The Dancing Matrix of Life - Tarchin Hearn

Life is a boundless matrix of dynamic relationship.
Ultimately, every action reverberates throughout the universe.
I responding to you.
You responding to me.
This responding to that.
That responding to this.

Responsiveness is the living heart of being...
Atoms, molecules, organs and organisms, families and societies;
entire ecosystems, biospheres, planes and galaxies;
all shifting, responding, constantly changing.
Each birthing of this is a dying of that.
Each dying of that is a birthing of this.
Responsive change is the very nature and fabric of what is.
Permanence is a mental abstraction; a hope, a need,
a convenient but potentially deadening freezing
of the actual creative dynamic of all our lives in action.

Suffering arises through trying to fix or make permanent
what is essentially a seamless fluid process.

May we cease grasping at permanence and
with heartful confidence, love, enthusiasm and wide awake
sensitivity, enter fully the great birthing/dying matrix of
responsive relating;
this ineffable, un-pin-down-able, present blessing of now.

Tarchin Hearn

~

Photo - Indra's Net of Jewels Mandala

2013

What Remains After Death...

I seem to be drawn to the topic of "death" lately - especially after watching this creative you tube video called "The Life of Death", which really impacted me.  Not in a morbid way, but in opening the door to bring awareness to the reality of "my" mortality - the certainty of exiting life as "i" know it... It left me feeling that death is really always with us.  It's right here - part of life. We know this, but we often avoid the idea.  But what really happens when we die...  Does this thing we call "consciousness" really "go on"?  What's left, if anything...  Is there truly a Greater Cosmic Beingness in which we are absorbed after physicality is gone?

My personal belief has been that our personal identity as a human being does not "go on" - that is, the "ego"/personality does not...  My belief has been that this "i"-wave called "christine" does not go on as christine, but dissolves into the Greater Ocean of Beingness - that famous analogy of the wave receding back into the Ocean...  But do I believe that because I like that scenario over others?  And will "i" know this is happening?  Will there be awareness?  I don't know...  Who really knows...  Just meandering here...

My father died in the early morning hours before dawn - we think - sitting in his chair in the living room.  He evidently couldn't sleep and had gotten up sometime in the middle of the night to sit in his chair.  My mother was still asleep in bed, and told the story later that Dad had come to her in what she thought was a dream and said: "Skip, I just died."  When she awoke at 5 am, he was not in bed.  She got up and found him dead in his chair.  Now some may call this woo-woo stuff, but...  who knows! Was my father aware of his death?  How exciting!  Did his consciousness go on, able to communicate somehow with my mother? And if so, how long did his consciousness linger...  Is this "dissolving" a gradual thing...  The Buddhists believe that one goes through what they call a Bardo period of "traveling" after death for something like 30 days or more.  But how do they know this? My father had had a near death experience several years before his actual death, in which his heart stopped after open heart surgery and he was "clinically" dead for a few minutes...  But was *he* "gone"?  Evidently not, as "he" was revived, and reported to us that he was now not afraid of death because his experience of dying, which he believed to be real, was peaceful.  There was something there that experienced "peace."  Fascinating...

My grandmother died in the hospital, having fallen and hitting her head, creating a blood clot under her skull requiring surgery.  After several days the decision was made to remove all life support because she was not improving...  I was not present when she died, but upon entering the room a half hour later, or so, I was gifted with an intensely tangible presence of Love that I have never experienced before, nor since.  It was like a warm presence that absolutely engulfed the room...  What was this!?  It was not the love I had for my grandmother, nor her's for me, but a greater Love.  

I realize now that it is this Greater Love that absorbs us, is what remains and "goes on."  Whether "we" retain anything of consciousness or the personal self remains a mystery.

In death and beyond there is only Infinite Love...

~*~

Photo -Imprint of a bird and wings in the snow

A View of Death - Joan Ruvinsky

Below is a transcript of a conversation that Joan Ruvinsky had with one of her Friends that was sent out in a recent newsletter from Joan's organization: Pathless Yoga.  Joan knew she was facing death, as she had end stage lung cancer.

When this body goes, does THIS [our Beingness] go?

The body is here and THIS is here - both/and...  There is one alive-space of us, and the room, and the wall, and everything else...  If global sensing is primary, the experience of me will become non-localized.  In other words, who I am is being interpreted right now as if I am a body-mind.  But the experience after I die is that there isn't a localization, that essence (called me) is just another flavouring of pure, dimensionless being.

When this body goes, does THIS go?  I'm going to say it the way Jean [Klein] said it because perhaps his wording is better than anybody's: the body is an expression of THIS.  The ocean comes up and makes this Joan wave and then this Joan wave recedes back into the ocean.  If you are looking just from the surface, yes a body has died and that person no longer exists.  If you are looking from beneath the surface, you see that yes, there is no body, but THIS still exists.  Whether I am here or not, IT is still here. This expression of IT, this tip of the wave, has come back into the ocean...  Right now you relate to the tip of the wave as well as the ocean.  The big question now is: "What is going to happen?" In your outer experience there will not be a body, but is your outer experience the truth?  What will happen in your inner experience?

There may be grief because the expression of THIS is going to be gone.  THIS is not going to go away.  And when it happens that the expression goes away, let's see, let's see what's left.  It is an experiment!  We don't know...  This everythingness... this presence... what will happen to it?  When you just stop and just close your eyes and listen within, when the background becomes the foreground, what will happen then?

Joan Ruvinsky was "reabsorbed", you might say, into the Great Ocean of the Ineffable Mystery of Being March 21, 2016.  She was evidently conscious during much of the dying process, and could describe her experience, until she could no longer talk.  Amazing...

~*~

Photo - Craypas Oils Art
Radially Blurred