Remembering

Friday is Remembrance Day - a day to remember those who departed from this earth plane in an attempt to protect and serve the rights of you and me. Certainly Remembrance Day is punctuated by strong energies that relate to loss at the hands of war and the memories that living veterans carry in the present day. I also think that it lends itself to a more general remembering of those we've lost.

Loss is a bit of a challenging topic because there's so much emotion around it. Perhaps that's what I'd like to reflect on. I recently lost someone close to me and while it is a painful and emotionally charged experience, I am left thinking about how very human grief is. The more awakened part of me recognizes that all is well, that the person who was "lost" is not really lost, only changed in form - only his body is lost, our bodies being the most dense part of our beings. The human part of me struggles with remorse, regret, anger, sadness and longing. Surely the person who has departed is not feeling any of these challenging feelings - he's been set free of such dense and heavy emotion! So, why do I mourn? Do I mourn for the pain of the person who has departed? He no longer experiences pain. Do I mourn for the pain he experienced here on earth? But again, he's been set free of this pain. In my estimation, there's one primary reason that I'm mourning and that's for MY loss, not his. With him gone, I feel as though a part of me has been lost - that part of me that this person fulfilled - and pain sets up camp in that void, at least for now. We tend to grieve that which we perceive as being lost in our own lives, and that is very human of us. That being said, I think it's very important for us to honor our humanness and do what we need to do in order to BE human, moving these emotions through our bodies as productively as possible.

Meanwhile, our higher selves know that nothing has in fact been lost and that perhaps something has actually been gained. Those close to us that have departed have gained freedom and, down the road, we are able to gain strength, insight and empathy, which lends itself to our increased capacity to support those around us. Feelings that are associated with grief and loss are very heavy because we experience them in our bodies, which are also very heavy. Our spirits soar and are weightless. May we remember that once a person departs from this earth, their spirit is set free from the constraints of the body and everything is...probably pretty dreamy and amazing, to say the least.

Someone once told me that when love is "lost", as in the breakup of a relationship, that love lives on in other ways because, as love is energy, it can be neither created nor destroyed, only changed in form. It was comforting to me to consider that while my heart may have felt as though it was aching for love having been "lost", every love having been shared lives on and there really is nothing to mourn. Rather, I could celebrate that I had been blessed with the gift of experiencing love in that form for that period of time and celebrate how that same love shows up in my life in different ways.

This is a short reflection with a simple point: as we remember those that departed while protecting our country and those that have departed in other ways, may we also remember that their souls are not lost, but rather changed in form. Their souls are free from the weight of this earthly plane. May we find comfort in knowing that they now guide and protect us with a bird's eye view and that their peace is one that we do not yet know.  May we honor who they were on this earth and remember to celebrate the freedom they have now gained. Lest we forget.

Roberta Shepherd for Prana Holistic