Alfred lay unconscious in the hospital for another six days. The family members visited him frequently—some gave him reiki, and others told stories of events and special days that would be familiar to him. One particular day Diane leant over to her papa, kissed him on his forehead and whispered in his ear that Florence had died. ‘She went to make plenty of cups of tea for you. She has some beautiful cakes—your favourite. She was worried that if you went, there would be no-one to take care of you. Now you have her waiting for you—it’s okay to go to her.’ Alfred passed away several hours later, in his sleep.
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The twin sisters The twin sisters
To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.
Thomas Campbell
May and Ivy were twin sisters, not identical, but close in ever other way. They lived in close proximity to each other, their children grew up together and they shared their Christmases and other special days—their bond was inseparable. Yet Ivy passed away some twenty years before May, leaving this world on Mother’s Day. It was a tragic loss for May.
In the following years, May suffered breast cancer, and then a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease followed. She managed well for quite some time, with a loving husband, supportive daughters and grandchildren, but finally she needed to be hospitalised as the condition had progressively worsened. She needed intensive hospital care as her small-framed body shook from morning until night. The doctor said it was as though the poor woman was racing a marathon every day of her life.
The family made her room as comfortable and as homely as possible, surrounding her with familiar photos, and she was fortunate enough to be able to view a little garden from her window. How long she would be able to sustain her existence was not known, but I strongly suspect the infinite bond between the twin sisters surpassed all barriers of communication, for May passed away, on Mother’s Day, the same day her twin sister had passed away many years before. Twin sisters born with the same birth date died on the same special day.
Is there something greater, beyond our own understanding, that Spirit can manipulate their time of passing? Is there a greater plan, in this case a legacy for those they left behind, that two women who entered this world together would now leave for their children and grandchildren an anniversary date that no-one could forget?
How do you say goodbye to the ones you love? Is there a right or wrong way to be present, not to be present, what to say and what not to say? Maybe some of the following suggestions could be food for thought.
End-of-life rituals
In our society, many people have lost touch with the spiritual aspect of death and dying. It’s a subject that’s usually taboo, but may resurface when someone you love is dying; placing you in a position of contemplating what is needed to make the transition peaceful from this world to the next.
As the Bible says, ‘Ask and ye shall receive’—seek out assistance. Don’t feel you need to shoulder this difficult time by yourself.
There are people and organisations that have been especially trained in Sacred Dying—your hospital chaplain, minister, priest or rabbi may be your first port of call. There are organisations which can help you, such as the Sacred Dying Foundation which has wonderful literature available for downloading from the internet on www.sacreddying.org. It may be the starting point to assist opening up dialogue with other family members as to how you are to handle the coming days. Something to consider is a vigil, described below by the Sacred Dying Organisation.
What is vigiling?
Vigiling is primarily concerned with providing spiritual presence for the dying, and can include the act of praying, talking, and/or performing rituals. A vigilier accompanies a person from life to death, while providing whatever is necessary to make the transition peaceful. With Sacred Dying, the end-of-life transition becomes an opportunity to bring reconciliation and acceptance to the dying and their loved ones. In the vigiling process, you may consider incorporating into your daily activities time spent sitting together, talking, listening and, at other times, in shared silence. There may be opportunities to read inspirational texts, or provide healing touch through massage, holding hands or gentle strokes. Setting a comforting mood through ritual can also be considered.
End-of-life rituals can help a person to die not only a peaceful death but also a sacred death. The Sacred Dying Vigil can include anything from a formal religious ritual to something simple and personal. These rituals can aid in a more meaningful passing and can include beautiful poetry and particular readings, the aid of music, and setting the mood with candles to allow serenity and peace to enter the surroundings.
There will be no right and wrong way as you ‘feel’ your way through the dying process. The family and friends of Solomon, Mary, Alfred and Florence chose to honour their loved ones’ final days in uniquely different ways, yet each process, each action assisted in building bridges from this world to the next.
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Blueprint of the soul Blueprint of the soul
Soul is at home in the deep, shaded valleys, Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow there, The rivers flow like warm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul, Spirit is a land of high white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers, Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances, There is soul music, soul food, and soul love… People need to climb the mountain not simply because it is there, But because the soulful divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dali Lama
Just for one moment, I want you to turn the palms of both your hands up. First look at the left palm, then your right palm—notice that the lines on the hands differ from one another. I recall having my palms read by one of Australia’s leading palmists, Paul Fenton-Smith. He looked at both hands in great detail, his eyes moving backwards and forwards over them, carefully studying the shape of each hand, the lines and marks that formed a ‘map’ of my life, past, present and to come.
I was stunned with the accuracy of detail he was able to divulge without knowing too much about my growing-up years. He explained to me that my non-writing hand, which for me is my left, was like a profile of my character and potential, and it doesn’t change much with age. However, for my dominant hand, my right, the lines would change and evolve in time to demonstrate what I had achieved and other significant events around health, family and occupation—amazing!
Literally our future lies in our hands. I reflected—if we are born with road maps of past, present and future in our hands, then there truly exists a blueprint of the soul from one life to the next, a tiered effect of past vibrations of who I was to who I am and who I will be in the future.
Each religion of the world has a similar philosophy, a belief that life is eternal, that we go on to live somewhere else—whether it’s heaven or the afterlife—somewhere eternal, one day to be ‘born again’ to spiritually evolve and move forward while reflecting on where we have been—our past. It was the Egyptians who were the first to believe that the soul was immortal. With similarities documented in the spiritual traditions of the Greeks, Romans and Celts, the eastern cultures refer to this as reincarnation. I am in wonder at how beautifully Mother Nature has orchestrated rebirthing in the plant kingdom with perennial plants—bulbs planted in rich soil, sprout, grow, blossom, wilt, then recover and rebirth next season, they too fulfilling their genetic blueprint.
Science has proven through the study of human DNA the accuracy of correlating our biological parents—they can even pinpoint which continent our ancestors came from centuries ago!
So too our souls come with their own DNA memory bank of past, present and future.
The majority of people will have experienced meeting someone for the very first time, and perhaps the hairs stood up on the back of their neck, they got a quiver down their spine or they felt they had known them a lifetime—there was an instant connection. My friend Jules met her husband at a conference like I had predicted— they literally bumped into each other
as she stepped out of an elevator. Later he told me that when he saw her, he just thought ‘there goes my future’. He didn’t know where that came from— it was just a knowingness, a meaningful coincidence.
I sense that random events and meaningful coincidences are spiritual forces guiding our destinies along the soul’s blueprint. I suspect Jules and her partner once again had connected at a soul level—a soul connection from a previous incarnation. Maybe they would achieve perfection in this union, fulfilling their karma and reaching nirvana, never to return to this earth again. Are you still searching for your soul mate? You could well be waiting a number of lifetimes.
We have been led to believe that there exists a true happy-ever-after love story just waiting to complete you—someone who is perfect and brings you a lifetime of bliss and happiness. In fact, what the soul is calling for is completion—completing this lifetime’s karmic ties. I sense it is a much softer option to believe in ‘soul connections’. If you’re so hooked on the notion that there is only one love out there who will truly make you happy, you’ll be waiting a long time. Soul connections are not necessarily lovers—they come in all shapes, sizes and sexes.
Your soul will vibrate to an energy that will let someone special or even difficult enter your life and allow your soul to learn what it needs at that particular moment. It may be your next-door neighbour; the difficult, demanding schoolteacher who pushed you to your limits to see you on your career path; the hard, critical father who eventually led you to needing psychotherapy—why?
Only to see you would make a great psychotherapist yourself as you learnt to resolve the issues of the past and by doing so open your heart to find a new love connection.
Gifts, whether painful, shameful or beautiful, are of the soul connection kind. Our soul connections are red flags on our map of life, bringing to our attention what we need to experience and work through as we continue along the blueprint of our soul.
Soul birthing
Those who have been around children often say: ‘She’s been here before—there’s a certain knowingness,’ or, ‘It’s like looking at an old man. He’s definitely been here before.’ I believe those words that pop into your head are very prophetic. Unknowingly, they are recognising a quality of an old soul. It has been debated for centuries as to the exact moment when the soul activates or descends into the unborn body. Some believe it hovers around and integrates at the time of the ‘quickening’, when the mother feels the first movements of the baby in her uterus. Some say it’s at the time of birth.
Ask any mother who has carried several children in pregnancy, and she will compare the personalities of the unborn babies. ‘This one will be a calm baby,’ she may say. Or, ‘He has more character than my first.’ Perhaps it’s, ‘This one loves the music I play, he’s dancing inside me,’ or, ‘This little one has been here before—I just know it.’
Mothers do know—they sense the qualities of the soul they carry. They may have vivid dreams about the nature and character of the child. They give the unborn child a name—they don’t really know where the idea came from, they just thought of it. It’s not a name that would be familiar to them or perhaps that they’ve even discussed with their partner—it just felt right. And they know if they’re carrying a boy or girl child.
If you can accept the notion that a soul chooses its parents so that it can understand and learn lessons in the new life, then for those of you who have grieved over your decision to terminate a pregnancy, or have experienced a miscarriage or a still birth, having this knowledge that these little ones knew their time in this life would be somewhat short may be able to lessen the blow. This time maybe they were to be the teachers to the parents, gently touching their emotions and pointing them in a new direction of their souls’ purpose.
There are some tribes in Africa who, at the time of the death of their child, actually place a cut or burn on the skin or break a bone to disfigure the body, believing that when the child reincarnates the markings or disfiguration will reveal who they were previously. It gives a whole new meaning to birthmarks and congenital deformities if we adopt the belief that our bodies will hold a key or clue through memories of a scar or physical manifestation of abnormalities that may pinpoint a previous reincarnation.
One of my children has a very unusual brown birthmark splattered on his chest. I’ve often puzzled at this. Could it have been the entry site for a bullet or sword? How could this be proved— that there existed a correlation between this mark and his past lives?
Dr Brian Weiss, head of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Florida, US, and author of Same Soul, Many Bodies, has done much work with past-life therapy, and has been able to retrieve detailed information of individual past lives. He believes the choices we make now will determine the quality of our life when we return, and that a person’s remembrance of a past life may be relevant to a problem in this life.
There also now exists overwhelming evidence by scientists, such as Professor Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia, that reincarnation is a reality. Professor Stevenson studied children from all over the world who remembered their past lives, and confirmed the details contained within them. The book Children Who Have Lived Before by Trutz Hardo has detailed accounts of such investigations, revealing through these children’s stories that reincarnation is a reality for all of us.
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Children who see further than most
Know, therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return, Forget not that I shall come back to you, A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
Kahlil Gibran
Reincarnation can be defined as a rebirth of the soul in a new body. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been reborn thirteen times. Since the first Dalai Lama, each reincarnation has succeeded in bringing peace and wisdom not only to Buddhists but to many around the world. But how was the Dalai Lama found?
Looking for the boy destined for greatness
In order to find the present Dalai Lama, the Regent of Tibet took a journey to Lake Lhamo Lhatso in southern Tibet. For centuries the Tibetans had observed that visions of the future could be seen in this lake. Here the Regent saw, among other things, three Tibetan letters, followed by a picture of a monastery with roofs of jade green and gold, and a house with turquoise tiles. The vision contained enough information to seek out the next Dalai Lama.
When finally the high lamas and dignitaries found a place matching the description of the secret vision, a high lama, government official and two servants disguised themselves as traders and found the house that was seen in the vision.
There they found a two-year-old boy, who soon became comfortable with his visitors and he began to play with the rosary which had belonged to the previous Dalai Lama. In a dialect unknown to the district he lived in, the child demanded the rosary, claiming it belonged to him. He later addressed the government official by his proper name and identified the high lama and servants. Astonished, the men left the village only to return with tests to help determine if this child was the Dalai Lama.
In the first test the child was to identify objects that personally belonged to the previous Dalai Lama before him. He was to choose the correct items from carefully crafted duplicates; items included spectacles, a pencil, a bowl and a small hand drum. He passed the test quite easily.
Next, the child was examined for eight distinguishing marks of the Dalai Lama. After finding three of these marks, the examiners were so overcome with joy that their eyes filled with tears. There was no doubt that the two-year-old boy before them was the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
Learning from children
Not everyone’s incarnation holds such vital memory reserves as those his Holiness experienced as a child. Did you have an imaginary play friend when you were young? You’d chatter away as you played games or lay in your bed—you even called them by a special name. They were fun to be with. It is a wise parent who does not dismiss a child’s ability to see S
pirit. Ideally, you could ask questions of your child like: ‘Is your friend a boy or a girl?’,
‘What’s their name?’ or ‘Do they live far away?’ All typical questions you’d ask if the friend were a child at school. By showing a general interest and not showing an alarmist attitude, you will allow your child’s natural psychic ability to gradually develop rather than suppressing and eventually switching off their intuitive faculties.
Everyone is born with intuition—it is their basic survival right, and if the family can accept this is a natural sense like seeing, hearing and feeling, then the child will feel secure and open to expressing what they sense. Never dismiss a child’s warning, ‘I don’t like that man’. Just maybe they have picked up psychically that ‘that man’ is not a good soul and they could be in danger. As adults, we can at times override our natural tendencies to ‘listen’ to our internal prompts and warning bells. Children are pure and not contaminated with opinions and religious dogma that would see them closing off their God-given birth right.
Some will see physical presences around them—they may tell you they have seen Nanny and she told them certain things. Rather than be stressed, try to be open to what they are communicating and why. If they feel they can’t openly express to someone what they are witnessing, they may start to feel different, or believe they are weird as no-one else speaks of seeing the same things. Children of this generation have more awareness rising from the media with movies and TV shows such as The Sixth Sense, Medium and Ghost Whisperer, to cartoon characters Scooby Doo and Casper the Friendly Ghost, to remakes of the beloved Peter Pan and Wendy, to the ever-popular Harry Potter—all with shades of spirits, ghosts, angels, fairies and supernatural forces, enough to stimulate lively conversations.
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