Whenever I attend a funeral, my heart is touched by the vulnerability and preciousness of our lives, by the depth and breadth of love, and by the feeling that all our life stories come together to form a brilliant mandala I think we could call The Divine Human.

As the full stop defines the sentence, as the end explains the beginning and as perspective defines a work of art, so we suddenly understand that we live, for the most part, lives of humble and inconspicuous magnificence. We experience wounds and losses that challenge us to the core and that somehow illuminate what is most exalted in the human spirit.

At funerals it is always love that is celebrated, not perfection. Truly, no one seems to care how imperfect you may or may not have been. Whatever you were, at your death you were that unapologetically. Those around you usually accepted you as you were, and loved you for it. It is one of the most beautiful things in life, this understanding, acceptance and forgiveness that we offer the departing soul.

Anyway, perfection is a fiction of churches and dogmas and lies about undeserving beggars at the door of something unattainable. We love the imperfection, the funny and the quirky attributes of a personality, the familiar ways and sayings that, with repetition to underline them, made an imprint upon our hearts and minds and memories. We love people for who they were, foibles and all, and for what they stood for and what they represented to us.

Just for being here, just for letting us love them and for sharing a little bit of our journey, we lovingly honor them.

The Divine is Human and the Human is Divine. In the big picture, we are all representatives or symbols and archetypes of the Divine Blueprint. But that blueprint wants or needs diversity. We came here to imprint ourselves and our unique perspectives on the Human Mandala. We came to awaken, to uplift and to impregnate matter with Pure Divine Essence. And we do that amidst the duality of life and consciousness, in order that the most differentiation and expansion may occur. And the magic is just this—we do that without having to do anything at all. We do it by our presence alone.

Often we forget that we are already Divine Beings on the inside. We don’t have to create it, we don’t need to struggle and sacrifice to attain it, we just need to accept it. We simply need to brush away whatever is covering up the light, and stay present to all of our senses.

What we do not need to do is to carve ourselves to the bone. We are good enough. We are loveable enough. We are enough. So many things in life come down to acceptance.

Faith in oneself is essential, but faith in something beyond ourselves is surely magical.

Once you have it, it never truly dies, no matter how many abandonments, torturous experiences or dark nights of the soul you endure. I have seen this so many times both in myself and others. I think: “This is it. This is the death blow. My faith (or their faith) will never recover from this one.” But just like memory foam, it all springs back into place, just the way we left it. I have even been known to metaphorically throw everything in the air, willing to let go of every belief and assumption, every comfortable premise and every congruent pattern I have formed out of my experience, only to find it all soon settling back into place, pretty much exactly the way it was. Perhaps this is because faith is always allied with hope, and without hope we are truly over, through, finished… whether dead or alive.

Our lives, because of spiritual amnesia, have become a search for meaning and relevance. Whatever it is that we face in life, if we can find a meaning for it, or assign a meaning to it, we can usually endure it. I think it is because we hold onto the hope that by divine design or synchronicity, all the tiny threads of life’s tapestry will eventually form a beautiful piece of artwork, where each and every thread will become unique and irreplaceable. We trust above all that the final unveiling will be utterly exquisite and the moments of pain will be swept away.

The finality of death provides us with a rare opportunity to survey a life—someone’s completed story, from the perspective of meaning and relevance.

Without another song to sing, the music fades but the incandescence lingers on. Some say that every word ever spoken, and every thought and emotion ever experienced, remains with the earth, forever. Whether by our contribution to the Akashic (Soul) Record or whether through our adamantine particles impregnating everything we ever passed by or touched or thought about, surely we, the real individual personality essence that makes us who we are (in whatever realm we inhabit) immortal. Is there another definition?

If we could expand our sense of self beyond the narrow confines of physicality and focus, beyond the straight jackets of creeds and rituals and asanas, and beyond the perpetual striving for perfection, simply to see the inner beauty and let it express outwardly, being who it is and loving who it is… we may find, as the Navajo did:

“In beauty it is finished.”

If there were some force in opposition to the Divine (if that were even possible), it would surely be frustrated with the Divine Human. For notwithstanding the most dreadful of deeds and the most heart wrenching losses, our souls nearly always manage to emerge as heroes. Perhaps it was planned that way or perhaps the Divine in us always draws towards itself exactly what it needs for optimum expression.

As billions of souls, navigating in our vulnerable human embodiments, we face each unknown day, each life and death itself, with the greatest courage and beauty. We learn to grow and to evolve. We both improve and accept, suffer and rejoice. We innovate and we tolerate, we disappoint and we inspire. And death reminds us that our souls will always have the last word…

We are human. We are sublime.

Let there be many windows to your soul,

That all the glory of the universe

May beautify it. Not the narrow pane

Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays

That shine from countless sources. Tear away

The blinds of superstition; let the light

Pour through fair windows broad as truth itself

And high as God.

Why should the spirit peer

Through some priest-curtained orifice, and grope

Along dim corridors of doubt, when all

The splendor from unfathomed seas of space

Might bathe it with the golden waves of Love?

Sweep up the debris of decaying faiths;

Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out beliefs,

And throw your soul wide open to the light

Of Reason and of knowledge. Tune your ear

To all the wordless music of the stars,

And to the voice of Nature; and your heart

Shall turn to truth and goodness as the plant

Turns to the sun. A thousand unseen hands

Reach down to help you to their peace-crowned heights,

And all the forces of the firmament

Shall fortify your strength. Be not afraid

To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

**Note: Adamantine particles describe all fundamental, subatomic particles. These particles form all of the elements in the universe by assembling the atoms of all the original substances such as oxygen, hydrogen, iron, etc. They are the basis of everything that exists, including our bodies and are the smallest particles that cannot be divided any further. Quantum physicists have already discovered these particles but have selected other names by which to identify them: electrons, quarks, muons, neutrinos etc. These pure particles are so small and simple that they represent an absolute and so are one of the constants of the universe. Adamantine particles are crystalline particles of infinity that all contain the stored potential to manifest any original substance or element. These particles are encoded with a type of universal ‘DNA’ somewhat like stem cells, which allow the particles to form any possible type of atom. Source

Maureen Kelly is a greedy goddess. She wants it all, everything, the best things in life, to love and to savor and to honor and treasure, until death do us part. She is a sacred devotee of Love. And as she savors and devours life, it devours her, and there takes place a merger of the love within her and the love within all. Sooner or later it becomes obvious that we are all one. We are the same being wearing different disguises. By allowing others inside, to see all of us, without whimpering, without wavering, and being real until it hurts, is just another way of saying I Love You, and We’ve Got This Covered.

She lives in Sydney, Australia. She has two grown up children, and a puppy. She loves to cook and to read and to watch old movies. She also loves vintage clothing and anything natural, the ocean, and being her authentic self.

 

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Assistant Ed. Caroline Scherer