@Takamba said
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@Dar es Alrah said
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@RegentLynx said
"It definitely isn't always easy to maintain this attitude. Especially in times like I am going through right now personally. My wife of six years passed away last month which has left me feeling like a part of me dyed as well. It can sound so trite and commonplace that I hesitate to use the expression but she really was my soul mate. There is such a big hole in my life right now that I am not sure what really remains for me?"
If it were just intended to foster an* attitude* then Thelema would be a pretty cruel and heartless thing, and really of very little value to anyone in the world at all. Merely having an 'attitude' cannot mend wounds, not make the bitter parts of life sweet. An 'attitude' can be a shield to your emotions when faced with trivial short-term griefs. It offers no consolation to the wounded. Indeed, it appears as a mockery and an insult to deeply felt loss. When you lose a partner and a soul mate, it is a wound that is physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. A tearing apart of two that had been one, and leaving the remaining partner bereft and in tatters. Like all wounds, this one will take time to heal. What remains for you is the same as has always been there for you.
A woman who had lost her child, took the body of him to the Blue Buddha and asked that he restore her child to life. The Buddha told her that he would do this if only she could procure a sesame seed from a house that had known no sorrow. The women departed and visited every house in the neighbourhood. They were all willing to give her sesame but there was no house that had not know sorrow. She went back and the Blue Buddha told her that this was the only thing he had to offer her - that all human beings share this suffering. The women left the Blue Buddha and took up her dead child again. The Blue Buddha's words were wise but now when she wept, all the tears and suffering of mankind also fell upon her shoulders and she felt ashamed of her single grief in the face of the suffering of the world. Despairing, she prepared to take her life and follow her son but just then the Red Buddha appeared before her full of flame. Her tears were quenched by the heat of his radiance. Wordlessly, he took the body of her dead child and burnt it to a crisp. Without explanation he undressed the woman and conceived a child upon her. Who is to say that he did not give her exactly what she had asked for?"
Here I think the word "attitude" has been mistaken for the negative loading that has been, by some, associated with it. An attitude does not mean the way one huffs themselves, or struts, or bad mouths or whatever is popular to call "he's got attitude." Attitude means "the angle of approach from which we see the world around us.""
You put it perfectly Takamba, that was exactly what I meant when I used the word attitude. Grief can so easly cloud our vision so that we are no longer looking at reality in the proper way. I am well aware that something such as this will be a healing process that I must go through, there is no quick and easy solution. Also, intellectually I am well aware that death is an illusion but that doesn't relieve my emotional pain. When I think about this the only true solution would mean becoming not just aware intellectually of this truth but to also have the ability to feel this truth emotionally. How is one to do this? I think the solution would be having certain mystical experiences which convinced one not just intellectually but also emotionally, so that one's head and heart would be in complete agreement on the matter. As it was written in the "Confessio Fraternitatis", "Were it not a precious thing, that you could always live so, as if you had lived from the beginning of the world, and, moreover, as you should still live to the end thereof?".
However, even if one had this experience and Understanding there would still be the issue of missing the departed. Once again time will be what it takes to ease the sting at least some what.
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