Words to Ponder Over: We're Dying All The Time

Not so much a "Words of Comfort" post, as much as a "Words to Ponder Over/Think About".  I was listening to Brian D. Smith's podcast Grief 2 Growth, while he was interviewing Clare Goldsberry.  Clare is the author of the book "The Illusion of Life and Death: Mind, Consciousness, and Eternal Being", and is a student of Buddhism.  At one point in the interview, she talks about the impermanence of all things, a theme I personally have been hearing more about lately:

"So we don’t really like the unknown, and we don’t like change. And I think one of the things about the Buddhist tradition....It’s a philosophy of change, and how to adapt to change, because everything will always change. And whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, even our bodies are constantly changing. Day by day,  our cells die....we experience little mini deaths every day as our cells die. We get....new hair, we get new skin, we get new fingernails, things are always changing. We’re just not that aware of it. And I think this lack of awareness, about change and about impermanence really keeps us from looking at at death and what it is, and how we can have a good death and what it means. People think death is the end."

You can hear and/or read the whole interview here.

Brian's interview with Clare reminds me of an old science article I read years ago about how the human body replaces its cells every 7 years.  Actually, according to livescience.com, the truth is more complicated than that -- skin cells and cells in our digestive tract replace themselves in a matter of months, while certain cells in our brain are with us from birth until death.  But it does raise a fascinating perspective -- that, for the most part, the earthly bodies we inhabit now are not really the same earthly bodies we inhabited 10 years ago!  As Clare points out, everything in our world is in a constant state of flux, a constant state of change, and that leaving our physical earthly bodies behind at the time of "death"  is really about us going through another change as we go onto something new.

Personal Musings: Brian D. Smith's Podcast & Amy Call's NDE

I was listening to the Grief 2 Growth Podcast -- I think it was a little over a month ago -- when I heard Brian, the host, speculate on how we humans have such a limited perspective on our own troubles and sorrows in life:

"Because when we’re going through life, these traumas seem insurmountable. They seem permanent. They seem like we’re not going to be able to endure them. So we would say why would I in my right mind, choose this type of trauma, this type of tragedy. And I heard this teaching, it was actually frankly, after my daughter Shayna had passed away....So the question then becomes why? Why would I choose to endure this type of trauma? Why do I choose to endure this type of pain?....I would never choose things like cancer, I would never choose things like death of a loved one, those types of things I would never choose. But then that’s just a matter of degree. And I think about people, I really think of us ourselves as kind of like toddlers in some very real ways we as even as adults, as we think we’re all grown up. And if you look at a toddler, and a toddler falls to the ground, so they skinned their knee. And as an adult, we look at them, we see them, they scream, and they moan. And they're like, it’s the end of the world, like they broke their leg, like they’re never gonna walk again. And we kind of smile at them. We ....empathize with their pain, but we know it’s going to be okay. Because it’s relative, we realize that that scrape on the leg is not that bad. But for a toddler, if that’s all they’ve ever known, they think this is terrible. Similarly, if we tell our young ones.... we’re going to go somewhere, we’re gonna go to the movies, but we’re not going to go today, we can’t go today, we’re gonna go tomorrow. For them tomorrow is just never gonna come. It’s the end of the world again. So it’s a matter of degrees and the way that we take things, I believe, when we’re in these bodies, we look at the tragedies in the world. And we look at things like the death of a loved one. And we say, No, this is too much. A good and loving God would never allow this to happen. I as an intelligent human being, would never choose for this to happen. But what if you had a higher perspective? What if you knew that this thing that happened to you is only temporary is only going to hurt for a little while. And what if you knew [that what happened] to you is going to make you a better person?" 

You can read the whole transcript of that episode and/or listen to it here. When I heard Brian explain this concept, it reminded me of reading something similar somewhere else, namely, Amy Call's recollection of her near-death experience.  You can read about her entire experience at the NDERF website here. (For those of you not familiar, NDERF is short for the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation).  I have found Amy's NDE one of the more insightful and profound I have read to date.  She relays a lot of thought-provoking information concerning Spirit Guides, people who die with addictions, people who commit suicide, and so forth.  The relevant excerpt from her experience:

"It was actually comical at moments. I could feel how the 'Elders' as I will call them (these are those who are Helpers on the Other Side who have Mastered themselves in many or all ways, and help work with us) see us and find so much humor in the way we do things. (Humor is so valued, there!!) It might seem brutally annoying to consider when we are in the midst of a great argument or drama that is playing out in our lives, that the Elders view these things very much like when a mother sees her two-year-old scream and cry and bop another child on the head with a stuffed animal. The mother doesn't want her child to fall apart, become hysterical and cry. She feels for her child, but at the same time, she sees a little bit of comedy in how seriously the child takes what is usually a trivial drama. She continues to love her child and thinks the world of it, hoping it will go on enjoying the day, living and learning."

After reading Brian's and Amy's words, I'm left to wonder: are so many of us, myself included, so mired and stuck in our grief that we've lost all sense of perspective?  Or maybe we've just forgotten what is so obvious over the course of our lives: things that seemed like an awfully big deal to us when we were younger don't carry much importance anymore.  Certainly there were issues in my personal life that used to cause me a great deal of sadness and disappointment -- now, I don't give them much thought anymore.  Maybe the same is true of our grief, albeit over a longer time span.  Maybe when we leave this earthly life behind, we will come to realize that the grief and sadness we carry with us now will fade away, because we will be fully present and tuned in to the opportunities of our new post-earthly lives.

Practices That Have Helped: Listening to Podcasts

It's no secret: grief can be a very isolating event.  It's actually kind of ironic: for something that is almost universally experienced, losing our loved ones can create all kinds of barriers with other people.  Friends who were once close to us might become more distant.  And we might be self-conscious about burdening other people with our sadness and turbulent emotions over our loss (or losses).  Many times we might find ourselves alone, wanting to talk with someone, but not sure who.  We might agonize over what we should say, and worry about how our words will be met.  We yearn to feel understood.

One practice that has really helped me in the last couple months has been listening to podcasts.  For me, it almost functions as a sort of "group therapy" when I don't have access to other people that I can share my experiences with.  Hearing others describe their losses, and the trials and sorrows they've endured, and how they've managed to pull through in spite of it all, has given me the strength to keep facing day-to-day life.  

There are two podcasts I have been listening to a lot as of late.  First is "Grief 2 Growth", hosted by Brian D. Smith.

 

 

Brian knows about the shock we can face from losing a loved one: his 15 year-old daughter Shayna died unexpectedly in 2015, and at that point he felt his life was over.  The tagline at the beginning of his podcast is that he was "planted, not buried" -- and his goal is to help listeners realize that they can still grow, thrive, and touch others' lives in spite of their grief.

The other podcast I've been listening to is hosted by Sandra Champlain, We Don't Die.

Sandra was a lifelong skeptic, until her fear of dying led her to conduct her own research, which led her to conclude that we, in fact, don't die at the end of our earthly lives.

Both Brian and Sandra have a wide variety of wonderful guests on their programs: people who have suffered the devastating loss of loved ones, people who have experienced profound After Death Communications and Near Death Experiences, people who are spiritual mediums, as well as people who have written books to help us deal with our grief.

I am sure there are many other podcasts out there that would be very beneficial for those of you who are grieving, and I hope to add to this list as I continue to explore.  In the meantime, if you are feeling lonely during this time of loss, I highly recommend checking out Brian's and Sandra's podcasts.  I have found much comfort by listening to them and the people they interview.