I felt surrounded by a sense of warmth in bed last night thinking of my friend Christine. I must say I cried again too, but I had that strong sense just as I had when my sister and mother died in 2014 and 2017 of freedom for her, that her spirit was around me very strongly and that she was in a place of peace. Something about it felt very beautiful and deep.
My older sister was the same age as Christine and that synchronicity was not lost on me a few years ago when she went back to South Africa and some of the grief and feelings of Jude leaving home to go to New Zealand when I was 3 years old came back to me. Sometimes I believe God brings these fated relationships to us for our growth in consciousness and healing. I have got to grieve past losses that I could not grieve at a younger age far more in later life and sobriety, and I have shared before it took til 6 years sober for feelings of grief around my Dad’s death and treatment of me to begin to emerge in 1999.
Life blew apart in the following 5 years which was my Uranus opposition. We all get that transit in our 40s and it comes with the uprush of the repressed life and feelings and not all of us manage it ‘well’ but how could we with our level of consciousness? I read a very good book by a Jungian therapist, Murray Stein a few years before all of this went down for me on midlife and he said that from 40 onwards we have to bury the corpse of our past life and loves and make some kind of meaning of it. For many of us who never got to live as or unfold our ‘true self’ due to repressive forces of conditioning and our ignorant society it can be a painful journey that for some of us ends in illness or death. It demands a growth in awareness that reached back towards past generations too, I believe in order to understand wider influences and it demands a growing up but also a connecting with our spiritual self or inner child. For others growth in consciousness and compassion and wisdom comes through suffering purifications and the ordeal by fire and water which Jesus spoke of… I see it closely tied to the symbolic idea of crucifixion and rebirth.
Something about our soul and spirit just longs for authenticity and freedom, I see that more clearly now, and when we cannot get it in life or get too caught up with others we can get trapped and become ill, that is not to say we should not strive to connect intimately with others but from the way I have seen some children treat their parents I am glad in many ways I don’t have children, sorry to say. That said its a spiritual work in progress for all of us and some can be a great support and comfort if they are not narcissistically wrapped up in their own agendas for the parent, some may be permanently alienated from so called ‘abusive; parents and not able to forgive or make the leaps of compassion and understanding required.
Anyway I drew great comfort from the warmth of my friends spirit close to me last night. I thought of how I read recently that the Lakota people say in that when a loved one dies the veils between the two worlds thins. So those of us touched by death often learn to visit the underworld in grief and may become mediumistic to a point, or our energy may be called by the loved ones into the world away from this purely mundane, physical one which, as I see it however is still full of spiritual ‘life’ and soul life. I think this is why some close lovers die shortly after one another, they do not have as much of the ‘love’ energy anchoring them to this world. I see this in my sister’s struggle lately, she loved my Mum and they were closer in a way and since Mum’s death and her own cancer struggles the energy of death has been pulling on her.
That said I do think some of us can learn to live well ‘between the two worlds’ maybe we are the shamans, the poets, the writers, the mystics, the dreamers, the sensitives. In any case the world needs us just as it shuns us at times or we feel we don’t belong in it.
Today I reminded myself to be grateful for what my friend gave to me in the time she was living, rather than feel self pity that she was gone. I am still allowed to be sad as that is natural, but I can also remember that in spirit my friend is not that far away, she is as close as a thought or a breath of wind. And still I miss her. ❤
Emerging From The Dark Night 