Release

 

My question this month is about releasing: how best to release my hold or grip to allow life/Spirit to take Its own course. After relocating, I find this is a necessary phase for moving forward with new life conditions.

The image I have is of a formerly wounded or captive eagle being released to the wilds after being tended to by a caring healer. After protecting the bird in a safe space to allow it time to heal, now the Healer first prepares the eagle for eventual flight and then the day comes for the eagle to regain its liberty.

Releasing an eagle or other animal acknowledges the Call of the Wild. The call of the open air and unbounded energy of the natural environment certainly appeals to a denizen of the wilds more than being held within a caged or domesticated life.

Currently three good friends of the past 26 (and more) years have been facing “terminal” illness conditions. One has passed two weeks ago, another is in hospice as I write this, and the third is prepared for moving on, sooner or later. Release is important, both for my friends and for their closest friends and family. Release from the confining limitations of an ailing body certainly is a Call of Spirit to transcend the earthly and bodily limitations to ascend to the freedom of pure Love (so I believe).

With summertime easing into Fall where I live in the Finger Lakes now, trees that have had rich green foliage begin to shade into yellows, reds and oranges as they prepare to release their leaves to the fertile ground and transition for yet another Winter.

images are from pixabay.com

Life energy flows through their roots and the veins of the leaves and so I ask, where does all that leaf energy go when it is liberated and converted into pure energy again?  The smell of Fall in the air carries their energies of transformation, pervading the atmosphere and reminding me, all of us, that All is Well.

Carrying Deni

Week Two of this year’s monthly process at Better Endings invites you to reflect on nightly dreams with regard to a question you have posed in Week One (or any time).

This month for me my significant dream has preceded the statement of my question, and has influenced it. My question is about Starting Over (see last post) after having retired and relocated far from my familiar life of the past 25 years. Not having a lifelong spouse or children due to choices made along the way, this major shift of location and new social community can seem overwhelming some times, though my dear dog and cat companions and being closer geographically to my family members and returning to be reacquainted with some very old friends are welcome blessings.

Recently I have been rudely awakened to the distance I have created from my Colorado friends as a very dear friend there (as well as another dear friend further away) has become afflicted with a debilitating illness and I feel sad and helpless not to be able to be there to lend a hand and provide direct support. Thus, “starting over, again” has a sad element of separation and anguish regarding loss of the mobility to be with especially my friend Denise in Colorado.

So, the dream. In this dream another Colorado friend and I are going to pick up Denise–who is the one suffering now–to bring her with us to visit a third friend who is in the hospital (in the dream). I go to “pick up” my friend Denise quite literally, for her body is shrunken and she is unable to move about on her own. I pick her up in both arms rather awkwardly and ineptly and she says, “Hold me like a log.” When I awoke (just after that) I realized that holding someone like a log could mean with both arms outstretched and holding the body up toward my chest. Or, it could mean I am to see my friend’s or anyone’s body itself as just “like a log,” dead weight so to speak, as versus the dynamic, beautiful and vibrant, free spirit/ Soul my friend is and will always Be.

When I awoke and reflected on this brief dream I still felt sad for my friend’s condition, but I also felt encouraged. Time and geographical distance shift and forms of life and relations bend and change, but Soul to Soul connections, camaraderie, unconditional love do not fade and can persist despite outward facts and conditions. I love my friends; friendship has always been the bedrock of my life despite a lifelong theme of Relocation to pursue, first my family’s and later my own primary quests: educational, career-based, and spiritual.

So how this dream helps me answer my probe about how to best approach starting over (yet again) is to suggest that a life based in love, friendship and service is never truly solitary; and that friendship is eternal, spiritually if not always in the outer form.

That is all I can say, for now.

I welcome YOUR Story and Comments about your own monthly–or lifelong–Quest.