Source, Separation & Forest Through the Trees

I will try to say this in as soft a way as I am able, in the hope that it will be taken gently.

Suffering is related more to perspective than circumstance. I may not always have the power to change my circumstances, yet my ability to change my perspective is always within my power. 

How many times have I heard and taught these words for myself?  Yet here I am on the rough edge of firsthand experience, following the physical passing of one of the most beloved men I will ever know.

Recently, when in a window of grief’s brief grasp, in my desperation, I asked Rex to teach me whatever I needed to know to make it through the waves of emotion. 

I was not surprised that I felt his familiar compassion speaking into my heart: “My dear Syl, in order for you to understand, you have to stand further back...Whether or not you will be able to really see the big picture, depends on your vantage point.”

I took a moment to let this thought sink in, as I felt him close, and took him up on his offer.  I asked him to take me further back, in hopes that I might see the forest through the trees. He did, and it helped.


In my next breath, I recalled a time that I scoffed at him in mortality, when years ago, he told me he really felt we had planned to meet up here before we were born.  At the time, I was more cynical than I am these days.  I used to justify my suffering by subscribing to life as the proverbial crap shoot.  

On that day, now long gone, he had leaned in and nudged my shoulder with his, as we sat on his green leather couch together; and then he let out a gruff chuckle for us both, because I wasn’t laughing.

Back in the present, I asked my friend again to take me further back, and again he did. I saw a bigger picture than I ever had before, specific to my experience with him. It is not important to repeat out loud, but it deepened my compassion, and helped me feel that this whole experience was within the bounds of my own agency. I really had agreed to it ahead of time. 



In this simple and very sacred perspective, I glimpsed the power within all of us in this circle called life, and gained a more full understanding of the only reality that binds us together beyond here...it's truly love, isn't it. 

Not the kind of love that comes from co-dependency, or the ego’s desire for self-serving acceptance that's reflected through an "other", but the kind of love that allows for a wide path of experience, and loves us enough to set us free.  

In his poem "The Homecoming", Wendlle Barry speaks to this kind of love with his words:

"We roam the distances of our faith, safe beyond the bounds of what we know...Oh love, Open, Show Me My Country, Take Me Home."

Love asks nothing less of us, regarding those we care for so deeply, to be allowed their experience, even if it means that they turn toward the light and pass through the veil.  Grief is the conversation of letting them go, and allowing ourselves growth in doing so...Like a best friend that has graduated early, we wouldn't hold them back, but don't really know how we will manage without them for the rest of our time in school.

I then heard something more from Rex, something I really love him for. He spoke to me at a deeply spiritual level with such softness, the kind of soft whisper he used to share with me when I least expected it, with the warmth of his words just behind my ear, he said: “The key is in the mark, in the heart of His hand”.

He impressed into my heart, in fairly simple terms, that my experience of grief is not because Rex has left me separated from him since he passed. Grief happens when I allow myself to feel separate from my Source (God, Heavenly Parents, Christ, Buddha, Universal Consciousness, whatever you need to call it that creates the least resistance in you):

When I think that I miss my beloved co-heart, Rex (or anyone that goes away for that matter), what I am really missing is the feeling of connection I had when we were together, and that connection has nothing to do with mortality. Real love never dies. The connections that are most important are still in place.  I believe that it explains why I can still feel him so near, most of the time.

He again impressed into my heart, the reality that we had this connection of love and mutual respect before we came, we met up here and experienced it together in mortality, and we share it still now. In truth this applies to all of those people that shared love with him while he was in the physical space of his earthly life.

He said he was doing for me, nothing more than I had done for him after he was born. He is ministering to me. This message spontaneously pricked a pre-mortal memory in me, of watching over him for nearly 13 years before I dropped into this earthly experience. 

I felt a dove-like, feathery buzz, as every cell of my body witnessed to me that this was true. We also worked here together  side by side, in mortality for also nearly 13 years.

I found, just as he said, the further back I stood the broader my perspective and the greater my love. I found in that moment, that my grief eased into gratitude and my suffering lifted.

He told me gently that from the perspective of his space now, he has incredibly easy access to me, but from my perspective, in my moment of grief, it doesn’t feel like I have easy access to him.

When we dance the veil with those we love, we have to align ourselves to where they are, and then the gap evaporates, and mortal illusions give way to eternal realities.

The ego that is so connected to our physical body can make it tough to align, so our loved ones who have crossed over can get through to us more clearly at times when our ego is caught off guard.

Sometimes it is our suffering that has brought us to the point of surrender (which is, after all, the only point of suffering in the first place), and our heart is blown open, dissolving the veil.  Suffering is the steam of the ego evaporating from the body, until we have the perspective to shed it more through our own choosing.

Soul to soul, he explained to me that death is nothing more than releasing ourselves from all resistance and becoming more completely aligned with all that our life has helped us to become, and all in relation to our Source. The only regret beyond the veil is the love we resisted (giving or receiving).

What we call death is simply the culmination of all that our physical lives have caused us to become.

If we have separated ourselves from who we really are, then the ego that passes with us through the veil can (depending on our personal circumstance), become something like a spiritual prison without the body. We feel imprisoned because the ego can’t lay the body down, only the higher will of the body can shed the ego. Christ taught this when he said: "I have overcome the world" (meaning all the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual addictions related to the ego).

The ego that leads us to believe we are a source unto ourselves, opens the door for adversarial energies to distract, disrupt and disconnect us from our higher paths. Learning to take up the ego and lay it down again is one of the main purposes of having a physical experience.

Paradoxically, our ability to love also expands exponentially when we shed the physical perspective of the body through the experience we label as "death". The event that we mistakenly relate to the final separation is really a re-UNION. Uniting more fully with the perspective of our Source, and all that our connections of love have caused us to be in our life are amplified beyond anything we can now grasp once we cross over.

Living a spiritually focused life, while in a body is the purest way to evolve our soul.  The perspective of a loved one's passing, helps our spirit to use the metaphor for this life, called OUR BODY, to understand at the soul level how to lay our ego down. It is a hidden message in our grieving...To surrender our will over, and over again, to become more fully wedded to our essence.

The body helps reveal in us our inherent capacities for learning and perspective. Through this learning we can glimps our pure Self skimming the surface and realize our potential is beyond what we may have thought. Anyone who has experienced the aging process, or emotional or physical adversities, or any other experience from this vast life, where they have had to let go of everything knows this firsthand.

In each and every moment, regardless of where we may sit, our Source is eternally focused upon us, with a crystal clear perspective, and will never cease to draw us closer to it. Through our choices we gain new perspectives that increases our agency to chose again in an ever expanding circle that will eventually gather all truth to it's center. Each time we swing around the wheel of experience, we learn, as best we can, to not resist the essence of who we are:

We are part of the Source we seek. The most primary way we learn this in life is through our love and connection to others. This was Rex’s work as a masterful therapist and healer, to help people reconnect with the Source of their true Self. He knows how to help people do this, and from my perspective, he is still doing just that. I am living proof ... and so is HE!