Dead Alive! – CREDO LI

   
You may have seen her on TV. A hurricane victim in Texas standing in her totally wrecked house, wearing a dirtied white shirt, blue shorts – a woman in her thirties. At her feet the pet carrier she was unable to retrieve containing her two dead puppies. She told the reporter she had lost everything, had no place to go and no way of going – a poster person for what confronts each one of us at the moment of our death. But she is alive and so are many others. What is the psychological impact on such individuals? Could anything positive be said? The answer, I truly believe from personal experience is yes! She is still living.

When my so beloved husband Walter died, what struck me again the next morning, were his toothbrush, his dressing gown, his notebook open on his desk with a pencil laid across it . . . every thing left behind! A permanent situation.

For those of us who have had a near-death experience, there is a gift. Your values are changed for the rest of your life. On October 9, 1949, I almost died from hemorrhaging after a miscarriage. My blood pressure went down to 3, and I found myself in outer space looking down at the earth, the size of a dime. (Strangely, it seems Emerson and Jung, decades later, had the same trip!) A black cloud engulfed me and a voice asked: Can you love enough??? As if the world depended on my answer, I screamed YEEESSS! which is what I was whispering on the operating table, as I came slowly back to consciousness. I woke to find myself surrounded by hot water bottles and that big round light about 6 inches above my body. They brought me hot sweet tea to suck through a pipette. As this happened about midnight, the rest of the night I lay on my bed watching a nurse with a death’s head kindly pressing air bubbles up the dripping tube attached to my arm. When she had walked in, I thought she was death come for me and I turned in fear to the wall. Then I knew I had to look at her with love and so I did and received the love back from her all night long. In fact that nurse died three days later, but I have never forgotten her. But the interesting thing that happened was that though I was so weak I could only move my fingers, I felt strong enough to lift the city of Paris! There was a total reversal of where one’s life force resides!

This was the beginning of my reversal of values. Like an old fashioned photo negative, all the darks were light and the lights were dark! The importance of physical things diminished and the abstract and emotional ones increased. The psyche made the soma a physical container of hidden enduring values – hard to explain! This lasted fully the three years of being an invalid that followed. The reminder came back to hit me anew with a shock when my husband died, and, of course, as I confront the certainty of my own celebration of “Aberduffy Day.” As I approach my 86th birthday, I feel the necessity of sharing the insight that dying alive holds the magic of a permanent shift of values. Astrologically, Scorpio rules death, resurrection, and recycling, and its opposite sign is Taurus, the sign ruling material possessions and earthly manifestation!

The bull of Merrill Lynch is in the news today. The “stock market” is in question. It is no longer “bullish.” Believe it or not, I did the chart for the advertising director of Merrill Lynch years ago and asked him if they were conscious of that bull’s symbolic significance. He said he didn’t think they had a clue.

I suspect that for most of you reading this, it will come as no surprise that the global economy and the four elements involving weather – fires, floods, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and droughts – all seem to be challenging humanity to change its sense of values collectively! Or else!

This is already happening. Some of the wealthiest people are now engaged in helping others, and many of the new younger generation are waking up to the joy of serving and helping others. So, as our election approaches, perhaps the matter of ideals can acquire more significance. I sure hope so!

I want to explain the importance of that woman absolutely stripped of everything but life and what her example can prove to us, and also to point out that by sharing my personal near-death experience, I hope you will accept that I am not just mouthing platitudes but have walked my talk as best I could, like many, many others in this world, including you who are reading this.

In the end, as I learned from my darling Walter, all we leave behind, for better or worse, is what we give.

Lovingly,
ao