Emily Dickenson wrote about an aspect of the sorrow when a loved one dies:

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1 Committing to Life Last week, an acquaintance of mine took his life. It was not a gentle ending. I wasn t particularly close to him. I had only spoken with him a couple times. Still his choice and the manner of his death affected me. I can only imagine how profoundly it has affected the community of friends who knew him better than me. Every life is so precious and so unique. When somebody makes a decision that life is not worth living, and more tragically, that they themselves are not worthy of life, it causes us to take pause, grieve for them, and to deepen our enquiry into how we are holding and stewarding our own commitment to life. This post is my own reflection on these matters. My heart goes out to his closest friends and family. Emily Dickenson wrote about an aspect of the sorrow when a loved one dies: The Bustle in a House The Morning after Death Is solemnest of industries Enacted opon Earth The Sweeping up the Heart And putting Love away We shall not want to use again Until Eternity. In the case of suicide, the sweeping up is uniquely complex. Self-violence is hard to look at, let alone sweep up. We mostly are inclined to sweep it under the carpet, come up with platitudes about the one who took their own life, in a desperate attempt to spiritualize away the horror of it.

2 While walking in the forest today, I saw a dead leaf float slowly to the ground in the sunlight and land ever-so lightly. It seemed natural and beautiful this death. When it was time, the leaf was released. I couldn t help but to feel the contrast between this gentle and natural letting go, and the conscious decision to sever life s thread prematurely. So violent, so full of despair, and yes, so full of selfloathing. I m not questioning that he was overwhelmed by darkness, in a way that I never have been. But his way of ending his life revealed, in my mind, a soul who had never been sufficiently praised, or whose earliest experiences shut him down to receiving the praise and blessing of others. There was a level of violence toward himself that now haunts the living. Okay, haunts me. I m not exactly angry, because I didn t know him well enough. He absolutely has the right to take his life. We all do. And suicide reminds the survivors that embracing life fully is optional. What was he saying with this final act to his friends, family and acquaintances? We ll never know for sure. Some say he wasn t making a statement at all. His own psychic pain was so severe that he didn t have the capacity to be thinking of how his actions would affect others. Some will conclude that it is a royal finger to those who loved him, a gesture that all the support you tried to give him meant nothing it simply didn t register. Some say that he had no choice at the moment, that he can t be held responsible therefore. But isn t it the ultimate evasion of responsibility? We ve all had suicidal thoughts. We re all somewhere on the continuum of suicide. My psychotherapist points out the evil is live spelled backwards. Each one of us has to make the decision to live, again and again. Some of us have already committed suicide, without actually taking our life. The walking dead. What I mean is that we haven t actually decided to stay committed to life come what may. All of us, very early in

3 life, make some kind of commitment to life, all the way from I m here, bring it freakin on to I m not sure I really want to land. This place isn t what I was expecting (in which case we live half-lives) to I m outa here. Much depends on how we entered life, the birth process, and how we were received in the first years of our life. And, in my opinion, the hardest thing to do in life is to take responsibility to bring to consciousness our level of commitment to life, to understand our ambivalence, and consciously redeem the ambivalence, by getting the resources we need to choose life. Even when we are depressed. I don t put much stock in the diagnosis of clinical depression. I believe that we can affect our hormones with our belief systems and the way we indulge those belief systems. But the way our medical system is doling out anti-depressants is essentially sending a message that we are not responsible for the quality of our life. Meds can temporarily give us some time to dig deep into the source of our ambivalence about living. But they don t allow us to deal with the underlying trauma. Like you, I have some acquaintance with darkness. I ve indulged moods. I ve entertained fantasies of what it would be like to end my life. The really annoying thing is that even in the depths of my despair, there is a little part of me that knows that I could choose to exit the funk. I ve always known that I m one split second decision away from getting out of the grand narrative I ve told myself, in order to justify my indulgence. When I don t and choose to indulge the dark, it s because I ve fallen in love with a story that my mood has created by way of justifying the mood. I watch myself twist reality and circumstances in such a way that my mood makes perfect sense. I want the darkness. I hate my life and I hate you when I m in it.

4 It s a high stakes game. Really high stakes. When the Deuteronomist told Moses: I set before you life and death. Choose life therefore that you may live he cut to the quick. When we make little daily choice for death, we are hosting evil the antithesis of life. And, friends, in my experience, this darkness, this mood, this hosting of self-hatred and hatred of others is a memory. I ve created the circumstances to reenact early trauma, and I m doing it to give myself the opportunity to heal, to redeem it. Misunderstood, it simply feels like I m a victim of circumstances. As I say, high stakes. So, we the living are left to sweep up. But the work is a personal and communal tidying up of our own belief systems. It s a coming clean with ourselves about where we are on this continuum of life and death. It s sweeping up all the shadowy bits of our unconscious taking an honest look at how selfhatred plays out in our life. It s looking at the patterns we continually re-enact and the stories that we tell ourselves about why we cannot fully commit to this life. It s looking at the fear and the trauma. The sweeping up involves doing an honest audit about whether we are resourced sufficiently to do this work of being human, and if we are not, how are we going to take responsibility for getting the support we need. I hope that in the divine economy of thing of whatever is next for this soul, that he will seize this opportunity to be open to the love that is his birthright. There is a doctrine in the Christian church about the resurrection of the body. Some scholars believe that it arose in the second century BCE as an affirmation that all those Jews whose bodies were so violated and mangled by the trampling violence of conquering empires, would be raised up, tenderly knit back together by the One in whom there is no violence, and in whom there is only love and deep compassion. May it be so. Seeing as there are so various families buying online and

5 likewise exploring the internet market place, it has get increasingly famous to purchase medications online. So the next question is where can you get information that is reliable. You can find useful information fleetly and conveniently by going online. The most common sexual problems in men are erectile dysfunction and ejaculation disorders. A lot of doctors think about levitra cost. Did learned something about buy levitra online usa? Other question we are going to is buy generic levitra online. In effect, a medicinal reviews found that up to three quarters of people on such drug practice side effects. Luckily, most cases of sexual dysfunction are treatable, so it is momentous to share your concerns with your partner and physician. Today, there are many options for men who suffer from erectile disfunction. Get emergency help if you have any of these signs of a side effect to this medication. Talk to your soundness care provider to see if it s sure to make the switch. No Provision for the Flesh Romans 13: :8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 13:9 The commandments, You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet ; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, Love your neighbor as yourself. 13:10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

6 13:11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 13:12 the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13:13 let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 13:14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Midrash on Romans Natalie Tajera For Paul, the flesh primarily means life without G_d. Or you could say, using non-religious language, our life when it s in a state of non-coherence or separation from Source. Yes, the physical body may participate in this life of separation, and thereby gain a mind of its own. This is when it s possible to get into a life of drunkenness, debauchery, and licentiousness. The natural impulses are absolutely trustworthy when in a state of coherence, or again, when they are in Christ to use Paul s language. Otherwise, they will simply reflect and express the general incoherence. This incoherence can happen right at conception and during our

7 embryonic development. If the field that we incarnate into is disorganized say our mother is highly anxious, or taking medication, or even drinking too much caffeine, then we learn to adapt to a disorganized field. We conclude (through an intuitive process) that this is what life requires of us. Don t take my word for it, though. Here is just one example out of Adelaide University of a growing body of scientific research discovering just how early in life we adapt to a disorganized field. This adaptation to an incoherent field continues after we re born. If for whatever reasons our maternal and family environment is unable to provide a loving enough milieu, so that we feel like (a) we belong (b) we are enough/not too much (c) we are precious (d) our needs and wants are valid (e) the universe, through our mother/family, is attuned/responsive to us and (f) physical, emotional, and psychic boundaries are respected, we will begin the dance of adaptation to an incoherent field. The result is our personality, comprised primarily (with the exception of temperament), or what some call our frontal self, the adapted self we present to the world in an attempt to engineer/manipulate the world into loving a bad/unlovable/shameful human being. This frontal self is an ingenious invention that served us well in terms of surviving the trauma of incoherence (not being adequately loved). And indeed, we may want to call upon it from time to time when our survival is actually threatened as an adult. All of this happens below consciousness awareness, in what Paul calls the darkness. Paul was likely anticipating the historical advent of an age of light, that had been inaugurated by Jesus life, death, and resurrection. He was helping the church to discern how to live given this belief that the age of darkness had been overcome

8 and they were just waiting for the new age. How do you behave as citizens of a dark world when you are waiting for the new age? Some simply gave in to the darkness, because they were expecting to be lifted into the light anyway, so why not have a good time. Others tended to stop paying their debts and their taxes. Why bother? But Paul s encouragement was to start living as though that age had already arrived. Indeed, from the point of view of the Jesus lineage, it was already accomplished. Our lives are meant to confirm the truth of it. But the metaphor of exiting the age darkness holds for our psychological and spiritual journey as well. It is an exiting of the interior culture of the unconscious adaptive or compensation patterns. To put on Christ means to bring the light of Coherence to bear on this patterning, so that we can live in the Coherence of Love. This is what it means to be in Christ. There is a pervasive state of health that we never fully lose. This is the light of Christ. But it is deeply buried below all the drama that our unconscious patterning chronically re-enacts. (It does so, not because, we re bad, but so that we can see it, that is, bring it into the light of conscious awareness.) Very few of us got what we were expecting when we entered into this world, which was unconditional love, a good enough family, and a culture that was sane. We all adapted, necessarily, to the darkness. Naturally, because this trauma is passed on for millennia, our parents and their parents also inherited the darkness, and lived in unconsciousness. Our unconscious compensation patterns structured our personalities. These are what we default to under stress, when we feel like our survival might be threatened (even though we re not actually in danger, it just feels as though we are, because what we are feeling is the original trauma which was a matter of life and death. When Paul tells the early church to make no provision for the flesh he is saying effectively, do not indulge the frontal

9 self, do not feed the adapted self that is reflecting incoherence. Rather put on Christ, which is the state of health or wholeness that is ever-present. Jesus is the incarnated presence of this Coherence one who refused to provide for the flesh. His time in the wilderness with the Satan was his own struggle with the dark forces of unconsciousness and the dark forces of this world and beyond. The story says it was a 40 day struggle, but this represents mythically the time it takes to make this journey from darkness to light. In my own experience, it s spread out over a life time (sorry about that), and there is a new contending with the darkness with each new stage of development. Living in the day as Paul puts it requires an absolute and unswerving commitment to bring the light of conscious awareness to bear on our unconscious patterning that gets in the way of us being centres of Coherent Love for the world. It means that we take absolute responsibility to know when we are in a state of contraction (which is the felt sense of these compensation patterns), and that we stop it. We do our work. We stop hurting others with our darkness. Period. There is no way around this work. No provision for unconsciousness. There can be no spiritual by-passing. This is work is our spiritual work. (It s not the totality, but it is the foundation). It s what we re here for actually. It is a work of redemption. This lifelong project is a direct participation in the redemption of our our own ancestries historical trauma, and the redemption of future generations. When are in Coherence, we put on Christ, we are christing agents. Paul says that the only thing we owe to anybody is love. In this is love: that we become transparent vessels for the Love that wants to

10 live us. Seeing as there are so various families buying online and likewise exploring the internet market place, it has become increasingly famous to purchase medications online. So the next question is where can you get info that is reliable. You can find useful data fleetly and conveniently by going online. The most common sexual problems in men are erectile disfunction and ejaculation disorders. A lot of doctors think about levitra cost. Did learned some about buy levitra online usa? Other matter we are going to is buy generic levitra online. In effect, a medic reviews found that up to three quarters of people on such preparation experience side effects. Luckily, most cases of sexual dysfunction are treatable, so it is momentous to share your concerns with your partner and physician. Today, there are many options for men who suffer from erectile dysfunction. Get emergency help if you have any of these signs of a side effect to this medication. Talk to your heartiness care provider to see if it s sure to make the switch.