Experiencing loss creates opportunities to practice releasing our attachments to who we think we are. Richard Rohr writes:
Some form of suffering or death—psychological, spiritual, relational, or physical—is the only way we will loosen our ties to our small and separate self. Only then does the larger self appear, which we could call the Risen Christ, the soul, or the true self. The physical process of transformation through dying is expressed eloquently by Kathleen Dowling Singh, who spent her life in hospice work: “The ordinary mind [the false self] and its delusions die in the Nearing Death Experience. As death carries us off, it is impossible to any longer pretend that who we are is our ego. The ego is transformed in the very carrying off.” [1] This is why so many spiritual teachers say we must die before we die.
The overly defended ego is where we reside before these much-needed deaths. The true self (or “soul”) becomes real to us only after we have walked through death and come out much larger and wiser on the other side. This is what we mean by transformation, conversion, or enlightenment. [2]
The civil rights leader Rosemarie Freeney Harding offered a compassionate example of not clinging, even to life itself. Her daughter Rachel recounts how Freeney Harding sat with the dying:
Mama would go sit with the ones who were leaving here. Keep them company. Take food and stories and family and silence, so they could remember something beautiful in their final hours.
Death is not the end of everything. What comes after death is just as important as what comes before. Practice Dharma to leave a strong imprint of positiveness at death.
Knowing too how to make the separation: The last conversation. The last morsel of food. One has to separate completely.
When Daddy [civil rights activist Vincent Harding] died, Mama sat at the side of his bed and he asked her if she would go with him. She whispered to him, “No, fool! Are you crazy?” She was kissing him and crying and holding his hand. She told him no. Everybody tried to make him as comfortable as possible when he passed. But he had to go alone. They were waiting on the other side—Mama Catherine and them—Daddy’s people. My mama knew that.
(In my father’s house are many rooms. I go to prepare a place, that where I am there you may be.) Buddha went ahead to discover what is real. Mama brought reality into our home, gave us an example and sent us into the world to practice. [3]
Richard Rohr concludes:
Anything less than the death of the false self is useless religion. The manufactured false self must die for the true self to live, or as Jesus himself puts it, “Unless I go, the Spirit cannot come” (John 16:7). Theologically speaking, Jesus (a good individual person) had to die for the Christ (the universal presence) to arise. This is the universal pattern of transformation. [4]
References:
[1] Kathleen Dowling Singh, The Grace in Dying: How We Are Transformed Spiritually When We Die (HarperOne, 1998), 219.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass, 2013), 62.
[3] Rosemarie Freeney Harding with Rachel Elizabeth Harding, Remnants: A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering (Duke University Press, 2015), 196.
[4] Rohr, Immortal Diamond, 62–63.
Image credit and inspiration: Unknown, Neom (detail), 2023, photo, Saudi Arabia, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like this cave explorer, loving surrender can sometimes mean walking bravely into a dark unknown.
Story from Our Community:
Sometime in my early 60s, I began to fully understand that I was loved by God. Until then, life, career, and family had completely filled my bandwidth. A crisis had been building within me over my feelings of failure in my life, parenting, and all that I had left unexplored in my life. The last 15 years of spiritual exploration have filled me with awe, stillness, and a precious surrender to the mystery of faith.
—Carol F.
