My family attended a Beltane festival yesterday, an ancient Celtic celebration of springtime and fertility. We celebrated the outgoing May Queen (curtsy) and King, and welcomed a new May royalty who will hold and embody in sacred trust the ability of the earth and all its inhabitants to bring forth new life.

That may be literal or metaphoric children. We birth our ideas, we birth our creative endeavors, we birth our changes in our work-in-the-world. We all wrote down what we wanted to bring into life in the coming year on a ribbon and tied it to the Maypole – the sky god’s very own phallus resting in the earth mother’s yoni. We danced and sang and wrapped that phallus with our sincere wishes for prosperity and love and health and world peace. (In true Beltane fashion there were a few wishes expressed for really good sex, too.)

The weave of our dance and our ribbons was powerful to be a part of, the hope being that if the sky god finds our intercession “pleasing” (this was a PG13 festival), then the earth mother would receive his seed, and all would be well in the coming season.

Yes, for those of you who didn’t know, that is the symbolism of the Maypole. I have never experienced my children’s May Day festivals at school quite the same way since I learned this.

And, as I celebrated life yesterday, death was also on my mind. I painted morning glories on myself in honor of a woman I know of that name who is living her last days as I write. Three friends have just lost parents. I heard that a previous client is in hospice.

And, so, as I am wont to do, I contemplate the seeming paradox. How do we hold life and death with wholesome mind-states?

When we fear death, we end up not being able to truly engage with life.

It’s important to tease out different levels of this issue. We all have a hard wired drive to live. If your access to air is blocked you will fight hard to breathe. If a saber-toothed tiger chased you in the wild, you would have run as hard as possible to escape, your sympathetic nervous system activated to help you survive. That’s very natural.

But, it’s also true that death is a natural outcome of life. We will all die. How did this become such a terrible thing in our culture? We idolize youth and work to extend it as long as possible. Our elders are hidden away and often treated with a sense of impatience at the least, fear and revulsion at the worst. It’s considered a failing to become seriously ill, the prospect filling us with a sense of panic.

I see it in my clients in subtle and not so subtle ways. When someone has spiraling multiple chronic illnesses the question arises – “Am I dying? I feel like I’m dying!” The fear that comes with that thought makes it very difficult to not only work on improving your health effectively, but difficult to have much peace while doing what you can for your body.

Sometimes we are driven by dysfunctional relationships with parents that are carried into adult life, or repeated with adult relationships. As a child, our survival depends on remaining in relationship with our parents. Literally. If our parents don’t love us and leave when we are young, we may not have the skills to survive. Parts of our personality get frozen in time as we figure out ways to cope with these difficult circumstances. You may know that the hard time you have with taking care of yourself is rooted in your childhood. But, most of us don’t identify that as a fear of dying. In my experience, that is the core emotion. If mom doesn’t love me she won’t take care of me. So, I better figure out how to act in a way that will keep her taking care of me. Hard wired survival instinct.

Interestingly, some of my clients who have a terminal diagnosis are the most peaceful. They can’t hide anymore, can’t distract themselves from the inevitability of the end of their time in this body.

So, I hold the contemplation this verdant springtime that the end of life will come. I watched my mother let go a year and a half ago. She was, in the end, very peaceful and relaxed.

One day I will let go.

Grief is not a sign of failing. It is a natural outcome of witnessing a natural process with someone you love. We can grieve the loss of our loved ones with tenderness and relaxation. Tears falling like rain. Outbursts of anger like lightening and thunder – bright and loud, then passing.

We can grieve our own death without fear before it is immanent.

Knowing it will end someday helps you love what is, right now. It is fleeting. And, so delicious. All of it. Dancing, loving, working, eating, hugging and snuggling. This is what’s important. Do what you can to remove fear from the equation.

Then you can truly invite in your life. What do you want for yourself and your community for the coming year? Write it down. Keep this paper in a special place, bury it, or burn it to release the wishes into the Universe. Let yourself want these things. Desire is a beautiful thing and helps create your journey forward. Do it consciously. Direct it! Now is the time, as the flowers bloom and the seeds are planted.

Plant your seeds, knowing that when it’s time, what grows will lie low again, surrendering to the wheel of life.

Blessings on your journey.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2014 at 12:31 am and is filed under Life on Life's Terms, Living with Health Challenges, Seasonal Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.