#die wise

[juliansummerhayes]

I make a prayer now to your old ones, to those whose face you never saw and voice you never heard and name you haven’t known, that they remember you while you try to find them remembering you, that they come at the proper time to gather you in, that they whisper to you the truth that you haven’t been alone, and won’t be, that they know the hard friendship of the ending of days; I make a prayer that all who were there at your making will be there for your gathering in, that their hands will be there just by your opening head, your little fountain, to make a home for your sorrowing heart and for you; I make a prayer that your house and your people will be blessed by your coming and your going, that the day will come when they will boast of for a while having known you, and will marvel at the way of your going out from among them, and that you might be reason enough for them to continue for a while, and that in the days to come you will be claimed as noble, as an ancestor worth coming from.

Stephen Jenkinson

[juliansummerhayes]

When your focus is on how you feel about things in the world then the things of the world slip from view, your little boat of learning things for what they are are swamped by the swells of how you feel about them. With hard work and with learning, the things of the world are still somehow out there, waiting for you to know about them, no matter how you feel. They survive how you feel about them and they are there before and after the storms of your feelings roar through and abate. Feelings aren't much of a compass to go by.

Stephen Jenkinson, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

[juliansummerhayes]

The meanings of life aren’t inherited. What is inherited is the mandate to make meanings of life by how we live. The endings of life give life’s meanings a chance to show. The beginning of the end of our order, our way, is now in view. This isn’t punishment, any more than dying is a punishment for being born.

Stephen Jenkinson

[juliansummerhayes]

Where do the dead go?

This isn't an idle contemplation.

I wonder where they go?

To heaven, hell or another realm?

Do we give it much consideration? I doubt it; but imagine if we could commune with the dead. What would we learn? What would they teach us? And how would it change our lives?

But of course, in our death-phobic world we're never going to move towards the ending of our days, are we?

Blessings,

Julian

Photo by Liana S on Unsplash

[juliansummerhayes]

Part II of the session; this is excellent too.

[juliansummerhayes]

Someday, this will end

We die in the manner that we lived.

Sadly, for too many people they never come to their death with any true sense of knowing, and mostly it's a morose canticle where something -- i.e. the future -- has been stolen from them.

Death, our death, should never be news, even of the unexpected variety.

But of course, in a death-phobic world, no one is going to talk about death; in fact, they'll do a volte-face at the merest whiff of the thought.

In my case, it's becoming clearer by the day that my fate is to be that gloomy guy who wants to bring out into the open an honest, broken-hearted conversation and endings-orientated question/answer approach to try to get people -- even my close family -- to change their relationship to death.

In simple terms to not see death as an executioner but as an angel they must wrestle if only to know death a deity and not something to hold at arm's length.

And I make no apology for this direction of travel. In fact, I know now that it's been there for a very long time.

Blessings, blessings to you all.

Love,

Julian

[juliansummerhayes]

Enlightenment

I'm bound to be out of touch with the world of spiritual excess but it wasn't that long ago that there appeared on the scene (I don't know if they are still here) a slew of fairly orthodox non-dual teachers.

I wasn't quite sure what they were selling but, for a while, I did think it might be something helpful to my unnerved sense of this thing called 'life'.

But it didn't last -- my enthusiasm, mostly.

Instead, I came back to the exegesis of this life which I've come to call animism but could just as easily pass as god. (I'm not religious in case you're wondering.)

That's shorthand for saying I am one with everything holy -- as much as 'I' can discern these things -- i.e. in case it's not already obvious everything we see, feel and experience is an abstraction.

Beyond this one-ing, nothing else exists or that's how I opine on life etc.

You?

How do you see life, the world, the universe?

I'd love to know.

Love,

Julian

Photo by Alex Shuper on Unsplash

[juliansummerhayes]

The more beautiful question - #11

It's Sunday; I'm up at the crack of dawn. It's like I want to make the most of the light, which is always special first thing.

Today's question builds on my theme of our death phobia. I hope to move onto something a little less "deep" (as my wife would say) over the coming days; but don't bank on it!

Where do we come from? Where do we go to? Is this the whole deal, or is there something else? (OK, that's technically three questions but they're all related.)

Love,

Julian

Photo by Di Maitland on Unsplash