Death and Presence

I love celebrations of life. So much so in fact that I have decided to expand that aspect of my services to include pet celebrations.

I've been toying with the idea for quite some time but had not acted on it until Ardeth who owns Appel Funeral Home started a pet funeral home in Edmonton. It inspired me to jump in and offer celebrant services to help people deal with the loss of their beloved furred and feathered friends.

It's so easy for society to dismiss this kind of loss or gloss over it as though it should be no big deal, but it is a big deal when your pet is your best friend and source of love and comfort. Loss is loss and when a very important part of our lives dies, whether human or animal, it is important to acknowledge, grieve and celebrate the life lost.

When I was younger I didn't think grief was a big deal, matter of fact I didn't let myself grieve the losses I had encountered, I just suppressed the pain and carried on as though nothing had really happened. When it finally did all start coming out I was quite shocked at the layers and layers of unacknowledged grief I had been carrying. It wasn't that it hadn't been affecting me, it was just that I didn't know what it was when I acted out or get depressed or lost interest in life.

I suspect unacknowledged grief is being experienced in epidemic proportions in our culture because we have made death something to be hidden away or unnatural somehow. Death is every bit as natural and part of life and birth is, they are two sides of the coin of life which must be experienced by everyone and everything that is manifest. We like to soften it up by using words like transitioned or passed over but the reality is that the physical presence is no more, it has died, regardless of what one may believe about what happens next. There is a loss which needs to be grieved.

What I've learned with my own grief is that when I acknowledge the loss and associated pain and sadness and am fully present to it I don't have to act out or get depressed or run away through any kind of distracting behavior. I move toward it instead of trying to get away from it, giving it the quality of attention it needs which is compassion and understanding. It is only then that I can experience the poignancy and sweetness of the experience which leads to a state of deep peace and ever expanding waves of love.

Presence, presence, presence. That's what is truly available in all of life's experiences when I embrace them instead of turning away and pretending. Presence is the home of peace, love and joy and that is what is continually calling from within. It's all right here, right now as long as I am too.

Namaste

Seeming Contradictions

Wow, there's so much going on in the inner world these days it can be a little overwhelming at times. Life however brings everything up in its own time and so moving with whatever shows up is always the best option.

One of the elements of the human condition I have been getting insight on of late is what might seem like internal contradictions or what some people have called pairs of opposites. We tend to experience them as duality a lot of the time and the ensuing struggle can be very confusing and even paralyzing at times.

The aspect of duality or contradiction I'm referring to here is the existence of two seemingly opposite ideas co-existing in the psyche at the same time. For instance there is a desire in me to be seen and at the same time there is a desire to be invisible. There is a desire for 'wealth' along with a pull toward 'poverty'. I could undoubtedly go on about this but you get the drift.

What I notice about these desires is that one tends to be more unconscious than the other generally and there is a definite sense of separation between the two, an either/or kind of energy. They seem very complex with layers of feelings and beliefs surrounding the desires. When I simply observe the thoughts around them rather than getting caught up in them however, I notice that the thoughts are not the truth but rather assumptions and beliefs that have developed over the years in an effort to make sense of the opposing desires.

When I move toward the essence of the desires however I get that they are actually a continuum of possibilities based on an idea. Visibility and invisibility seem to be based on an idea that I would call existence; wealth and poverty on an idea of ownership or possession. They are experiences available to us in the human form and we get to play with them or (suffer through them).

When I view these seeming contradictions from the perspective of possibilities based on a single idea I feel a kind of freedom and the movement of energy in my body. There is nothing to struggle with from this perspective because all my beliefs about it are not The Truth, they're just ways I can experience these ideas. They can co-exist very comfortably within the psyche when I become aware of the spectrum which I had previously been seeing as contradictions.

Life really is just one big adventure isn't it?

A Continuum of Possibilities

Namaste