"Just keep humming and the discords will be drowned out. Life is a great organ, to be played with body and soul...forget yourself in its majestic rhythms and you will find heaven on earth."

Winifred Rhodes Emmanuel
Gay Troubadour of the Organ

The Transition We Call Death
by Flesymi

Death is not what we think it is. Death is a transition from one form to another, or better, from one dynamic state to another. In our incomplete mode of thinking and relating to ourselves and others, we think we are "alive" because we strictly identify with our current biological form; and we think of ourselves as "dying" when that biological form is nearing the end of its physical usefulness. This skin-encapsulated self-identity may be difficult to refute, but let us try.

Bring to mind some features of your own identity that are non-physical, or at least have non-physical aspects:

Love
Fear
Excitement
Gloom
Intuition
Creativity

While these aspects might currently require a physical body for expression in this particular timespace nexus, they are clearly rooted in a deeper part of our nature that seems to hover beyond the confines of our physical form. In short, we are not just our physical bodies; we are much more...but how much more?

Discovery of this is exactly our path now. We are discovering individually and collectively that we function within non-physical fields of living, organized information and energy. But we are these fields, and we are the condensation of these fields as they take the shape of our bodies, our families, our communities, our societies, and even the circumstances of our lives. We are all that we see around us. Even quantum physics tells us that the perceived and the perceiver – us and the world around us – arise simultaneously out of the "Big Bang" each and every moment of existence. We, collectively, are a perennially unfolding flower held in bosom of Existence Herself; that bosom we call NOW.

But before we can grapple with "death" let us first gain a clearer picture of what life is. Let us broaden our view from the tiny pinhole through which we are accustomed to looking at things. Let us look at the principle of life as seen through its operation in something other than us. For instance, a grove of aspens trees.

One of the largest living organisms in the world is a grove of aspen trees that spans the Colorado Rockies. Here billions of trees express the one life of the grove, all connected through the same root structure and that breathe the same air. Even so, each tree is unique…in fact each leaf is unique. Every tree displays the twists and turns of its penetration into this dense physical world: it leans toward the light, its roots are as different as the ground upon which it sits, it has scars and other memories within its inner rings that shows its living path through time, and these unique characteristics only happen in relation to the local and non-local environment in which the tree survives. If it is shaded by a larger tree, it will not grow as large, until of course, the larger tree dies leaving more light to fall upon the underling.

If each tree had a localized, personal awareness of itself in relation to the grove, no doubt it would perceive itself as separate from the grove. It would see other trees and comment: look at that ugly, bent so & so over there, how disgusting that it soils our nice neighborhood; or I wish I was as tall and white as that gorgeous hunk of bark over there. But examine this grove under time-lapsed photography where decades pass in a matter of seconds before our eyes…centuries and millennia pass in minutes and hours. What would we observe?

We would see the "life" of the grove rise and fall within each tree, within each grouping of trees in relation to the local "neighborhood", in fact within the entire grove. We would see one organism spanning an immense area, whose abode is an even greater living being: an orb, itself, throbbing and hurtling through a seemingly endless joy ride in multidimensional space. But through the trees we would see a living ebb and flow of the life force moving, twisting, contorting, expanding, contracting, and pressing itself into the biosphere. We would see the grove assimilating the elements and nutrients of the earth, reaching steadfastly for the light of the sun…and diving ever deeper into the earth for grounding, while inhaling and exhaling the air. Get a solid picture of this in your mind as we now embrace the "death" of a single tree.

Removing the emotion from this scenario, we find that "death" of an individual tree is simply the life force withdrawing from that particular form and re-emerging in a different one. It is a transition from one dynamic state to another. Nothing is lost, sure the shell or outer exterior is merged back into the local earth-based environment, but the deep and unique characteristics of the individual have now been embedded in the fabric – the field – of the "life" at large.

And so it is with the six billion "trees" manifesting in this most exciting time on earth now. View the past 20,000 years of human life on planet earth in a time-lapsed show over two hours. You will see the same smiling faces throughout time, you will see the same horror throughout time, and you will remember a particular person or group but might not quite be able to put your finger on why or how you know them. You will see the same life ebbing and flowing through all the individuals that make up who we are…you will see the same Being pressing itself into the conditions of this time-space nexus. And you will see it ever striving higher for the light, for more of what it can become. You will see that same bosom of creation cuddling its infant flower regardless of the horrors the flower inflicts upon itself. You will see that life cannot die, life always existed, always will, only the form it takes changes, and it changes, apparently magically, with our perception of what "it" is.

What makes us fear death and dying is too narrow a self-identity, for others and us. We feel that the loss of the outer form is the loss of the essence, the soul. Further, we seem to be lost in a very distorted notion of "time" where our loss apparently happened in a "past" that can not be reclaimed, and this immature notion of time forever separates us from a new relationship NOW with our loving friend or relative who has made his or her transition.

If you are facing "dying" yourself, endeavor to tap into the largest perspective of who and what you are as you make this transition, and do your best to stay aware and in a state of love and acceptance "through" the transition. If someone you know is about to make his or her transition, be the rock that grounds the experience in wholeness, respect, love and an honoring of the life of which you are witness. If someone you know has moved on in the past, gain a new relationship with the essence – the soul – of that being now; you will find that nothing has been lost but the outer shell; as always, the deeper, more meaningful things in life are still there.

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