Letting Go – Day 14

JG: Did you struggle with the process, and if so, did that have an effect on the intensity of the experience?

BF: I don’t know that I’d describe it as struggling as much as not being aware that things can be (or ‘are,’ actually) different than my conditioned mind was capable of perceiving them. In the instance of my infant daughter’s death, for example, my wife at the time let me hold her as she was dying. In every other way, I was quite the narcissist at the time, but from the moments I was holding my daughter as her heart stopped beating, I started to realize that my attitude was all about self-protection, and that it wasn’t necessary (or courageous) to hold to that. While the opportunity was there, and from where I am now it’s clear as day, I can’t say that I was aware of what my daughter had come in to teach me until many years later. It was still a long road, but as I say, I believe it’s more a journey of accepting, and of ‘opening.’

In the shamanic death experience as well, once I accepted that things were the way they were, new perspectives became possible; I allowed myself to open to the energies that were all around. It wasn’t that they weren’t already there, as another reality, you could say; it’s just that my consciousness at the time had me perceiving myself as more separate, if that makes sense.