Epiphanies with Death

Moments are precious. Notice them, breathe with them, inhabit them.

Welcome to this edition of Liminal Walker Musings!

If you are a new subscriber, a special WELCOME! A dear friend of mine died recently, my heart both aches with grief and feels expanded as love. The liminal binding them together. To write about anything else right now seems artificial. So, here are my musing and meanderings, sprinkled with sadness and epiphanies. Love to you all!

Thanks in advance for reading and if you feel moved, consider becoming a subscriber as well as commenting because I’d love to hear from you. I am glad you are here today, appreciate your support.

MOMENTS

Photo by Linus Nyland from Unsplash

What unfolds and emerges in a moment of time?
Can a whole life be lived within heartbeat?
Inside a cycle of the breath?

According to the dictionary, a moment is a brief, indefinite interval of time. Our lives appearing to be a myriad of sequential moments, one following right after another. Yet, when does a moment truly begin and what instigates its creation? When does a moment conclude and where does it go after it transpires? And how do these moments blend together? No answers here, only questions. Contemplating and sensing into the wide expanse of it all. The uncertainty and ambiguity of life’s mystery…

Life seems to be composed and painted by these precious moments. Inviting us to reside and inhabit them as they happen. Or do we chase after some idea of them, pursuing an illusion or fantasy? For me, I find life is enticing me more and more back into the present moment, where the animacy of existence can reveal itself…

BREATH OF LIFE

Photo by Saad Chaudhry from Unsplash

Years ago, I read and studied the sutras of the Pratyabhijnahridayam. A text also known as the Heart of Recognition, from the tradition and philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism. What has stayed with me through the years is how life breathes in and all of its physicality disappears into the void then life breathes out, returning our corporeality again. These flashes happening so quickly we can’t register it in our minds or experience. There’s a fluidity to this inhalation dissolving everything we know, followed by the exhalation that brings it back together again. But… not quite in the same way for this is how change manifests, impermanence as part of our ongoing experience.

I am feeling into this precious space that exists right before the exhale, where potentiality and possibility are ripe. Decisions, whether unconscious or conscious, ours or collective, becoming our lived moment to moment timeline through that breathing out. How the undefined as the inspiration becomes defined, evident and recognized through the expiration. Choice collapsing as physical experience.

Today I am drawn to this specific point. I ponder on this space where life has expired, passed away but has not yet returned. I recently had a very close friend die suddenly. As of this writing it has been about ten days. I wonder what his last breath was like. Life exhaling as him, his physical body no longer able to be animate. That one distinct instant as a window in time when the corporeal body ceased to function. One moment, one cycle of the breath where he was living, the next moment gone…

For me, there was an inhalation before I knew of his leaving then the exhalation when I was given the news. All within a heartbeat and the beginning of the waves of grief, ebbing and flowing like the ocean tides. For him, a heart that ceased to beat anymore.

YOU

In honor of you dear friend…

You left in the night as a whisper
a quiet storm that landed on my shores
ravaging all possible future moments
erasing their marks off the slate of time

Yet still I find you here in my heart
memories etched in longing
breathy notes once played on the flute
of your life echo as kirtan trills.

I call but you do not respond
candles lit in your remembrance
cast animate shadows on empty walls
flickering moments of gossamer spaces.

You are no longer here, yet somehow you are
each moment graced by your
subtle presence of generosity and love
like flowing water filling barren margins.

DEATH

Photo by Daniele Levis from Unsplash

With this recent death in my life, there is this psychedelic type of experience I have fallen into. My reality feels altered, my perception broadened, expanded. While simultaneously moving through and with the swells of sorrow and grief. Finding myself at times on the couch with nervous system overload. This event as a catalyst, an inner alchemy for something significant has changed in me because of his passing.

From Psychology Today.¹

“… as psychedelics stimulate hyper-connectivity between sensory brain regions, they relax connectivity in the so-called default mode network, the interconnected brain areas responsible for self-referential thought and the “me” aspect of self. The experience is felt as ego dissolution.”

I feel this gift of the “self-referential” as me melting away, my ego quieting. I am seeing and experiencing how love shared does not die, becoming stronger than ever before. Death truly is a superpower! Inviting me to live authentically. Recognizing it’s impossible to be present if there is a running away from the dying. Death comes as it comes. No pleading, bargaining or compromising will change that. No reciting facts and statistics will alter its arrival. Existence is ongoing because death makes that possible. Each loss and change making space for something new. Like when autumn arrives, plants whither, die and decay, becoming nutrient packed fertilizer for the new sprouts of Spring.

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

-Quietness by Rumi translated by Coleman Barks

Questions for you…

• What is your relationship with death?

• What has death taught you?

• How does death move in your life?

Would love to know your thoughts and feelings. Let’s have a conversation…

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1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/psychedelics.