Sangha - My Father (Harshaji)

[Guest guest]

"...This has been a difficult day for me and I have been going through

many desperate emotions and praying. I don't feel ready to lose my

father.I ask for your prayers.Thank you for all your friendship and

warmth and love.

 

I cannot be with my father physically right now but am holding him in

the warmth of my love in my heart.I was reminded of Dylan Thomas's

poem about his father where he tells his father, "Rage, rage, against

the dying of the light."My father cannot rage, being sedated,

incubated, and again on a ventilator. I have raged for him the whole

day, holding him in my heart, praying, weeping, and shouting, "God

bless you Father, God bless you" and in my mind have kissed him from

his feet to his head.Love to allHarsha

 

 

 

Dearest Harshaji,

 

Ohhh, Beloved Friend, to be near to you in Heart, I am. Your deep and

profound experience with your father moves me so, moves all your

friends here at this Sangha. There is such a sense of “My God, My

Lord, my Love,” give me strength and give me peace in this day that

is before me. The difficulty of letting go of anyone we love, of

letting go of our adored and revered parents, what more powerful

thing can wring our hearts through and through with a Love

Incomprehensible?

 

I too thought of Dylan when my own Beloved father was in a coma with

failing kidneys, failing everything, and my heart was torn in a

million pieces to watch him there, frail and wan, and there was

nothing I could do but what you have done, rage against the dying of

the light. Oh Harshaji, how much I feel for you and your family at

this most trying, most difficult time. We, all of us, in our love for

others, in our longing to remain near and connected physically to our

Beloveds’, we suffer greatly when the thought and prospect of losing

them is put before us. Vicki Woodyard so sparked my keen interest and

alignment of ‘yes, yes,’ when she spoke to Jerry Katz about nondualism

and the day to day challenge of living with our loved ones’ death

hanging so close, so near. What is this Advaita when our hearts are

breaking and we see our darlings in pain and illness, and sometimes

even dying? I guess Advaita is just that. Living awake and aware and

experiencing everything that arises and everything that presents, all

the agony of hurting for our loved ones, the struggle of watching them

in great pain and sickness and seeing them fearful and confused….and

living in that moment, moment to moment and hour to hour, day in and

out.

 

I used to think nondualism was about avoiding those things that gave

rise to reactivity and identification, that they would somehow become

less and not the same, that life would act differently when I ‘got

it,’ when I was more “enlightened,” and then I somehow did get it…and

it was found in just this, all these things that happen each day and

in each hour, and it was in the things that rose for me, like

jealousy and fears, like sensitivity and shyness, all this was just

for me to see what it actually was…OnlyOne.

 

I read something from Paul McCartney after his wife Linda died. He

spoke of not wanting and not taking anything to “dull” the

experience, the great and devastating pain of loss when she died. He

wanted to experience fully the Love he had for her and she for him,

even and especially this Love as it was given in her dying and him

being the widow and broken-hearted husband. To him, he was living

fully present and open totally to what Love wanted to show him, and

that was shown and felt in the enormous pain and the great wound in

his heart that was so shattered because she was his Beloved, because

of the Love between them. Such perfect nonduality, and so like Vicki

Woodyard has shown all of us again and again in her writings

expressing her and Bob’s Love, their Love in all its presentations.

Even unto dying.

 

My Heart is so moved for you right now, Dear, Beloved Harshaji.

 

 

“Love is the Water of LifeDrink it down with heart and soul! “

 

~ Rumi

 

 

“Let only that little be left of me whereby I may name thee my all.

Let only that little be left of my will whereby I may feel thee on

every side, and come to thee in everything, and offer to thee my love

every moment.

Let only that little be left of me whereby I may never hide thee.

Let only that little of my fetters be left whereby I am bound with thy

will, and thy purpose is carried out in my life---and that is the

fetter of thy love.

 

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

 

This is my prayer to thee, my lord---strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart.

Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows.

Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.

Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might.

Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles.

And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love.

 

I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my

power,---that the path before me was closed, that provisions were

exhausted and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me. And when old words die

out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where

the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.”

 

~ Rabindranath Tagore, “Gitnajali”

 

 

 

LoveToYou, Beloved Friend,

 

Mazie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winterize your home with tips from MSN House &; Home.

[Guest guest]

, "Mazie Lane" <sraddha54@h...>

wrote:

> This has been a difficult day for me and I have been going through

many desperate emotions and praying. I don't feel ready to lose my

father.

 

I ask for your prayers.

 

Thank you for all your friendship and warmth and love.

 

 

 

Dear Harsha,

 

I pray that if it's your father's time to go, you'll let him go.

I pray that you honor his death by examining your suffering, and

it's causes. What greater gift can a father give than giving his

son freedom from suffering with his death.

 

Metta,

 

Pete