"From the light we have come, and to the light we shall return!"
— Rev. Josianne Antonette
Conscious Living
by Rev. Josiane Antonette
Everyone has ever lived, is now living and will ever live, will depart one day. Impermanence and the knowledge that impermanence holds within it. It is a subject that is evaded, ignored and denied by our progressive youth-oriented society and even more painfully so by many of the "new age spiritual community". Yet there is nothing more certain and inevitable than death. In many cases, it is our lack of knowledge and acceptance about life and death that increases our fear and make us feel uncomfortable when the subject is addressed. Aging, fatal diseases and dying are not seen as a natural part of the flow of life, but as an ultimate defeat. We ignore, deny, fight against or displace our feelings, as a way of coping. but when death touches someone we love or ourselves, we then suffer at more than one level as we have lived in ignorance or have tried to avoid the reality of life. Our scientific community has created the current definition of death, and in doing so has closed the discussion on death by labeling it THE END.
There is life after death, just as there was life before we were born, for we are spirit, eternal, indestructibly spirit. At the time of birth our spirit takes a form called "body" and "dies" from its original state to experience life on earth, and at the time of death the spirit leaves its form to go back to its original state. When we pass over, there is no sense of "the end". Our identity and consciousness stay the same and we will only experience a short time of confusion similar to that of waking out of a deep sleep and trying to understand the unusual condition it finds itself in. We will gradually regains consciousness and start to remember and eventually return to our original essence, also called "original innocence". Great bliss we follow the experience of being at "home again" as well as a deep understanding of the purpose of life and love. The duration of the state of confusion we will experience as soon as we have left the body will be determined by what and how much we have learned during our lifetime or the extent of development we have attained.
The more aware we are about spiritual dimension, the other side of our being, the easier our living and dying will be. There is no separation between birth life and death but merely a continuous flow of entering and leaving, just like breathing, in and out . . . in and out . . .
I know for a fact that when we embrace our living and dying fully we awaken to our full potential. We become more real with ourselves and others, more present with each other, and live our lives as true embodied spirit.
