Do Not Fear The Reaper
Solace, Truth, High Destiny and Love are often found in the strangest places...
The greatest lessons I have ever learned have come from The Reaper.
After channeling things I do not have words for into four songs tonight, now I feel like I can share a few things. It’s amazing what dark, delta blues, zero judgment of ones experience, and putting pen to paper in the form of poetry will do.
Highly recommend.
So friends, the time has come to share some of these, and to talk about another avenue of finding medicine in the shadow:
Grief is Love
I learned this for the first time when one of my best friends passed away. This lesson would be further engrained in me as the deaths would continue.
We experience death for many reasons. I suppose the reasons don’t matter, but something does need to be said about this, because it is beginning to feel like an extermination, and the ones who know, know:
Last I checked, we are losing around 3000 people a week due to drug overdoses, namely fentanyl.
I am a recovering addict with 14 years of sobriety. The root of addiction is profound disconnection, and people who suffer from things like PTSD or addiction are moreso canaries in the coal mine of the side effect of living in such a disconnected false reality, than anything else.
However, I know how hard it is to understand and accept this, namely because of the unspeakable damage people do to other people when they are driven by addiction, trauma, and a host of other things.
I may be a recovering addict, but I’ve also been in the role of the person who loves the addict, and I’ve had my life burned to the ground more than once by being in close proximity to them. So I am familiar with both sides of the fence.
These things are very complex. Moving on:
The above of what I said has nothing to do with the first persons passing who fully taught me that GRIEF IS LOVE. Not only is grief love, but it is one of the highest expressions of Love I have ever felt.
When she died, even though she was one of my best friends, and I’ve never quite had a friendship like that in my life to be honest… as much as I loved her in life… I actually felt myself get closer to her in death. I felt my love for her transcend anything I knew. And in the days after her death, before the ceremony/celebration of life for her passing, I could feel her with me, in my room, in the music we’d listen to, and I allowed myself to be in that space. I allowed all of the feelings. It cannot be done any justice with words, so I’ll leave it at that, but if you know, you know.
Second round:
When my former fiance died, it was like all the noise in the world STOPPED. I barely remember the months after his death. I know where I was in my mind, but it certainly wasn’t where my body was. I don’t know where my body was.
I remember where I was in my mind though. Once again, if you know, you know.
There’s a sort of “void” or “waiting room” in between worlds, and sometimes, when someone you are so profoundly connected with crosses over… part of you goes with them. You may find yourself a temporary visitor in this waiting room between worlds, if this is ever the case.
Yes, it sounds horrible. But it taught me on a level I cannot convey with words, the following sentence:
The only thing that matters in life is Love. Everything else is NOISE.
Every single thing I had been consumed with and concerning myself with deaded itself immediately. It had no significance. All the white noise of the world stopped.
The fires of this experience burn away all falsehoods, and only what is real remained. That realness, that truth, is a love that is indescribable, but it is there. And it can be accessed without going through the passage of grief, but it is also especially there when you do.
Another avenue for touching this constant truth in our reality is whatever spiritual practice that takes you there. I know what works for me, I cannot tell you what works for you, but you already know. Deep down, you have all the answers you seek outside of yourself. We all do.
Sometimes, I think people are more afraid of life, than death.
Death is mercy. Life? Life demands all of you, or else suffer the consequences of a living, breathing, decay and betrayal of all you know you are, but refuse to show up and be.
We Are Living Legacies In Process.
We live so foolishly when we forget this, but death will remind you, because when they go, all you are left with is their legacy. Their memories. How they made you FEEL. What they showed you with their example… and oftentimes, this example is magnified a thousandfold once they pass… it’s easy to overlook each other when immersed in the commotion and chaos of what we call “daily living”.
What do you want your legacy to be?
This is a question I have found to be unbelievably clarifying when it comes to identifying ones PURPOSE. This is something way bigger than us as individuals. We move on… but what we leave behind, whether positive or negative, (I’ve yet to see a “neutral” legacy), that energy and those behavioral patterns, that wisdom (or lack thereof) will be passed down through generations.
Do we want to be a generational curse, or a generational blessing?
Yes, our decisions really do have that much power. Maybe this is why so many are so afraid to truly live.
Hate to break it to anyone in that situation though, but dodging this has just as much of an effect as showing up for it. Avoidance is robbery… and not just of yourself.
Some people don’t care. Let them experience and know The Reaper, let them experience and know Love, let them experience and know Death, Grief, and God… and their selfishness will fall to its knees, and they will have a new pair of glasses, so to speak.
This is the magnitude and medicine these experiences bring, and our loved ones leave behind for us to discover. Honor them and honor yourself.
The going is coming, and the coming is going.
“God breaks the heart over and over again, until it remains open.”
Someone said that to me a few years back. I knew he was right as soon as I heard it. I still had a lot of breaking to do before I remained open. Then I shut down after being open, for YEARS… and then I opened just enough to let what I thought was love in… and it broke me on every level.
I do not praise abusive, deceptive, selfish, savage, immoral people. The level of disgust I have for the boundlessness of deception and cruelty that some people can stomach inflicting on others is…. something I will not channel here. That’s for another project.
So I do not credit the individual who showed me a new level of hell. I pray they have an opened heart and open eyes, face the truth, and change. HEAL. So you stop hurting people. That’s as far as my business is concerned. Case closed on my end, they are God’s problem now.
We are all like actors… as if we all decided before we incarnated in this life exactly which roles we would play, exactly what we would and would not do to each other, even the most heinous things…why?
For the purpose of rapidly accelerated evolution. For a really great breakdown on this topic specifically, listen to Matt Kahn’s talk on Twin Flames. This is NOT some new age romanticizing thing, a “twin flame” is not something that feels good at all. I mean it does at first, but holy shit.
But like all things in nature, everything serves a purpose… even if we find ourselves shell-shocked and chain-smoking, praying to God and asking HOW, and WHY, and also, WHAT THE FUCK.
Eh, we don’t always get the answers. But that energy? We will be very surprised what arises from our hearts when it remains broken open.
Channel it. Feel it. Use it. We do not have to use it for direct vengeance.
Sure, you totally can, and I won’t judge you.
But I’ve found it better spent in using it as fuel to get closer to why I incarnated on this planet. Destiny. Purpose. The creative energy that comes from these spaces is unreal. Do not judge anything you create or write, just let the ghosts tell their stories, they demand to be heard, and no one can speak like they can. Let them out.
Death cuts through all the bullshit, and you know what? The secrets the dead keep, do NOT die with them.
Don’t ask me how I know that, but if you know, you know. So what do you want to leave behind? A legacy of trauma, deception, agony, betrayal, secrecy, heartache, chaos? Possibly even worse… an example of mediocrity and repetitive cycles of suffering?
Or do you want to leave behind a community that is more inspired, more uplifted, and more directed toward their individual and collective purposes, and are more united and can further the work your own soul was moved to take on in this incarnation?
You will leave medicine when you die. Your absence will contain it for someone. Same as the ones we love and lose, they leave medicine too. You just have to have the eyes to look for it, and the stillness to feel it.
Do you want people to pray to you in their time of need, the way I so often pray to my lost loved ones and ancestors?
Or do you want to be a bitter pain in their psyche, that they damn near go to the ends of the earth to forget?
Tragic yet karmic justice of this thing is… they will forget. People forget QUICK. Especially if they want to. You live on in the memories of the living. You also die there. In the sense that we view death, at least.
The choice is yours. Memento Mori.