It's Out of Love We All Come...and...It's Unto Love We All Return

 

Apologize not for your own or for another's existence;

for it's out of Love we All come, and it's unto Love we All return.

I recently had a very dear friend from my childhood cross over. As an adult he'd played the role of compassionate friend, giving me a smile, a reassuring hug, a kind word in some of my darkest and hardest moments--those moments when it was hard to breathe, when life got really tough. He'd been through two heart surgeries, one of them several hours long, and after that he suffered from a depression so deep,..well...so deep that his second attempt at suicide was successful.

Ever since I realized that I was a dreamwalker when my dad crossed over, I find myself suddenly napping a couple hours during the day when someone who's touched my life dies. I'm so out of my body I can't move my limbs. It's something I learned was natural and that humans have been doing since ancient times. We walk alongside our loved ones--quietly, as a loving and clear, agenda-free presence--and escort them to the bridge of flowers that crosses to the other side of the veil.

But the dreamwalking didn't happen this time. Maybe I didn't allow it because it was a suicide, and I've been told to not try to attempt it with suicides. Being highly sensitive empathetically, it's a gamble when being with someone who FEELS so lost, so alone, so...desperate. It's too easy to feelingly get sucked into their vortex of pain, and find yourself crossed over, as well.

Maybe he didn't need an escort either. Maybe he wasn't lost at all and was okay and clearly enscounced within the love and celebration of those awaiting him on the other side. We could have even dreamwalked during his surgery...and I didn't necessarily have to have been his only dreamwalker. Dreamwalking is a natural human ability and it's more common than most humans realize. We just didn't have a word for it in our current culture until recently. 

I've heard he wasn't really even himself afterwards, something that is common with those having been under anesthesia so long. That seems to tell me that, like my brother, Steve, he was having difficulty staying embodied in human form. 

I've been at a loss then. What do I do? How do I help comfort those left behind? Myself included?

And what can I do from this side of the veil to support my dear friend? Maybe he doesn't need my help. Maybe he was in such a place of trust deep within that he wasn't afraid--that the depression he'd felt was a longing for the relief he'd experienced while under anesthesia. Maybe he'd had an out-of-body experience at some point during all those surgeries, and he'd experienced the release from the burdens of being human. This human journey is not for the faint of heart. I've heard it is much easier to let go and die than it is to be born into the confining limitations of the human body.

In the nineties I read the book, Embraced by the Light, by Betty Eadie, who told the story of her own near-death-experience. After checking on her loved ones and reviewing her life, she was told that she wasn't finished yet with that lifetime, that she had some things she needed to do. She had the final say, but her story needed to be shared, and she had to return in order to do that. I'm one of those who needed her back. I needed to hear her story, and this is why:

She was shown a line of angels standing at the ready for their incarnation into a human body. Every one of those humans-to-be was revered for their courage and bravery. If you'd taken on the human experience, though we might play the role of coward here, there really is no such thing from the other side's point of view of us. It takes a whole lot of faith, perseverence, guts and determination, love and sacrifice to play the human role. It takes forgetting who you really are, and getting stuck and limited in a biological body, when deep inside and in one's dreams you just know you can fly and that you're free--but all of that seems so elusive, impossible from this side of the veil.

And...Betty's decision to return was not an easy one. To tell her story to a world that could be harsh and judgmental about such things was not for the faint-of-heart. She spoke of having those moments of longing to return home to the other side, too. Times when she felt so alone, having those difficulties that come with simply being human.

As for suicide--I get it. Life can feel overwhelming at times if you're the least bit sensitive. And frankly, we humans are all sensitive, though some may have buried it deep as their means of a way of coping in this tough old world. 

I even set out to kill myself at one point in my life. My mom had passed, my dad was having a difficult time with it, I felt like a loser in my own marriage. I really never seemed to fit in this world; and one day I just thought it would make everyone else's life better if I was no longer here. I don't even remember what the last straw was. I just set out walking my way out of the city one cold and gloomy winter day. My plan was to just keep walking until I froze to death out in the middle of a field. I'd just disappear, and everyone would be better off for it.

But as I got to the outskirts of a neighboring suburb, I had the realization that doing this to myself was going to hurt my loved ones far more than if I stayed. I put myself in their shoes and felt into how they would feel if I followed through on my plan...and I turned around and returned to a husband waiting for me at the door, worried out of his mind. I was so cold.

I haven't shared that story with very many people who know me personally. It wasn't one of my brightest moments, and there was a bit of shame lingering there. Now, I look back, and I have a good laugh at myself because I absolutely hated being cold! Most of my life, I'd had cold hands and feet--and when those digits are cold, well you're just plain cold and miserable.

Later on I would learn of other empathetic people similar to me having started to attempt suicides, as well. My beloved humanity--we have these thoughts and feelings more often than any of us lets on, and maybe by sharing our stories with one another--by opening up--that which is hidden can be brought into the Light of Love and Gratitude for all parts played.

As for my beloved friend and classmate, I don't have a sense of him wandering lost in the Near Earth Realms. I don't feel a sense of depression in my own energies in relationship to it. It feels like he's okay. I'm sad for all his loved ones here (myself included at times) because of the loss of him and all that they'd been through leading up to his death, but I have a sense that maybe he--his consciousness--mostly left his biological body during that last long surgery. He was meant to exit at that time, but maybe there was a little something he had yet to do here on Earth. Maybe it was to open the door to the Christ light on this very subject of suicide.

The Old Testament story, The Book of Job, has been at the forefront of my mind ever since my mom crossed over in 2001. It's struck me as amusing that Job's (pronounced with a long "o") life story seems to reflect what a "job" it is to be human. The job of the human done out of love and sacrifice for the wisdom gained for its soul. Job lost over and over again in every aspect of his human life. He lost his wealth, his entire family and loved ones, his friends, his health. 

In the end, though, everything he had lost was restored to him...and I FEEL the GRATITUDE and LOVE for everyone and everything he NOW had--it's huge, it's awesome--because, once upon a time he lost it all...

Love lets go. When we love, we seem to open ourselves up to an inevitable loss, and yet we continue to love and care and appreciate and feel...and maybe it's important for me to remember that when our world is in such a state of crazy divisiveness. 

I am here for all of this, to walk through this momentous change in our world, and I am here to stay for quite awhile yet...but because I weighed my options of whether to stay or go (I've done so many times before and since that one walk of suicide), I'm clear with myself about staying, even when some days feel pretty tough. It's painful sometimes to watch humans fighting with themselves and each other...and then I tell myself to step back, observe, love and appreciate the acting jobs of all these amazing souls playing at being Little Humans.

In our last hours together, Dad showed me when he plopped that paper towel on his head and it flopped on either side of his head like dog ears, that it's important to laugh to lighten things up when things feel at their darkest and hardest. To not take it all or myself so seriously...it's just a job, after all.

My dear departed friend, thank you for lightening up the lives of me and my loved ones by helping us to laugh and to smile and feel okay. Thank you for those little moments of kindness you probably forgot. It all made the job so much easier. I miss you...and...I'm going with the idea that losing you will just help me appreciate you all the more when I see you again.