Lionhearted Soul Seeds
with Sue Penrose-Gould
a Guide for Transformation and Sacred Healing
'I am a seed in the flower of life.'
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.
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.
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.
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. [celebrate life]
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. [see here]
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.
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.
Below are suggestions for you to creatively work with.
Celebrating a Death
Releasing Ceremonies
Here are suggestions for two ceremonies to honour death in all its guises. Read through and if one resonates with you, I offer it to you as a soul seed to aid your grieving and restore fresh life within you.
First Releasing Ceremony
The first Releasing Ceremony offered here asks for a container in the form of a bio-degradable bag or cloth which can be tied to create a bag. In effect you have a shroud within which you may add small symbolic tokens which represent aspects of your life's experiences now gone, or to represent a loved one now departed.
Before starting, before creating a space within which to create your representational shroud, take time to collect bio-degradable objects, also paper and pencil to write and draw with. Whatever you are drawn to and that will decompose, that will feed Mother Earth and her micro creatures is suitable.
You may have your own practice or guidance to create a safe space to work ceremonially with here. If not, I suggest you create a real or imaginary area in which to stand or sit. See yourself within a circle or a hexagon. See yourself rooted with Mother Earth in the centre of this space. See the boundary clearly defined and imagine it extending into earth to its core and returning with strength of protection back to you and your boundary. See the boundary extend skywards, as it does so, see all negative influences that may be affecting you be drawn up to be transmuted by phoenix energy of spirit. Draw back unconditional love of source-spirit. As it reaches the boundary shape around you it melds with the protective strength of core earth energy. These two together form a bubble shield of protection around you.
Settle. Breathe gently. Notice the rise and fall of your breath and body as air is released and drawn in. Breath that sustains you.
Within your safe space breathe into your heart, allowing its intuitive intelligence to meet with whatever or whoever is in your awareness for release through this ceremony.
Let your heart breath fill you and reach into the fabric of your loss and grieving. Be gentle with yourself here. There is no rush with this ceremony. Whatever you choose to do here, however you find your comfort, can be revisited for as long as you need as many times as you need. It is here as a suggestion, an aid for your process and honouring.
When you are ready you may wish to write heart felt words of love and thanks to whoever or whatever you are honouring and preparing for release. Add these to your shroud bag along with any representational objects, herbs, flowers - whatever feels 'right' for you. When you have sufficient for this ceremony close the shroud bag both with a string or cloth tie and seal it with your love.
Ideally you will be able to release this bag through a burial in the ground. As you would with any burial this asks you to be grave digger, celebrant and bereaved. Travelling through this process and these roles is part of the healing. A further option is to bury the shroud bag in a suitably sized pot of soil. You may plant a herb or other suitably sized plant with your shroud bag in the pot. Maybe sow seeds and watch them sprout new life.
If you do not have earth available for burial, you may have opportunity to offer this shroud bag to fire - the importance of ensuring all is toxic free being paramount.
As you step back into ordinary reality after this ceremony have a wake. Drink fresh juice, a cup of tea, eat delicious food. Rejoice what you have done as well as the one released.
Second Releasing Ceremony
The second Releasing Ceremony works with the elements of Air through your speech and breath, Water through your thoughts and emotions, Earth as the receiver of that which you release, Fire as the transmutation agent, and Spirit as source of all life. This ceremony can take place standing, sitting or lying down. Whatever your circumstances permit and are appropriate for you. Likewise this ceremony can take place as easily in your vision, your mind's eye, as it can in a physical reality.
This ceremony asks for two containers. One is physical, such as a glass tumbler or ceramic bowl, the other is a non-physical container you will create to work in. You will also need water to fill your bowl and a quiet place, free from interruption and distraction where you can sit, lie or stand.
You may have your own practice or guidance to create a safe space to work ceremonially with here. If not, I suggest you create a real or imaginary area in which to stand or sit. See yourself within a circle or a hexagon. See yourself rooted with Mother Earth in the centre of this space. See the boundary clearly defined and imagine it extending into earth to its core and returning with strength of protection back to your boundary. See the boundary extend skywards, as it does so, see all negative influences that may be affecting you be drawn up to be transmuted by source-fire of phoenix energy of spirit. Draw back unconditional love of source-spirit. As it reaches the boundary shape around you it melds with the protective strength of core earth energy. These two together form a bubble shield of protection around you.
Settle. Breathe gently. Notice the rise and fall of your breath and body as air is released and drawn in. Breath that sustains you.
Let you mind become aware of a thought, emotion, idea, concern, life experience or loved one whose time is now ended.
Just acknowledge what ever comes to mind and let it be. This is a ceremony practice that can be repeated as many times as you feel need to.
Remember, you are surrounded by positive energy that is assisting your well-being.
In your mind's eye see a loving energy come to you from source-spirit, as though a misty cloud of goodness has whoosed to you and as by osmosis, is completely gathering whatever thought or emotion is with you in this moment. See this loving energy spiralling within your head, your mind, through you, down your spine, through your heart, to your gut, collecting all thoughts and emotions to be released at this time. Imagine the spiral now turned from mist to water as it flushes through you and out of your earthly chakra into mother earth who receives it kindly.
Often we envisage Earth as the Great Composter of that which we no longer need, that no longer serves us. See this releasing spiral be received by Earth and all that does not serve you be transmuted by the mantles of fire within our planet's being.
Imagine in your mind's eye the water-spiral of thoughts and emotions being transmuted by phoenix energy of earth. That which is returned to you, that which you may draw back up into your being, is as a cooling stream of mist. Beginning as steam and becoming cool, etheral, elemental breath as it reaches you. With hands on your heart, receive this and with absolute love speak, sing, breathe, chant your gratitude and love for the life released into the bowl of water. Let the water contained in the bowl receive your heart-breath. Water has immense intelligence and will carry all you breath into it along with your heart-felt intentions, so it may be released back into Mother Earth.
When you are ready, open your awareness to your surroundings, and in whatever way is practical for you*, take the water to release it to soil and earth.
*whether into soil in park or garden or forest, or into soil of a pot plant.
