Click for Youtube: Dancing Through Eternity
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“When you are tempted to think a life has been cut short, remember that every soul is dancing through eternity.”
Memorial Day is a holiday for remembering men and women who died while serving our country’s armed forces. Many use this time to remember all loved ones who have passed. It is certainly a good time to reflect on perspectives we hold on matters of life and death. In ways we may not even be aware of, our view of death impacts the way we live our life.
Recently, a woman was telling me of a family who lost their three-year-old daughter to leukemia. “I don’t understand why some lives are cut so short,” she said. “It just doesn’t seem fair.” While we are empathetic toward those who experience such a loss, we do well to consider the grander picture. We always feel the time we shared with a loved one now passed was too short. But whatever its duration, the earthly experience is temporary. The soul, momentarily tethered to a body, is not the sum of the loved one we knew in bodily form. They are experiencing life free of the blinders imposed by the physical senses. Their stay on earth may have been brief, but their life has not been cut short.
In our consideration of death, the disadvantage most of us have is that we only have memories of events connected to this incarnation. Life, as we understand it, is what happens between the bookends of birth and death. Everything beyond is unknown. Yet the one who sails over the horizon of visibility gains an insight those who remain on the shore rarely grasp. Whether they were killed in the heat of battle or silently slipped away from the quiet of their hospice bed, they would long for us to know that there is no death. They would know that if we do not grasp it now, we will discover it soon enough.
We are all dancing through eternity. The day will come when we step from this plane, but we will never step from life. Jesus reminded us that in the Father’s house there are many rooms. Earth is but one of these rooms. Hold your loved ones in the light and beauty of life and know they are doing the same with you.
Interesting perspective, as always, which I appreciate.
As you’ve stated often in your posts on the Complete Soul, we do not choose our incarnations with any stated purpose in mind – we simply choose to have a bodily experience for the experience itself. It is my belief that all life is purposeful. When you set out to write a book – whether, like yours on spiritual matters, or like others on various topics, it is usually with the intent to influence those who read it with your wisdom or opinion or story or information. There is purpose. So it is with the lives we live while briefly on this earth.
So it is with the lives we live while briefly on this earth. While in a body, we have the ability to influence others, for good or for ill. To believe, as you seemingly do, that all NDE’s are positive, airy and light, is to be ignorant of other experiences which are not so. I suggest visiting this website that chronicles some of the LPE’s (less positive experiences) related to a doctor of internal medicine who has written about both positive and not-so-positive experiences related to her: http://www.neardeath.com/science/experts/barbara-rommer.html
In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read this book but I believe it is important to give both opinions on NDE and to recognize that how we live, and why we live on this earth plane near other embodied souls, carries important consequences for all of us.
Thank you for this message from yesterday which I’ve watched this Monday morning – Memorial Day – a day to remember.
Thank you for your comment. Yes, I’m quite aware that some report “hellish” NDE’s. Researchers say these constitute about 1% of reported experiences and that they often start out negative and end positively. There are some evangelical NDE researches who focus on these as support of their belief in hell. I do not believe there is a place known as hell, so their negative experience probably has to do with their own psychology, which we apparently carry with us. In the same way some report variously seeing a being of light, Jesus, Buddha, etc., so our belief system apparently influences some aspects of the NDE. However, it is common that atheists come back believing in God, Christian fundamentalists relinquish their rigid views of sin and punishment and materialists come back knowing there is no death.
As far as purpose goes, yes, we have purpose, but I have come to believe that is of our choosing. From the universal point of view, our purpose is to express life, love, power and intelligence. Does God choose how we are to express these things? No. We make our choices based on our interests and dispositions. The will of God is unlimited expression, which is found fully in the human being. That said, if we choose to fritter away this life, we apparently are free to do so. There’s no St. Peter keeping score. And, as Fillmore reserved the right to change his mind, I think we can all change our sense of purpose any time we feel deeply moved to do so. God is not going to be disappointed that we’re no longer doing something He expects us to do. This is, to me, the kind of thinking I’m willing to chuck.
Thanks again for commenting.