From the Archives: For Heaven's Snakes

[First Posted 8/31/2006]

E.W. shares:

"Not long before you wrote about how much more painful loss becomes as we get older I had contemplated (for some perverse reason) the possible death of one of our dogs. I felt such a deep vibratory pang I had to quickly cut off the contemplation. I realized how much more painful the loss of a pet would be to me now; and this from someone who was almost inconsolable when one of his snakes died when he was a kid!Your way of understanding this phenomenon really resonated in me. I actually began to understand more deeply how grief relates to awareness."

Thanks, E.W. — it takes a certain, finer awareness, along with courage to not only allow oneself to feel the pain, but to admit to it — which is really admitting the pain, allowing it to exist as is, alongside the as-is of one’s self.

Any pain, physical or mental or emotional, is vibration, which is movement. Often this movement seems to be impaired or stuck, as if running in one place but getting nowhere. Can not-moving be movement? Perhaps here is movement of a different sort, a different order on a different dimension. Moving our legs through space creates distance across space, which is experienced as a measurement called time. If our legs cannot move because we are in pain — in our body or our heart — there is still movement but of this different order. Here is where courage is needed, to do something seemingly counter-intuitive, which is to go towards and into the pain. "Riding the pain" is one way someone has described it. Others feel carried by it, or even pulled, if resistance is offered. All ways are valid and unique, generated by the Spirit Self and therefore numinous.

Whether or not one believes the pain of grief can be avoided, or has been avoided — it occurs anyway. Any suppression or repression takes place only on the two-dimensional plane of the simulate self. The Authentic Self is where the action, the movement, takes place. The simulate self interprets the difference between the two selves as an edge or barrier, and uses fear as a kind of sonar to sound off against the barrier to detect and prove its existence. Movement of Authentic Self on the waves of pain takes place, regardless of our awareness of it. It is, in fact, the awareness that signals that an awakening is taking place, an awakening to one’s living experience. This awakening can be visualized as a point of awareness arising on the wave, and as an inseparable part of the wave. Perhaps this speaks to the quantum mechanical conundrum that light is simultaneously a point and a wave.

Returning to the space opened by the pain of grief returns us to familiar feelings. The space is opened further each time; or rather, one’s awareness of the already infinite space is exponentially widened. This has been described before as experiencing each subsequent grief as “harder” — but this particular word will change in concept and meaning as the widening continues. Yet it doesn’t mean the experience will become “easier.” It becomes “different.” In a way, there is an experiential realization that one’s manifested material body is limited in its ability to experience and endure physical and emotional sensations. It simply can’t tolerate higher levels of the truth, and this gives rise to its own kind of discomfort or growing pains.

The word “grieve” arises from an ancient Indo-European root for “heavy.” When a certain level of understanding of Truth is arrived at, a lightening of the mind occurs — enlightening – but the mind-body may shut or break down, and the mind-body cooperative may then separate. The cosmic materials that comprise the atomic structure of the physical body are released when the enlightened mind dissolves the “glue” that held the structure together. Mind moves on, free of the material body, and at some point, will utilize other cosmic materials to build a new body that will be able to tolerate the higher level of Truth. Its manifestation will be reflective of the truth as understood by that particular mind.

Grief, then, “undoes” us — that is, it disengages, disentangles, frees, loosens, releases, unbinds, unblocks, unbuttons, uncloses, unfastens, unzips, unfixes, unlocks, unravels, unshuts, unstops, unties, or unwraps us. The pain of grief is a taste of the divine ecstasy foreign to our earthly mind-bodies. Deflected, it continues on anyway, unbinding the glue. Embraced, the pain embraces us back and this chemical union becomes a catalyst for consciously aware change, or movement from the lower to the higher. This is why we seek the company of others of like mind and vibration, who can hold and carry us during the grief process and thus impart a strengthening and nourishment to our temporarily weakened state. We have grown new wings — now, out of the cocoon, we need to rest, to allow the wings to dry and expand before venturing further into new space.

We also experience the separation from other human and animal (and serpentine) mind-bodies as well in our grief — and in our beginning or even anticipated grief as well. When we understand that the “undoing” is also a “doing” and that because of “like vibration attracts like vibration”, another chemical is added to the catalyst that becomes part of the emerging flux, and which will naturally reunite our mind with those minds, whether without or within new bodies.