Newsletter Articles written by Tera Thomas
Issue 29
From the Dark Comes Light
by Tera Thomas
Fall is my favorite time of year. I love the cool mornings, the special golden light that only a fall sun produces, the bright colors as the trees get ready to shed their leaves, and the heightened activity of all the wild animals preparing for winter. It’s strange to think that with all this activity and glory, it is nature getting ready for winter, the season of death on the medicine wheel. Yet, the winter solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year that marks the beginning of this season of death, also marks the birth of the sun, as all the days that follow the darkest day get lighter and lighter until we reach the balance of the equinox in the spring.
As we are connected to the changing of the seasons, we go through a process of being born, maturing, aging, dying. We do this not only in a big, overall pattern that would contain our whole physical life and end with our physical death, but also in smaller ways—every year, every day, even every moment dies. Our lives are filled with mini-deaths as we change and grow, and sometimes they feel as difficult as actual dying. I love to watch how animals are in tune with these cycles of nature and open to the changes that nature presents.
Over the years I have worked with countless numbers of animals in their final stages of life and been present as they left their physical bodies. I have never once in all that time had any animal tell me they were afraid of death, or felt cheated that death had come so soon, or that surrendering to death was a failure. Most of them tell me they understand the process well and view it as another phase of life. A cat once told me that we humans have it wrong—life and death are not opposites, birth and death are the opposites and there is life in both of them.
Participating in the deaths of so many animals has taken away the fear of my own death, but it has done nothing to diminish the dread, the pain, or the grief I feel when someone I love dies. It’s interesting how differently I look at those two things. The truth is dying is easier for the one dying than for the one left behind. We are physical beings and we love and cherish the physical presence of family and friends. Even though we can know completely that nothing and no one ever dies, we often just can’t feel the presence in our physical lives when their bodies are gone. We feel a hole, a vacuum, a void.
I lost a lot of friends this year—not that live with me in my immediate family, but dear friends and teachers nonetheless. I lost llama friends, horse friends, dog and cat friends, a bird friend, and a human friend. With each of these deaths my heart ached. No way around it, losing a friend hurts.
I used to believe that when I got really connected, really conscious, enlightened even, I would be immune to the pain of losing loved ones. I thought my physical life would become less important and pain would not visit me. But I no longer believe this is true. I used to want to live my life immersed in the higher dimensions. Now I want to be like the animals and live this life in my physical body, connected to the spirit world, and bringing it into the physical and onto the earth.
I also used to think that the goal for my human life was to find happiness. There is nothing wrong with happiness, but we’ve read too many fairy tales and created such simplistic goals. We are so fortunate to be provided with a full spectrum of emotions—joy, love, pain, anger, compassion, happiness, sadness—and a physical life gives us the opportunity to experience them all, sometimes even at the same time. The pain of death does not preclude the love that we feel for our dying friend, the laughter that we shared, or the blessing that we feel for having had them in our lives. It is all there together in a fullness that can hardly be contained.
As we become more connected to all of our relations—animals, humans, plants, minerals, the earth, spirit—we begin to know in the depth of our souls that we are never alone, that we are part of everything, and that our spirit can never die. Knowing this may not make the deaths we experience painless and it won’t mean we can skip the grieving process, but perhaps it can make our physical lives a richer, fuller, more beautiful experience. To everything there is a season, and every season holds within it the possibility of all.
I dedicate my work in the year to come to the loved ones I have lost this year. I am so grateful for their presence in my life and know that they live on in my heart and are with me still. I pray for continued opening to feeling the whole spectrum of emotions that these losses offer to me and to all who allow themselves to be deeply touched by loving someone. There is a death in every day, a death in each moment, and sometimes a death for the ones we love. I trust that each of these deaths is filled with life and, as with the seasons, each death is followed by the birth of light.
