I woke up this morning from a dream about death. And with the message that it's not a big deal from the point of view of death itself, only from the point of view of life. Death seemed like quite a normal and MINOR occurrence, I guess like someone returning from holiday, or coming back from a party.
I was reading a piece yesterday about the Fairy attitude to death, by Dora Van Gelder: "Once we see the world from the fairy point of view, we get a glimpse of a new universe. So many things that matter very much to us do not seem to matter at all to them. Life and death, for instance, are things they know all about; to them there is no uncertainty and no tragedy involved. Human beings so often shrink from life and fear death. Fairies actually see the flow of life through all things. We live in a world of form without understanding the life force beneath the forms. To us the loss of form means the end of life, but fairies are never deceived in this way. They have a penetrating and powerful lesson for us."
And maybe animals too? We pride ourselves on having a future awareness of our deaths that animals do not have. But maybe much of that is fear. Animals are not distanced from their instincts like we often are, and I don't think the instincts view death as an extinction. Animals know who they are, they know how to live according to their different natures. We humans do not, we are the new-born ones.
We are deeply attached to our physical forms, we think that is who we are, rather than the underlying life force. That is what Dora Van Gelder is saying. We suffer from existential amnesia. Not only are we identified with our own physical form, but it gets worse than that, for we become identified with the physical forms of others, they become who we are too, and so we grieve when they die. And this is a very real thing, I don't want to make it sound like some sort of silly delusion. But it is precisely how we learn to let go of our over-attachment to physical forms. It is ourselves, who we thought we were, that we grieve for. The other person is probably just fine, and maybe feeling a bit sheepish for having made such a fuss about dying (as I think one of my relatives felt after they had died.) Death is just the dissolution of the physical body, that is all, it is not the dissolution of the Spirit. Though what happens after we die is a mystery, and I think it is best left that way, for it opens us to the mystery of life.
And I think the fairies have been showing me the same thing with relationships. We get so heavy about them, we consecrate them in church, the other person becomes our 'other half', and I think that is just silly. It seems to be something we usually can't help doing when we are younger. If we remain open, that process of feeling destroyed when the relationship ends can transform us. Or we can just carry on in the same old way with a replacement partner. The choice is ours.
My experience is of something - and this year it has felt like the fairies - shoving me towards other people for a dance that changes me in some way, and then it is over. And we are often judging of this sort of thing. It doesn't mean that the dance may not last a long time. But it is still a dance with a beginning, middle and end. I can feel a bit knocked around by it, but that is just me learning to see these things differently and more lightly. And I think it allows for more depth rather than less.
And it is all the same thing. We get attached to our physical forms, we get attached to the physical forms of others, we get attached to jobs and money and possessions and reputations, as though they are who we are. Hanging loose to all this, so that there is more room for the Spirit, seems to be central to our human journey. Learning to hang loose often requires a lot of grieving, we may feel torn apart at times, and it may take years to absorb. It is a visceral journey to remembering and to wisdom, but would we want it any other way?
So we are at the party, and we have been at the party for years. And then one day a stranger turns up, a compelling and very real presence enters the room, and we realise it has all been a game, it shifts our perspective entirely, if we allow it to. Actually, it frees us, frees us from this attachment we have that is always a source of suffering, though maybe pushed away at the back of our minds much of the time.
🥰🧚♀️🧚♂️💫💖🌿☘🌌
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