My colleagues and I have interviewed hundreds of Near-Death Experiencers and we all say the same thing. We were not upset to lose our body and this incarnation once we realized that we were still who we are and that the “thing” we were leaving behind was painful, cumbersome and inhibiting. There was often a sense of “Oh! So that one’s over! Now I can get some rest while I heal and start again anew.”
If our death was not sudden, if there was sufficient time to realize that we were dying, then, yes, it often was painful detaching from the people we love. But once we had left our bodies, we were not so upset about leaving. Many of us reported being joyful. We felt peace. Many of us became ecstatic as we moved toward the Light.
Our problems began when we had to return to the physical plane. We liked leaving our toxic pain or egos behind and coming home to our Self/Soul; we felt real again and we felt the connection to our Higher Self and God. We liked more fully experiencing who we really are — our Sacred Person. Once we were back here on Earth in our body, however, we had to struggle because our loved ones and our society wanted us to resume our old roles, which meant putting our egos back on or being our false self.
Sometimes, when people are dying, this mechanism of dropping the ego and being real begins long before the dying process is complete. Those of us assisting them have an easy time because all we need to do is be real. Being real invites our attention to focus on the Divine Energy that is really orchestrating everything, and we can release into the dance of life and death. We become aware of the cycle that the Eastern religions have always referred to: birth-life-death — learning, resting, healing — birth-life-death. Souls come in and Souls go out. The ego and the body die, but we — our Essence that we here term our Soul or True Self — continues our journey of growth and transformation. Physics confirms this in the first law of thermodynamics, which in part says that energy can be converted from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.
Birth is an experience of celebration. Death can be, too. I am not trying to get your hopes up about what it is like to die. My book, Final Passage, is realistically written, containing some stories about people who never transformed to anything higher. At the same time, however, it also contains stories of what is possible when Spirit transforms suffering. When we are being real we share our Truth. Being real and sharing our Truth “flips” our consciousness into a deeper dimension that is Spiritual, where suffering is only what is happening to the body, not to us. Suffering is about fearing our pain. When we make room for Spirit, we stop fearing and the suffering dissolves.
The stages of birth-life-death cycle are beautifully designed to occur at exactly the right time with the assistance of God’s Divine Energy. Each one of us creates or designs our timing so that it is not one minute before or one minute after the appropriate moment. Our ego can do none of this. Our Soul/True Self, in concert with our Higher Self and with God, is creating our timetable. Our ego is the victim of our dying. Ego is the pain of trying to hold on. Our Soul can orchestrate our death with grace.
Our Soul’s nature is to create. There is a formless part of ourselves, like the part of the acorn that holds the oak tree, that creates our personality, ego and image. Its nature is to create. If we identify with the creation — our bodies, ego, image — we will suffer in life and in death. If we identify with the creator — our Soul, our Higher Self and God — we will end our suffering. At this level, we go behind the ego chatter and we are free.
No matter how Spiritual or free we become, as we move toward death there may still be some moments or elements of physical pain if we decide not to take any medication. We may experience the pain, but not the suffering that we created by resisting the pain. If we examine our pain closely, what emerges is the knowledge that, in part, pain sculpts who we are becoming. We are “becoming” throughout our entire life, and this includes every moment of the dying process.
--Barbara
From The Natural Soul Barbara Harris Whitfield 2009
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