November 2011 - Snow On The Desert

On Death

November 28, 2011 No Comments - Download PDF

I recently wrote a letter to a friend who is a medical resident working with people that are going to die. She said she was not completely comfortable with the idea yet.

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Quite the tag line, huh? I couldn’t resist.

Funny enough, I arrived at my current incredibly positive take on death logically. I believe that life’s troubles are caused by an unhealthy relationship with things that are easily craved or averted, calling them unhealthy attachments. But, all attachments have a positive side. For example, a little beer makes you feel good but too much makes you feel bad. Craving beer when you aren’t getting it can also be a pain. But, none of that will change the fact that a little beer makes you feel good, which is GREAT!

In trying to find balance in my own life, I started to realize that being human simply means that you are stuck to an imperfect body. Things go wrong and it can kind of drag you down sometimes. There is definitely a “burden of life”, and through that down payment you get all of the wonderful things about life! (The “gift of life”) So, at the end of the day, our biggest and one most absolutely unavoidable attachment is the attachment to life itself – the deep connection between our soul and our body.

I have recently personally experienced some incredible releases of old attachments. The feeling of passing through critical doors that once seemed impossibly blocked is indescribable. When I think of death, I can’t help but think of how it comes with the release from the deepest attachment we will ever know.

It seems like there is a period of time just before a transition happens or an event ends where the mind accepts that the change is inevitable, and the release from the attachment begins. I feel this every race about 10-15% from the finish line. You can probably relate, the burden just gets lighter. I can’t imagine what that experience would be like when it comes to death.

“Remember the clear light, the pure clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns; the original nature of your own mind. The natural state of the universe unmanifest. Let go into the clear light, trust it, merge with it. It is your own true nature, it is home.”

– Tibetan Book of the Dead

What is really incredible to me is now this plays out in everyday life for you and me, just on a much smaller scale. That’s the magic.

Jung

From the Red Book

November 17, 2011 No Comments - Download PDF

[I:] I feel that I must speak to you. Why do you not let me sleep, as I am tired? I feel that the disturbance comes from you. What induces you to keep me awake?
[Soul:] Now is no time to sleep, but you should be awake and prepare important matters in nocturnal work.
The great work begins.
[I:] What great work?
[Soul:] The work that should now be undertaken. It is a great and difficult work. There is no time to sleep, if you find no time during the day to remain in the work.
[I:] But I had no idea that something of this kind was taking place.
[Soul:] But you could have told by the fact that I have been disturbing your sleep for a long time. You have been too unconscious for a long time. Now you must go to a higher level of consciousness.
[I:] I am ready. What is it? Speak!
[Soul:] You should listen: to no longer be a Christian is easy. But what next? For more is yet to come. Everything is waiting for you. And you? You remain silent and have nothing to say. But you should speak. Why have you received the revelation? You should not hide it. You concern yourself with the form? Is the form important, when it is a matter of revelation’s?

Jung

Depth of Research

November 12, 2011 No Comments - Download PDF

How about this for deep research:

“Liber Novus this presents a series of active imaginations together with Jung’s attempt to understand their significance. This work of understanding encompasses a number of interlinked threads: an attempt to understand himself and to integrate and develop various components of his personality; an attempt to understand the structure of the human personality in general; an attempt to understand the relation of the individual to present-day society and to the community of the dead; an attempt to understand the psychological and historical effects of Christianity; and an attempt to traps the future religious development of the West. Jung discusses many other themes in the work, including the nature of self-knowledge; the nature of the soul; the relations of thinking and feeling and the psychological types; the relation of inner and outer masculinity and femininity; the uniting of opposites; solitude; the value of scholarship and learning; the status of science; the significance of symbols and how they are to be understood; the meaning of the war; madness, divine madness, and psychiatry; how the Imitation of Christ is to be understood today; the death of God; the historical significance of Nietzsche, and the relation of magic and reason.”

Wow. That pretty much covers all of the areas of study that I can think of. Just “self-knowledge” and nature of the soul would be plenty!