Death………it scares the hell out of most of us but it is a part of life process and actually occurs many times during one’s life in many forms long before our physical body wears out or succumbs to disease! We can have many forms of death such as spiritual death, emotional death, death of a relationship, death of an idea, death of our personas and personalities and of course our final demise which ends our time on this planet or at least we hope it does! My dear sweet Paula hates the word and does not like me to discuss it or really want me to write about death but it’s just a word and I write about whatever comes to my mind and my free association of thoughts and ideas no matter where there may lead me.
Most of us have experienced emotional death throughout our life when we have lost feelings we have had for something or someone whether it is our work, our lover, our hobbies, maybe a pet or a loved one. Sometimes these changes bring about a death of an idea as well. I remember one of the most emotional times for me was when I lost my cat “Eers” when she had only been with me for a little over 6 months. Now I must admit I never was a fan of cats growing up and I always saw them as somehow cold, calculating, eerie type creatures and I was never fond of them being around me. I owned a dog as a child and I loved him a lot until the day I had to “put him to sleep” (i.e. order his death) and then I suffered emotional death from losing him. I never believed I could ever feel that way about a cat but a few years ago this little, adorable, playful cat that had been abandoned in our neighborhood showed up on my doorstep hungry and in need of a home. Something had awoken in me and for some reason I felt that this little creature, which was so playful and affectionate, should be part of my home. I discovered that the perceptions I had of cats were so very wrong. They are beautiful, affectionate, loving and playful creatures and I cried for hours the day she was killed by a speeding car that ran her over and crushed her in the street in front of my house. The tears flowed as soon as I picked up her warm little body in a towel and held her. Since that time I have added two more stray cats into my home and love them both dearly for the joy and affection they display and give me each and everyday. I guess what died in me was my misunderstanding of the nature of cats- my idea of the nature of cats and that was a good thing it did for if that idea had not died I would have missed out on so much joy they have given me over these recent years. It was my rebirth and it came.
Emotional death is closely related to death of a relationship and we have all experienced that including most recently my dear sweet Paula who is in process of ending her relationship with her spouse who could never truly understand her or embrace Paula but only the person that use to be confused for her and covered her from the world. Paula’s wife laid down the line in the sand and Paula was prepared to walk right over it as she decided that living her life as she truly is was more important than staying in a relationship where the emotional death had occurred. Paula also told her wife she loved another who accepted and embraced her for who she was and that she fell in love with her the moment she met her. These actions have caused the death of the relationship that once existed between Paula and her wife and yet Paula does not fear this death even though the person she loves has not fully escaped her shell to completely to emerge to be who she is meant to be. When she does she will experience the death of the shell that has masked and hid her true self from those around her and that death will be relished and cherished-yet it is death nonetheless. Again, it is the death which is part of life, especially for the life of a transgendered person and particularly for one who is transitioning. Rebirth will be found and Paula will find new love and experience rebirth of her relationship.
Spiritual death occurs quite commonly as well and actually quite frequently in our lifetimes. I have been in this struggle for sometime. When I was young, I was raised in organized religion but I never associated worshipping at church with spiritual enlightenment. The two often do not go hand in hand. One could go to church services regularly and yet still be very much spiritually empty. One could be filled so intensely with spiritual growth and understanding yet have never even seen the inside a church in their life. I left organized religion when I was young and sought spirituality from other sources and drifted form being an agnostic to finding my comfort with there being a creator of the vast universe we have barely even seen or explored. Sometime later I returned to another organized religion but lately that has slipped away, mostly due to fact the people of my church as well as most churches where I live are not very accepting of those of us of the LGBT community. I sense my spirituality will again come from my discoveries, readings, connections with others and maybe someday the right fit for me in a church that is open and welcoming and lets me seek answers and does not feed me dogma and rituals or spoon feed me answers. Maybe I will try being a Buddhist. I have died spiritually several times –each time to rise up and seek out for the answers to our existence with the reasoning we have been given as humans. Death spiritually does not rattle me and it should not bother anyone else. It is part of life. Rebirth is frequent in this journey as well.
All of these other deaths such as spiritual death, death of a relationship and emotional deaths always bring about changes and rebirth. Without the deaths we can find that rebirth. So with that said all of this brings me to the final type of death and that is our physical death. I witnessed a lot of that death when I lost my mother, only brother and father all in a span of 15 moths anguish filled months. While I grieved their departures it was my emotional death that I was experiencing and not their physical death. Painful as it was, I had lost loved ones but I had not felt their own physical death. Why do people fear death (physical death)? We learn to deal with a death of a relationship, an emotional death or spiritual death and we find rebirth and renewal but we do not deal with our own physical death very well and why is that so? What makes us fear death? Is it the unknown? Is it the fact that we may not go anywhere after we die and our body returns to ashes and dust? Is it because there are realms beyond our finite comprehension and we don’t like the realm our spirits may be heading to in that journey? Will we finally find peace in those realms? The unknown scares us as human beings and while it is tough enough to deal with all sorts of deaths beyond the physical one, we somehow mange to deal with them, find our rebirth and move on in our lives. But when there comes a time when we will no longer be moving on in our physical life, we suddenly fear this death like no other before us. Why? The physical death is the easiest for us to endure of all and it is unlike other types of death in that we will never recover from it and it ends all other types of death one may experience in our lives …..…….
Most of us have experienced emotional death throughout our life when we have lost feelings we have had for something or someone whether it is our work, our lover, our hobbies, maybe a pet or a loved one. Sometimes these changes bring about a death of an idea as well. I remember one of the most emotional times for me was when I lost my cat “Eers” when she had only been with me for a little over 6 months. Now I must admit I never was a fan of cats growing up and I always saw them as somehow cold, calculating, eerie type creatures and I was never fond of them being around me. I owned a dog as a child and I loved him a lot until the day I had to “put him to sleep” (i.e. order his death) and then I suffered emotional death from losing him. I never believed I could ever feel that way about a cat but a few years ago this little, adorable, playful cat that had been abandoned in our neighborhood showed up on my doorstep hungry and in need of a home. Something had awoken in me and for some reason I felt that this little creature, which was so playful and affectionate, should be part of my home. I discovered that the perceptions I had of cats were so very wrong. They are beautiful, affectionate, loving and playful creatures and I cried for hours the day she was killed by a speeding car that ran her over and crushed her in the street in front of my house. The tears flowed as soon as I picked up her warm little body in a towel and held her. Since that time I have added two more stray cats into my home and love them both dearly for the joy and affection they display and give me each and everyday. I guess what died in me was my misunderstanding of the nature of cats- my idea of the nature of cats and that was a good thing it did for if that idea had not died I would have missed out on so much joy they have given me over these recent years. It was my rebirth and it came.
Emotional death is closely related to death of a relationship and we have all experienced that including most recently my dear sweet Paula who is in process of ending her relationship with her spouse who could never truly understand her or embrace Paula but only the person that use to be confused for her and covered her from the world. Paula’s wife laid down the line in the sand and Paula was prepared to walk right over it as she decided that living her life as she truly is was more important than staying in a relationship where the emotional death had occurred. Paula also told her wife she loved another who accepted and embraced her for who she was and that she fell in love with her the moment she met her. These actions have caused the death of the relationship that once existed between Paula and her wife and yet Paula does not fear this death even though the person she loves has not fully escaped her shell to completely to emerge to be who she is meant to be. When she does she will experience the death of the shell that has masked and hid her true self from those around her and that death will be relished and cherished-yet it is death nonetheless. Again, it is the death which is part of life, especially for the life of a transgendered person and particularly for one who is transitioning. Rebirth will be found and Paula will find new love and experience rebirth of her relationship.
Spiritual death occurs quite commonly as well and actually quite frequently in our lifetimes. I have been in this struggle for sometime. When I was young, I was raised in organized religion but I never associated worshipping at church with spiritual enlightenment. The two often do not go hand in hand. One could go to church services regularly and yet still be very much spiritually empty. One could be filled so intensely with spiritual growth and understanding yet have never even seen the inside a church in their life. I left organized religion when I was young and sought spirituality from other sources and drifted form being an agnostic to finding my comfort with there being a creator of the vast universe we have barely even seen or explored. Sometime later I returned to another organized religion but lately that has slipped away, mostly due to fact the people of my church as well as most churches where I live are not very accepting of those of us of the LGBT community. I sense my spirituality will again come from my discoveries, readings, connections with others and maybe someday the right fit for me in a church that is open and welcoming and lets me seek answers and does not feed me dogma and rituals or spoon feed me answers. Maybe I will try being a Buddhist. I have died spiritually several times –each time to rise up and seek out for the answers to our existence with the reasoning we have been given as humans. Death spiritually does not rattle me and it should not bother anyone else. It is part of life. Rebirth is frequent in this journey as well.
All of these other deaths such as spiritual death, death of a relationship and emotional deaths always bring about changes and rebirth. Without the deaths we can find that rebirth. So with that said all of this brings me to the final type of death and that is our physical death. I witnessed a lot of that death when I lost my mother, only brother and father all in a span of 15 moths anguish filled months. While I grieved their departures it was my emotional death that I was experiencing and not their physical death. Painful as it was, I had lost loved ones but I had not felt their own physical death. Why do people fear death (physical death)? We learn to deal with a death of a relationship, an emotional death or spiritual death and we find rebirth and renewal but we do not deal with our own physical death very well and why is that so? What makes us fear death? Is it the unknown? Is it the fact that we may not go anywhere after we die and our body returns to ashes and dust? Is it because there are realms beyond our finite comprehension and we don’t like the realm our spirits may be heading to in that journey? Will we finally find peace in those realms? The unknown scares us as human beings and while it is tough enough to deal with all sorts of deaths beyond the physical one, we somehow mange to deal with them, find our rebirth and move on in our lives. But when there comes a time when we will no longer be moving on in our physical life, we suddenly fear this death like no other before us. Why? The physical death is the easiest for us to endure of all and it is unlike other types of death in that we will never recover from it and it ends all other types of death one may experience in our lives …..…….
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