Unfold Your Wings and Watch Life Take Off

Five ancient oak trees grow alone in the meadow. Each oak reaches for the sky with a huge canopy of leaves sprouting from an ancient twisting trunk. These oaks are rooted in the level grass carpet. Dark green reeds and clumps of yellow wild flowers decorate the ground. Dense woodland embraces this soft lush loam, wrapping the meadow in a semi-circle. The outermost tips of the oaks bob and vibrate in the gentle breeze accompanied by delicate birdsong flowing from the surrounding wood. On the edge of the meadow an ancient oak has split asunder. Its empty branches lie on the meadow like a giant white skeleton.

Your Healing From Fear Of Death

A few years ago I learned that dad was seriously ill. I came back from holiday with my girlfriend, Carolyn, to be told that he had been taken to hospital as an emergency case. He was in hospital for seven weeks, undergoing a series of investigations to determine the cause of his problem. During this period I visited him nearly every day.

Although these tests had not revealed the cause of his ill health, I sensed that dad might be coming near the end of his life. Carolyn encouraged me to tell him that I loved him. This was not easy because all his life dad had found it difficult to receive such comments, brushing them aside with a sharp rebuff. As a result I felt nervous about revealing how much I loved him. I had never told dad that I loved him. Carolyn advised me to tell him and keep telling him even if he did try and brush me aside. My inner guidance agreed with her suggestion. I knew it was the right action to take.

Choosing a moment when we were alone I proceeded to tell dad how much I loved him. To my surprise he did not brush me aside but listened. Encouraged I went on to talk about our life together, remembering and thanking him for many of the great sacrifices he had made to raise me as his son. He said nothing but I could tell he was listening intently. I talked to dad in this way whenever we were alone. During our time together he said very little, but sometimes we cried as we recalled evocative shared memories. These shared tears said much more than words.

Then after seven weeks the doctors discovered the problem, he had a large cancerous tumour next to his bowel. It was not immediately life threatening, but they would have to do a small investigative operation to discover the type of tumour, so that they would know how to treat it.

The family visited dad the night before his operation. I was last in and when I appeared he held his hand out in a spontaneous welcoming gesture that I had rarely seen before. The others disappeared and we were left alone. I only stayed a few minutes, because he was tired, but in those few minutes I detected a peace surrounding him that was not of this world.

The following morning loud banging on my front door wakened me. It was my sister. surprised I invited her in. She simply said,

Death can approach like a king in a snowstorm who has come to capture us. But we can escape. We can use its pervasive presence to galvanise us to action. Death has much to teach us, especially about life. So what is beyond death?

The great presence in the heart of our pain
The great letting go in the heart of our control
The great sacrifice at the heart of our selfishness
The great mystery in the heart of our reasoning
The great radiance in the heart of our ill health
The great perfection in the heart of our flawed existence
The great trust in the heart of our despair
The great eternity in the heart of our time
The great oneness in the heart of our aloneness
The great silence in the heart of our noise
The great stillness in the heart of our activity
The great nowhere and everywhere in the heart of our world
The great peace in the heart of our fear

The great presence in the heart of our pain
As we throw off our pain and open our heart we become aware of a presence that starts to walk with us. That presence is our own immortality. As we are healed of our pain immortality comes very close. It follows us around like a beautiful radiant swan that wants to enter fully into us but cannot because we are not yet perfect. As immortality approaches and lives in us, we notice a powerful surge in our creativity and in our love of life. The beauty of the radiant inner swan inspires our whole being. Living with immortality is so freeing. We no longer need to be impatient. We are enveloped by the timeless and the eternal and develop a deep patience that is able to overcome every problem. As the eternal enters more fully into us we yield increasingly to the call and live a highly spontaneous radical life.

The great letting go at the heart of our control
As we age immortality closes in. At the point of death itself, we must surrender our control completely. Yet all our lives many of us act as if we can control our life, pitting our will against immortality and the call, which comes from the great beyond within. If we have lived like this then immortality will come as a great psychological shock, a devouring monster that has come to separate us from all we hold dear. If we learn instead to embrace immortality while still alive, by letting go and listening to and following the call, we will be dying to our past and opening fully to the possibilities of the present moment. To live fully and totally in the present moment awakens an awareness of immortality. Then we are reborn as children of radiant Being, leading lives inspired by the beauty of the graceful inner swan.

The great sacrifice at the heart of our selfishness
Perhaps the most important question we need to answer before we die is "Who am I"? To answer this question we must travel from selfishness to unselfishness. We must change from experiencing our own true self as this person and this body, to all people and everybody. As we respond to the inner call to offer more love to more people, we die to all jealousy, greed, vanity, anger, boredom, hate, and sorrow. Through sharing ourselves with the world, the pain we feel inside is transformed into love. We are able to live in this love with complete faith, in the amazing knowledge that what we need will come to us precisely when we need it. We become an ever-expanding vessel where love flows both in and out, wearing away all traces of selfishness and egotism.

The great mystery in the heart of our reasoning
Death is an encounter with the unknown. You cannot reason it out. You cannot intellectualise it. You cannot escape it. Immortality is the great inescapable climax of life. Many of us live as if we know everything, our arrogance permeating every facet of our life. Yet much more is unknown than is known. How often have we heard someone say, "I don't know"?

We love to reason out everything, endlessly turning topics over in our mind. We like to know. I went on a nature walk a few years ago. The guide was well educated. He had studied the trees, the plants and the animals that lived in the woods. Yet his delivery was dry and technical. Although he worked in the woods and had studied the flora and fauna, he was oblivious to the mystery of the woods. He could not convey to his audience the wonder of a woodland walk. He was not acquainted with immortality. He was trapped in the known.

The great radiance in the heart of our ill-health
As we age the death urge makes its presence felt. We develop the aches, pains and disabilities associated with the approach of our death. Yet to many of us the rising presence of our death wound comes as a bitter pill. I suffered an awful shock when in my mid twenties I was diagnosed as having schizophrenia. I could not understand. I had imagined I would have perfect health. For years I could not accept this disability into my life. This wound exposed my vulnerability and taught me more about life and living than anything that has happened before or since. Today I am learning from my wound how to reach that place beyond pain and suffering, the immortal place where bliss prevails.

The great perfection in the heart of our flawed existence
We painstakingly construct our life to suit our imagined needs and requirements. Many of us, especially those of us who regard ourselves as materially successful, are proud of the life we have so carefully built. We surround ourselves with comfort and luxury as we strive to create the perfect existence. Yet our carefully constructed life, so manicured, so perfect, has a flaw. That flaw is death. It can strike at any moment. When death strikes, our carefully manicured lawns, neatly clipped hedges and beautifully decorated rooms lose their significance. Immortality, the great leveller, has come to take us, or our loved one home. The beautiful lawns, hedges and rooms fail to attract our interest as we grapple with the approach of the unknown. Instead, if we learn to Be, we can discover true perfection, the immortal place, known only by childlike people working to heal a world in need and pain.

The great trust in the heart of our despair
Death, loss and grief can throw us into despair. Yet we often have to reach the bottom of our despair to find the ability to trust anew. Time and again people facing death also face despair only to find, as the appointed hour of their passing approaches, despair gives way to a kind of complete trusting. They no longer worry about the future. Soon the past will be no more. They discover Being. Immortal living is an expression of complete faith and total surrender to Being. As we learn to trust Being, the beautiful radiant swan within, we can discover immortality while still alive!

The great eternity in the heart of our time
Eternity is that point where the loving presence surfaces in the full embrace of the present moment. To those of us who live close to immortality, it is a great open space at the centre of our lives. To feel eternity we need to draw close to immortality. The extent to which we experience eternity is dependent on our own ability to accept and then transcend our death urge. We do not need to be actually dying physically to experience this. Opening our heart and surrendering our pain will take us there. When we do this we enter into eternity's great inner space. We find we have room to breathe where others are struggling. Now we are no longer crowded by deadlines, schedules and timetables. We may still operate in this world, but are not cramped by it.

The great oneness in the heart of our aloneness
We are alone. We may have a marriage partner, friends, family and work colleagues as part of our lives but we remain unitary. We are one not two. We enter the world alone and we leave it alone. In our aloneness many of us feel separate. We feel both alone and separate. This separation is an illusion born of the fear of death. As we embrace immortality and release our grief and pain, its light enters into us and our ego shell dissolves. We are still alone but our separation has been replaced by childlike oneness. We are surprised to find that we are the world.

The great silence in the heart of our noise
I was walking along a remote beach in the west of Ireland one summer when I heard two teenagers complain, "There's nothing happening. It's dead around here."

By dying to our pain and entering into immortality we embrace the emptiness and silence from where all conversation, music and creativity emanate. To build a relationship with silence is to build a relationship with immortality. But how many of us fill our lives with noise. It is clear that for many, silence, immortality's container, is simply too much to bear. So we busy ourselves with a hundred different distractions – anything but transcend pain to face the joy of our silent inner essence. By cultivating and valuing extended periods of silence in our lives we open to our pain. We grieve, we grow and we allow immortality's presence to enter into us in the spontaneity of the present moment.

The great stillness in the heart of our activity
I overheard a mother say to her child, "Don't just sit there, do something".

From an early age we are indoctrinated with the idea that "doing something" is good and "just sitting" is bad. In our school days and later in our working life we are cajoled into "doing". So much so that "just sitting" becomes something alien. We develop frantic lives in the mistaken notion that we are "living life to the full." I remember, as a young man, getting lost in a remote area of Donegal in the west of Ireland. I knocked at the door of a small white cottage at the side of the road.

I entered to find an elderly couple sitting quietly in a room with no noise whatever except the restful tick of an old grandfather clock. At that time in my life this was an alien experience. I nearly always had noise present in the background. Here were a couple that were completely content without such distractions. I could sense the peace and the love in that room. Where peace and love are, stillness and immortality are also.

The great nowhere and everywhere in the heart of our world
Before we are born we come from nowhere and when we die we simply disappear back to the everywhere from whence we came. This nowhere-everywhere is a wonderful place filled with beings of light and celestial music. It permeates our world of space and time and it exists within our own hearts. We cannot see it and we cannot hear it, so we pretend it does not exist. We busy ourselves with the affairs of the world and are cut off from our true home, the great wonderland within and beyond. By spending time in stillness and silence we can come to know this world beyond space and time. As we die to all our hurt, negativity, sorrow, grief and pain, we restore some balance into our lives by becoming acquainted with immortality. It is important that we come to know the childlike inner world. It is the essential part of our nature and our reality.

The great peace in the heart of our fear
Ultimately all fear stems from a fear of death. As we heed the call, which comes from inner stillness, we are taken on a life of adventure away from the secure and the conventional, the tried and the tested, into an unknown future. This journey takes us into our fear. This journey is the method the call uses to exorcise our fear. If we want to progress spiritually great gains can be had from the contemplation and awareness of our own birth trauma, vulnerability and pain. To face our traumatic beginning and our impending ending is to face our deepest fear. By exorcising this fear we awaken Being............the timeless, immortal, childlike, place where the radiant swan dwells.

Our experience of immortality is greatly nurtured if, as well as dying to all our pain anger and grief, we also believe in an afterlife in this silent, eternal, nowhere-everywhere, immortal place. By its very nature the existence of this afterlife cannot be scientifically proven. Its existence has to be taken on faith or experienced by direct perception. Personally I know with every fibre of my being that there is such an afterlife and that I will be happy to make my home there when I have passed over. I know I am a spirit having a bodily experience.

Unfold Your Wings and Watch Life Take Off

Part 3 - Your Healing

Your Healing From Fear Of Death

Envoi