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Honouring our Deaths

Death is inevitable. Each death is unique and each an opportunity to honour a life lived. Here are soul seeds, ceremony to release and honour the lives of all sentient beings now departed. These ceremonies can also be for the life experience deaths that come our way. All prepare us for our own inevitable passing.  Please read on and contact me for more information. 

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Honouring death as a labour of love

Burying a beloved is a labour of love. When we release our beloved - whether an idea, a dream or a sentient being - we are actors in love with the tangibility of mother earth and the inconceivability of spirit. There is trust. There are tears. 

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Each experience is so unique. The manner of the death, the means of committal and release of that which has had its earthly time, is as individually precious as you are.

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Unlike with a birth where we have some weeks or months to prepare ourselves for its imminent happening, inevitable death is unpredictable. It can be as sudden as 'out of the blue'. It can be the inevitable happening of a lingering, uncertain route that appeared with a terminal diagnosis. It can accompany a birth. It can be many things. There is no guarantee that a life is going to be lived. Once a birth happens a death will follow. Sooner or later. That is why we celebrate life. It is the treasure that we are gifted with experiencing and, mindfully, we can have some input as to how we experience it. 

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As any woman who has experienced pregnancy may tell you, and if that is your experience you are likely to know, there comes a point sooner or later when carrying a developing baby in your body that you realise with frightening reality that its birth could mean physical death. It certainly is a death of a way of life prior to the new one's arrival. Which is one reason why placenta honouring is so important.

 

Maybe you have had opportunity to bury a loved one yourself. Usually in the Western world this could be a small songbird found dead by life's paths. It could also be with the death of a beloved animal companion.  Even that takes physical as well as emotional strength. Taking oneself through the physical labour of digging a hole deep enough even for a small one, knees on the earth scooping out soil as far as one's stretch can reach, lying flat to dig deeper though layers of earth, rock, discarded brick chips and tiles - whatever it is that lies below our western gardens - is a beautiful blessing. The sacred act of preparing one's loved one for burial is one to be experienced if you can. In our rather messy yet sanitised  human created worlds we don't have the opportunity easily to experience the physical reality of the circle of life. Bodies, once the breath has ceased and the heart stopped are taken away, hidden in a cold place, the closest to burial that many bodies experience. Locked away. We miss the experience of smelling death, seeing the subtle physical changes, feeling the rigidity of limbs and softness of belly. Experiencing earth's warm embrace around the buried one. Being with the corpse long enough to howl our grief. Here, in the West, unlike public yet painfully personal cremations at the ghatts, we are not present when the body is cremated. We do not smell and see and witness in any way the transmutation of elements. Our senses, physical, emotional and spiritual are curtained off. And we curtain ourselves off from what is the most inevitable, appalling reality of our lives. We will cease to exist as body and spirit. And without spirit our physical reality is no longer ours. It is now a gift to be offered back to mother earth. Whether as a burial in earth, a scattering of ashes or sky burial offered to vultures, this is as much a gifting to mother earth and source-spirit for the life lost as it is a gratitude to mother earth and source-spirit for life given.

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So when we are experiencing pain of loss how can we celebrate a death?

Actual hands-on burial into mother earth is a rare opportunity. Death experiences can be as much about material matter as the loss of an aspect of ourselves - a love affair ended, an employment lost, a home consumed in a forest fire or flood, a treasured hope or dream vanished - as they can be about the ending of a beloved sentient being's earthly life. We can celebrate by creating a ceremony which is symbolic and adaptable to whatever is appropriate for us.

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If you feel moved to carry out a Ceremony to Honour Death yourself, have me conduct one on your behalf or invite me to hold a workshop deepening into this Sacred Work, please contact me

Donations for this work include at least 50% going to Global White Lion Protection Trust. Thank you

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