Preparing for Death – Life’s Inevitable Transition
November 23, 2015 • Insights on Life, Learn
You can prepare for it but no matter who you are you will feel the pain of letting go of this birth. It’s like duct tape slowly being pulled off a hairy arm. Countless magnetic energetic cords break as they are forcefully detached from what they were connected to.
When you live in a physical body for a long time it’s only natural you build an attachment to it, to the life that you have just lived, and the people and things associated with it.
I said bye, not good bye, to a very dear friend on November 19th. Five minutes before I got on stage to speak to a group of entrepreneurs her son called me to tell me she was dying. I stepped out of the hall and spoke to her, and an hour later, while I was giving my talk, she passed away. I said bye not good bye because I know I’ll see her again. Death is not the end. It’s a transition from one state to another. That is the Hindu view of life’s inevitable experience.
Two months earlier, fortunately for me, I had already made plans to be in the city she lived in for a week. I took this opportunity to visit her almost every day. She was so grateful to have me there and I was so grateful to be there as someone who loved her, and to help her prepare for this transition. She’s a mature soul. An old soul as some people would say. Why? Because of how she approached her impending death. By the way, we decided not to use the word death and instead replace it with the word transition. Few people approach their transition with such grace and courage as she did.
She asked me if I could help her prepare for this transition. She wanted to learn more about it. What is the Hindu view of transition, how best to prepare for it and anything else that I could share.
We focused on three areas:
1. How to wrap up the current life – the more karma you can resolve before you transition the less “baggage” you carry into the next life. We looked into how to do this inwardly and outwardly.
2. How to prepare for transition – in the days and hours leading up to transition, and the moment of transition, what is the inner preparation.
3. How to plan for the next life – this life only leads into the next. We talked about how to manifest the life that is best for our spiritual progress in our next birth.
When you understand and know that you are a soul living in a physical body you realize that it is only the physical body that gets left behind in this transition. The soul, having shed the body, now functions in the astral plane awaiting its next birth. The key is to resolve as much of the past as possible, exit with intention and grace, and with a clear plan for the next birth.
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