why people become addicted: it is an attempt to recreate what it feels like to be free of the physical body.
Even though I have had this dream and believe that it revealed a truth to me, and have had several OBEs that were accompanied with the same experience of freedom and lack of any emotional feeling, I occasionally fear death. I suppose that the fear is more about dying before I feel ready to go as I am convinced that if I were truly suffering, I would be thrilled to get out of here. However, I cannot imagine using suicide as a solution to a problem as I don't think it solves anything and could even set one back a bit in one's evolution towards enlightenment. This is probably a lesson I learned in a past life and I believe that if somebody really wants to commit suicide, they are entitled to so that they can learn that it is counterproductive. As I work with ideas of non-duality, meditate, and figure out which aspect of me is the eternal part, I am beginning to sense a division between something about me and my ego or fictitious self and I am sure that as this evolves, I will overcome any fear I have of death and attachment to the body and life on Earth.
I guess that this reading from Beyond Words and Thoughts is appropriate for today as some people would say that this is the death of an old year. How phoenix-like and cyclical.
Namaste
I am presently reading through Joel S. Goldsmith's book, Beyond Words and Thoughts. It is available for exorbitent amounts of money from Amazon.ca sellers. I found my copy in a wonderful Victoria bookshop called Russell Books and it was extremely affordable being less than $5. Russell Books is on Fort Street and is one of the places I visit whenever I am downtown in Victoria. They sell used and new books and carry a huge selection of metaphysical, spiritual, and new age books. Anyway, it turns out that Beyond Words and Thoughts is the perfect read for me at the moment as it addresses some of the spiritual issues I am wrestling with: a good bit of the book is about surrendering to the universe which is something I am not always good at and need to improve upon.
Today's reading is about the fear of death and overcoming it; how even those of us who think we are not afraid of death or say we are not afraid of death, actually are. Many years ago, I had a dream of another past life. What was so interesting about this dream, despite the fear I experienced during the dream, was that it took place in the final hours before I was killed and continued for a short time as I experienced the first few moments of death from that life. In this dream, I was a young man living in England, and based on my dress, it took place about five centuries ago. I knew I was to be executed the following day for something I never did. I spent my final night experiencing a gamut of emotions and thoughts ranging from terror to disbelief, to hope, and back to terror. At one point, I became curious and logical about death, realizing that it happens to everybody eventually and this caused me to wonder what it would be like. Just before I died, I was filled with choking grief because I suddenly realized that there were all sorts of experiences I was looking forward to having and now I would not be able to have them: an important lesson that I have tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to apply to this life; finding time amongst my duties for activities I am passionate about.
Right after I died, I found myself floating in the air in a state of such peace that there are no words to describe it. Imagine being totally free of all emotion and thought. At one point, I had the idea to look at my dead body, but I had no care for it. I couldn't even remember the name that people called me by when I was attached to my earth body. It was many years post-dream before I finally understood just how necessary and influential the human body is when it comes to experiencing emotions: according to the experience in this dream, once I was no longer connected to a physical body, I was unable to feel fear or love and I certainly didn't care about anything. I am certain that the emotional vacuum that attended this experience and the lack of a physical body were the reasons why I felt so at peace. I think I now understand why people become addicted: it is an attempt to recreate what it feels like to be free of the physical body.
Even though I have had this dream and believe that it revealed a truth to me, and have had several OBEs that were accompanied with the same experience of freedom and lack of any emotional feeling, I occasionally fear death. I suppose that the fear is more about dying before I feel ready to go as I am convinced that if I were truly suffering, I would be thrilled to get out of here. However, I cannot imagine using suicide as a solution to a problem as I don't think it solves anything and could even set one back a bit in one's evolution towards enlightenment. This is probably a lesson I learned in a past life and I believe that if somebody really wants to commit suicide, they are entitled to so that they can learn that it is counterproductive. As I work with ideas of non-duality, meditate, and figure out which aspect of me is the eternal part, I am beginning to sense a division between something about me and my ego or fictitious self and I am sure that as this evolves, I will overcome any fear I have of death and attachment to the body and life on Earth.
I guess that this reading from Beyond Words and Thoughts is appropriate for today as some people would say that this is the death of an old year. How phoenix-like and cyclical.
Namaste
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Spirituality, Infancy to Youth
This is my first post on this new blog that I have just created. To celebrate, my eighteen-month-old calico cat Shanti just arrived and opened the cupboard in my end table which she does very well and I have no idea how she does it, and is now settling down to sleep on my knitting projects. Whenever I am doing something important, she appears and hangs out close to me. My eight-and-a-half-year-old Pomeranian, Sadie, is sleeping on the couch next to me. My adult son is sitting at the other end of the couch enjoying "Castle."
It is 30 December 2010 and we are in the midst of a cold snap: the woodstove is managing to keep my elderly bungalow comfortably warm, but I found it necessary to place a blanket, rolled up and held like a sausage with rubber bands, at the base of the front door to keep a cold draft from invading my home. This rolled blanket is a twill gamp I wove on my Louet David: I used a turquoise Harrisville wool yarn in the warp and natural Harrisville wool yarn for the weft.
I plan to use my blog as a vehicle for exploring my metaphysical and spiritual adventure and development. I have been actively involved in spiritual discoveries and studies for most of my life.My parents came from England, each to an uncle living in the Victoria area, and met at a Theosophical meeting in Vancouver. By then, they were both vegetarian.
My spiritual development probably started when I was very small as even at the age of two I loved nature and gardens and thought that there might be fairies in them. By the time I was three, I was able to go into the garden daily throughout the spring and report back to my mother when I first sighted the new shoots of daffodils. At that time, we lived on the banks of Fuller Lake in Chemainus. I loved being outside in the garden, hanging out with our white cat and West Highland Terrier called Misty. I particularly remember helping my parents plant runner bean seeds in the garden, rowing with my father on the lake and being fascinated by small fish swimming beside the boat, and climbing a Yew tree at the front of the house. We didn't have TV, this was the 1950s, but apparently I could sing bits of Beethoven's sixth symphony.
Also, I had a repeated dream of being a very old scrawny emaciated man with brown skin, sitting on a branch by a river in a very hot part of the world, cicadas or something similar buzzing loudly all around me, and waiting to die. Every morning, when I was about two or three, I woke during this dream. How does a very young white girl living in the northwest coast of Canada where it is cool and damp know about brown skinned old men in hot steamy jungles with cicadas buzzing loudly all around him? I believe this was a past life, and have recently learned a little about how Hindu men prefer to go about dying. I will reveal this later
When I was seven, I started demanding to be taken to Sunday School. My mother complied by introducing me to the Unitarian Church in Duncan. When I was twleve, my parents took my sister and me to Camp Indralaya, a Theosophical camp, on Orcas Island. We returned there the following year, and I didn't make it back there until the summer of 2009.
When I was about fourteen, I joined a Chemainus group that studied Huna and learned about using positive thinking to create and/or manifest and heal. The Abraham Hicks/Secret stuff sounds similar, but during my readings of this other material, I didn't come across anything that suggested one be so positive that one adopt the attitude that whatever one is trying to manifest is already a fait accompli. In this Chemainus group, Huna was mostly used for healing others as well as studying its philosophy and techniques. One of the group had other psychic abilities, mediumship really, and we were occasionally visited by a ghost who some of us could see and who used to come and stand in the circle with us when we were attempting to send healing to somebody. At this time, and during some psychic development exercises, I realized that I might be capable of intuition. I have since learned that although I don't see ghosts -- I prefer to think of them as spirits -- I feel them and might occasionally be able to communicate with them. However and although mediumship is interesting, it is not something that I am motivated to develop, at least not at this time. From this Huna group I took the philosophy that I live in a great big universe that is quite capable of taking care of me and I have to learn to get out of the way and allow it to do its thing. I am still trying to learn how to do this -- I think. Or maybe the universe (10,000 unseen helping hands or 10,000 HH) has its way with me despite whatever I do or think. I am still trying to decide if this is the case, but have a sneaking hunch it is.
Namaste
It is 30 December 2010 and we are in the midst of a cold snap: the woodstove is managing to keep my elderly bungalow comfortably warm, but I found it necessary to place a blanket, rolled up and held like a sausage with rubber bands, at the base of the front door to keep a cold draft from invading my home. This rolled blanket is a twill gamp I wove on my Louet David: I used a turquoise Harrisville wool yarn in the warp and natural Harrisville wool yarn for the weft.
I plan to use my blog as a vehicle for exploring my metaphysical and spiritual adventure and development. I have been actively involved in spiritual discoveries and studies for most of my life.My parents came from England, each to an uncle living in the Victoria area, and met at a Theosophical meeting in Vancouver. By then, they were both vegetarian.
My spiritual development probably started when I was very small as even at the age of two I loved nature and gardens and thought that there might be fairies in them. By the time I was three, I was able to go into the garden daily throughout the spring and report back to my mother when I first sighted the new shoots of daffodils. At that time, we lived on the banks of Fuller Lake in Chemainus. I loved being outside in the garden, hanging out with our white cat and West Highland Terrier called Misty. I particularly remember helping my parents plant runner bean seeds in the garden, rowing with my father on the lake and being fascinated by small fish swimming beside the boat, and climbing a Yew tree at the front of the house. We didn't have TV, this was the 1950s, but apparently I could sing bits of Beethoven's sixth symphony.
Also, I had a repeated dream of being a very old scrawny emaciated man with brown skin, sitting on a branch by a river in a very hot part of the world, cicadas or something similar buzzing loudly all around me, and waiting to die. Every morning, when I was about two or three, I woke during this dream. How does a very young white girl living in the northwest coast of Canada where it is cool and damp know about brown skinned old men in hot steamy jungles with cicadas buzzing loudly all around him? I believe this was a past life, and have recently learned a little about how Hindu men prefer to go about dying. I will reveal this later
When I was seven, I started demanding to be taken to Sunday School. My mother complied by introducing me to the Unitarian Church in Duncan. When I was twleve, my parents took my sister and me to Camp Indralaya, a Theosophical camp, on Orcas Island. We returned there the following year, and I didn't make it back there until the summer of 2009.
When I was about fourteen, I joined a Chemainus group that studied Huna and learned about using positive thinking to create and/or manifest and heal. The Abraham Hicks/Secret stuff sounds similar, but during my readings of this other material, I didn't come across anything that suggested one be so positive that one adopt the attitude that whatever one is trying to manifest is already a fait accompli. In this Chemainus group, Huna was mostly used for healing others as well as studying its philosophy and techniques. One of the group had other psychic abilities, mediumship really, and we were occasionally visited by a ghost who some of us could see and who used to come and stand in the circle with us when we were attempting to send healing to somebody. At this time, and during some psychic development exercises, I realized that I might be capable of intuition. I have since learned that although I don't see ghosts -- I prefer to think of them as spirits -- I feel them and might occasionally be able to communicate with them. However and although mediumship is interesting, it is not something that I am motivated to develop, at least not at this time. From this Huna group I took the philosophy that I live in a great big universe that is quite capable of taking care of me and I have to learn to get out of the way and allow it to do its thing. I am still trying to learn how to do this -- I think. Or maybe the universe (10,000 unseen helping hands or 10,000 HH) has its way with me despite whatever I do or think. I am still trying to decide if this is the case, but have a sneaking hunch it is.
Namaste
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