*Mystery, Flor Nieva Sampieri, Flickr
* * *
I don't believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn't say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It's an ongoing process.
*Eckhart Tolle
God replied to Moses, "I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: 'I Am has sent me to you.'"
*Exodus 3.14
* * *
A monk begins a long pilgrimage to find the Buddha. He devotes many years to his search. Finally, he reaches the land where the Buddha was said to live. While crossing the river to this country, the monk looks around as the boatman rows. He notices something floating towards them. As it gets nearer, he realizes that it is the corpse of a person. The corpse drifts so close that he can almost touch it. The man, suddenly, recognizes the dead body. The corpse is his own! He losses all control and wails at the sight of himself, still and lifeless, drifting along the river currents. That moment was the start of his liberation.
* * *
Having worked as a Chaplain intern over the last ten weeks, I have been with dying, death, and after death. I have been with families struggling with the prospect of letting go, and letting a loved one die. Most of my patients have been in the last stage of life, and their illness is one in many speaking of a likely soon demise. I have seen in their presences, in their faces, myself, all of us. The veil between myself and death has become more clear and thinner. I have not been able to hide from death.
This has led me to reflect more on interior Silence as a dying. In Silence I die to who I think I am and my sense of control; I die into someone, or something, I know not. If I say I die into God, that, still, is unclear.
Silence leads me to a place of conscious death now, even as that place is the place of conscious life now. In touching Deathlessness that embraces death, I recognize a Mystery that neither denies death nor claims death as the negation of life. For death is not the opposite of life, but is the opposite of birth. And birth and death are held within Life. Yet, with even these words, I still have fear of the unknown of dying and death, while I affirm that in death, as in birth, Life is present and will remain, for Love, being Life, is deathless.
How I will or will not remain after death is unknown to me. I only affirm Life remains, and in some sense I am that Life, for that Life is my Heart, your Heart, our Heart. This, for now, is enough for me to affirm, as I ponder my mortality and that of all those I feel dear to on this earth.
* * *
*India - Prayer on the River, Valerio Pandolfo, Flickr
* * * CLOSING BLESSING * * *
Grace and Peace to All
The Sacred in Me bows to the Sacred in You
*You are welcome to contact Brian at briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
The presentations at this site cover a long time period. Each one represents part of an on-going Pilgrimage, and the writer's ideas, practices, and experience have changed over time. This change is the quality of any living Journey. Please read with this in mind, allowing the inner Teacher to speak to you as you need at this particular time in your own living Journey. Thanks!
