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Facing Death with a Full Heart and Open Mind

August 7th, 2012

I’d like to share with you a very special interview with a friend, Adrienne, who is dying – here in Lewes, just a short walk away. Readers of this blog might remember Adrienne’s beautiful blog post that she wrote while having mistletoe injections a few years ago: ‘God is in the Detail’.
That post rings true to me now more than ever, and is well worth reading and re-reading. Here’s a sample:

“If it is possible to be frog-marched down the road to enlightenment, I suspect it might go something like this. Gratitude: As I wrote last week, whatever time remains appears more intense. Little details seem like tailor-made miracles. Judgement and reactions: So what? Life really might be too short. Even those nasty people who are trashing my planet are, to me now, simply ignorant; let it all go. Bad habits: Stuff that; I want to live my remaining days to the full, not lost in a cloud. Forgiveness: It’s physically much easier to say sorry than to bear a grudge. Living in the moment: More than ever, so much of the busy-ness we call life and where we put our energies seems rather a waste of time. I can’t even work myself up into a lather about the credit crunch; faced with possible death, both the voice of the news and even the voices in my head seem tedious. What remains are the core values that we all live with; love, truth, hope, happiness, which, like the vegan-esque diet I’ve been on, contributes to a rather curious lightness of being.” Adrienne Campbell  Read the full post

Adrienne is now taking her journey with an incredible openness of heart and mind which is deeply moving. Here in Lewes there is a fantastic community of people on the path of opening to self-awareness and planetary awareness, and the other day we all joined in a meditation and ceremony for Adrienne in a beautiful garden she helped to create out of wasteland by the river. The sun shone, we wrote messages for our friend on strips of ribbon and hung them on a wicker gateway, then sat in a circle and sent her our love. Later someone played the violin and there were cakes and drink for those who wanted to stay awhile.

A few days ago another friend filmed an interview with Adrienne in which she talks about what it is like for her to be setting out on this journey. She speaks with such naturalness and awareness that it feels an enormous privilege to watch this interview. It helped to dissolve for me much of the fear I was still carrying. I hope you will also find it helpful and inspiring. Bless you Adrienne for this gift!

A detail: When Adrienne speaks about ‘Transition’ she is referring to the ‘Transition Towns’ movement. She has been a prime mover in the Transition movement here in Lewes.

5 Responses to “Facing Death with a Full Heart and Open Mind”

  1. Death is change, but still a leap into the unknown. To face it takes courage and, perhaps, a certain wisdom. Thanks for sharing this and bless you, Adrienne.

  2. Adrienne’s sharing of her passage is remarkable. I hope more and more of us follow her example and share our own passages, to help each other in what all too often seems like to lonely transit to the unknown. Yet, as Philip Carr-Gomm wrote in these pages not too long ago, the process is one of “dying into the cosmos” . . . Let me quote his wise words:

    “Yesterday a friend said to me ‘Of course we all die alone.’ In that moment, rather than accepting this familiar idea, I found myself saying ‘I don’t believe that. I believe quite the contrary: that when we die, we die with everyone, we are not alone at all at that moment, but are united with every living being – we die into the Cosmos.’ I realized in this conversation that I choose to believe that it is at the moment of death that we finally give up our sense of isolation as separate beings – that it is precisely at death that the illusion of aloneness, of separation, disappears!

    Of course we can never know what exactly happens until we actually take the journey ourselves, but we also know that our belief in outcomes influences enormously our current state – physical, mental and emotional. For this reason our beliefs about what happens at death are important. I thank my friend for such a stimulating discussion!”

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