“To everything, turn, turn, turn.  There is a season, turn, turn, turn. And a time to a every purpose under heaven.” ~ Pete Seeger 

Happy Sunday!

Saturday, at the end of my morning meditation, I had a vision.  My view was about 1′ above the ground looking at an individual plant in a sandy desert environment.  A strong wind came through first blowing the plant and then lifting the sand to tear at the leaves and fine stems of the plant.  Oddly I did not find this event upsetting as I would usually feel bad for the destruction of the plant, my compassion for knowing it as a living being. Instead I had an awareness that it was a restorative event.  As the leaves and stems, which were sparse to begin with, broke away from the main stem I saw a light travel down the stem to the base and knew all would be well.
The energy, essence, or spirit of the plant was returning to its center.  It made me think about how we extend our spirit out into this body and this life of things.  The imagery brought to me the awareness that it is not bad for rough times to come to tear away the unnecessary parts of this life.  It is in this way that we return to the center of our being to once again become aware of our true nature, of the Self that is truly real and eternal.
I reflected on if this was why as we age we experience the failing of the body.  Perhaps this aids in our returning our attention to our hearts, our center of being, as we must release our tight hold on the things of this life as it gets more difficult to interact with them.  Importance on the physical must fade as our body fails to perform for us as it once did.  The body has changed but we have not changed on the inside.
What better tool to realize we are not our bodies (assuming this has not been realized before old age)?  That being within us, who still wants to do a cartwheel, run in the rain, or has sexual fantasies, is still in there full of the lust for life.  Who but God could formulate such a great plan to cause a human individual to finally reflect on the big question of “Who am I?”; this question is the trigger to begin the journey of realizing there is more life then what our five senses bring to us.   Aging is a gift from God, a blessing that makes the transition into death easier as well as  a means of receiving new lessons for the soul’s growth.
When I first learned about the many deities of the Hindu faith I could not understand or accept the idea of Lord Shiva the destroyer.  Through my studies I have learned that other faiths and mythologies contain this idea of the destroyer god.  How could death and destruction be divine?
I feel I have reached a tipping point where my awareness has expanded to be more conscious of eternal life and less on the limited physical life so that death can be beautiful and sacred.  I understand today that destruction has a divine role in Creation.
There is no end; it is just returning to Source. We, like the plant returning to Mother Earth for a season only to burst forth in the Spring when Father Sun calls it out to play again, are continuous.
“I have deep roots of well being.” ~ affirmation from Abraham Hicks.
Since I was a child I have felt such pain in seeing animals dead along the roads.  As a driver I would not look closely at things in the road, I would avert my eyes, and even pretend to not see it.  Abraham has said of animal lives that they “come and go and come and go and come and go.”  This makes me realize that it is I who is making physical life most important and I who can instead bless and be thankful for the little critters who have moved onto the next step of their journey.
So what about when we suffer the death of a loved one?  Can this too be viewed as divine and worthy of gratitude? This event is possibly harder to bear than our own decline or demise so how to move through it with acceptance?
I have two thoughts on this.  First, if I follow the message of the vision then it says to me that this is a period of struggle for the one remaining. It is a period of being torn down so that awareness of the important eternal things can again be realized.  We will go through pain and struggle until we finally turn inward to seek the help that has always been present.
The second thought I have is that by holding the belief that our loved ones never really leave us we may also ask the questions that lead us away from only believing the things that our senses tell us of the physical world.  I learned from Deepak Chopra that growth/learning moves through three levels: we hope that we can grow, we have faith that we are growing, and finally we know that we have grown.  Like in these three levels the one left behind may live in faith on the fringe of full enlightenment hoping and having faith that their beloved is truly with them.  They wish and hope the signs and thoughts that bring the feeling of connection are real, a few of us are courageous enough to move into truly knowing and seeing past the physical.
My mind is bringing these two thoughts together and I am realizing that the struggle and suffering of the individual through grief is a means to return awareness to the heart center.  There in the heart, the individual is just where he/she needs to be to connect to Source, the Oneness, to be able to know for certain that their beloved is always connected to them.
‘Law of Attraction’, once resistance is released the Universe brings to you what you desire.
“Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from two sides.” ~ Lao Tzu