AVANT SOUL

Loss makes one more appreciative for what one has. It's almost a consolation prize! Yes, of course it could always be worse. Yes, your courage & dignity are much to be admired. Yet when you're Christopher Reeves, and are no longer mobile due to paralysis after being thrown by a horse, how could your loss not be stamped into your new identity?

It's more than a bit sanguine to tell Christopher that his real self will be free in Heaven, that his soul will, of course, have unhampered mobility, when for the time being he is physically defined by his wheelchair. As glorious as the heavens, the physical world is a substantial part of God, as well.

A mother loses her child due to a drunk driver and creates MADD -- Mothers Against Drunk Driving. A woman's husband is incapacitated by a bullet he never could have deserved, and she becomes pivotal for legislation passing The Brady Act.

It's true, yet odd, that we're blithely informed that we're not "supposed to" hang on to the past -- Live In the Present! We're told about the power of Now, and just in case we're still processing tragedy, betrayal, or our disappointment from someone who diminishes our value, we hear, Now Is All You Have. The proponents of "nowism" overlook our debt to the past and our connection to the future.

When someone has experienced crushing loss, the insult of well-meaning words to "live in the present, it's all you have" belittles the stressful adaption and extreme pressures to adjust to wrenching events. Loss entails drastic 'new rules' which alter a life. Loss inevitably brings about restrictions which are lodged permanently in place. It is frequently abrupt, and not accompanied by a "30-day notice," or "repeated & obvious warnings" that something dreadful is about to happen.

Yes, some losses do exist which might allow for preparation, like slow, degenerative illness, but you don't generally pick up the paper to read that "today, the earth will open up and swallow you alive" -- or -- "at an unexpected moment this afternoon, when the birds are chirping and the sun is shining, you will perish in an avalanche."

Preaching "nowism" to those in society who undergo abrupt and unexpected loss is a form of new age cruelty. It's insensitive to speak with someone who has witnessed people falling to their deaths in the World Trade Center, by saying, "You know, in Zen Buddhism, none of this is real. It's part of karma!" And you certainly don't inform surviving relatives of the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City to "put on a happy face ... be in the now."

When the pyrotechnics from a New Jersey rock band at a night club create a fire which causes loss of life, a stampede, and hideously disfigures some of its groupie survivors, it's a little too pat to tell the injured, "Whistle a happy tune," or worse, "I told you rock music is dangerous."

We're horrified by loss yet are assaulted and surrounded by it in worldly events and by its exhilarating technical simulation in profitable industries of "passive vociferous participation" -- pyrotechnics in movies, entertainment, video arcades, computer games, and relentless drama of the 24-hour mass media. All the more puzzling that we seek to compartmentalize loss, to block it out whenever it becomes too real, or appears too close to home.

There's a deceptive line not often acknowledged when it is crossed, where our recorded perception of this world somehow diminishes the impact that we are venturing into areas of actual, irrevocable destruction. We can't simply "reshoot the scene" -- or -- "rewind the film," or start over, when a real boulder just fell on our real big toe.

In fact, real habitat is being destroyed, real rain forests in Indonesia and Costa Rica are lost forever, real fires have leveled millions of acres of forest in Southern California, real people are malnourished and starving in South Korea, and entire nations of real people are perishing from AIDS in Haiti and much of Africa.

The point here is this: Ultimately, everything in this dimension is impermanent. This world contains at least two arcs of wisdom, and the first arc is waking up within the dream, where you sustain a certain basic attitude. Your attitude absolutely contains permutations of loss, or pleasure, which you allow yourself to feel -- and more telling, how much Loss or Pleasure you experience in spite of yourself.

You have your "degree" of waking up, your experience of admitting to feeling graduations of Loss, and gradations of pleasure.

If you're asking at this point, "What pleasure?" then you are either being coy, or unduly immodest, or possibly disingenuous, or quite possibly you are in pain.

One other possibility is unexpectedly revealing: You can't define what pleasure is due to the fact that you are unfeeling. So where is this going? It's leading to the second arc, which by definition, is what distinguishes each person's life from one another.

The second arc is infinitely more interesting. Two people can undergo virtually identical experiences, yet arrive at radically different interpolations of where they are in respective 'reality-check' from the same events.

In other words, the second arc concerns what was required in your Life, what tribulations you needed to undergo, to arrive at your current position of awakening or understanding.

NOTE: If you're asleep, unaware, or snoring, you might say, "What understanding? I fail to understand what you're saying about understanding. What do you mean, the awakening of awareness? These are vague terms. They don't mean anything to ME. ZZzzzzzzz (snore)."

And our person will get indignant by the thought-process whereby he or she might be held accountable for any implicit or participatory responsibility concerning awareness, for "degrees of revelatory participation," or for a point of view. Just point to a six-pack and a refrigerator!

But should you ask an unaware person if they experience loss or pleasure, the reply might be equated with degrees of sensory expression, or that lack of pleasing sensations ... not necessarily a sense of greater life forces at play.

It can't be explained to a person who is asleep, for the same reason that if you approach a person who's a heavy snorer, you will be told, "I DIDN'T HEAR ANY SNORING." It is absolutely irrelevant that everyone else was kept awake, or deprived of restful sleep, by the person who snores. "I wasn't snoring, don't you think I would have known?"

Therefore, the second arc, for those who become aware, is what it took in your process of life, what events transpired, to begin to integrate your current wakefulness along the way.

The first arc is WHERE you are. The second arc is what it took to arrive at where you (momentarily) are. And in happiness, loss, joy, or pain, the voyage to arrive at your current "location of awareness" can be a harrowing, even shattering, and heartbreaking path. In deed!

Not everyone wants to be nailed to a cross in order to reach unity with God. This is one heck of a process to attain that state of inner realization and complete awakening (even if it was possible for you). Why then is loss part of the formulae to wake us up, to become more Christlike?

Within this worldly dimension, this local time zone, LOSS (and arriving at some culmination of awareness) frequently entails coping with an ongoing crucifixion. The arc of being Free and Awake doesn't always seem to warrant the toll & hardship required to "get there on the way."

SMILE, we're all going to die, anyway!" -- isn't reassuring when you're currently bleeding or experiencing insurmountable pain. Because the Creator's sense of appropriate, ultimate justice and cosmic time isn't as snappy as an instant Lotto™ ticket, it easily appears that there is a double standard for those of us here in earth. We witness many folks who appear to have an over-abundance of creature comforts yet appear immune to much, if any, physical suffering. Then there are others who contribute far more to the common good, who truly do more to "raise the bar" of humanity in this world, and to whom unspeakable tragedies have occurred.

The media allows us to observe people who are as happy as pigs in mud. Surrounded by material comforts, they are the "Paris Hiltons" of life, so clueless as to this material reality that she believed that WalMart was a local wallpaper store.

If we track the progression of Life over the course of only a single generation, it would seem that evil is often lavishly rewarded and that good people are destined to suffer horribly. To then hear, "No worries, mate, it all becomes fair & balances out in cosmic time, i.e., eternity," seems more than a bit specious. Especially if you're one of the innately good people to whom bad things have happened, while brazenly amoral people go momentarily scott-free.

Small wonder that "LOSS" is an awkward topic at cocktail parties. On the one hand we have the atheists saying, "SEE? This whole world is an unmitigated scam, there's no fairness to it, and no cosmic order to its intricate wonders, either!" -- and on the other hand, we have the new age bimbos saying, "You surely attracted this terrible tragedy to yourself; it's your karma. Possibly you were an evil Aztec warrior in your last incarnation who slaughtered innocent maidens in blood sacrifice while playing Bocce Ball, and that's why you reincarnated in the misery of Los Angeles, destined to collide with an SUV driver in an accident on the 405 Freeway during bloody morning rush hour." -- Of course, that makes PERFECT sense! --

With all these chaos theories, these inadequate attempts to "make reasonable" that about life which is staggering, momentous, ridiculous, and clearly NOT reasonable, it is challenging. It is challenging to keep a clear head and an open heart concerning so much loss of beauty and innocence on this planet. We're citizens here, and to maintain vigilance with our own awareness, to not treat it as "only another media event" requires extraordinarily mature skills.

We can't pretend that loss isn't taking place. Nor can we let it all in, bleeding endlessly for the stupidity in this world. Nor can we become numb & deadened to it all, unless by erecting stalwart ivory walls not to feel, we succeed too well, to become that which is unfeeling!

We've spoken of the pitfalls which occur when tragedy or misfortune befalls someone, and the risks of having one's daily life identity become newly redefined by the "boundaries of unkindness." It's a balancing act to keep a sacred, unsullied piece of oneself, an untouched sanctum of genuine goodness, an unpolluted flame deep inside. If tragedy has marked you, and all you see is the mark, then the beast has WON.

There exists a sanctified fire of the soul which maintains its purity and its faith, and is not tainted by loss. Its secret is to feast with one another. It seeks to keep the ravenous beast of media despair from baying by the front door or being invited into our living rooms!

It sustains a piece, a vanguard of hope deep within, untainted by the loss of this world.

It maintains a shiny piece of joy within which lives childlike pleasure, its enthusiasm and its innocence, in spite of the loss within one's personal life, or loss to cherished loved ones close by. Our sacred relationships are often our only healing ointment and balm! Maybe turning off the TV will help!

Truly, none of us want to give counsel to our fears, to our most dire forebodings. Here are a few concluding thoughts: There AREN'T tidy and neat sutures to resolving bone-crushing loss. Major loss contributes to a perception of lack. A lack of mobility. A lack of someone who has been taken away. A lack, a disappearance of the person you once were, which an accident or chronic illness has grotesquely altered.

The perception of loss is relative to the size of the wound.

The perception of loss is relative to the feelings of emptiness and the feelings of bleakness.

Are we tracking? A solution is forthcoming!

The "LOSS PARADOX" isn't what a person "actually" has (and we all require some basics of food, shelter, and companionship), but that which exists in the unmistakably personal perception of emptiness.

Follow: It isn't a case of, "I see plenty of food in your cupboard," but more accurately, the real case concerns the cupboard of personal emptiness and woundology when an individual is saddled with an enormous void, the size of the internalized loss. This isn't mere semantics, because the LOSS PARADOX describes a metaphysical state where the person can only be healed as the size of the wound and the enormity of emptiness is addressed -- just as you would dress a wound.

The quandary of healing, however, is split between two dimensions: The point of the impact of the wound must then be tracked to the past, while its scar tissue is in the present.

Enormity is a scary word. There exists a genuine reality check of perception here -- little authentic argument about the loss of a hangnail or a fingernail versus the loss of a child who has perished in a hiking incident, falling to death after slipping on ice.

Naturally, loss which cuts deeper is acute and brings unbearable anguish. Let's conclude by examining resolution to the kind of bone-crushing loss which tends to forever stain a person's inlook -- and outlook -- for the remainder of her or his life.

FIRST AND FOREMOST is to regain mobility -- any degree of mobility -- in the present. This applies to any degree of physical, as well as emotional, mobility.

The greater metaphysical question is, how do you resolve, or fill, the enormity of an empty wound that's lodged, quite stuck in the past?

No matter how bleak, when paralyzed in one area, seek freedom and any degree of mobility in any other areas. This is paramount! -- Mobility and renewed creativity, combined with authentic support and appreciation from caring people, can and will resolve loss.

Make no mistake, only as basic needs are met, can the more ephemeral crisis of Spirit be dressed -- (addressed)-- and the gaping wound closed -- (or tissue renewed)-- because basic must always come first. A basic example would be to first comfort or give food before trying to revamp a person's belief system. But there is more!

Recognition broken down is RE--Cognition, and Cognition is TO KNOW. Part and parcel of healing is to begin to acknowledge yourself so very well. Knowledge sits on a ledge -- some say, hanging by its fingernails -- and we cling to the appearance we want to present, versus the actual recognition which is there.

To heal we first come to grips with our terrible fear of heights, our plunging to the depths of our fears, our ledges. We both climb the walls and hit bottom on a "ledge finding mission."

Knowledge is hard won, because to recognize, you first must know. You truly need to pack an inner knapsack and journey on a long hike within. The ledges, obstacles, sheer vertical cliffs, and heartbreaking depths are all within the ledgers of the self. And no mere book knowledge, this! It's the Book of Life.

It is in re - knowing that you become re-known, or renowned! Re-knowing is like refinishing the "woulds" and sanded shoulds of your ALLEGED. This work on the furniture of the self is akin to the carpenter of the soul. Working on shapes and interfaces, our surface veneer and the construction inside, the foundations which solidly link our being to eternal knowledge versus mind stuff. You can view yourself as disconnected from all else that exists or participate in the recognition which is the final "finishing tool" in dealing with loss and repairing the splintered furniture of the self. Recognition by yourself, and only then by others. To first become known. To rest and reside within knowing. Only then to become renowned.

Hard work, finishing and refinishing the time tables of awareness. There is more...

LOSS is the presence of gaping holes in the ledger of the self. Some may not be resolved, yet cognition is the key which reapplies the varnish and fills in the wrenching gaps.

On a practical level, to begin to fill in the hole of emptiness initially seems an exercise in futility. The hole has become dark and depressive; its walls have lost their pinions to lift one out from sheer, impenetrable walls. When you recognize someone in this state, chicken soup and medication could be serviceable! First is to reactivate cognition ... the damnedest thing about suffering is that God says, "Now that I finally have your attention..." The fact that you neglected earlier focus funds is a moot attention point! Begin -- attempt -- however gently, to have the other person's crater of loss begin to be filled with caring.

Even when that despairing person of loss is yourself. The caring is gentleness from yourself.

Begin to turn the crater (inside out) to a mountain peak. You can't dredge goodness out of nothing, but spirit is renewable. It begins slowly, like a tender ribbon of sweetness, a shoelace of icing to drizzle into the wound. It's like folding vanilla into a place of sorrow.

You don't diminish another person's suffering by saying, "Grief is over! The sun is shining.

Birds are chirping. Oh, for the glory of NOW!" You don't fix anything -- at least not in this initial stage of grief counseling. But you are present, and sadly, you might initially be the one who best brings a recognition of sweetness to your own wounds -- and to begin to "transfer ownership" of your loss.

You begin to fill an empty chalice. You begin to pour simple caring into the desolate and bleak beakers where trauma has morphed into this other-dimensional hole, this pit.

You show up and are present and request receipt of the Holy Spirit's administration. You ask to be absolved of blame. It's freeing -- acutely liberating -- to release the self-importance of your own blame from the pain & emptiness of your losses.

You cease trying to "boss God around" and allow for the potentiality of miracles. The reason you surrender is because your controlling the outcome isn't the way Holy Spirit works best. If your control placed you in the driver's seat -- well, look at the attendant wrecks! Turn driver training over to God.

Loss often leaves numbness, caustic tears and a cauterized wound. Loss will take time and unbelievable kindness to resolve. But a time will arise when you will recognize that wounds are openings and doorways for the light to now stream forth, and to shine.