Dawning Forever

"Look, how the sun is dawning for us, ever dawning: in the earth in our hearts … a fire within in rock, in river, in plain, everywhere living, everywhere dawning …."

From "A Dream of Angus Oge" by AE

All things die. Nothing ever dies.

We are not material beings with souls. We are souls or spirits inhabiting material bodies. We are each living many lives. We call these our past, present and future lives because we have a hard time seeing all time at once and only perceive small slices of it. Therefore we imagine that we move through time when, in fact, time moves through us.

At any given moment in time we are living and dying in many material bodies in many places all at once. From the moment we put on a material body that body begins to die. The physical processes of life – all life – end in the death and dissolution of the material body.

Sometimes the process of dying is slow and gradual, in which case we die of "old age." Sometimes it is sudden, as when one is injured in an accident or contracts a serious illness, in which case we die young. In either case, only the body dies. The spirit continues.

This is the natural order of all things. Mountains and hills, seas and rivers, trees and rainbows all die. Nothing in the material world is eternal.

When our material body dies in this world we become fully aware of our spiritual body and may instantly find ourselves in the Otherworld. Sometimes we may discover the Shining Realms before we have cast off our physical bodies. Many people have entered the Inworlds and returned with travelers' tales. These are called near death experiences ("N.D.E.'s") and whole libraries of books have been written about this phenomenon.

My first near death experience occurred at age five, the result of German measles followed by a high fever. I fell asleep and woke in a beautiful shining country. There were green rolling hills. Cool streams chuckled over bright stones, curling around the feet of the hills. Small groves of trees dotted the parkland and the air was like wine.

They came across the hills like comets to meet me. Tall, shining folk in glittering robes of light.

At that time I had never been given any religious training nor had I been exposed to Faery tales. I had no name for the place or for the people who dwell there, and so I called that land the Shining Country and the citizens the Shining People. During my stay among the Shining People, I was asked to make a decision – to return to this world and live in this body or to "die" in this body and be instantly reborn in another body. I understood I had work to do in this generation and needed to inhabit a physical body in the material world to accomplish those tasks.

My choice was to return to this body. The Shining One who was my closest friend "There," promised me he would always be near me in this and Otherworlds and that I could return to the Shining Realms whenever I wished. He has kept his word.

Because of this experience, I have never been afraid to die. I have never been terribly wretched when a friend dies. Of course, I feel sad when someone or something I love leaves this world. The sadness I feel is the grief of separation. If a friend moves far away I miss them, whether they have moved across the country or right out of this world, I miss them.

I know we shall meet again in the Summerlands. I know this because I have visited that Shining Country many times. Nothing we love is ever lost. All the good things we care about live on the Bright Realms.

Death, the cessation of the processes of life in the material of the body, comes to all things, including you and I. Spirit never dies.

Only the physical body dies. The spirit is eternal.

Dawning Forever copyright © 2003 by Tira Brandon-Evans, all rights reserved. Used with permission.

By Tira Brandon-Evans