Suicide and The Afterlife
A number of suicides have been coming to me for help crossing over. One stuck in my mind, mainly because when I saw him he was sitting in the chair in front of my alter which no one does but me. I saw the back of his head first, then he slowly turned and I saw that he had absolutely no face at all but instead, in the area on the same plane as his ears, a stony tan color with crags and crevices, a rather granular, uneven surface. His first comment was, she’s not afraid of me. And I wasn’t.
He’d blown his face off, but it was so long ago, the image of the flesh had changed. I felt sadness from him, and I felt his surprise that I wasn’t scared of him. I sensed no danger from him, only the sadness and quiet supplication. This was a human being. An extension of God just as myself. And as I always receive these souls with kindness and compassion, I let him know that he would get his old face back, good as new, and the suffering would soon be over.
So many suicides in the world. The news outlets always have a story about someone’s suicide and suicides have increased overall in recent decades. Two thirds of all gun related deaths are suicides. The world can be a miserable and hurtful place, we all know that.
I’ve had times in my life, many years ago, when I was still drinking quite heavily, where depression became overwhelming and the idea crossed my mind. I thought it might be a way to ease the pain I was feeling, not realizing that the alcohol I was drinking to alleviate my pain was only making it worse. So when I hear of someone who has wrestled with this demon. I get it.
The problem is that it’s not our place to take our own lives. That’s because this existence… this I am, that we are… is, beyond a certain point, very much not under our control. We don’t get to make the big rules. We can convince ourselves that the rules we have made for ourselves are all the rules involved in a life. But the will of God and the absolute truth will always bear out in the end. Whether we are aware of it or not.
Free will gives us the freedom to do whatever we wish in this life, but free will has no bias towards right or wrong. If life becomes unbearably painful or sad or both, our challenge is to learn something from the situation, and learn, feel, think something new about ourselves, and grow. Grow through it. Grow beyond it. Change.
I’ll admit it in a heartbeat. Anthony Bourdain was one of my major celebrity crushes. I was watching Parts Unknown the other day and wondering how such an open minded, compassionate, self made sage of a kind, would want to leave this planet when he had inspired so many of us to see the rest of our world in ways we might never have, had we not witnessed his adventures.
I remember seeing some of the final episodes of the show before his unfortunate decision, and he seemed depressed to me. He’d always had a hint of darkness to him. I thought it was most likely a remnant of his struggles with addiction. It was blended with a reverence and intensity that was part of his NYC toughness, swagger and charm. But now that darkness appeared to be getting the best of him.
His face was a little puffier than usual and his energy seemed sad and resigned. I would wince when he and his guests would dive head first into drinking and boozing. I knew it was part of his job, but I could also see how it wasn’t helping him. When the news came, I knew alcohol had probably played a part in his depression.
I have started reading, or rather listening to the audiobook of Gabor Mate’s, In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts. I think the man is brilliant, genius in his field. Suicides can happen slowly over time not just with drug addicts, as he so wisely points out, but with all of our repetitive lifestyle habits that are deleterious to our mental and physical well being. In other words, many of us are slowly committing suicide through our addictions one way or another.
The people on My Six Hundred Pound Life are slowly committing suicide with food. Smokers used to refer to cigarettes as coffin nails, I don’t know if they still do. A bag of chips and a 2 liter soda everyday is a slow suicide. The “sweet tooth” is a slow suicide. Many of us treasure our sweets. Sugar and its products are seen as one of the great pleasures and delights of life. It is just as addictive as alcohol and in my opinion only a hair less deadly. The sugar addict. No one calls them that yet.
As we kill planet earth, we kill ourselves.
We become addicted to stress, addicted to work. We become addicted to anger. We become addicted to self destructive emotional patterns. These things take a toll on the body and the mind. And all are fueled by childhood trauma. In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts. I highly recommend the book for everyone to read.
When we are born into this world, our life has many possibilities and outcomes. Very few aspects of it are set in stone. There may be a few predetermined destinies but there are many paths to follow, or carve out to one end or another. Not all of them the best way to go.
I often think of extreme emotional pain as a kind of earth borer. You know, those gigantic construction vehicles used in mining and other large scale commercial/industrial pursuits. It digs deeper and harder into your soul than anything that had gone before. And while it’s happening, it’s more pain than you have ever known. You might wish you were dead. Your mind might be reeling, unable to focus clearly or think rationally. Your insides might feel like hamburger.
But when it’s done, however long it takes, could be years maybe decades… because we do tend to hold onto our traumas… the depth remains. When the pain, the grief, the trauma, subsides, you are now quite aware of just how deep you go. Sure, tragedy, pain and trauma caused the depth, but when all that is healed, and the life of your heart and mind begins anew, you realize you have become this newly expanded being.
The knowing, the experience, what you now know about yourself, that you didn’t know before, is something you wouldn’t have known had it not been for the pain or the trauma. I’m not saying emotional trauma is something to be invited or pursued for spiritual growth. But sometimes in life it is entirely unavoidable.
If you look into the depth and you still feel pain, though somewhat less than your last visit to your pain, your depth, just know that it hasn’t healed yet. You still have some healing to do. Keep seeking the healing. If it’s therapy, religion, art, music, physical exercise, or all of the above, keep at it and know that the pain, the depression will never be bigger than you.
This is another way to look at it. This is a better way than giving up, or trying to take yourself out of the game. Face it like a knot to be unraveled or a puzzle of many pieces to be assembled. Face it like any complex problem to be solved, one step or piece at a time. Stop trying to avoid staring into the pain you are already feeling. Sure it’s unpleasant. But aren’t unpleasant events what caused the pain in the first place? You’ve survived the worst of it, that point in time was as bad as it was going to get. You may as well go the distance and see it through to the end of the pain. Not the end of you.
That’s the big karmic gotcha of it all. You can’t take yourself out of the game no matter what you do or believe. You are an eternal being and eternity is what you decide it will be for you. You can step off of the cruise ship at a port in the middle of hell and decide not to get back on for whatever reason, but you will then have to play the game that is part of being at that particular port. Like wandering the earth stuck in the heavy, negative emotions that drove you to commit suicide, when you were hoping your crummy decision would rid you of them.
Committing suicide to alleviate emotional pain is the equivalent of stabbing yourself in an already existing wound to make the hurt go away. You’ve only compounded the damage and added a new wound that is much, much worse than the original. Listen to me when I say this.
You Will Never Not Be
I’ll say it again.
You Will Never Not Be
You Are An Eternal Being
You can’t make the pain go away by making yourself go away, it doesn’t work like that. You will have to exist with the consequences and ripple effects of your actions and beliefs. That is, until you desire to go home. Who was that guy that said you can’t go home? Bullshit. You can always go home.
There are constants in this entirety of existence, seen and unseen, material and spiritual. God, home, heaven, nirvana, whatever you want to call it, is the original constant. You can always go there no matter what you’ve done in life, if you believe you can, if you know that’s where you want to be, that’s all it takes.
Not unlike Dorothy clicking her red shoes together. Just believe it with all your heart. I know it sounds pollyanna and overly simplified but it’s true. Desire to be with God from the deepest, truest place in your being. And when it’s all said and done, when your life ends at it’s natural designated point in time, there you will find yourself. You just have to weather the storms.
newageoldsoul.blogspot.com
