Journey of Return - Dorothy Hunt

When the Beloved wants to take you Home,
extend your hand to His welcoming
even though your body may be trembling
and your mind may want to flee;
even though those around you grieve,
and you yourself have mourned, even before they,
the changing form of your body.
Tears are not the final truth
though they will come and go
like stars that need a dark sky to be seen.
Death is not a failure of a mind
that is not strong enough,
or positive enough, or pure enough.
Those who hold such views are simply
masking fear with ideas of being in control.
We are being lived...
...anguish, fear or deepest grief
cannot alter Who you really are.
The beautiful Spirit that extended ItSelf
in space and time, and called ItSelf by your name,
is simply ready to return, unencumbered by a body,
to Its vast and spacious Unborn Self,
that kisses you at birth,
and holds your hand in death,
and never for a moment
forgets you are ItSelf.

The mind imagines you are leaving,
but where could you truly go?
You are Life ItSelf...
Unceasingly flowing,
moment to moment unfolding Yourself.

A body is born; a body dies; but you do not.
Deep within your heart, you know this Truth.
Rest there.  Rest in the knowing that
opens your heart to all that IS,
that loves ItSelf in all that comes,
and returns to ItSelf in all that goes.

Dorothy Hunt
Zen Buddhist Teacher

~

Personal Note - My 90 year old mother has started her
"Journey of Return."  She collapsed at home on Dec. 23rd
and spent the next week in the hospital where they discovered

she has stomach cancer.  She chose not to pursue treatment, and
is now at home on Hospice Care.  She really doesn't understand
what is happening, as she has already forgotten what happened to
her in December.  She is "transitioning", as they call it; seeing
people where there are none, seeing paintings on walls that aren't
there.  She has begun to grieve the loss of the functioning of her
body, but we don't think she knows "she" is dying.  But she is also
still very lucid, just exhausted physically; as are her children who
now care for her 24/7.  Three very different personalities brought
together in time in a family dynamic that is difficult... 
We don't know when "The Beloved" will take her.
It could be weeks or months according to those who "know"
about the process of death.  I will have to say that this experience
has made me question any *ideas* of an underlying "spirituality" -
as it does not appear in my present experience.  Maybe we just
create lofty ideas of "spirituality" to comfort the mind.  The
practical fact is that my mother will die, dissipate, even if her
Consciousness continues or is absorbed into the Greater
Consciousness, etc...   It is the process of death
itself that is exhausting as the body slowly declines... 
It appears to be an "event", an "experience" that is happening,
like birth, whether we are able to
understand the mystery of it or not...