I happen to have a beautiful view outside my front kitchen window that includes trees, the sky, and grass during the day and stars and moon at night.  I had just gotten my girls to bed last night when I came into the dark kitchen and was drawn to the window again.  Fireflies were busy lighting up the front yard like little sparklers darting on and off, but when I looked up I only saw the moon.  I had expected to see stars twinkling and constellations I could recognize, but instead I only saw that bright moon and blank sky.  I was a bit disappointed and thought that it was cloudy, but then I realized it was obviously completely clear and had to chuckle at myself.

I couldn’t see any stars because my eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark yet, but as I kept looking I began to see twinkles here and there, and soon the sky was filled with little sparkling lights.  I stayed there enjoying the view of fireflies here on Earth and the stars above me, and I started thinking about how quick I was to decide there simply weren’t stars to be seen that night.  We really do this often in our daily lives and we may not even realize it.  We see the man who cuts us off in traffic, but we can’t see that he is distracted because he is on the way to the hospital to visit his sick wife, we hear our coworker talk too loudly on the telephone but don’t hear him confessing to his doctor that he just can’t hear the way he used to or to his wife that he gets so nervous at work that he ends up talking loudly to cover his fear of making a mistake.

The stars are always there whether it’s clear or there is a tornado blowing our house away, but we only see them when we stop, look up, and happen to do both on a clear night.  We don’t think about them sparkling in the background unseen by our limited human vision any more than we think about why our child talked back to us, the mailman put our mail in the wrong box, or how hard the grocer worked to stack the peppers that we sorted through in our hurry to get home last week.  I thought about the classic glass half full or empty and my own idea that it it is full whether we see the air in it or not, and really the list goes on and on if we consider how many times we base our decisions on what our eyes or ears pick up in a few seconds of scattered attention.

I know that in my younger years I have drawn incorrect conclusions about people based on how they dressed or how neatly their hair was brushed, and when my eyes adjusted with some experience and age I realized I had judged them before my eyes had learned to see past exteriors.  I also caught my own reflection in more than a few mirrors I happened to pass by in stores and got a really thorough lesson in judging people on the basis of the apparent time he or she took to prepare for a shopping trip since I didn’t recognize myself for a moment.  That lady with the sweats on and the hair pulled into a quick pony tail must not care much about her appearance or anything else at all to come out in public looking that way, right?  Or perhaps she is very busy and needed groceries on the way home from the Y?  Who would have known by my appearance, but I am sure people around me might have been able to “just tell”.

As the stars began to appear last night in the sky outside my window I also thought about that moon that wasn’t completely visible, and although I know the moon is basically round I would have had to tell you it was a half circle hanging in the sky somehow if you had asked me to tell you its shape based only on my view from my window.  The older I get and the more things I see that I don’t see, the more I learn how little we are really able to see from our own singular vantage points.  No wonder there are so many wars and smaller battles on the home front considering how many pairs of eyes are in various stages of adjustment on our planet.  We can’t always see the stars until our eyes adjust, and many times we don’t even realize we aren’t seeing anywhere near the truth or the whole picture.  It really makes one look a little closer if we think about all the beautiful stars we don’t  see until we give ourselves a little time to see from a different perspective.  As we say in astronomy when we wish someone a beautiful dark, clear sky full of stars unobscured by the light from a bright moon, “Happy seeing”!

Hope is a word that we humans tend to use a lot when we pray or wish for things that we aren’t convinced will happen.  We tend to use it when we are wishing things to be a certain way and aren’t betting on them turning out as we wish, and often it’s heard when there are crossed fingers involved.  The old saying that while there is life there is hope has kept me going a few times, and I know hope is an essential commodity that we need to keep close to our hearts in order to make our days tolerable or our pain bearable.

But then I wonder sometimes…is there always hope?  I surely never thought I would be doing many things that seem fairly normal to me now, and I have made it through many times when I didn’t feel it was likely I would, but is there really always hope while there is life?  Does that mean if a person is not alive without machinery keeping her breathing and her heart beating is there still hope?  Is that still life?  Since we can’t scientifically prove at this time when someone’s sprit, soul, or being leaves the body when exactly do we stop hoping?  Or does that just mean we hope for different things perhaps?  What about more mundane situations then?

My question would be when would it be okay to stop hoping if ever?  I know there were many times people were ready to give up hoping for me to heal or be healthy, but really sometimes it takes a very long time to “get” something or to even be ready to heal, and if we give up too soon then that would mean so many possibilities would be missed.  So my question tonight is one that I think has a different answer for every situation and person.  I guess I didn’t quite give up on me, and maybe that is the part that counts.  So is it then when a person gives up hope for himself that we get to stop hoping for him or change our prayers to a new type of hope for peace instead of life perhaps?

Nope, since the mental health professions would tell us that is when we must take control of the situation until the person starts hoping again.  Is a patient allowed to stop hoping or should she believe that “while there is life there is hope” and keep trying to survive?  I’m asking a lot of questions tonight, but I have few answers.  If no one had helped me find some hope again I wouldn’t have a lovely family and wonderful kids, but it doesn’t turn out that way for everyone.   It’s a pretty good idea to get straight in our minds what hope means to us I think, and to share that with loved ones so they are left sitting here as I am doing now and wondering what hope really means and when it is time to say, “Enough”, whether it is with illness, an accident, a mental illness, a relationship, or a dream.  What are the boundaries in our lives where when we cross them and take off our ring, hang up the phone, stop letting people treat us badly, hold on to life, or stop expecting an outcome  that isn’t likely?  I can’t speak for anyone else of course, but I have been thinking about this for awhile.  I haven’t gotten it all figured out yet, but maybe I will soon before I really need to know.  At least I hope so…

A few times in my life I have visited the place between life and what we usually call “death” myself, and many times I have visited others as they lingered there.  For many it sounds like a frightening place, although not as frightening as what they perceive to be beyond the gray area that lies beteen the two states of being.

If you had asked me years ago when I was a child or young adult I would have told you that we had to be great people to get to spend eternity with God as I was taught, and then if you had asked me throughout most of my life my scientific mind would have told you that I believe our bodies lay to rest and I couldn’t prove what happened to our essence or spirit since no one had the answers to give.

When I was 27 I had encephalitis and almost died, so I spent a bit of time in a place that was simple and the most pleasant place I had ever been.  I don’t think most of us can plan for time spent in that place so we aren’t sure what to expect, but for me personally it was relaxing as I drifted with no emotional pain for the first time in my life, no physical ills, no urge to rush to complete any projects or be anywhere, and I really didn’t want to come back at all.  There were no big bright lights or parties of well-wishers, but I could feel the presence of energies, or what I felt were living or passed over creatures, all around me off in the distance.  The experience was one that affected me so deeply I didn’t feel connected to my body for a whole year after, and the only reason I chose to come back was that the medical staff working on me kept reminding me I had a young son who needed me.  I have been close to that place several times in my childhood, but that was the only time I lingered there for any length of time.

I worked for two years as a Respiratory Technician and worked many “codes” where we tried with all our technology and passion to save people who were on the brink of crossing over from this life, and there was definitely a time when the person’s spirit, energy, soul, or whatever one wants to call it was there in the person’s physical body and then wasn’t.  I never got a sense that the spirit ceased to exist, though, but more that they changed from living in this particular body to being part of all the rest of the energy that surrounds us every day.  Most people who passed over as I would describe it did so peacefully and were still around us but just not inside the body they had been in, and many lingered to watch us and be with the grieving family as well.

Since I chose to come back and eventually felt I connected pretty well with my own body after my illness I have searched on a subconscious level for the experience I had when I visited that gray area, and I have felt still part of it on some level.  I have visited many others who were in that gray area since then as well, and this place is not a place to fear or dread.  It isn’t the end room where human spirits are waiting to snuff out of existence, but more of a relaxing and centering place to ease into a new type of existence.  I have seen some struggle and cry before they get to this area, but once a person enters and understands it is okay to relax now it is a peaceful and satisfying place to them.  If they continue past this area that energy or soul isn’t gone, but just different.

That is why we might feel our parents touch our cheeks or hear from our children that “Grandma likes this shirt on me” or hear a whisper on the breeze even if they aren’t with us physically any more.  It also comes to mind that there are some we might not wish to have around us, but if we reach for healing ourselves those spirits will move on when we aren’t receptive to their energy any more.

So if you asked me now about that place or “death” itself I would say something very different from what I would have said even a few years ago.  I would say now that the line between life and what we think of as death isn’t bold and clear, and that there is nothing to fear or dread.  I would say that there is energy all around us and throughout the universe, and that it is simply in some forms we can see with our eyes and some we can’t.  There is a flow of time and space, and when we are open to other energy forms and spaces we aren’t bound by what we see in front of us and fears of disappearing or ending.  All I can say is that my own experience says to me  that our loved ones are often around us when we are receptive to them even after they have moved to a different place, that there are many energies around us that we may see or not see depending on many factors, and that the process of moving in and past that gray area where we either leave or stay can a wonderful place and not something to fear.

It is comforting to know that we don’t just pop out of existence and that the transition from one phase to another doesn’t have to be traumatic and terrifying, but it takes a different mindset than the one I grew up with to absorb the idea that we aren’t the masters of the planet and are instead part of the ebb and flow of states of matter and “time”.  We aren’t alone and our choices do matter since everything is connected, so we are at the same time small and no greater than other creatures and amazingly important and powerful beings.  When we look at our lives this way a bit of waiting to choose whether it is our time to go to our next phase of existence isn’t really frightening after all.  There are as many ways to view life and death as there are beings to consider it, but I guess the hope is more to make peace with whatever you believe is your path instead of trying to understand and control it.  Peace.

I have had the privilege over the last few months to have met and learned from some wonderful guides who have changed my life in ways I never expected.   I have realized why I have been so drawn to animals all my life, and when I think back to my childhood and picture my poor mother’s face when she would catch me playing with snakes, spiders, local “aggressive” dogs, running with horses in the field, singing back to the birds as I hung out the window, and I’m sure other creatures I don’t remember, I have to smile with a sense of peace in my heart.

Aside from one human guide I am fortunate enough to have met, almost all my journeys, meditations, and dreams are with animals.  I seek them out and crave their companionship, and although I do have healthy respect for their strength and wildness I feel the bonds from a distance.  We are animals ourselves after all, and what better guides could we have than those species which have learned to live and thrive on our planet without destroying their surroundings?  They live at peace with the natural world and when any species oversteps its limits nature corrects the balance.  Since humans are relative youngsters on the earth we have much to learn from those who live in harmony with it and know how to read its language, and I realize now how I have been drawn to listen to and learn from all the creatures around me since I was very young.

I could reflect now upon all the messengers and guides who have visited me or are permitting me to join them on this journey I am taking, but that is for another time.  In this moment I feel utter peace and joy as I sit here with my white wolf guide next to me and I know that when I sleep tonight I will have companions beside me through the night.  I know that whatever information I need will come my way, and I know also that when I wake and hear the birds outside singing and see my very old cat ambling toward me for breakfast and a brushing I will still be among my friends.  I have only to listen and be open to the messages they bring to learn what I need to know to continue on my path.

I will look up and see the vultures that circle right above my trees and if I have a moment to walk around outside my house I will feel the connection to every crispy brown leaf on my grass.  I will touch the bare branches of the little dogwood trees and feel the worms deep within the cold ground, and I will see the promise of the garden I will plant in a few weeks.  I will feel the connection between each of my cells and the cells of each blade of grass and each creature I meet along the way, and then come back in to work with my feet on the hardwood floor that was fashioned from old logs from tall and sturdy trees.  I will sit again with my cup of tea and my guide and companion next to me, and I will most likely stop a few times to watch an ant walk across my desk during my day.

We aren’t far removed from all other creatures unless we lose the connection to them, and forgetting that is a sad and dangerous way to live and sure way to die from our separateness.  I hope you will do as I plan to for the rest of my life.  When you walk along your path think of the creatures around you who live, need, eat, feel, reproduce, and die as we do, and listen to their wisdom.  You don’t need to be a mystic or have any special gifts.  Just open your ears and eyes, and most of all open your heart and mind to the amazing and wise beings we are fortunate enough to share the universe with.  If you listen they will share their wisdom with you, and I wish for you the  feeling of peace that I feel in this moment.