The Way You Live in Me

"May Their Memory Be a Blessing"

Where will you be for your body’s last breath? What is the web of relations that will hold you through that transition? How easily will you let go of everything you have known yourself to be?

Something I noticed during my father’s passing is how the thoughts/ stories/ identities that loosely hold together a “me” – the same thoughts/ stories/ identities that dissolve at the time of death – are held together in their own ways by the loved ones left behind.

Extending our good will toward the dying and the dead is a great gift, to Life. It is an active “not impeding” Life’s natural ability to recycle itself. When this natural ability to recycle itself stops or slows down, we gum up the system. Which in turn gums up our own system.

The way that Life energy relates to different aspects of itself lives through our relationships. When “I” see what I see of “you,” I partially shape “your” identity. And vice versa. How important it is, then, to extend good will to all beings – those in bodies, and those no longer in bodies – within our web of relations.

How complex that makes it then, when our relationship is ambiguous – when harm has been caused. Harm not addressed creates division, gumming up the system. Therefore, addressing harm while the ability is there to do so, in the body, helps human life on earth to clean itself up, to un-gum the system.

When harm cannot be addressed with those who’ve gone on, it is vital that we address those thoughts/ stories within ourselves. It is a little harder to do when the bodies can’t talk story with one another, but still do-able. (Especially because what you held of that person who’s now gone, are remnants of a story that is trying to dissolve – it lives on in you, until you too are able to release it – maybe at death, but maybe, if you’re lucky, before.)

Since you and I are the ones alive on the earth at this moment, it is incumbent on us to do this work. This work is not a matter of hashing and rehashing the stories in the mind only. It is a matter of feeling. Going into the heart, feeling what’s there, and releasing the feeling, along with the stories, along with the thoughts. It’s a matter of true, deep, abiding forgiveness.

With tonight’s full moon, I plan to sink into the luminosity of pure Being, letting the stories arise as they naturally do, feeling the feelings, and returning to Being. Attempting to do my own little part in un-gumming the system.