(Sorry, but no pictures this time. Blogger is having a problem with it's upload software.)
Illness is a part of life's overall plan. Just as ‘up’ is a necessity to ‘down’ and ‘in’ is a necessity to ‘out’, so too is illness a necessity to health. It is complementary and a part of the
duality of this reality. Cure one disease and up pops another. Cure TB and an epidemic of asthma appears. Close the door to smallpox and in walks AIDS. Wipe out polio, and on the saliva of a deer tick dances in Lyme disease. Because disease is part of our belief system we should not stop our fight against it. But, we should also try to understand its purpose. Science tells us the purpose of a virus is to replicate itself, nothing more, and the purpose of our immune system is to keep it from doing so, nothing more. Science tells us that hostility is inbred in nature, that it is the survival of the fittest. Seth and Elias claim we do not ‘catch’ a virus. They state that all viruses can be found in the body and that the
subjective and
objective self triggers their replication.
Seth teaches that all matter is conscious and despite theories to the contrary, all things, animate and inanimate, depend upon inborn
cooperation. It is cooperation, not survival of the fittest that governs all of nature.
“Each organism has a purpose, and it is to fulfil its own capabilities in such a way that it benefits all other organisms.” This mirrors perennial philosophical thinking. There are many ways we benefit and not all of it do we judge as good. When a virus multiplies unchecked in our bodies it is because it has been invited to do so by one or more of our beliefs as a means of
communication and/or experience, and not because it has an insatiable need to reproduce at all costs. It is important to remember that
death is merely a change of focus in consciousness if we are to get to a point where we can believe that matter is conscious and cooperative. If we believe that this shining point of focus we call life is all that there is then we will go kicking and screaming into the darkness. But, if we trust that life is eternal and that it is we who choose our departure time, then we can look upon
disease states and death with different eyes. Nothing is as sure as death and taxes. We prepare for taxes, but run from death our entire lives.
Consciousness does not experience death as a failure, whether it comes early or late, by expectation or not. Consciousness is eternal and, as such, unexpected or early death is seen as another experience that only went so far. Those that are left behind do not see it that way because of our belief system, but for those that die, the realization eventually occurs. Death is not an end, but simply a new beginning, and it always has its purpose.
Consider this story as an example of a widening awareness that death can bring. Jacob Thrimble is close to death. He is sixty years old and his family is gathered around his deathbed to pay their final respects to a husband and father who, according to their beliefs, is leaving them too soon. It is obvious to his wife and only son that Jacob wants to tell them something, and so they draw close to his lips.
“I never did enough,” Jacob whispers through dry and cracked lips.
“Nonsense,” his wife cries. She reminds him of all the sacrifices he made for her; how he bought her the beautiful fur coat she had always wanted with the money he was saving for a badly needed new farm tractor.
“No,” Jacob whispered. “I never did enough.”
This time his son answered. “You did more than anyone could ask of a father,” he said. “You gave up golf and fishing and all the things you love and took on an extra job to put me through college. No one could ask more of a father. You did more than enough.”
Jacob Thrimble opened his eyes and took them both in for the last time. On his final breath came these words. “No,” he said. “I never did enough for myself.”
The insight only came at the moment of death. It was death’s gift to Jacob Thrimble, or more accurately, Jacob’s gift to himself. There are many who lose the fight to death at an earlier than expected age, but if we allow it, we can find the victory in an apparent defeat. Those of us that are left behind feel cheated by death. It has robbed us of a loved one and we believe it has cut short our beloved's life. This is what we believe, and it is that belief that saddens us so deeply at our apparent loss. It’s not what happens within consciousness, but it is what we believe happens and so we experience it. Where is this afterlife religion says exists, but our scientists cannot find? Science says, “show me or I won’t believe it,” while religion says, “you must have faith.” We are caught between a rock and a hard place.
I was eighteen when the women’s movement began. I was brought up to respect women, to open doors for them, to take care of them, and to light their cigarettes. “Ladies before gentlemen” was the catch phrase, even unto death, before the women's movement began in the early sixties. The early battle between feminism and chauvinism left me confused, just as the battle between religion and science has us confused. I felt as though I was damned if I did and damned if I did not. If I opened the car door for my date, was I a male chauvinist pig trying to keep women subjugated and inferior, or was I a gentleman following the rules of courtesy as I was taught? It is a little like that with science and religion. We see the benefits science has brought us, but the idea itself has cut us off from our essential selves. That science cannot prove the existence of simultaneous realities, or that consciousness can exist apart from the body, does not mean we cannot believe in it until we experience it. The more of us that believe the more the proof will appear. Prophets and sages have experienced detached consciousness, and written about it throughout the ages and we did believe it, once. Many knew time was relative long before Einstein proved it. We gotta get out of this place some time and death will lose its sting when we understand that death is not an end, but a new beginning.
If we are to prepare for death as we prepare for taxes we must begin to understand what death is about. What is most important is this very moment of this very real life that we are presently living. It is in this moment that eternity exists. The present moment is our point of power. It is through an understanding of
who we really are in the grandest sense that an understanding of death will become clear. We have believed for too long that if we don't get ‘it’ here, we’ll get ‘it’ there, that if we don't feel ‘it’ here, we’ll feel ‘it’ there. We don't know what ‘there’ is, but we do have some understanding of the ‘here.’ Our concept of the place called heaven has kept us from being fully present in the place called ‘here’. This ‘here’ and this ‘now’ that we find ourselves in, is all we’ve got, and if we don’t make the most of it because we think we’ll get it ‘there’ we are cheating ourselves. To await my heaven, while ignoring what is at hand is like the Sad Sack who does nothing to change his life, and proclaims to all who will listen, how life would be so much better if only he could pick the right six numbers on his State’s lottery.
Our belief in the afterlife is as simplistic as our understanding of God. Death is not an end; it merely marks a new beginning in terms of how we view the forward march of time. GC Jung in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche says:
“We are so convinced that death is simply the end of a process that it does not ordinarily occur to us to conceive of death as a goal and a fulfilment, as we do without hesitation the aims and purposes of youthful life in its ascendance.”
Death is an end and a beginning for consciousness, just as birth is an end and a beginning.
Bill Marshall
Check out The Forgotten Self,
US or
UK. It's a fictional account of a global shift in consciousness.