Love and Loss: A Journey through Fear to Peace – Volume Three

~ 757 ~ I was asked to do a memorial ceremony in the local native tradition by the family of a deceased couple, Fred and Nancy, friends who lived near me. Although I am deeply immersed in the native culture and religion, I am not “ordained.” I have no “credentials.” Nevertheless … As I drove up the mountain through many layers of clouds, I thought to myself, “Flying through clouds. Heaven is with me, heaven is in me. I breathe the clouds, the breath of heaven.” My first stop was the summit, where I offered a chant to the gods. I then drove down the mountain a little way to the place where the spirits of ancestors fly. I walked about twenty or thirty yards off the trail and looked for a suitable place for my offering. “Okay spirits,” I said, “Show me the place.” A sheltered spot in the rocks caught my eye. I invoked the spirits, inviting the angels, Amida, Jesus, and the ascended masters to help me, and I began to set up my offering in the rocks. As I laid the first leaves on the ground, I noticed that this spot was slightly wet, as if a small spring was seeping up through the rocks. This is an arid alpine place above the clouds; it rarely rains here, and the rest of the area was dry. I couldn’t figure out where the water was coming from. It seemed as if the earth was weeping. I made a bed of leaves as the foundation and laid upon them gifts in remembrance of my friends – flowers, a slice of homemade bread, and a tomato from the garden – to remember the beautiful flower and fruit that they were in my life and others. I sprinkled salt upon my offering, asking the spirits to join me. I moistened a leaf and waved it over the offering, blessing it with droplets of water. Then I began my incantation and prayer, ending with, “Above the stars, above the sky, rest in oneness with God forever.” As I drove back down the mountain, two rare native birds flew in front of my car from right to left. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I think it is a good sign. In native mythology these birds are considered guardian ancestral spirits, sacred protectors. Perhaps one bird was Nancy, the other Fred, watching over me on my way home. ~ 789 ~ To desire death in order to attain one’s blissful vision of eternity is taking the first poison. To desire death in order to avoid the pain of life is taking the second poison. To desire death in order to jump off the merry-go-round, to escape all the pleasures and pains of life, the whipsaws of dualism, is taking the third poison. Death, like life, must simply be accepted, allowed to evolve in its own time, as the leaf falls effortlessly from the tree in the natural course of things, not too soon, not too late. For everything there is a season. When the weight of life becomes too heavy, I will drop it. Or, when the weight is lifted, I will let it go. ~ 892 ~ As I was finishing my breakfast, sitting on the rock wall by the ocean, I noticed a feather next to my coffee cup. “Oh, an angel feather,” I thought. I took a picture of it and put the feather between the pages of my book. Then I noticed another feather nearby, and another one. “There are lots of birds around, so there are bound to be lots of feathers,” I thought. “This doesn’t mean anything.” And then, just as that thought entered my mind, another feather wafted down in front of my face and landed on the ground beside my foot. ~ 923 ~ In the last couple years I have become mildly addicted to playing Spider Solitaire on the computer. Well, okay … more than mildly addicted; I have played over 1,000 games. This game is teaching me how the future unfolds from the past. Each move, especially early in the game, sets the game on a particular course and predetermines whether the game can be won or not. All games can be won, but not by every route. Only certain sequences of moves can produce a win. The game allows unlimited undo, so it is possible to retrace one’s steps, go back to the past and change course. In a difficult game, at the level involving all four suits of cards, fewer routes lead to victory. Sometimes one move early in the game, sometimes a counterintuitive move, makes the difference between a win and a loss. Over time I have come to understand the rhythm of the game, how one move leads to the next, to the next, and so on, and how the entire rhythm of the game is changed as one move is changed. This is what life is. A wrong move in the game of life is like taking a wrong turn in a maze. When one lives in time and eternity simultaneously, it is possible to back up in the maze, revisit the past and find a new route to the center or the exit. This is what the seers mean when they say we are living the past. Each move in the game of life is a karmic tug at Indra’s Net, and each move affects every other move across the entire net. Every move we make now sets up a new route to the future, and later moves will reset past moves. This is the reason for my existence – to reset the past, repair bad karma, and plot a new course for suffering souls that finds the way out of the maze and wins the game of life. Through me and all the mystics, God is pushing the reset button, altering our collective GPS to enable a blessed change of course into the future.