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First, that one experiences some ineffable spiritual connection with another person, does not negate the potential for other aspects of experience to be present, such as sexual attraction, or simple appreciation of the physical appearance of the other. So, spiritual experiences of connection can arise and, in a sense, throw one out of his or her normal range of references, so even confuse, and other feelings and thoughts arise around that connection. So, that one connects in a subtle, spiritual way with another, does not mean the absence of what is seen to be more ordinary thoughts and feelings. However, how these will be experienced is, again, around, or outside, the connection happening, even one may sense as seeking to intrude upon the sacredness of the communion occurring. If such is allowed to impose on the experience of connection, the connection is, thereby, compromised.
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If you, in a single moment, found yourself transported to a mountainous, arid, over-cast, and cold terrain, when the moment before you were in a terrain flat, sunny, warm, and humid, this relocation would be registered by the body-mind as a shock. The body would first respond with perception, the mind would, then, conceptualize immediately, seeking to make sense of and appropriate the shift into the known, the past experience. Confusion could be heightened, if no reference for the shift could be found in the past. The more you underwent this surprising shift, the more easily you would be able to relax into the experience. Finally, you would feel no confusion at all, for the shift has become normalized. This is what can happen when one is transported from ordinary, relational consciousness into a subtle spiritual connection. While we are already one, when this arises in immediate experience, one can be bewildered and seeking, thereby, a reacclimation to this new consciousness-environment. The temptation is to fit it into the past, rather than let it teach itself to us. This act of denial is due to the threat the experience is to the ego, as the sense of self is known only by reference to a known past, not an unknown now, and certainly not the timeless Unknown. This is a reason so many fear and push from thought the fact of his or her death, as well as push from awareness that everyone one loves is dying, also. Death itself is not the main threat, the unknown is, and, for some, the Unknown.
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This potential of spiritual connection and our shared spiritual essence, prior to earthly relations, is a reason one should not first be-with another dying as the two were in relationship based on any other understanding less than purely spiritual. That is, if I am, as example, with a parent dying as a parent, identification with that connection of the body can hinder my accepting the death and the other letting go as well. The very idea, if clung to, of my being his or her son or daughter can intrude. Rather, that we are one in Spirit can be brought into the need to support the parent to die as non-parent, for parent being a veil of our connection in Grace and death being the divestment physically of all earthly veils of Spirit. Thankfully, I was blessed not to attach to the parent-child veil when my earthly parents left the body-state, so was able to be more present, to assist in transition out of the body, and in a particular way each needed. With the apparent dying of the parent, the death of the earthly framework of connection was placed in the same dying process. I could not negate the thought parent-child, but I could not and would not affix to it; therefore, being the son of the parent floated, so to speak, around the certainty of the spiritual essence we shared in one in Life.
Sadly, I have, as a spiritual leader and hospice chaplain, seen adult children who selfishly cling to the parent as parent at the time of death, unable, or unwilling, to release and bless the parent to be free of the body. No amount of sentimentalized so-called empathy can negate that such is, in an adult, an egoic way to approach death and a disservice to the dying one that one claims to love. Love seeks release, the freedom of the other from all boundaries of past relating, even as you yourself know that longing for deathless freedom. Death needs to be a time of our most lovely expression of Love-ing the other, even as we will need that same selfless presence. Yet, also, any spiritual connection is a death, a dying into a larger experience of Life, not a cessation of Life. Life cannot become Lifeless. We, always, release another with and in and to Life, never out of Life. Life only knows Life, Itself. Spiritual connection assists us in the pruning away of all we think we are, that we are not. Is this not a dying into Life?
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