The Reality of Death, the Reality of Life, the Reality of Love

by Robert Wilkinson

As many of you know, this is a sacred day for me. This year is a milestone, as my daughter would have been 29 today.

This would have been the year where she left many old ways behind, and accepted a different mantle of adulthood, as all of us do at that age. Like the rest of us, she would have taken all she was given in childhood that was tested in her 20s, and moved out into the world on her own terms to claim her destiny. And yet that was not to be.

Because we are Soul-Spirits with a cloak made of a body with feelings and a mind, I know beyond doubt that my daughter in her Spiritual Body has been with me on this journey to find meaning after her death so long ago. Still, for the longest time I missed her physical presence, riding the waves of grief as I learned to accept that I would never see her again.

And yet, while I had to say goodbye back then, it also opened the door to a life I could never had imagined before her. I have been walking between the worlds of life and death since then. It has left me unafraid of death, and aware of the grief we all share for all kinds of reasons.

Death is a fact of life. We all deal with death throughout our lives. No one escapes confronting what has died, what is dying, and what will die. That’s why accepting each death for what it is and knowing we must do whatever it takes to heal is of utmost importance in finding our way to a sense of connection with all of Life. By honoring our healing process, we are offered opportunities to find the strength and courage that can lead us to a greater unconditional Love.

This year I have been contemplating the profound voids that accompany the many kinds of deaths we all experience throughout our lives. If we live to any age at all, we will experience the death of friends and loved ones. As we age, we also experience the death of dreams, the death of beliefs, and the death of ways of life. When these die, we again confront our need to move into and through the grief we feel and do whatever it takes to heal the best we’re able.

Recently, I have pondered other sorts of collective deaths of ideas and ideals that we all feel. I believe we are in a state of collective shock and grief over the death of any pretense of honesty in our elections, the death of civility in public dialog, and the death of any standard of decency in our national political arena. These no longer seem to exist, nor does any desire to emulate the gentility, civility, and common respect that once existed in our society.

In recent months, due the ugliness in our collective dialog, I have witnessed the death of families. The bonds of affection and trust can take a lifetime to forge, and vanish in an instant. When loyalty, humor, tolerance, and mutual respect are gone, and we confront intolerable attitudes and conditions, it kills the family bond. And yet, the death of those biological bonds also opens new relationships with those who are more your true family than your biological relations.

This led me to a realization that across the many lifetimes of our eternal existence, we have had ten thousand fathers and mothers, ten thousand sisters and brothers, ten thousand sons and daughters, and ten thousand aunts and uncles. While we lose some, we gain others, both in this life and across lifetimes. While the death of family ties is always difficult, we have had many families, and where there is joy, we find our true family.

Is it the death of the natural order? The death of the old ways, whether environmental, governmental, or social? It seems that species are disappearing at alarming rates, and we are living through the beginning of another mass extinction. I have wept at the death of millions of bees, as well as other creatures dying in massive numbers all around the world at this edge of collective death. We are one Life together. When plants and creatures die, we all experience it, whether we know it or not.

These global deaths, whether of Nature or ideas and ideals, naturally create a very heavy atmosphere. Any sense of heaviness we feel is a clear signal of our connection to “All-That-Is,” and our need to accept that with the passage of the old, we will find entry into a renewal of hope and joy in the future. If you are feeling emotional heaviness, whether personally or generally, when you’re finished here please take a new look at my 2012 offering, Letting Go Of Emotional Heaviness, where I offered some tools that will help all to navigate those deep waters that take us from death to a renewed life.

While Blyth’s death devastated me and left an unimaginable void in my life that could never be filled in any adequate way, it also opened me to understand that every death is followed by opportunities to become stronger and more courageous in the search for meaning in life. Despite the impossible heaviness of the grief that accompanies a significant death, by embracing the journey into the underworld we learn radical detachment from old perceptions and beliefs, and can open to a greater understanding of the dance that life and death do with each other.

Living where I do, Nature is all around me. It has taught me a lot, since life in the desert can be relentless for those creatures which live here. I have seen moments when a hawk seizes a bird on the ground and swoops up into the air. These are moments of death for one and life for the other. I have seen snakes seize rodents, and roadrunners seize snakes. And though people are allegedly more evolved than animals, in this desert I have also seen people seize what was not theirs, creating the death of a future for one, and future karmas affecting the life of the other.

Throughout my life, I have experienced the death of many friendships due to the irrevocable loss of any common bonds we may have shared. However, while I have experienced the death of my trust in some people, I also have experienced a strengthening of trust with others. We create bonds of love, trust, and affection with each breath we take, and throughout the years, leave behind those relationships not built upon the foundations of love, trust and affection while embracing new ones where we may find and demonstrate these.

Since I began my healing journey, I have found every death to be a sign that a chapter has closed, and another one will open in the right way and time. While I miss my loved ones who have passed from my life, I also know that we cannot lose what is truly ours, nor can we hold on to that which has outlived its time in our life.

We are all parts of the greater Life in which we live and breathe and have our Being, and are not separate from the life that is all around us. Since we are all together within the one Life we share, as we learn to bless and leave behind lesser ways of living and loving, we find that each life-affirming act we do creates many forms of life and death in our future that will be perfect for our never-ending journey from lesser to greater awareness.

Death is Nature’s way of teaching us to accept and come to peace about those things we cannot control, or even make sense of. Through death we throw off fear. Through death we learn clarity about what has been, and what is. Through death we learn to face the fact that each end is followed by a new beginning, and each void will be filled with contents perfect for where we’re at and what we need to learn. While death can be terrifying, it also is liberating.

In reflecting on what I gave you in the past, I found a piece of my 2014 offering to be something I believe is important to contemplate on this anniversary of the beginning of my journey from hell to redemption:

Over the years, I have found that consciously walking between worlds, regarding Death not as an enemy to be feared but as a manifestation of God that blesses us to embrace unconditional Love, helps us experience our mortality while also showing us the way beyond fear. The direct experience changes our perspective, and we learn to hear, feel, and know much deeper levels of existence.

The great Spiritual Master Astrologer Marc Edmund Jones wrote about the nature of human existence as a combination of the “horizontal” and “vertical” elements of life. The “horizontal” of our existence represents our interactions with the world. The “vertical” of our existence represents our connection to Spirit, showing our foundation and aspiration to flower and fulfill our life purpose.

Blyth’s death taught me to go deeper, much deeper than I ever went before. I had aspired to higher Truths before her, and yet have found even higher ones since her death. I came to realize that most of us build foundations, metaphoric “slabs” or “pier and beam” platforms on which our flowering consciousness finds its ground. These may be adequate up to a point, but sinking deep roots is the Way of Nature. It is how the giant trees stand upright even in the strongest winds.

While I had attained great heights of realization before Blyth, from her death I went deeper than I had ever gone before in this life. These depths allowed me to know the root of Life itself. That root has allowed me to grow into greater Love, Wisdom, and Intelligence than I ever knew before her death.

So while this is an important point in my 29 year journey through the valley of the shadow of death, I know the journey is endless, and I have found a constant joy in the dimensions of unconditional love she opened for me. Though she left this world almost 3 decades ago, she opened me to a never-ending sense of her eternal presence, and I am certainly a more loving and compassionate man than I ever was before she came and left so quickly so long ago.

May all of you who have lost a loved one find comfort and healing in the courage, compassion, and unconditional love that you were offered from that death. Death is a fact of life. And love is stronger than death.

Happy 29th Birthday, Blyth. You've changed my life and countless other lives forever. Thank you for making me a better man. Love, Dad.

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If you want to order a paperback copy of the book I wrote about my ordeal and path back to a loving, fulfilled life, you can find it at Love, Dad: Healing the Grief of Losing a Stillborn. (Just make sure the subtitle says “stillborn” rather than “child,” since this second edition clarifies this work was written as a result of a full term birth loss and updates all the global numbers related to pregnancy and infant loss.)

Though it was written as a result of the death of a child, what is explored in the work are ways to move through grieving any loss of any loved one, whether child, parent, sibling, pet, friend, or any other. It can also help you understand what the bereaved are going through, and perhaps help you to be a more compassionate caregiver, if that's your privilege.

If you want to explore more about the grieving and healing process, please visit my previous articles. Each one covers different elements and approaches to healing our grief. These articles cover different things than are offered in the book, while elaborating on some of the core concepts and related issues. And of course, give yourself some space and time, since they will bring up some very deep feelings.

From 2006: Love, Dad - Bereavement, Grief, and Healing After A Significant Death

From 2007: Coping With Loss and the Grief That Honors A Love

From 2008: For Those Who Grieve the Loss of A Child

From 2009: Death, Loss, Grief and Bereavement - Honoring the Sacred Moment

From 2010: To Those Who Grieve the Death of A Loved One

From 2011: Death is A Fact of Life, And Love is Stronger Than Death

From 2012: Letting Go Of Emotional Heaviness

From 2013: Losing Loved Ones – Grief in the 21st Century

From 2014: Overcoming Fear of Death

From 2015: Healthy Grief Leads To A Healthy Life

From 2016: Remembering Blyth and the Road Not Traveled

Copyright © 2017 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Dee Kelly]

Sending you so much love Robert🙏🏻 Thank you for this
excruciatingly beautiful post.
There are no words...Love, Dee❤️❤️❤️

[sw]

Thank you, Robert. This essay touches the soul.

[Nic]

Thank you, once again brother. We never walk our paths alone and you have been a valuable companion in my journey.
We know that the dead are really not that dead and we also know a little better what it is to be alive (and in life).

Blessings be to you and yours and to everyone else.

[Kristin]

Thank you Robert, for this poignant post. Your commitment to sharing your experience with us all is an ongoing inspiration--peace to you, and much gratitude.