Actually, This is Us

We just cannot get too comfortable with the status quo, because change is constant. Humans’ discomfort with change is as logical as if a rock in the middle of a stream were uncomfortable with the water rushing by and longing instead for things to be calm. It’s as if a leaf in a tree objected to the breezes and the movement of air past its body and longed for only still days.

Objecting to change is objecting to something that is a constant in life. Actually, change is life, and life is change. There is no static moment. There is no state of stasis. Even when you think your current state, for good or bad, is kind of stuck in place - you are changing. Your cells are dividing and reproducing and aging and dying and being born. Every breath brings a different mix of air into your lungs, and every thought has an impact on your brain chemistry.

We change with everything we observe and everything we experience.

We take it in, and therefore, we are more than we were before we took it in.

We are made of change. So fearing it or feeling angry about it is just…silly. Silly, yes, for an eternal, ever-changing being to object to change like a fish objecting to water.

Change IS life. They are one and the same. We’re made up of change.

This is Us

As I binged the final season of This is Us to be ready for tonights series finale, I thought a lot about this state of constant change, and I realized it’s probably the basis for the sometimes misunderstood philosophy of detachment taught in some spiritual traditions. It’s frequently mistaken to mean one shouldn’t love or cherish anything in life, but I don’t think that’s it at all.

I think the key is to love and cherish all we can in life, and to understand that change is constant, and all things change and therefore nothing is "permanent" because permanent is static, and that doesn't exist. Surrendering to this compels us to cherish the people and events of our lives even more. And peace with this surrender can only be attained by knowing for sure that nothing ever ends. Everything is energy and energy cannot be unmade. It can only change form. The very fact that change is constant means that nothing can end. LIFE cannot and does not end. There is no death. Not the way people think of it, as an ending, a cessation of being. There is no such thing as cessation of being.

What I believe

When a loved one completes their physical journey, they do not leave us. They only change form. They emerge from their physical shell like a butterfly from its cocoon. In the same way the butterfly can only open its wings once it emerges, we open and broaden and unfold ourselves as we emerge from our bodies. We become massive, expansive beings. We expand so wide we reconnect with the whole of us, made up of all the other lifetimes we’ve lived, and we kind of homogenize all the experience and wisdom and knowledge of those lifetimes. And again, we are more than we were before. And when we will it, we will beam a part of us down into another newborn, flowing into them as their soul with their first breath.

I think we can be in many places at once in our expanded state. We humans are beams of Source energy in physical form. But the bigger part of us remains non-physical. As we emerge from our bodies, we rejoin that bigger non-physical part and from our perspective of pure Consciousness, we can join with the beams or souls that are still earthbound. I envision two swirls of sparkling misty light, entwining together like a pair of seahorses in love. We can embrace our loved ones’ souls and beam with them.

So when we hear that the dead, “live on inside us,” it’s not a pretty expression about memory or past experience. It’s present tense, right now, and it's literal. They are embracing our soul, which is beaming down and filling our bodies. We can feel them there and experience them there.

We must go inward to find those loved ones who are no longer physical. We must hear what we imagine they would say to us, because it’s far more than imagination.

Big caveat here: they would never say anything remotely negative. They are pure positive energy now. Negative mind-chatter isn’t them. If that's what you get, gently re-direct your thoughts to the idealized version of the loved one. The perfected version, the one who has healed all wounds, feels no pain, harbors no sadness or anger, and is aligned with all well-being and joy.

They can see the bigger picture now, the mosaic of which each lifetime is a vital and beautiful piece of gemlike glass.

And if they peer more closely, they can also see that each lifetime, each piece of glass is also made up of a million individual pieces—the experiences of that lifetime. And if they widen the view, they also see the beautiful pattern all those lifetimes create together. A eternal creation-in-progress that is never complete.

Everything that didn’t make sense before, makes perfect sense once that bigger pattern is seen. Our loved ones understand that there was never really anything to feel badly about. All the stuff they got all fired up about in life was just another piece of glass in the mosaic, and it wouldn't make the image it does without that piece.

All of this is a part of our ongoing, constant becoming. Our family's unfolding. The evolution of Consciousness. The story of humankind.

In other words...

This is Us.