“I want to be cremated and have my ashes spread near the creek on the Big Tesuque Trail in the Santa Fe Mountains.”
On a sunny spring morning, I sit at my dining room table and write this in the will I am preparing. I think little of it. It is but a directive for some day in the future.
Later, while I eat dinner in that same spot, I pause from my chicken and brussel sprouts, my appetite suddenly gone. A wave of nostalgia washes over me. In my will, I am talking about this body that I have inhabited for a half century.
In those years I have kayaked it over waterfalls, stuffed it with rich food and wine, entangled it with lovers’ limbs. I have nursed it through illness and exalted in its strength.
And yet…
I never thought of it as burning to ashes, vanishing into dust.
I call on the Beloved, and the sadness eases but still lingers. My appetite returns enough so I can finish dinner and go to bed.
The next morning, I’m reading a contemplation note in my sauna, the warmth seeping into my bones. Suddenly the light blinks off and the hum of the infrared emitters quiets. Is it a power outage, I wonder? I climb out, tiptoe across the cold concrete and see that my surge protector has died. I attach the plug to the wall socket and resume my practice, the power full on.
Later in the morning in my office, I click on a YouTube video called The Thunderbolts of the Gods. Through vivid images of the cosmos and interviews with scientists, the documentary presents recent findings in astronomy. Apparently Einstein’s theory that the Universe is held together through gravity is being replaced with a theory that electricity instead infuses all creation. The science is beyond my comprehension, but I do get a sense that the Beloved is showing me something profound, though I’m not sure what.
Later in the day, I stand in the guestroom of my house, massaging my friend, the air infused with the scent of sesame oil. Each week we exchange massages, a relaxing gift for my body and hers. As an Enya tune plays on the stereo, I rub my fingertips along her arm and down to the palm of her hand. Suddenly, in looking at her fingers, pink and plump with vitality, I see the opposite, the day when life will leave them. They will be dry, crisp and then dust.
I recall a date I had early in my spiritual quest. My new boyfriend at the time, a pre-med student, snuck me into the cadaver lab at the University of New Mexico Medical Center. In a state of shock I wandered around the fluorescent-lit room that smelled of formaldehyde and held twelve bodies, each lying face-up on a gurney. I finally stopped next to an old woman. Her body lay thin, gray, lifeless, but her irises retained a mind-blowing sapphire hue. Looking into those marbles, I knew without a doubt that a body is only a temporary home for something much larger.
As I massage down my friend’s legs and feet and run my thumb between her toes, the Beloved takes me on a trip. I see the current that fills this body is like the electricity that powers my sauna. Except the Divine current never blinks, never ceases. It is an eternal charge running through all life—charging the whole Universe—including me. (For more on this, see Love Energy.)
I look at my hands as they knead my friend’s muscles and recognize that this body, this temple where I reside for a time, will surely go, but I won’t. I am the everlasting current, and the very basis of that current is love.
When I finish the massage, I move quietly to my living room. My feet dance across the floor, my heart so light I feel as though I am flying. I look out the window, and the piñon trees, the blue jays, the sky with puffy spring clouds seem to shimmer with a sparkly light. Today’s trials—health concerns, tension with my neighbor, uncertainty about the future—are but blips on the screen of my eternal radar. I can overcome anything. But most all I can be—relish—my true spiritual self.
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Gorgeous! Perspective is all we have, and allowing it to change, to amplify and enlarge allows us to see our Selves as well as our bodies in truth, one being vast and beautiful and the other a machine that will one day break down and be tossed aside. Thank you for increasing my perspective this morning, kind friend. It is beautifully written with love and joy.
Thank you, Rudy, for your lovely response. What you say is true; our goal is to see ourselves as we truly are: Love.
I have seen enough of “death” to know that it is an illusion.
That is a very powerful sentence, Tom, a beautiful poem in its own right. The more that dies in my life, whether attachments or bodies of loved ones, the more I come to know, and rely upon, the Real.
Beautiful contemplation, Lesley. The spark of consciousness inside us will never be extinguished…that is a promise from the Maker. I would like to add that all matter, our bodies, all forms here and all bodies will also perish at Pralaya. There is a “death date” for the entire creation that we call the Triloki. In layman’s terms, all the countless planets/stars/moons in this vast universe, will eventually vanish. This truth, as delivered by the Saints, has and continues to be a worthy subject for contemplation in my journey in consciousness. Someone wrote a book whose title I like a lot: “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and It’s All Small Stuff”. Thank you for this juicy subject matter which most have a tendency to ignore.
Thank you, Al, for bringing in the vast dissolution that is part of the great whole. It is amazing to think that our essence continues to journey through such a vanishing, but we do. Wild.
Thank you for this beautiful contemplation on the real Truth within each of us. Since my stepfather’s translation in February, this has been a frequent subject of contemplation for me. The Master is so loving to have shared through you this soothing and peaceful message. Soul is grateful, dear friend.
My condolences, Marian, on the passing of your stepfather. When a loved one passes we really do come face-to-face with our lower mortality and higher immortality. I’m happy this offering sparked truth in you, as your presence here sparked love in me.
For those who have studied religions of the East, you know about reincarnation. But more than that you understand the idea the God we worship is an infinite, loving consciousness … the Great I Am. Created in God’s image, we too are consciousness and we occupy a four-dimensional body that grows, ages, and dies. When the prama (energy) leaves my body at death, it is “I” who withdraws it and then I return to the Cosmic Consciousness and await my next incarnation in my path toward total conformity in thought, word, and deed to that of the Creator. What remains is not “I.” It never was; just an image, a perception, and whether it is buried to molder or reduced to ash is immaterial. “I” will not be there. “I” will be free, soaring through the universe.
Beautifully said, Bud. What is truly wonderful is that freedom of which you speak is a state one can enter while still in the physical body. It is not a state in the future but exists here and now.
Lesley,
What a beautiful and inspiring weave of the outer reality with your inner perception, and greater, your alignment with the true and real. Thank you for such a deep sharing about the swiftness of our passage here and the magnificence of transcending the illusion of physicality.
Thank you, Michael. What you wrote is so poetic…”the swiftness of our passage here and the magnificence of transcending the illusion of physicality.” Truly we are blessed with all levels of creation but especially our truest essence.
I was led to Google+ just now. I’d forgotten I had a profile there. While checking out the posts I came across this. Yes, I recall it from April but had forgotten. Now in July, fresh from my son Joe’s death in June, it calls to me and re-reading it gives me comfort knowing Joe felt like you describe. He was only 48 and was only talking about making a will because at 48 you generally still have time. The laugh is on us who are left sorting out the pinda problems as Joe is soaring with The Master far above such mundane things the pinda has to offer. Joe was always a jokester and I can feel him now, laughing at how unimportant all these material pinda problems really are. I can now remind myself to laugh along with him.
Diane, your comment really touched my heart. I know that process of sorting through loved one’s lives. It tugs the heart in many directions. In that process a great deal of purification happens, so we can trust that each day that we are willing to enter into these creations we are brought closer to our own Foreverness.