Deaths… And Life

TUES., FEB. 9, 1993, 12:07 PM
OFFICE, PULLIAM HALL

You have read, with interest and care, quite a stack of papers telling of responses to death. You can’t help but note that since some of these students could, theoretically be your grandchildren, in age, that some of these grandparent deaths could be like unto your own. You don’t feel the closeness to any of your grandchildren that comes forth in some of these papers. In some ways you wish that were more true, but you also know that you’re living life as honestly as you can. You like your grand kids, but you don’t especially seek them out for recurring activities.

Reading these papers does cause you to think about your own death and how you would want it to be like and unlike some of these described. You would not want to reach a condition where your mind did not function well at all… when you have lost the sense of who people around you are. You don’t look forward to a hospital stay or residence in a nursing home, even as these possibilities seem “off somewhere in the future.”

Living out your final days on the Farm I have chosen for you to have is your best alternative, but that is more probable if you don’t live extra long. That is… if you should live as long as your Mother and Father it is less likely that you would want to be doing all that you do now on a regular basis. And yet you enjoy the life on this place, and a town dwelling place might not be as pleasant.

You have considered suicide in a case of incurable cancer of some other deteriorating condition from which you would not likely recover. I have not approved of most suicides, in the past, even as My death, as Jesus, did have the flavor of choosing a time, place, and way for dying. Oh, I have approved of heroic deaths, where persons have given their lives so that other might live. As I have told you repeatedly, the important factor in a suicide is the balance of motivations… the extent to which this is done for other rather than as just a selfish act of getting out of pain (and yet this doesn’t mean that it is automatically wonderful, and My will, that a person be in pain for the last months of life.)

Another factor that I haven’t yet stated plainly, but which is one you have discerned, is your sure knowledge that you and I are linked together, and that death, no matter what its form, cannot separate Us. You would come across for positive reasons, just as you would move into retirement or away from the Farm. Death is commencement of new life, and My concern about time is minimal… has been greatly overexaggerated. I might determine when you should die, for My purposes. More likely it would be from natural causes, for you, and it would be of little concern to Me whether you “served out” a fatal illness or came over a bit “early”, for “early” is of almost no consequence to Me.

I want the teaching of this course, as well as all of the others, to be stimulus to you to enjoy life fully, appreciating both people and events that are part of your life, in general and each day.

There can be real merit in enduring pain of various kinds. It also can be an experience that almost (or actually) dulls the spirit, leaving the sufferer to be an awful model of continuing life. Sometimes I intervene, but mostly I let the natural forces of earth life operate. Some do come on over with the admission that they didn’t deal with pain and deterioration at all well, and sometimes are surprised that this experience was part of their planned destiny. (It isn’t always, but is, sometimes). Some who have had such a negative experience then go on to a spiritual (non-incarnated) life of helping humans deal with pain. Death really is quite a life event!