Now for some of me...
A few months ago I picked up (again) Iyanla Van Zant's One Day My Soul Just Opened Up and decided to actually DO the process. Do a 40 day devotion (no, I'm not religious) and really show up. I promised to show up and journal every day and cut the crap and really go deep.
Keep in mind as you read that MUCH work has been done since this, but the best way to show you where I am now and why is to show you where I was when I really started to dive in.
Here's how it began:
Remain Open. There is something bigger going on here than you know. [a quote from Iyanla's book]
My dream last night...trying to make the flight to come home but I was missing
every transfer because I had to continually stop to pick up my bags. I had tote
bags and loose papers and stuff...just stuff.I could barely pick up something without dropping something else and no one would help me carry everything I had to take. I wasn't angry or thinking they should. I just felt burdened and anxious about how I was going to do this and get where I needed to go.
I told Mike I feel like I'm playing Beat the Clock...that time is against me. That I won't get the time I want/need and that I won't be ready. [to say goodbye to him when he dies]
Funny, Mike's flight is going to leave as scheduled and nothing I do will influence that and surely my baggage will prevent me from being ready. I'm not believing/feeling the flight in my dream was Mike's flight...it was my flight home but the burden feels the same. I'm carrying too much and it's hindering me on the journey I need to take.
I want to be joyful when Mike is released from his suffering. I want to
be filled with love and gratitude that he has been set free. I want my love for
him to be greater than my Ego---the Ego that is afraid of losing his earthly
presence in my life. The Ego that lacks faith. The Ego that doesn't believe him
when he tells me he will remain close by me.
Article comments
1 - alienboy
To my mind, this isn't a leap worth taking. You worry about things that may or may not exist - such a luxury in this world, don't you think?
Your friend Mike's story IS tragic, but you worry about how you will feel when he's gone. At least you will still be able to feel then, unlike him...
You say this is a journey between you and god? What a fool's errand! Even if there is a god, unlikely but you never know, s/he would simply want you to live your life the way that seems best to you. This is the essence of what anybody's life is really about.
In my view, there is a certain oneness we all share, the oneness of our common origins and ending. To mistake this powerful unifying energy for some kind of externalised deity is a disservice to our shared nature, our commonality.
Cherish your loved ones be they friend or family. And treasure all life as it values you. To be directly connected, you only have to see the connection is there.
Please do keep going, if indeed you want to, but don't think that you are the only one trying - and so far it seems to me that you have a long way to go to get "naked" as you put it...
2 - Laura Young
Alienboy, I am right with you on most points...let me give a wee bit more context...
I'm 42 and a coach and I'm working a lot with mid-life folks who have gotten really deeply into their careers and lifestyles and money issues and status, etc etc and then things start to happen like they lose their first parent...or a child or grandchild...
All of a sudden this existential wave of panic can set in...I just had a client tell me he hasn't slept well since seeing the end of life montage at the end of the last episode of Six Feet Under.
Personally, I can count about 35 deaths just this year among family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and clients so I'm getting a lot of exposure to people coming to terms with this part of life.
And I see people doing things like getting botox injections and dying their hair and getting various surgeries to enhance their bodies. We can barely deal with aging in this culture, let alone death, and since death of our bodies is unavoidable I see our inability to dive in to the very nature of our grief and our sense of what does or doesn't have ultimate meaning for us as a real problem as I see so many people being seriously blind-sided by death when it does come. I've seen some serious pain...even to the point of suicidal grief.
So, in the midst of this I thought that I needed to go in to the belly of the beast myself. I'm not trying to hold Mike for canonization, or make this some melodramatic angst ridden journey...this really is what the title suggests...An Anticipatory Grief Observed. It just happens to be the Mike is the first one in my most precious inner circle that I am likely to lose, (odds are), so the impact is notable in my life as I really consider what this represents to me. There is a level of impersonal observation of my process despite the pain I went through along the way...and you are spot on...I'm a long way from being naked at this point...this was just my VERY first step on what has been a very deliberate 5 month process of really getting in to this.
So, you just anticipated where I will be going, once I get through the Valley of Death stuff.
So, why share this at all then?
Because I often am in contact with people who are in, or just approaching this level of consciousness, or peace with life, and they really are wrestling with questions that you have already decided are meaningless and irrelevant (and may well be). If you just tell people, "Ah, don't worry about it, I don't" but they ARE worried and it DOES matter to them there is a disconnect and you aren't a help to anyone.
And if you just talk about the end result and not the process, it's too easy for people to say, "well, you're different" and then they determine that they may just not be capable of happiness and that's pretty tragic.
I think embracing the ugly, crazy, confused parts helps people embrace their own so they can get through it and on with their lives on the other side of it.
We aren't exactly a culture that deals with pain, after all.