Death is the Process of Incubating New Life
Harvest Full Moon over Joshua Tree National Park
Without death, there is nothing of value.
A soulless world encourages faster, quicker, thrashing about to find the one filament that seems to be the one that will burn forever and right now. However, the miracle we are seeking takes time: to find it, to bring it to life. The modern search for a perpetual motion machine rivals the search for the perpetual love machine.
The heart is one of the few essential organs humans (and animals) must have to live. Remove one kidney, the human lives. Additionally, take both legs, the gallbladder, one lung, one arm, and the spleen; the human lives — not well perhaps but there is still life. Take away certain brain functions and the human still lives. Take the heart and the person is gone instantly.
The psychological and physiological center is the heart. It is the heart that enables us to love as the child loves: fully, without reservation, and with no hull of sarcasm, depreciation, or protectionism.
There are Seven Tasks that Teach us Love
Discovering another person as a spiritual treasure even though one may not realize what they have found.
The chase and the hiding - a time of hope and fear.
Untangling and understand of life / death /life aspects of the relationship and the compassion for the task.
Relaxing into trust, the ability to rest in the presence and goodwill of the other.
Sharing future dreams and past sadness.
Healing archaic wounds with regard to love.
The use of the heart to sing up new life and the intermingling of body and soul.
Love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many beginnings — all in the same relationship.
To make love is to merge the breathe and the flesh, spirit and matter; one fits into the other. One can come into a cooperative and rich relationship with what one fears. One only need to stop running, do some untangling, face the wound and one’s own yearning with compassion, give one’s entire heart to the process.
Protectionism creates nothing, selfishness creates nothing, holding on and screaming affects nothing. Only letting go, giving heart, the great drum, the great instrument of the wild nature, only that creates.
This is how love is meant to work, each partner transforming the other. The strength and power of each is untangled, shared. One gives the heart drum. The other gives knowledge of the most complicated rhythms and emotions imaginable. Who knows what they will hunt together? We only know they will be nourished to the end of days.
Summarized from Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.