Letting Go – Day 28
Letting Go – Day 28
By Jenny Griffin
Death
As I alluded to in Day 15’s post on the tarot, death is the ultimate letting go. It is also a universal, something we will all eventually share, and as we go through our lives, we experience it in its many forms around us.
All things die, that is a certainty. Not just living beings, but hopes, dreams, relationships – all things have the potential to end, which to our emotional selves is the same as death. It is the finality of it that we strive to resist, the unknown quantity that exists post-death, without the thing that is dying. All the ‘what-ifs’, ‘could-have-beens’ and ‘what-might-have-beens’ float around, nagging at us to revisit them, keeping us tied to the non-existent potential that died with the being or dream. Does the thing that has died have the same attachment? No. Their journey is complete. The soul of the creation that has died has done its job and it has gone on to whatever comes next. What it leaves behind are huge gifts, which are different for each person involved, but they are there for us to find and to celebrate.
It’s important here to talk about that concept of legacies. Each and every living being leaves a legacy by virtue of the fact that they spent time on this planet. We might feel like some legacies have more validity than others, but who’s to say that the homeless guy on the corner that you see every day as you walk home is not there to spare someone else from being there. The space he takes up by being where he is means there’s that much less physical and energetic space for someone else to be there. What a gift. In death, he opens up a space that none of us would consciously want to fill, yet when he stood there in life, we might not have appreciated that gift. That’s why stepping back and looking at death from a slightly different perspective can be so powerful. That’s not to say it doesn’t hurt — death and endings hurt — a lot. It’s more to say that if you can grieve and be open to the possibility that within the separation from your loved one or long-cherished dream lies new perceptions, you will more easily accept death. It is when we fight to let go of our loved ones that we prolong the process of grieving and don’t get the gifts as quickly.
So how do we do this thing, this letting go of the things that we hold dear? We do it through our hearts, and our emotions. Grieving is the way to release the hurt we feel, and the quickest way to the gifts. No one wants to feel the depths of despair that grief brings, so sometimes we run to something new that will take away the pain. The pain doesn’t go anywhere; it simply gets buried beneath a layer of not-quite-happiness-but-not-sadness-either which keeps us able to exist without too much trouble. Sometimes, without accessing those depths of grief and pain, we cannot fully understand happiness. What we take to be happiness is more like a state of contentment with no extremes, no mornings where we wake up so filled with love and gratitude for all of existence that we could just burst. Emotions are our gauge to navigate our way through the world.
Sometimes death can seem so unnecessary and so damned unfair. If a child dies before it even has the chance to know the world, or if thousands of people are lost all at once in some horrific way, most of us want to scream at the sky and shout, ‘why? why?’ But if we can let go of our egoic attachment to the idea that these beings have missed out on achieving whatever existed in their potential, we can take a step back and thank them for the gift of opening us up to our own potential. We are invited to feel deeply, to experience the world and all it has to offer through every fibre of our being, something which might only come available to us through the process of grieving and the prospect of living when everything dear to us has gone. Take heart in the fact that these souls agreed to every step of their journey, that they have progressed, and that they watch us through our journeys with only love in their hearts. They feel every tear we shed and they celebrate with us our victories. Find the gift, because it IS there, and it is waiting for you to accept it.
How many people leave the theatre mourning the end of the play? Or believing that the actor who has just portrayed a spectacular death scene has actually died? More than likely, we leave the theatre moved by the performance and talking about the skill of the actor at taking on such a role. We applaud the talent involved, the casting, the script and the overall performance. This is what we are asked to do in life, as well. Applaud the life that was, celebrate the gifts it brought, and release yourself from any attachments to the soul. We are asked not to hold on to the circumstances around the death, which attach us to the sadness (not grief) and the ‘what-might-have-beens.’ In the end, all death is the same, final act of surrender, despite the fact that the circumstances appear different on the outside. Honor that surrender and respect the soul for its courage in choosing whatever method it did for its exit.
Our world is changing, and the sooner we can let go of attachments to the old systems, beliefs and other ties that hold us to the old way of existing, the sooner we can see those changes. We are tied to fear, and the old systems support that tie. This is what needs to die – this belief that fear is our only choice, when in fact at each moment we can choose how we feel. If we all chose not to accept the fear that is fed to us daily, imagine the possibility that might exist. Instead of clinging to the old ‘what if the economy collapses? What if I lose my job, my home, my family?’ why not let that ‘what- if’ die, because it never really existed except in your (or our communal) imagination anyway. Or even better, as a wise teacher once told me, think of a ’what-if’ that you’d really love to have happen. If you can ’what-if’ one way, then why not the other? And if they don’t even exist, how is it hurting you to try turning the process of ‘what-if’ on its head? What if everything you ever wanted was yours for the having, and all your wildest dreams came true? It’s better to head towards your eventual death with that idea than running fearfully from (life and) death to avoid hurt, pain, terror, or destruction.
Embrace it all and love it, and when it is your time to die, know that you have tasted life fully and leave with no regrets.
Jenny Griffin
Also known as ‘The Catharsis Coach,’ Jenny loves exploring life’s twists and turns through the lens of transformation. Her own journey through catharsis, a deep, deep letting go of ingrained patterns and beliefs, resulted in a feeling of connectedness, with the world around her and with that wise and wonderful voice within. Jenny has learned to engage with her life and experiences in a way that allows her to use the knowledge gained through them to serve others. When she’s not writing, she’s coming up with new ways to help people move through change with grace and ease.
You can find her at: http://thepowerofchange.me/what-is-the-power-of-change-3/
