It is close to one year since my life changed so dramatically. Losing your last parent can be such an initiation especially if you were completely unattached to begin with. "Picking up the pieces" and "getting on with your life" is such a joke! If there was no life to fall back on.
The mental illness is in remission and plans are in progress for the future. Every emotion I ever remember I replayed this year - much to my horror. And yet the learning process did a quantum jump in the healing interval. Is this what H S Lewis ment when he said progress would seem non-existant untill a crisis came and then a revelation of new powers would be evident ?
Not that I feel any more phychic then I ever did and I still do not understand or see what the others take for granted. I know now I did not want a lot of this near me. I am just beginning to love the things I so ardently studied and spurned. I guess it just wasn't my time yet. Mayby it is just as well it still isnt happening very fast in certain areas.
A strange thing is love. It can mean thinking about something a lot or it can mean a dread fear of separation from the thing you love. That separation can be devastating but it also works on many levels. Sometimes something dies and a part of you dies with it. Or you feel the death vicariously. A pet, a human you were taking care of, even a forest of trees: it is all the same when it comes to loss. It is no more; you can no longer see or touch it. Or it's own journey has taken a turn that you can no longer be a shared part of. I keep thinking now no matter how rotten life gets there is still the touching and feeling and experiencing. And of course the progress.
I love progress. I now love doing things. I hope I never forget this is just a way to get where I am suposed to be.
>george
Well, Gruntal, Old Bean (as the stereotypical Brits say in the old flicks) I haven't lost my parents yet, though they're both gettin'up there years-wise. But I've gotten divorced twice, and it's an experience that definitely has it's analogies to death. And no matter what has happened between us over time, I definitely loved both women.
I recall one of my friends telling me - about a month after I'd separated from my second wife - that he was gonna cut me lots of slack for a year or so. I resented it at the time: who really likes to think that they're being treated as temporarily insane? But now I look back on the things I did and the way I behaved and,... well... I was temporarily insane.
I was a member of AMORC during my first marriage, and my wife was, too. I've mentioned before in this forum that my mother was a Rosicrucian (now gone off in Anthroposophical directions) and that the Order has been there in the background most of my life. But we and some other friends were into other things as well. It was the seventies, so we smoked lots of pot and played with other drugs, and we read far and wide in occult literature (one friend owned an occult bookstore) and we thought this whole thing about careful, slow, balanced development that AMORC was always on about was for "other" people. AMORC struck me as hopelessly conservative, though I still loved it (kind of the way one feels about one's parents at that age).
Well, we developed carelessly, quickly and out of balance. Should I have been surprised that my life fell apart in my early twenties?
Years of difficult object lessons and hard-fought-for discipline (seven years of aikido) and I finally matured enough to become responsible and figure out that life is all about service. That's when I rejoined the Order. I only found out what happened in 1990 after I'd been back in for a few months. I had a crisis, and then decided it didn't matter. My job is to buckle down and study, not try to figure out the politics of the "earthly" Order. And I study much harder, and am much more humble about the whole thing than I was twenty years ago.
Progress! At the age of forty-five, I feel like I can wait. I'd be lying if I said I'm totally disinterested in progress and developing psychic abilities, but it's not the kind of impatience I had when I was younger. It'll happen one of these days. It's not my job to worry about that. It's my job to study and to incorporate the studies into my life as well as I can. I notice that my life is definitely different - better - since I live like an RC. Funny thing about "psychic" abilities and intuition. You often don't know why you zigged and didn't zag at some critical moment. And that determined your life path after that. Our conscious mind doesn't have a clue sometimes.
Yup, life can be rough. I still don't understand how some people can be so heartless. There are so many relationships that have caused me pain: friends, family, colleagues, and even fellow Rosicrucians. But I know I'm not innocent either. I still regularly ask forgiveness for the way I've treated some people. But I still don't think I've been as heartless as some have been to me. But am I deluding myself?
A year isn't all it takes to heal from a heavy experience, but it's definitely the mother lode. It gets easier after that.
Sometimes I think one of the things that allowed me to survive the things I've been through (the two divorces were just selected high/low points) is that I made a vow to myself as a teenager that no matter what happened, I never let myself become cynical. No matter what's happened, I've always remembered: Man's nature is basically good. There IS a God. Love is the most powerful force in the universe.
Thank you for reporting your feelings in such vivid words one year after you lost your last parent. I am glad that I have my mother and father yet but the description of your positive development gives me the chance maybe to prepare myself a little for the time, when I will have to suffer from such a loss. I wish you all the best to your further progress and my best thoughts accompany you.
George,
Sometimes life just Sucks!
The past several months have been a nightmare at times. First my father had major surgery. Then my mother became ill and was hospitalized. Then my wife had to have surgery. Next my son had a motorcycle accident.(Fortuneatly, no major injuries.) My father passed away in july, several months after recovering amazingly well from his surgery, so that was shocking. My career is in shambles, because of my frequent abscences to attend to the above events. (I had intended to start a new career, but now I have even more incentive.) Now, for the latest disaster.
I was severely injured and almost passed on myself. I am recovering quite well from that, but I went through seven days of excruciating pain. Pain that medical science could not relieve. I was told that I was being given one of the best pain relievers, but it barely helped. Since I do not usually take pain medication, not even aspirin, this was a surprise. (Unpleasant) Mercifully, my doctor found the source of the pain, and removed the irritant that was pressing on a nerve. It had felt like someone was sticking a knife in my back all the way to the hilt, and then twisting it. This went on for 7 days. I have since learned that some people have such pain for weeks and months. I nearly went insane after 7 days.
I found out from first hand experience that, it is very difficult to attune with the healing powers when you are in severe pain. In my moments of meditation previously, I had always sent healing thoughts to those in need, although I had intended them to be for mental and spiritual sustenance. Now after my experience, I also make sure to send thoughts of relief, to all those in physical pain also. It was absolute bliss when my pain ended, and drugs were no longer necessary.(The drugs didnt work anyway.) Those who have had relief from severe pain know what I mean by bliss.
I hope no one else has to go through what I did. Although it was character building, it nearly wiped me out.
Gary E. Morse
