It’s January 1st . . . I am not making resolutions. I don’t prescribe to the belief system that there is one new day more important than the others. I’d far prefer to live here in this moment. I’ve spent enough time looking backwards and forwards. It’s the middle place I’ve been sitting in; most aware of; working towards the now. I open up the BBC website, as I always do at the beginning of the month. Ten books to read in the month or for the year and the one I am drawn to is Lincoln in The Bardo. It really has nothing to do with the content of the book but, more the word, bardo. It announces something in my spirit. Later in the day, I visit Rick Levine’s YouTube site and make it through half of his predictions for the month of January. My knowledge of astrology is limited. I’m trying to understand more but, it often feels like math to me and that’s the place my brain checks out. In the video, Levine uses the word bardo. So, there it is again. Twice in a couple of hours.
This is how Creator works with me. Maybe sometimes plays with me or enjoys pushing me like a too eager child screaming “Look at me! Look at me!” I have learned to pay attention to the repeating patterns, words or dreams – there is always a reason. I sit with it for a while; thinking about that realm. I pray and then enter into meditation with the one of intention of asking for clarity on why I am supposed to look at the bardo.
I’m not Buddhist and have not studied Buddhism so, please forgive me for my rudimentary interpretation. Many many years ago I read The Tibetan Book of the Dead and so, I know bardo is a Buddhist philosophy. It is the realm between realms after the soul leaves the body. It is a transitioning place filled with a variety of experiences. The disembodied soul experiences consciousness in new forms and is said to travel through three different bardos. Each, offering a glimpse of the faces of beauty and fear. It is the place where we learn to understand both the light and the dark within us. It is said the more we spend this life in contemplation, prayer, meditation and spiritual travel the faster we will incarnate or if we are not incarnating choose (hopefully wisely) to “settle” in one of the five other worlds of rebirth. As it is with all our choices, there are heaven worlds and hell worlds.
I turn my thoughts temporarily to my mother; to her transition and her desire for me to conduct the cremation ceremony for her. I prepared her body, covered her in flowers and offerings and prayed until her body was taken by the flames. I prayed every morning and every evening for longer than the 49 days she requested. We pray for the departed and in doing so, we channel our grief. We cannot pray for another and not change our own vibration. It helps both souls evolve.
“May these flames, blessed and purified with great understanding and deep compassion, protect and nurture the virtues and wholesome seeds that _________ has transmitted to her/his children, relatives, friends and countless other being. May these seeds grow to fruition in each of us, so that ___ may live with freedom in the garden of awakening.” (Thich Nhat Han)
I realize the “bardo” has to come to me today because I am transitioning and the bardo isn’t just for the disembodied. It is a realm within this realm. It is the middle place I have been feeling so strongly the last few months. The suspended state of a soul not sure how it will be born again. We change. We evolve or devolve. We find new loves and we lose love, people, places and things we thought were important. Life shifts directions. We experience death and birth a thousand times in our short earth life. In the push to be better, stronger, smarter, healthier, kinder, more prayerful we fight the monsters and demons of this world and within us. We also are responsible for each other; to hold space and pray for those we know are also suspended or traveling through their own bardos. We must decide what is real, true and Love. We must let the fire of Creator clear away the old. We must bury our souls in the womb of the Mother and allow ourselves to be born again and again and again. We must decide what is our true path and the bardo shows us all the roads we have traveled to get here. It is the Wheel of Fortune card in the tarot. We are a spinning universe with the soul’s and universal matrixes.
As I sit in prayer and contemplation, chanting “In God, Through God, With God” I hear the words of Rumi: “Die! Die! Die in this love! If you die in this love, your soul will be renewed. Die! Die! Don’t fear the death of that which is known. If you die to the temporal, you will become timeless.” And then I understand why I have been dancing and crying in the bardo and on this day of newness I am born again.
Image Credit: Wheel Of Fortune (X) card from The Prisma Visions Tarot by James R. Eads. I highly recommend this deck
https://prismavisionstarot.com/