Recently I found out one of my favorite spiritual teacher guys, the brilliant Dr. David R. Hawkins, died about six weeks ago. He was very old. He lived a very long human life.
Last year I said to myself “he is really very old…I ought to go to Arizona and have a day retreat with him when he offers one. It could be the last one soon”.
That was true.
The interesting thing that happens when someone wonderful dies and you don’t know them very well, not really, is that some of the stressful thoughts that rise up around death are softer, quieter, sort of slower.
Not the agony experienced, the grief, when someone really close and important dies.
When I learned of the not-so-surprising news of this teacher who made a difference for me and who was quite fascinating, it was like there was sediment on the bottom of a clear lake and it got stirred up a little.
Too late now, I missed out, I need to re-read his books, I need to ‘get’ his teachings better, I wonder what it will be like to be 85 and lived all those years, I should have gone to Sedona (never been), I wonder if his family misses him…like a sadness, a little ache in my heart, my throat. Something missed, something gone now.
When I first encountered the Work, one of the first people I ever talked with about it was one of my sisters. She had gone to the School. She said that while there, not only did she ponder the death of our father fairly young from leukemia, in a way she never had, but also there were others who brought death to the conversation.
Death. One of the things that confounds us the most in this world. What is going to happen? What does it mean? Is it true?
What an amazing question, to ask if it’s really true that the person you know has died? I mean 100% end-of-story died!?
When I ask “is it true, that my father died?” then I realize I don’t know. I have no idea what’s going on, in fact.
He was in a body. He was born a baby, grew up, became an adult, got married, had four daughters…and that same body which changed and had an impact and offered and created and lived, stopped doing it in the same way.
But the body was still made of matter, and that material carried on in many various ways into little molecules and atoms and moved on into other formations.
One big mystery. That entity that was my father is now morphed into something undefinable but not actually entirely DEAD. As in non-existent.
And then there are all the memories of my father as well. Those images are big, sweet, sad, stormy, loving, kind, vivid. I remember him so well that I could have a conversation with him. I could actually sit in a chair opposite him in my mind and have a talk, ask him a question and probably have an answer.
That doesn’t seem entirely “dead” to me.
In fact there are so many images and memories and feelings that something is alive. Very alive.
Who would I be without the thought that my father, or anyone, should still be alive in that body they were inhabiting? Who would I be without the thought that it’s very sad that he is gone?
Who would I be without the thought that he is dead?
I’d see the people who look like my father when I do a double-take and stare…I would see them on the street, driving cars, taking walks, chatting with their friends in coffee shops…and I would smile with joy in this sensation that my father is present.
I would say “hi dad”.
I would remember him, re-member, like putting him back together so instantly, I don’t even have to try. He is just there, alive in my mind.
Instead of moving with unbelievable speed to the sadness or the missing him or the idea of what could have been if he had lived longer in that particular formation…. I could turn to myself right here, in the present.
I could notice, just like everyone can, that this moment of remembering him is filled with love.
“The old song asks, ‘Why do fools fall in love?’ Actually, only fools DON’T fall in love. Only a fool would believe the lonely, stressful thoughts that tell him that anything could separate him from another human being, or from the rest of the human race, or from birds trees, pavement, and sky.” ~ Byron Katie, in I Need Your Love, Is It True
Love, Grace
*This workshop is FULL* Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven In-Person Intensive Seattle 12/1 10 am – 6 pm. Stay tuned for a future one-day event again in March 2013!
Horrible Food Wonderful Food Weekend In-Person Intensive Seattle January 12-13, 2013 Saturday 10 – 5:30, Sunday 1:30-5:30. $215. To register write grace@workwithgrace.com now.
Mark your calendar for Breitenbush, the end of June! We will be looking at all aspects of what we consider to be flaws in the body, and Un-doing our beliefs about them. Stay tuned if you’d like to join me and Susan Grace Beekman from June 26-30, 2013. You can change your internal beliefs about what you think bodies should be like….and change your entire experience of being in yours.
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