In this life, as we know it, death is included. It’s a part of this life. All of us have experienced it one way or the other. Some perhaps a bit closer to home than others. It’s rarely quite clear what we’re supposed to do when faced with death. Sometimes we put up a strong show, when underneath we’re in such a deep amount of pain. Other times we get so lost in our pain that we lose touch with who we are. Grieving is a tremendously important part of the process and yet I think it is so important that we not get so lost in the grieving that we lose sight of the actuality of all of it.
When Zhuangzi’s wife died, Huizi came to the house to join in the rites of mourning. To his surprise he found Zhuangzi sitting with an inverted bowl on his knees, drumming upon it and singing a song.
“After all,” said Huizi, “she lived with you, brought up your children, grew old with you. That you should not mourn for her is bad enough, but to let your friends find you drumming and singing–that is going too far!”
“You misjudge me,” said Zhuangzi. “When she died, I was in despair, as any man well might be. But soon, pondering on what had happened, I told myself that in death no strange new fate befalls us. In the beginning, we lack not life only, but form. Not form only, but spirit. We are blended in one great featureless indistinguishable mass. Then a time came when the mass evolved spirit, spirit evolved form, form evolved life. And now life in its turn has evolved death. For not nature only but man’s being has its seasons, its sequence of spring and autumn, summer and winter. If someone is tired and has gone to lie down, we do not pursue him with shouting and bawling. She whom I have lost has lain down to sleep for a while in the Great Inner Room. To break in upon her rest with the noise of lamentation would but show that I knew nothing of nature’s Sovereign Law. That is why I ceased to mourn.”
This is a quote from a foundational text of Taoism. I feel it hits the actuality of what is quite well. Although perhaps it leaves something to be desired in terms of the importance of grief within the reality experience of loss. For if we do not allow for the grief to move, then the emotions get stuck in our body and the full expressiveness of who we are, and the full beauty of the heart, become limited. One thing that I have found in my path, is that grief can arise seemingly out of nowhere. I have sat in the actuality of all of it, the impermanence, the interconnection, all of it, and it has brought me deep peace, and a deep feeling of connection. I have also felt the waves of grief move through me so deeply that all that could be done was to sit there and cry. And this too has been so crucial to my journey, and has brought me in touch with my own nature to depths beyond what I can put into words.
If we do not allow for the the actuality to be seen, the grief can keep us trapped all day. If we do not allow for our experience of reality, and the movement of grief, then our bodies become trapped in an old story, rather than staying in the flowing moment to moment experience of life.
Yet there is a third component to all of it. And that is what is not known. For there may be the actuality of all of it, impermanent and interconnected. And there may be the reality of loss, and our experiencing it. Still, there is an unknown. For while we may have our beliefs, and we may have our ideas, and we see that the body, this unique expression of self is gone, there is so much that is unknown about what happens to the person after death, and in what ways that person, or that personality lives on, both within us and without us. To me, this seems to be the part that leads to the most suffering and the most confusion in the process. We bounce around believing our loved ones are still with us, or they still live on in spirit, and then we simultaneously sit with the belief that says this not to be the case. The truth of it is, that we, still being here on Earth in these bodies, in these forms, do not know. We know the body is gone, but what do we know of the person?
So what do we do with this. What do we do with this beautiful not knowing?
Do we suffer in our confusion, or do we find peace in acceptance?
And within that not knowing, can we find a new sense of freeness?
This is where I look to one of the most beautiful aspects of this human experience, the imagination.
Imagination, as a friend of mine put it, is the capacity to abstract from actuality in order to create reality.
And does that reality created through the imagination truly know any bounds…?
So to me, this is a beautiful place in which the personality continues to live on, within the imagination. For we are already imagining a multitude of personalities all day, based on our limited experience of that person, and we continue to do it at night, oftentimes not even being aware that we are doing it! So clearly, all of these personalities exist within our imagination all the time already, so there’s really no need for these personalities to die to our imagination just because the person’s body has died to the world. In this, I find tremendous freeness. For the personas of the ones I love continue to live on within the imagination, allowing for a continued experienced reality in which we are all together.
So my encouragement to all who are reading this is this. Deal with death in a way that works for you. The actuality is that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed, and we are all beautiful compositions of energy, and so in this, nothing is actually lost, only transformed. Truly though, loss is experienced, and with this comes grief, which must be felt to its’ fullness so that it may move. Beyond that, it’s up to us how we deal with the unknown component. For me, I find continuing to allow the personalities of the ones whom I love to live on in the imagination to be an extremely healthy and totally natural thing. Our Imagination is Ours to Use as We Will… Or as We Intuit…
The beautiful thing of the imagination is that it does not have the same space time constraints that our typical day to day mind has. And in this, we can imagine our loved ones at all ages, or as timeless. And the same for ourself. Recently I’ve been imagining the persona of my 1 year old self, sitting in my mothers lap, as pictured here, and I have gotten some of the most beautiful wisdom ever from this little one.
I-Magi-Nation. A Boundless Nation in which I am the Magi at the Center of It All.
Journey Well Relatives. Cry Deeply and Laugh Lightly, I Love You! A. Gabriel
