October 16, 2011

Samuel: Hello dears.

Hello Samuel.

S: Just one chair empty next to you tonight.

I have begged somebody to sit here. Samuel. I brushed my teeth, I wore deodorant, I’ve done everything I know.

S: There are two chairs right here in the very front for anybody who wants them. One is right here, one is right here, or if you move in then one will be there and one will be there. I won’t bite, I promise.

Greetings. I know that the form is thinking that this is the first Sunday of November, but I’m not exactly thinking that way. I’m thinking it just a little bit differently. I’m thinking of it more as, Please give me a report about the homework that I gave you last week, and let’s talk a bit about Samhain and then got a little more something for you.

So, how did your week go?

Not too well. The first part was fine but the second part was the pits.

S: Hurt a lot?

Yes, yes, hurt a lot.

S: Thank you for coming in spite of it.

It’s much better now.

S: You’re giving it to her as much as she’ll take?

Yes.

S: Good, good.

She is.

S: I will put you in those hands and remind you that you respond so well to the kind of work she does that the more, the merrier.

I’m not just going to keep her in a job though.

S: Wouldn’t hurt.

It would not hurt her, but it would hurt me. She’s been very helpful . . .

S: Good.

. . . very helpful, a wonderful daughter.

S: Heal.

Thank you, thank you.

S: Fill every cell of your being with light.

With that I know I will.

S: Aye, be well.

Homework, who did homework? All right, first what was your homework? Do you remember?

It was to make amends in areas where you had hurt someone.

S: That’s right.

Noki will drink your water but she will do it very politely, so, just so that you be warned. Thank you, Cindy. I needed to see me girl.

So who did their homework and wants to tell about it? Nobody? Frank, Cathy.

I’d say it was also . . . I’d add to what the homework was and say that I can sometimes do it and can’t make amends. It’s not a situation with amends; it was to release . . .

S: That’s right.

. . . the negative things that you’ve been holding on to. Especially you asked us to look at the deep, dark, biggest one we had that had been holding us back, and I’ll talk about that. I worked on that a lot, and it was really amazing what I realized, because it’s kind of, to me, kind of silly, but I visualize things a lot. I do things visually, in images. I picture images. And I realized that I remembered the negative things that happened in my life. And in other teachings you’ve asked . . . , well, I won’t go there. So I started thinking on this and realized that I’d had a lot of these experiences in my life that I hadn’t had. And I was having to realize that most of my problems were because of expectations and regrets from the expectations.

S: Good.

And I realized that if I took an image of the situation that I was upset about and was told to make a little description of it that was heart-warming and beautiful, I could do that. And I realized that every situation I’m in, if I take it . . .

S: If you step aside from it.

. . . step aside and look at it from another’s eyes and from a heart-warming and beautiful situation, every situation I’m in, I’ve had so much beautiful, heart-warming situations in my life that the few things that didn’t go according to expectation, so what. It’s really been amazing; I can walk the dogs in the park and be starting out that, “I’m having to walk the dogs; it’s cold, it’s kind of damp; I have all these other things to do,” and then I think, “Yes, but look, here I am walking two dogs that love me that I love.” And someone may look and say, “Look at that guy. He gets to walk his dog in this beautiful park. What a great life he has that he can do this.” If I keep switching my mind wherever I am to stepping aside and seeing it as a beautiful experience, it becomes that. That’s what I got from it and it was great.

S: That’s beautiful, Frank, beautiful. In other words, he was looking at the experiences of his life as if they were photographs, catching the moment of great pain and seeing it as a photograph and instead pretending that he could step away from that photograph and put a lovely, sweet caption under it instead of the focus on that pain and sorrow; putting that lovely, sweet caption on it, the reminder that there is another way to look at this, allowed him to realize that the greatest pain and sorrow in his life was the result of unmet or frustrated expectations. Wow, expectations, really big, very good, very good.

Well, I was working on the exercise and I was trying to look . . . I realized that the person I needed to forgive was myself, patterns of inconsistency, of not doing things that I know are good for me and I was trying to get to the core of why that is. So I had a lot of food for thought. The big take-away for me was specifically seeing a current pattern that I have that perpetuates me not feeling good about myself, which is a good awareness. It’s something that I do every day that I’m not consciously aware of, but I realize how much it was causing me to not respect myself.

S: And you think that’s not much. I think that’s huge, really huge. And you know, the things that are seemingly little things are what make up your big things. The experience or the action itself is, in all likelihood for most of you, going to be a small action or a single kind of thinking, a thought. It’s not that it’s this huge explosion that threw off your and forty other people’s lives; it’s a single thought, a single piece, a single action that, when you turn it around, will change your life. When that thought, that piece, that action, is something that’s based in a form of thinking that is not useful for you—-for instance, “I’m not enough. I’m not good enough. I don’t deserve”—well, you don’t realize that when you put off an activity and you really look at that avoidance and you realize that it’s because you don’t believe you have earned it and, bingo, that huge explosion that affected twenty other people as well is centered in the reason why you have such difficulty with prosperity, because you don’t find yourself worthy of receiving. So, look for the little things, the pieces, the steps, the experience. Look for those things that, as Frank found, tend to be related to expectations that failed. Look for those things that are related to an issue, a thought pattern that’s negative rather than positive for yourself. Very nice.

Ani.

I actually started with a really pleasant memory. And what I did was, my way of making amends was to restore to that memory the real beauty and magic of it, which I was denying so far. So I was actually . . .

S: I love that. I love that, sorry, keep going.

I was answering questions for an interview for a magazine in India, and it asked me how I came to learn dance. And it was the same story: I was six years old and my parents took me to this Institute Of Fine Arts, thinking that I was going to learn to play the drums, and I chose to learn to dance. I always tell the story. I try to sound extremely matter-of-fact about it, very apologetic about it. I don’t want it to sound like a six-year-old chose his calling, but that’s exactly what it was. But I was sort of refusing, I was sort of denying the beauty to that moment . . .

S: Yes, yes.

. . . and I just restored it back to it and I said, “Yes, I was six years old and I chose it.” And because I chose it on that day, among other things, I am here today, doing what I am doing. I mean I am here today, this Sunday, here. So just acknowledging the fact that that was the moment that I chose my calling was hugely powerful for me.

S: Well, when you recognize its power, when you give it back its magic, it opens a new door so that you can see all of the ways, all of the roads that have changed to bring you to you.

Yes.

S: And that happens every time you reveal a truth about you. It opens up an awareness, and if you follow it through you’re going to be able to see the roads that brought you to where you are. That’s beautiful.

And a wonderful byproduct of being able to see the roads that brought me here is just a feeling of gratitude, just being able to see that I am filled with gratitude.

S: Aye, aye, nice.

Thank you.

S: David and then Cam.

I guess I have more of a question. There are a number of instances where I can directly see attitude; I can directly see how I might have expectations or not about things. But then there are times in my life where other people’s actions have been forced on me. I—in high school, surprisingly enough—was beat up a few times, and it’s not something . . . I could, I guess, apologize for the damage my face did to his face, but I’m not really sure where things like that can go because, you know, I can turn around and forgive, but that doesn’t mean I have to be best buddies with the person who beat me up.

S: Thank goodness.

And I guess that’s part of where I get confused with forgive and forget, because if I forgive and forget too much I would have been beaten up every week as opposed to avoiding the person, so I don’t understand some of the things that you have said.

S: I can assure you I did not say forgive and forget; I can assure you. If you do forget it’s probably because you have overstressed yourself and your mental faculties are going a little awry, because it’s not your nature to forget, and you don’t want to forget; you just want it to stop owning you. You see, if you forget . . . now, the Form has a joke: “It happened before breakfast; I barely remember breakfast, so . . .” And that’s pretty much a stress reaction. It’s probably pretty true, but it’s not a right way to be. The more natural experience is, you have an experience, it plops into the lake of the known, (I’ve gotten good at that haven’t I? Into the lake of the known.) and draws to it similar experiences. And pretty soon they all kind of get mixed up into one, but those seldom-happening experiences you tend to remember because they’re not mixed up with a whole bunch of others. That’s the reason why you have a tendency to remember the negative more easily than the positive. You have so many more positive experiences in your life, but it’s one more of the same and one more of the same and one more of the same and one more of the same. But negative experiences stand out because they’re different. Now, when you are dealing with a situation in which somebody else’s will is literally, or figuratively forced upon you, it’s all about your . . .

Response.

S: I’m not hearing it, sorry.

Response.

S: Response, right. It’s all about how you respond to it, because your response is the key. A reaction is going to draw, most likely, a negative continuation of action. A response that you’ve been able to think through and chose to put out there, is going to be a place for change. Now, there you are a kid in school and you don’t really have control of your life. You’re not really versed particularly versed in action and reaction. Until you’re a particular age, and especially when you are in school and in your teen years, it’s all reaction. Isn’t that right? Do you remember . . . way back there?

A reaction is pretty much what’s going on all of the time. You’re reacting to things because you don’t have enough in the lake of the known, you don’t have enough wisdom built up, you don’t have enough experience built up. The things that happen to you in your childhood very often need to be looked at with a different viewpoint than when you are looking at your adulthood, when you are consciously out in the world being responsible. Those things that happen to you as a child, first thing you want to do is accept this is probably going to have to do with a reaction and then look at the reaction, not at the experience itself. For instance, don’t think about the kid who hit you; think about what it created in you. Don’t think about getting slammed; think about what you made of it. A child would rarely take a beating and make something good out of it. More than likely, the child, as the adult will also tend to do if the child learned it worked. The child will likely come up with a reason why you deserved it, if for no other reason than—they didn’t say nerd back then did they?—than “I’m different. I’m just not as social as they.” Not, “This poor soul has some real social difficulties, but in one way or another, what have I done to make this happen?”

There are things in your life that are not a part of a Guardian’s cause and affect but are a part of somebody else’s cause and effect, sort of like a car crash—poof—and it’s about your response. So look at the response, not the action and, David, see if that doesn’t help you zero in on a point of thinking that could be what you look at to change.

There was . . .

Cam.

S: Cam, thank you love.

Resonating with this discussion and the one of last week in my mind, which the lesson hasn’t come to full fruition, the true story, very succinctly: a doctor who had worked in emergency room found himself working in a war zone treating people, and he found that the soldiers who had very similar or the same injuries as people on the streets of the big city experienced much less pain and needed much less medication to control that pain. And the conclusion that he arrived at is that they had different narratives that they were telling themselves, almost on an unconscious level, at the time of the event. So that the soldier was going, “I’m going to get to go home. I’m going to be honored. I’m going to have attention, and things like this are going to happen.”

S: A different way of looking at what happened.

Yes, and the consequences of it . . .

S: Oh very nice.

. . . and then whereas the people on, someone on the street, say a jeweler, who was injured in a store would have a whole different set of words, which was the narrative. And so it was the narrative they were telling themselves that made the experience so much worse. I was reflecting on that, thinking this applies to all my life somehow, and the narrative that I’m telling myself at some level is kind of determining my experience of what happens to me.

S: Perfect, perfect, and the statement that you made is very much the power point here—the point of power, not the show or, whatever that is. That’s right, and that is you said you are able to see how it flows through your whole life, and that’s the key. Remember that I said that you don’t have a [single] negative experience; it shows up over and over and over until you have fully gotten it. And how do you know when you have fully gotten it? Well, all right, obviously because it doesn’t keep showing up. But what’s the signal?

When you can be thankful for it.

S: All right. When you’re able to be grateful for what happened, when you are thankful for it, that’s a really big sign. That’s a good one. Anybody?

When you no longer react to it, when it doesn’t bother you anymore.

S: There you go, that’s right. And then the step that comes after that is you’re able to be grateful for it happening; you’re seeing it in a different light because of that.

How do you know if you are still holding on to something? What’s the behavior that gives it away? This isn’t hard. How do you know when you’re still reacting, it still has power. Mary Claire.

Well, what you said earlier about something not owning you, when the thought comes up and you still have a response to it, a negative, emotional response, then you’re not over it yet.

S: That’s right, if you get angry, if you get upset, sad, if you find yourself exhibiting behaviors that aren’t your best and highest, whatever they might be, that’s a really good sign that you’ve not let go, which is to say, if you are wondering if there are things in your life that you’ve not let go of, what might you do? This is easy. Say it again, Suzanne.

Look at how you feel about it.

S: And if you find that you’re upset or angry or irritated or frustrated or you want to stomp off and drive away and . . . not let go.

What’s the biggest, hardest thing in life to let go of?

Fear of not being enough.

S: That’s very hard to let go of.

The experience of birth.

Justification.

S: Justification, the experience of birth . . . again.

Control of others.

S: Ah, the desire to control others. You know Guardians want to do that because . . .

It’s for their own good.

S: It’s for their own good. You know better what will help it; you’ve been through it. You’re just giving your advice. “If you just do it this way everything will be all right.”

And then I feel better.

S: Let’s throw a little manipulation in with it too, “If you do it this way I will feel better.” However, the hardest thing to let go of is life, life. The fact of it is, without constantly letting go of life, to become new, you’re not living anyway. So based on what I just said, what do I mean by letting go of life? What do I mean by that?

Would this be one’s identity?

S: I like that. The way you see yourself or the way you ask others to see you in the world. That’s in there.

It’s a process of being reborn often. It’s letting go of your old self and recognizing that this is new, it’s transformation.

S: Exactly. And here is part of the difficulty with it, and do remember I’m just saying part. Part of the difficulty with letting go of the old is you only want to let go of the old bad stuff; you do not want to let go of the old good stuff. All right, truth be told, when you let go of it, it does not mean you forget it; it does not mean you’ve lost your connection with anything. It means your past doesn’t own you; your past doesn’t guide your present. That is one of the hardest issues you will ever deal with in your life: letting what happened yesterday not inform you. That’s all right; letting what happened yesterday help you with today. That’s good there’s not a problem with that. It’s when what happened yesterday controls how you are today. And you know people like that. And if you are brutally honest with yourself, you will also know that there are times in your life when you’ve been one of those people, and there may even now, at this time in your life, be pieces in which that’s you.

The idea of death in this society is—I’m not sure if this statement is going to make sense so try to hear where I’m going with it and maybe give me better words for it—it’s so wrapped up in ambiguity; it’s wrapped up in “I don’t know. I have no idea what’s going to happen. What will it be like?” And yet, the fact of it is, every day you are dying. Every day you lose a little piece of you. Maybe that piece is a way of thinking you don’t need anymore, good riddance. Maybe it’s a behavior that doesn’t work; maybe it’s the way you’ve looked at something good and disempowered it. Every day you are dying, and it doesn’t mean you’re going to be gone forever; just like dying doesn’t mean you’re going to be gone forever.

So I want to shift a little over to that. When somebody that you love in your life dies, what do you do? Call the coroner.

You grieve.

S: Yes, thank you. You grieve. You grieve. Now, talk to me about grief. What is the right way to grieve?

[Laughter] . . . any way you want to.

S: Why are you laughing?

Is there a right way?

S: Gail.

It seems to change from culture to culture.

S: Good.

There are cultures where you just weep copiously, and it’s for the public benefit to see that you are weeping.

S: And wailing and throwing yourself and . . .

You can hire people to help you do that.

S: That’s right. We are talking today.

Today, yes indeed. One of the things I know from my own family, when people have died you’re expected to cry. That seems to be a very large expectation. In most of Western culture that’s going to be your first response. So that those who don’t cry get judged for not crying and not being able to express.

S: Because it’s a well known scientific fact that you cannot be hurt without crying.

What is well known is that if you are feeling something and you are purposefully stuffing it back and never giving it the light of day, that’s going to end up creating a problem. But to judge somebody because they’re not grieving the same way you do, not good, not good.

Mary Claire.

It’s not only different from culture to culture and family to family; it’s different from individual to individual, because for me the death of my father, someone I just loved very, very much, was something that I felt pretty good about because he needed to go, wanted to go, and I still had that connection with him after he left, and I could see the joy that was there.

S: Aye.

So I was sad when I thought about not seeing his form again, but I knew that was kind of a little bit self-absorption; so I got over that really fast because that connection with what . . . Really, the best thing that could have happened did. Why would I want to feel bad about that? So for me, it wasn’t a long grief process. It was a fairly short time unless I’m stuffing it down and not realizing it.

S: And you’re not. I would, but does that mean that if somebody you loved was in an unexpected car accident that you would grieve the same way?

No, it would be different.

S: No, perhaps; might yes, might not, but might, because it is individual, culture to culture, family group to family group and individual to individual. What’s the problem when an individual within a family group grieves differently than the others in the family group? And what if it’s even different than what the culture says is acceptable grief? You’re in big trouble then, aren’t you?

Somebody’s going to hell.

That’s grieving out of the box.

S: Grieving out of the box.

David.

Well, I was thinking in general, for my family, for the loved ones that have passed . . . We almost always get together as part of the grieving process to talk about all the great things that happened in that person’s life and how they touched us and things like that. Now, it was a lot easier for those who died at ninety-eight than it was for those who died at seventeen, because you’re also grieving for the loss of potential. When they’re at ninety-eight, you didn’t think you had them that much longer anyway, so there’s more personal loss the earlier they die in your life, or at least in my experience, than the older. But the process was typically still the same of talking about, “Do you remember the time when? Wasn’t that great when this person did that? Do you remember doing this?” And that was kind of nice.

S: And do you know what makes that kind of gathering easier?

Booze.

S: Right, and that’s called a wake; a lovely tradition. Stuart.

Well, I would say two things: one is the grief process is a process is a process, and it can kind of come in waves, and sometimes when you least expect it you might have a sense of grief and mourning for a loss of a loved one. And the first memory I have of someone in my family who had passed on was my grandfather. And I remember I felt really guilty because my life continued. I remember the day that I found out he had died I had to go to school and I felt guilty that my life had to, or was, continuing on somewhat interrupted, and I didn’t like that feeling.

S: Aye, Aye. Heidi.

And you’re only talking about the grief, at this point, that we feel when someone dies. but it’s very possible to grieve the loss of something in your life.

S: That’s right, that’s exactly right. A relationship, a job, a pet.

Your youth.

S: Your youth.

Booze helps with that one.

S: Bonnie.

I had an interesting, something that happened when my father died. He died when I was thirteen, and I had been taught in my little Sunday school that if you prayed for something, it would make it true. And I can remember the night before he died . . .

S: It would make it happen?

It would make it happen, you know, if I prayed for it. That’s all I had to do was pray for it and that was the way it was.

S: Hmm.

And I . . .

S: You must have been Baptist. Sorry, sorry.

I was. That wasn’t helping the misunderstanding I had about things. But anyway, the night before he died I prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed until I think it was probably 2:00 o’clock in the morning and the next morning he was dead. I made a connection of some sort there.

S: Yes, yes.

You killed him.

I did.

S: Which is part of the problem that comes when you are given a belief that does not come true and you don’t have enough experience in your life to fully understand the rest of the story. But that’s exactly the kind of thing that has, unfortunately, pushed a whole lot of people away from a greater relationship with Source, because they thought something or were taught something that wasn’t true. And you had to grieve, at that point, the loss of that much greater connection as well as your Grandfather . . .

Father

S: Father, oh, harder. As well as your father. As well as the thought that, “If I had just prayed harder or better or done it right, it would not have happened.”

Grief is a very, very powerful function, meant to do you good and not harm. When you are able to focus the grief on the other—the loss, the pain of that loss—it’s going to be a healthy grief. When your pain is focused on yourself—“I did something wrong to make this happen. If only I had done this. If only I had been, if only . . .”—that’s where you’re going to start seeing the kind of grief that eats at you until you are just a pained and bitter shell.

Frank.

I’m not sure I am understanding, or I want to make sure I am. You say that when you focus your grief on the other rather than on yourself, but are you saying that if I am grieving and then . . . but you didn’t use as an example that I’m saying, “Oh, I’m going to miss that person; I’m feeling my life’s going to be emptier.”

S: And recognizing the truth of a situation—“There is a hole in my life now.”—Is much different than . . .

It’s my fault.

S: Right.

And you’re saying . . .

S: “If only I had done this. If only I had done that. I did not go see him enough. I did not pray hard enough. I . . .”

We left with bad words.

S: Right, right. Remember last week I made mention of the “It’s all about me?” When your grief is all about you, you are not grieving, you’re indulging, and it’s not healthy. That’s not to say don’t give yourself—what?—twenty or thirty minutes of that. And again, as Frank pointed out, it’s also not saying, “I’m going to have this big hole in my life because this person that I saw every day is not going to be there.”It’s when it becomes about you.

Now, let’s see if I can do this somewhat anonymously. I have a very dear friend who injured herself badly, and in injuring herself badly, it was because she was doing something good to help somebody else and it happened to cause some injury. So, when she spoke to this person after finding out that she was pretty grievously injured, and this other person said, “Well, how are you doing?” She said, “Well, it’s turned out that this has happened.” “Well how did that happen?” “Well, it’s not, that part doesn’t matter, it’s not a big deal, it’s just one of those things that happens.” “Did it happen when this . . . ?” “Well, yes it did.” And all of a sudden it was, “Oh, I’m just so upset and I’m so sorry and . . .” “Hello, how are you today?” “Oh, I’ve just cried all night. I’ve walked the floors, I’ve been up and down, I’m just so sad, so hurt,” so, “I am, I am, I am, by the way, how are you?” Now that might have been too anonymous to be very effective, but that’s really unhealthy.

You can’t do anything about someone else’s drama.

S: That’s right, that’s right.

You don’t have to buy a ticket.

Yes.

Tickets are free.

You don’t have to use the free ticket.

S: That’s right, that’s right. It’s an unhealthy grief; stay away from it. Stay away from it.

And when you are looking at those experiences that have brought you great pain, have you grieved it in a healthy way, a way that does not include “What could I have done?” or “How did I deserve this?” or “What did I do to make this happen?” but instead, “Gosh that was awful. I see how it brought a negative line of thinking in my life. I’m ready to let go of that.” In your life, every day you die. Every day of your life, every minute, you die, and when you die healthy grieving is a part of the process of letting go. Does it mean forgetting? Well, have you forgotten your father?

No.

S: No. People in your life who are no longer there, have you forgotten them? Well, maybe you don’t think of them every minute, but you’ve not forgotten them, have you? You don’t forget, because they were a part of your life; just like, sure enough, those negative, painful, difficult situations. But instead of it owning you, controlling you, when you have been able to let it go or to see it another way, to let that self go, die, and a new self be born, functioning in a new way, a healthier way, a more positive way of looking at things, then you are living an ascended life. And what do you think living an ascended life would be like? Just the very sound of it sounds pretty good don’t you think?

The Ancients celebrated the seasons because they tended to live closer to the earth than you do and cycles of planting and harvest meant a little more to them than it does to you; although a lot of you seem to be going back to your old roots. And if your economy keeps up the way it is, a lot more of you will too. Oh look, instead of this lovely tree at your front door it will be string beans. I think it’s funny. So, Samhein was the festival of harvest. All the work that had been done was over and it was time to reap the fruit, but it was more than that. It was also the letting go of that old and the preparations to begin what is new. Now, that’s why, can you help me here, Heidi?

That has a little bow there.

S: Help me. Thank you dear.

She ties a mean bow.

S: Shame on it.

That’s what these are for, because a lot of traditions allowed that when you were experiencing a loss you would wear a black armband and put a black wreath on your front gate and a black sash on your door and you would wear black. And so I wanted to give you perhaps a wristband or maybe a neckband or perhaps an ankle band that, when you looked at it, you would remember that in this temporary, so-fast world, in which dying to the old is such a vital and important part of being able to live anew; in which you don’t get to ascend unless you die and live again, a reminder in which the power of starting new, out of the old, is what you want to be looking at over these next couple of months. I want you to have this and wear it so that when you see it you will re-remember it.

Bonnie love, would you come here? Are you at a place in what you are doing that you can do that?

No, I can come . . .

S: Good. And on your way up, would you please grab somebody else?

If you would, would you please give one of these to everyone you can and remember to save one for yourself. Remind them as you go, “Don’t put it on yet,” all right? Thank you.

While they are handing these out—don’t put it on yet—just, pardon me just a moment. So what is this?

[ . . . ]

S: You have always been so darling; and this stabilizes?

Yes, for driving in a car or someplace where there might be jostling, it stabilizes very nicely.

S: Come here just a moment.

Buses in India . . .

S: May I touch?

Sure. They slathered me in fiber glass to mold this to me.

S: I think she did it so that in India, she would have . . . (knocks on the brace).

Oh, I don’t have to buy a drum, do I?

S: You’re coming attached with it. Heal.

Is it anything like her armor of past?

S: Yes, I would say that it is the armor.

Is it around the back too?

Oh yes, it’s all around from all the way at the bottom of my hip to almost my collar bone.

S: Ouch.

But it’s comfortable.

S: If you stand.

Yes, it’s not real comfortable sitting, but it’s comfortable in that it stabilizes my back.

[ . . . ]

S: I don’t know, Lisa, I think maybe you might be the smallest bit fortunate not having to put one of those on.

All right, so back to where I was going: This last week you gave yourself the opportunity to find the blessing and the power that can come from looking at what’s not working and working to let it go, complete it.

Who does not have one yet? Good, and you have one, excellent, and you have one? Excellent, good, and these can go in with the CDs or DVDs, aye?

Sure.

S: You heard it.

So for me, grieving has so much emotion tied into the word, but it seems like, from hanging out with you for twenty years, we are just constantly dying to our old selves, but it’s never really . . .

S: Keep working at it anyway.

But it’s never been that emotional an experience most of the time so . . .

S: You know why?

Because I haven’t really been dying to my . . .

S: Now you see, David. That’s what I meant when I said earlier that you just turn it to yourself: “All right, what have I not done that’s making it like that?” No, it’s because you’re doing it for a purpose that you know is going to be good. So instead of focusing on “Oh, I’m not going to be able to obsess on my fourth grade teacher being mean to me anymore, oh,” you’re looking instead at being free from that obsession.

Sorry now, keep going.

Who lives next door?

S: That was it.

If you took all the cultural crying and wailing out of the word grief, what would be another word you could use instead?

S: Celebration. If you really believe that the one you love is going to go to something better, why are you crying? If you really believe—and you may not be of the culture that’s into that “going to go to something better” thing—if you really believe, though, that life doesn’t end, just the body occasionally does, thank goodness, and that, if you’ve made a connection with another person that connection is going to continue as well—if you really believe it, all of that wailing and noshing and bringing on the banshee isn’t needed.

But to honestly recognize, “I’m really going to miss this person. It breaks my heart not to have them every day,” that’s healthy; that’s good recognition. Do cry for that, but does it deserve the dramatic wailing and noshing and throwing and . . . ? That’s there because you’re not recognizing something in there, something positive.

You know that the form’s mother has lung cancer, yes, and is an advanced cancer, but people around her don’t want her to talk about death, which is so hard on her. “Please, your dying is killing me. It’s breaking my heart. Please forget even the idea of our having a conversation about this, because I cannot handle it.” How selfish is that? How really kind of mean is that? How far are you willing to go to make sure that you stay in your happy little fantasy at the expense of someone else? Well, if that’s how you’ve lived your life, I suppose it’s not such a hard thing to do.

Michele.

I was very close to my father and because he was a doctor he died of a cancer and this cancer was very fast. He was diagnosed in June, 1988, and six months after it he died. Because I had such a close relationship with him, when he was traveling around the world I would receive his message, and it was particular. I don’t want to put myself, as you say, in the first hole, but I have to say that I had a real special relationship with him. I could get his telepathy message. When he was in the airplane, I remember that sometime he would tell me that he wanted to have something to eat that was special. So I had to go downstairs to the kitchen to tell my mother, “Daddy has had this request. He would like to have this kind of food.” My mother always looked at me like I was crazy, but she would do the request.

S: And it wasn’t always birthday cake and ice cream it was, all right.

No, no, it was a good meal usually. When he passed away, it was very strange, because I was sitting beside his bed. I was only working five hours a day so I would be in the morning with him, and he would ask me to read some article in the newspaper and so I would do that for him. And sometimes he would tell me, “You know, you have to believe in something.” And I would say, “Yes, tell me what.” And he said,” You have to believe that there’s a life after death.” I didn’t know what to say and I said, “Why are you telling me this?” and he says to me, “Because I will see you again.” When he passed away, it was so special, Samuel. I was sitting on the side of the bed and when he passed away, I told him, “Ï love you.” The next day I woke up in the morning and I had a full part of my hair that was white. It was so strange to me; my mother didn’t have any reaction to that.

S: And that also is a little strange.

It’s strange, yes it is. And because I had this great and close relationship with my father, the next day I dreamed about him. He was in the bedroom and he told me that I will never be alone.

S: That’s beautiful.

And I still have it, this relationship with him that I don’t have with anyone in my family.

S: Yes, and of course, unfortunately, that’s because they don’t believe that kind of thing is possible or they don’t want to because it will mess with other things they built their life around, and so there is no doorway for that energy to touch into.

No, and my brothers and sister don’t want to talk to me anymore because they think that I am strange. After the death of my father they started to call me, “the apostle” because I was telling them some messages that I would receive from my father and . . .

S: Aye, aye.

They never believed me.

S: I was going to ask you how many people in here have had an experience like that, and I want you to see that because, you see, life does not end, and there are times when contact is possible. What Michele experienced is a very rare, the result of a rare kind of bond, a very powerful experience. This is not what you can expect to look forward to, but it’s not unusual, it is not unusual to have something happen, maybe many things happen, in which you know that the one you loved is not gone from you. It could be a dream in which they come to tell you goodbye; it could just be that sense of presence, maybe the scent of presence that you are familiar with. Life does not end and death is not an end, and you die every day.

And it’s so important that you are able to accept that so that you are so familiar with the process it doesn’t cause resistance and it only adds to a stronger and better life. But since you die a bit every day, that also means that you must consciously remember to die a bit every day and to, in a healthy way, grieve the old, because that means you are ready for the new. And that’s what this little band is about.

Think about where you want to put it and put it where you’ll see it the most. For some of you it might be a bookmark instead of a body mark, but usually the wrist is a very easy place because you’ll see it a lot. If you wish to go ahead and put it on now, great; if not, put some thought to it.

You will be amazed at the three great things that happen in your life when you stop resisting the letting go of the old. The first one is, you become freer, more free, lighter, because you are not carrying so many burdens around with you. You are letting go of the ways of thinking, the memories, the behaviors, the actions that have been running your life and holding onto you. Freer, lighter; that’s good.

Second thing is, you’ll start seeing things in a new way, a more positive way, because you are living an ascended life. You died to that; you’re still here—hmm. So you’re functioning at a higher frequency simply by the release of that which has been controlling you. I say simply—if only!

The third thing it does is it gives you a new outlook on death and life, taking away that innate resistance, the fear that causes so many people to direct their life around that fear. How many people here, if you had a choice . . . Well, all right, first, how many people here would rather just not die at all and simply float into whatever comes next and just be done with it that way? Probably most of you. But putting that one aside, how many of you have said, “The best thing to do is just go in your sleep and never know it.” Do you relate to that? Sure, sure. How many other things in your life do you find yourself resisting because you’re afraid of what the process is going to be like? Because that’s what you’re saying. The way you go stops determining the way you live, and that’s big.

Those are three great gifts. Remind yourself, do you want to really live? Then really, every day, every moment, remind yourself to die to what is not needed, to what is not loving, to what is not positive, to what is not the best you can be, because it’s only then that you’re really living.

Be well. Glochanumora.

Happy Samhain and . . .

Happy dying.

S: Happy dying, happy living and Glochanumora.