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| On Coping With Death |
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| by Pride Wright | |
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Ann, It is certainly heart wrenching to have two people within your inner circle confronting death at such a young age. On the spiritual path, there are some fundamental concepts we tend to sling around pretty freely long before we ever demonstrate that we actually understand or truly believe them. These concepts can generally be divided into four categories: identity, relationship, circumstance, and God. Those concepts can be bumper-sticker-ized something like this: "We’re all one" (relationship), "I am spirit" (identity), "The world is an illusion" (circumstance), and "God is love" (God). Unfortunately, in actuality we generally don’t experience oneness in our relationships, we identify nearly fully with our physical bodies, we believe we are highly vulnerable to the world, and we may even find ourselves cursing God when things don’t "go our way". It is often through trauma of one kind or another that, if we’re paying attention, we become aware of the acute inconsistencies between what we profess to believe and what our inner dialogue reveals we actually believe.An interesting thing about the four categories listed above is that an understanding of any of the four can fully illuminate the other three. So if you embrace this one—that you are a spiritual being (and I feel you have a strong sense that you are)—then every aspect of your world must be reinterpreted accordingly. First, discard the whole time/space continuum orientation, because it no longer applies. There are no more beginnings and endings in the sense that we have been socialized to accept. Personal identity now means something very different. And death, of course, doesn’t have any meaning at all. This "concept" is generally comforting in the abstract, but not especially so when you are being confronted with the death of a loved one. It’s easy for us to accept (though it may distress or appall us) that a person may elect to take his/her own life by a conscious act. Suicide happens every day. We have more difficulty with the notion that a person who appears to have been "acted upon" (illness or accident) may have made the same choice subconsciously. This doesn’t mean we don’t help or even intervene if it’s within our power to do so. What it does mean is that whatever action we take should be imbued with love, not fear or anxiety. It also means our objective should remain, even under the direst of circumstances, peace in the present moment, not what we perceive to be a beneficial change in circumstances. In order to do this, you have to speak from your spiritual core to your friend’s spiritual core. And above all, try not to be saddened by appearances. I wish you peace and the capacity to offer it to your two good friends. It’s your peace they need and your peace from which they can most benefit. As best you can, think about loving now, not willing change. And if possible, allow this experience to nudge you to begin thinking more consistently from the perspective of your own eternal spiritual self. Love,  Pride Wright |
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