Art, Faith, and The Koko Lion: Excerpt (On Loss) from "The Hardest Part is the Parting Part"

Friday, May 15, 2015

Excerpt (On Loss) from "The Hardest Part is the Parting Part"

At some point in our lives, we all may have to inhabit that peculiar bubble of time where we're called upon to witness the passage of a life. It's possibly the most difficult, but most essential, thing we have to do—showing up for an event we dread and knowing how to conduct ourselves through this unmistakably sacred time. A lot of odd feelings may get kicked up when we're called upon to be caregivers, or to be taken care of. Feelings like powerlessness and blame, or even resentment and anger at the "unfairness" of it all. But really, it is the fairest part of Life, that moment when we must come to terms with mortality. Intuitively, we know that we must be there for that—that we must surrender into our circumstances, experience our grief, and rise above our self-centered feelings. Our feelings are, after all, just feelings. They are directing us to our truths, but they aren't necessarily the truth themselves.

It's just hard to find your footing, to find your proper place at that time, suspended in that sort of grace. But here's what you can always do to face the pain, to put your conflicting feelings in their proper place and make your role and purpose clear and comfortable: Push everything else aside, and join your heart to Love. Within the fundamental understanding that there is no death, Love will always provide you intuitively with sure sanity, support, purpose, and direction.

Compassionate identification with one another is our connection to that healing power as part of the circuit—the circular, mutual, spiritual agreement between the person who needs the healing most and the person who has the chance to bring it to them. The truth is that everyone needs the healing, and so it's that identification we experience with one another that is the real key to supplying the aid and comfort—the "spiritual medicine"—that can only be passed from one being to another. We are the vehicles of this powerful spiritual energy. Like waterwheels, as we collect the energy of Love and compassion in our lives, Life brings us around into position to pour it out for another.

You may just call it the Golden Rule, because that's what it is. (When something's given a name like "the Golden Rule," it's usually earned the name). We're always being given the chance to become the person who does unto another the very things that we'd be most grateful to receive ourselves. And given the circular nature of Life, we'll get our chance for that as well. Meanwhile, what might be considered one of Life's most painful episodes is really the opportunity to provide one of its greatest rewards—the fulfillment of that most sacred agreement that we’ve made with each other, somewhere, someplace in time.

When we willingly (or even sometimes not so willingly) take part in this eternal cycle of caring, I think we become intuitively aware of the invisible spiritual machinery at work in the world and in our lives here on this planet. As so many revered spiritual texts have told us, giving—being of service to another, setting aside all selfish concerns we may naturally have—gives us more of Life's precious intangible rewards than anything else possibly can. Healing and comfort, and—here it is again—Love. And it works both ways—to care and to be cared for.

The Universe (God, if you will) suspends us in this bubble of grace at those times, especially at the end of one or another's life, when all materiality fades into insignificance and the pure spirit owns us completely and irrevocably. We are connected to the divine magic of Love and Life when we bear witness to that transition of the spirit out of the painful body, and back into that joyful light of being and bliss.