From the Manuscript: "The Unpretentious Way"
As the new book, A Risen Companion for Grief, unfolds, my guides feel it's important to share some of it. This is the Introduction, unedited. Please be assured that it is only this Introduction where the language is a bit dense and complicated, but I just had to get it out. The rest of the book is much simpler!
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Readers of the first book, The Risen—Dialogues of Love,
Grief & Survival Beyond Death will likely understand if it’s referred
to as densely multidimensional with information and veiled mysteries, often in
frustrating ways. More than a few readers have expressed the wish that it could
have been simpler. Others may also comprehend my adding that it reveals itself
differently with each reading, releasing information and stimulating ideas
almost as if personally customized for the one reading it. Perhaps this is why
Tim, one of the authors of that book, has mysteriously remarked that is a book
for the future, which is never present but seemingly always unfolding before us.
The
book now in your hands is not meant to cure grief, but to serve as some kind of
comforting companion for the present. When one is in deep grief, the present is
all there is—and that is the hardest place to be. Our loved ones’ transitions
bring up many memories of the past and worries about the future, but we don’t
need comfort from the when’s as much as we need it now.
It is
also for those who want to change their relationship to grief in a way that is
deepening and expanding, to be able to contain it; to become the container.
Grief
is hard and so this book wasn’t easy—yet I so
wanted this to be a simple book. It took almost eight years to find the best
language of the spirit for The Risen
Dialogues, published more than five years ago. Ideas and information that
were presented in it are also interwoven throughout this one, and I pray that
that time and experience has enabled me to re-present challenging Risen concepts
in more accessible and less stressful language.
As I wrote
this introduction I realized that in spite of any such intentions, living is
complex on our world. Simplicity seemingly becomes meaningless where grief is
concerned, and I can’t pretend otherwise. I very much doubt I have to tell this
to anyone who has experienced it. I know this because I have experienced seven
personal transitions in the past year of writing, and am witnessing an eighth right
now. And so readers will understand when I say that each transition is its own journey
of reaching and questioning, release and sorrow, progress and standstill, honesty
and avoidance, understanding and confusion.
Yet dare
it be suggested that the complexity of grief isn’t necessary, and could be the result from a collection of many beliefs?
Could the view that says that grief must
be complex and complicated be challenged? Can grief somehow become simpler? Do
we even want it to be simpler?
From my
many years of experiences with the Risen, it is clear that my beliefs about
grief must change or else I will stay stuck in a fear-based way of living, which
is an inversion of Life. This inversion is the attempt to reverse Life or to
stop it—-which is not possible, although I can pretend otherwise. The way I
allow my experience of grief to unfold will either be in support of more Life
or not. Either way, this unfolding never ends and must go on.
It appears
that on Earth we cannot have the simple without the complex. They co-exist in a
way which we physically experience as a Law of Nature—polar opposites on a
continuum, such as a pendulum swinging from one far end to the other. Hot and
cold, light and dark, bitter and sweet are controlled by such a law. Nature
does not like to be stopped but to keep moving, and as humans we are an
inseparable part of Nature. No matter how many times we try to change the laws
of nature by doing the math differently, two plus two will always equal four—at
least on our physical Earth.
Nevertheless,
the polar ends are not really fixed unless we believe they are. How can this be? When not restricted by belief, they
infinitely expand away from and contract toward one another in all directions
at once, which is also the same as no direction. This is where, as Einstein
once said, something gets spooky.
Does this
mean that we should seek to experience our grief in a simpler way that feels less
chaotic and more orderly between the two extremes? Probably most of us will at
least try, in the same experimental way a child seeks to balance a see-saw on
its own. It will be discovered that the only way is to leave the end and move
to the middle. But there one must stay, suspended like a pawn captured in a
game of chess, or else move back to a fixed position again of one-sidedness.
Either way, each place is one of suspension and trapped isolation. Nothing has
been gained in the way of progress or relief. The joy of see-sawing has ceased.
The mythic
Egyptian sage Hermes says this about an earthly Law of Nature, also called the Principle
of Polarity: [1]
“Everything is dual; everything has poles;
everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites
are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are
but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”
A
paradox is a statement or situation that seems to be ridiculous or
contradictory, but in fact is or may be true. The figure of Hermes appears in various
guises across many cultural myths, and is known as The Messenger but also often
as The Trickster. In this dual role of Trickster with a Message (or Messenger
with Tricks) he invents lies and fabricates half-truths to steal information
from the gods and then hide them for humanity to discover. He camouflages them in
paradoxical places that are hard to believe, which makes them hard to find. He then
says all paradoxes may be reconciled, but doesn’t say how.
Hermes
knows that humans navigate their ocean of life first by their intuitions and then by beliefs, and so his silence implies that we intuitively and simply have to believe
him. He’s reminding us that a belief that appears simple can be powerful enough
to reconcile a paradox and make all the difference in the discovery process.
It’s being able to have the conviction of the Red Queen in the story Alice in Wonderland, who prides herself
on her ability to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Alice thinks this
is nonsense, and yet the Queen is still the ruler in her own belief realm.
Whether or not the Queen is a happy ruler is also totally up to how she uses her
own thinking.
If one
is stuck in the realm of grief, is that place of immobility also the present,
and so our only choice? If this is true it doesn’t make now a very inviting place. How is such a paradox reconciled? If
life is movement then the immobilization, the non-movement between the polar
opposites must be death, right?
No. This is the Great Untruth, presented
as a particular belief which seeks to divert our attention from the Only Truth,
which is that nothing ever stops
moving, including consciousness—even when it appears that there is no movement,
even when it appears that one is stuck, or on pause, or “dead.” It is also a
fabrication or belief that above and beyond the pendulum is nothing. Here is a
hidden message from Hermes, posed as a question: Can we see from a higher-vibrating
perspective that the pendulum is finitely contained within something infinitely greater … that one lower law
is contained with a greater, higher
one?
Who is
putting forth this lie about life? It is our own ego-mind doing so through our
current beliefs, which most likely we were consciously or unconsciously taught
by someone or some institution, and/or passed on down through family and others.
The Universe neither judges nor condemns our choices, but unquestioningly and
with unconditional love gives us what we ask for and then accept. This includes
the statements of our beliefs—including our fears—which we continuously speak
into the Universe, and which then reflects and echoes them as feedback into
form and function for our personal material experience.
All
fears are rooted in the ultimate fear of our personal death, brought on by a
belief in the Great Untruth. What would happen if we changed that belief or
idea, or even forgot it? Are we even afraid to explore this? The only Truth is
that there is only Life—upward and onward, abundant and unending. Grief cannot
stop the movement of Life, although it can interfere with it for a while.
The
paradox we are faced with by our grief is seen in our trying to balance or reconcile
our sitting on the see-saw of two opposing beliefs: that of our fear of death
which ruins and ends everything, and that of our unrelenting desire for more
life never-ending. In the middle is the suspension of belief, a kind of limbo
which may bring temporary rest and relief, but is still based on lack,
limitation, and fear. But this middle place of temporary rest, which is also now, can be the launching pad from which
to rise above the restrictions of the pendulum.
Another
word for reconciled is “reunited.” When we can allow our self to become truly quiet
and rest within the now, we will begin to feel our Source, which is omnipresent,
changeless and resides here, right within each of us.[2] The
within is the middle of everything, which is also now. The feeling of now is the connection. It’s hard to believe
it’s that simple, but that is also a belief that can be changed.
Because
there is room for only one within, the feeling of connection to the indwelling
Source of Now effectively causes the two to become one.[3] When
we reach in as opposed to reaching out, we bring with us and reunite our temporary
outer human experience with our internal eternal Source. This reunion results in
the knowledge and feeling of one’s personal immortality, causing us to forget
about the idea of the fear of death. With the thought of death gone, fear is
vanquished. The paradox has dissolved, and we have Risen on Earth. It might be
just a little rising, but it still feels better, and so it is better.
The
feeling of reaching and reuniting with our immortal residence is also the feeling
of coming Home. Here is the lost sheep found, the prodigal child returned. The
fragmentation inflicted by the ego-mind has healed because one has returned
to—or stopped turning away from—wholeness. Can you see the pendulum that has
been at work here by our constant and unchanging behavior of going back and
forth? A new action was called for, but did we hear the calling?
The
action of reaching inward becomes the rising above the pendulum that ceaselessly swings on the earthly horizontal plane. This horizontal pendulum—meaning the
finite, changing world around us—continues to operate as Nature intends it, but
in releasing our fear of death, we are no longer weighed down by the fear. Thus
we achieve a feeling of release and relief, which allows us to rise above
finite feelings and into those of the infinite. This rising itself is also at
first on a pendulum, but one of a spiritual vertical nature, which can
initially take us down and up into greater depths of the experience of life.
This “down and up” movement can quickly transform into a multi-dimensional
experience, which could be visualized as a very different geometric form from
the simple, predictable path described by a pendulum.
And so,
among many things, the Risen collaborators of this current work aspire to
convey a stimulating and even novel concept of resurrection—the rising above the earthly pendulum—even while it is
swinging, even before one falls or flies off the thing that is the weight. Our grief
is the weight and our beliefs are the gravity. To be Risen is to rise above the
weight; to let go of current beliefs and then rise above them while also awakening
to this rising. To arise or awaken in the present is to be aware as our Risen loved
ones also are—to be where they are now—to reunite above and beyond the finite pendulum
of fixed beliefs. To rise is to be able to feel the movement of change and to
feel alive again. We uncover a new math that applies to a new dimension of
living, and which cannot be expressed in old formulae. It reminds me of one of
my most beloved wisdom suggestions: “Do not conform to the pattern (pendulum) of
this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”[4]
To be
free of the lie and rise above it is to be free to live. To be free to fully live
is to at last become aware that as a person—including our transitioned loved
ones—-we are each already on an eternal adventure of immortality. Awesome words
to read and hear, and while I cannot say that I personally demonstrate them
very well, I strive to keep the idea of progress and not perfection as a close
companion as I move onward.
Oh well—so
much for more accessible and less stressful language! All this metaphysical
talk about paradoxes and pendulums may look inspiring on paper. But nothing
will change until we bring some of the ideas in this book—any of them—from
virtual reality into our actual reality, and then practice, practice, practice
… and then trust to let it unfold.
To
satisfy my own self-centered need for simplicity, I will risk summing up the
above and what lies in the journey of pages ahead in a few brief sentences as
best as I can. They may be repeated again in various ways and places as we move
through the book. Maybe by the end we will have learned some things, which will
validate how we have grown and transformed in ways we couldn’t have imagined
when we first started out as companions on the journey.
The Unpretentious Way
1.
Feel your grief, and then use your love to leave
it. Do this not just for yourself, but also for your loved ones. Then
use your life to prepare for your own eventual transition.
2.
Strive to comprehend and then really feel the truth of your actual
immortality as it is now. Feeling
your own personal and present immortality will rob the grief of its energy and release
the joy of living to rise again.
3.
Fear not, for you have always been and always
will be free. Release all fearful thoughts and beliefs about death to feel the adventurous
excitement of your immortal freedom.
August
Goforth
New
York City, 2014
[1]
The Initiates, The Kybalion: A Study of The
Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece (New York: Jeremy P.
Tarcher/Penguin), 1st ed., 2008), 89.
[2]
“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalms 46:10
[3] The
ego-mind will often try to defend itself by manifesting what we call “simulate
selves” in this book, to make it appear that our mind is fractured and torn apart, giving rise
to the illusion that there are many selves within us, all at odds with one
another, resulting in chaos and fear. We will offer more about the ego-mind and
its simulate selves later on for those who are interested in learning about
them.
posted by August Goforth @ 00:05
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