Family death
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93, I figure all of us have lost someone. I'm having a rough time. I lost my sister a few months ago. What helped you through. I understand the feast and all that, I'm just having a hard time with all this, all around, even knowing Thelemic stances.
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Filius, Very sorry for your deep loss. I understand, been there this year myself. My advice is- don't let anyone tell you what to feel or not to feel. You need to go through the grief at your own pace. Of course well- meaning people will quote all the 'correct' things. This is a very private thing and I don't think any belief system can dictate our emotions to us. And talk to people who are sympathetic, you need to be around true friends. It does get better in time.
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@FiliusBestia said
"93, I figure all of us have lost someone. I'm having a rough time. I lost my sister a few months ago. What helped you through. I understand the feast and all that, I'm just having a hard time with all this, all around, even knowing Thelemic stances."
Even if your sister's soul is now free to go on its next adventure etc etc, doesn't change the fact that you miss her.
Its often said that at a funeral we do not grieve for the person lost, but for ourselves. Learning to live without someone is an organic process that we all must push through. -
You need to be authentic to your feelings. Grief is a real thing, and it has to go to completion. So (for example), don't feel guilty about the fact that you have to grieve. You've experienced a loss, a separation and, while there are better and worse ways to look at this philosophically, those intellectualizations mustn't keep you from experiencing your feelings until they've run their course.
Old feelings about death and loss run deep in the cultural mass mind. At some point in the process (probably earlier, rather than later), it would be valuable to start witnessing - perhaps not yet interfering with, but at least witnessing and distinguishing where you can - those ideas and feelings welling up from cultural reaction vs. those that are authentically yours.
Since we are individually and culturally learning a new relationship to death (ours and that of others), it may help to have a new 'story' to tell about what happened. I don't mean intellect it away, or bullshit yourself but, rather, use some other framework to put her death into a new perspective. The usual kind of story is, "She's gone on a trip, out of communication, and isn't coming back." (It's 500 years ago, she married a rich guy, is happy beyond measure, and is moving to India; or it's the future and she's on a starship leaving earth to explore etc. etc.) Maybe not even a literal story - but put her passage into this "gone on a long journey, won't see her again, no communication, wow she's happy!" kind of framework.
Of course, just how "out of communication" is a whole other topic... I'm just trying to hit some bullet points that might help for what you've asked.
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93, Thank you. I think that's one the big things, guilt. Intellectually, and to some degree otherwise, I understand the whole moving on concept. I think I feel guilty that I'm not able to cope with it on a purely Thelemic level, etc. Thanks for the advice.
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93,
" Intellectually, and to some degree otherwise, I understand the whole moving on concept. I think I feel guilty that I'm not able to cope with it on a purely Thelemic level, etc."
Looking back on past bereavement, I can only see that grief was a process that coped with me. People who are unable to address their own feelings about death prefer that we 'move on' or 'get over it.' There is such a thing as wallowing in grief out of guilt or (this one can be insidious) to get sympathetic attention, but mostly, grief ebbs according to its own timetable, not ours.
After that, the loss finds its own private niche inside us, and we begin to gain distance from it. But without such a close encounter with the raw emotions around the death of someone close to us, I don't think we have any hope of being able to take a Thelemic view of death as a transition. For one thing, we won't believe our own stated opinions, because they'e based on hopeful boasting, not serious grappling with the reality.
93 93/93,
Edward
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93!
The removal of an important member of our social construction can indeed cause a great shift and change in our entire world view and the self identity is defined within that matrix relations between our ideas and the element of the world we are accustomed to. These changes can effect the emotions greatly as well, throwing the waters of our cup into rough seas.
In these difficult times, it is important to realize the higher self, to find refuge with Nuit can help one through this process. However, it is wise to resist temptation to dissociate too much from ones life and feelings.
"...Nu is your refuge as Hadit your light; and I am the strength, force, vigour, of your arms."
not that these quote help much, but perhaps working with the concepts may help you to transmute the evils of the grieving process into joy. For even this is a part of life and an expression of light, against the shadows that pass and are gone. (the battle of Horus and Set, the outcome of which is joy).
This is of course just my take on the Thelemic relation to death, which as Jim pointed out is but a new introduction and the old cultural views are rooted deeper in the psychology of society.
As far as the going on a journey, Im not sure that is the thelemic notion. Rather that we are each of us an aggregate that precipitates out of Nuit, each Hadit as a grain of solid salt un-dissolved from the ocean, then at death we are re-absorbed into the whole again. That each has a True WILL and orbit, and death is the crown of that WILL. Thus she has completed her purpose for manifestation and, the re-dissolution as the complement of ones WILL, is not pain, sorrow and regret, but there is rather joy in fulfillment. (a joy that transcends the pain and sorrow of the physical process of dying).
There is no need to feel sadness as empathy for those who dwell in the eternal joy of dissolution. Let or grief focus on our own feelings of loss and the re-building of our life and identity in their absence.
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93, Thank you all. I wanted(needed?) some outside perspectives. I don't talk about it much(which my wife has been getting onto me about a bit), and more of late find myself breaking up on it. I guess that's life. And yes, Mr. Mason, that is what I consider a pitfall, and one reason I do not refer to it much. Pity is one thing I am not too keen on. I got response types that I was looking for, experience and knowledge. 939393
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93,
A couple of extra thoughts. We reject pity out of anger - the anger side of a close relative dying is one of the most difficult things. It spills all over the other areas of our lives, and the danger is, it can get thrown onto someone who just happens to be around, like a friend or a spouse.
The pity we're shown can be just someone wanting to feel helpful, not shoved aside. What else can other people offer us than apparent pity? Ouija board messages from the departed?
The hardest thing I found after three family deaths in eight months was the fact I didn't *have *anything to say, other than a kind of incoherent scream. When I went through counselling (there are groups that offer it for free, or for a nominal charge, and I do recommend this provided they're not openly religious), that was the key thing that came out from most of the men - the big, yawning Nothing. Talking about that helped me begin to feel half sane again.
93 93/93,
Edward
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I lost my father about 2 years ago and I had some rather interesting and emotional psychic experiences. I know this is not exactly on topic, but I was wondering if others have had the same and what they think of these experiences.
Personally I used to be kind of skeptical of perceiving the deceased psychically but there were some indicators that some of the details did not originate from "my own mind" so to speak. I don't want to go into too much detail but it's the kind of argument Crowley uses for asserting that Aiwass could not have originated within his own mind...let's say certain elements were "foreign" and unexpected although if I'm brutally analytical about it I would have to say it's not impossible these did not originate in my own mind.
One of these was a sort of intuitive feeling that my father was saying goodbye...that he could no longer "visit" as he was moving on to some other plane or something. I later read in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (The modern adapted work based on the original medieval work) about the 49 day period after which the "soul" moves into another bardo, and this timeframe was very precise. Another unexpected element was that it was as though his "persona" had been dropped, and I experienced a side of him that was quite unlike his day-to-day self...of course it still correlated with aspects of his personality, but those that one rarely sees.
At other times I think that some of those experiences where just a part of the grieving process.
Just wondering if others have had similar experiences and whether they correlate with my own observations.
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ModernPrimitive, 93,
I didn't get many specifics about my father-in-law's death, because of the iffy state of family politics at that time. At one point, shortly after another family death, I meditated on him, and had a strong sense he was trying to figure out if he was 'really' dead. And he seemed like he was trying to wriggle out of a huge knot of tangle of ropes holding him. This appeared to terrify him.
I finally learned he'd been feverish in hospital, and was thrashing around. They'd given him a drug that physically paralyzed him. He'd been in with a kind of pneumonia, but while in this paralyzed state he had a stroke that wasn't detected till too late, and he died after a couple more days.
I surmise he had come to, and panicked, thinking he'd lost his ability to move, or was actually scared to be 'dead' yet hearing sounds still. There were other details at the time that apparently corroborated this - sorry, but it's been 25 years, and I don't recall specifics.
Closeness to death does seem to open some psychic doorways that we normally keep closed.
93 93/93,
Edward
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Thanks Edward,
By some strange "miracle" my own father's belief system seemed to have rescued him from some kinds of torment. When he first appeared to me, very childlike and quite unlike his normal "kingly" self (He was a King in life, albeit of the Niezschean type) there was an angel beside him and this angel strangely enough took the form of one of those old Catholic paintings, quite unlike the Hollywood way in which I personally visualize angels.
Anyway, that aside, you're quite right about opening psychic doorways. On one occasion when it felt like he had come to tell me something, after I opened myself to it, within a few seconds I had a young little boy and communicating to me as well as a middle-aged man, both with "urgent messages". I got a bit of a fright and decided that I sure as hell didn't want to go there so "chased them all away" and closed up immediately. It was as though I'd opened up some "portal". I remembered Crowley's mention of the auras of spiritualists!
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The only comfort I ever had is that we are all going the same way.
My grandfather died several years ago. 3 months ago I was at his grave together with my family. The same night I had an intense encounter with him in a dream. He was all light, but he looked like himself during what I believe to be his best years. It was short, but it was an intense, loving encounter that felt real to the bones. Woke up crying and couldnt stop until an hour later. First time experience. People I talk to about it think it was a real encounter.
I never payd much attention to my dreams, but when I started out paying attention to my real needs again...things have changed.
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@Limb said
"The same night I had an intense encounter with him in a dream. He was all light, but he looked like himself during what I believe to be his best years. "
That is interesting. My wife had many dreams around this time and she said the same thing....my father was always a good 15-20 years younger in the dreams (and she didn't even know him at that age, she had merely seen photographs.) In the few dreams that I remembered he was also a lot younger. (Most of my "psychic encounters" lacked a specific and detailed visual component.)
Oh yes, even my mother-in-law dreamed about him and she he also looked younger. In fact she had commented in the dream how fantastic he looked and he replied with something along the lines of how wonderful he felt and that they should consider joining him! LOL!
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Right after my grandpa died (I was with him when he died, and AUMGNd for him while he passed), he visited me for a few weeks. He had dementia the last few years, but was also younger and coherent in my dreams. (although, he did tell me, cryptically, to remember the Maldives, and I still don't know what he's talking about...)
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@AvshalomBinyamin said
"Right after my grandpa died (I was with him when he died, and AUMGNd for him while he passed), he visited me for a few weeks. He had dementia the last few years, but was also younger and coherent in my dreams. (although, he did tell me, cryptically, to remember the Maldives, and I still don't know what he's talking about...)"
From wikipedia:
"The atolls of Maldives encompass a territory spread over roughly 90,000 square kilometers, making it one of the most disparate countries in the world. It features 1,192 islets, of which two hundred are inhabited. "
He's most likely kickin' back, sipping a martini with a little umbrella in it, a native girl at each arm. The afterlife must not be so bad after all...
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yes, I knew what the Maldives were, just not the relevance...
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Thrill with the Joy of Life and Death!