RAL:
Renee Levi
CP: Cathy Prins
RAL: So, Cathy, please all tell me all about the situation.
Draw me into it.
CP: Okay, well,
basically it’s about a friend of mine, Mary Kaye, who I’ve
known for four years. She comes from an Irish Catholic family, the oldest
of six children, one sister, Jane, and four brothers. Everyone has dealt
with their Catholic upbringing in very different ways. Mary Kaye has
always had a specific idea about how she wants to live her life, I think.
It was very important to her that she and her children live from an
authentic place. The rest of her family did not always embrace this.
Also, she lost her husband six years ago, to cancer as well, and it
was very clear in her mind that her children needed a male role model
and she kind of muscled her brothers into being the male role models
and there was a lot of resistance.
I met her three years ago. It
was shortly before she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the two
of us just hooked together on a spiritual level. I felt like she really
honored my experience with my spirituality and my understanding of energy
work and that sort of thing. A dear friend of mine introduced us. And
so, over the three years that she knew me we talked a lot about why
she thought she might be ill, what she thought she needed to do. A lot
of what came up was that she needed to let go and not try to control
everything in her life. And that was very difficult because she had
very clear ideas about what she wanted to do.
So, early on when she was first
diagnosed, she organized a healing evening on the beach with her closest
friends, those she felt would understand this concept. She felt strongly
about the power of a group, so on one level she began this process of
having group energy together back then. We blindfolded her, we carried
her down to the beach. She did nothing, she just received. We sang songs
to her, we put cream on her, we had smells that she could sort of relish
in, we brushed her hair. We were on the beach, which is one of her favorite
places.
There were probably eight or nine
women. So in addition to that healing group on the beach, we also went
back to her house, brainstormed, figured out what she needed to do in
terms of her work because she’s a single mom. We helped her get
together a schedule for her children to be watched while she was doing
her therapy, and that part in itself was very magical. Here these eight
women bustling around. We had all our children with us. There was no
arguing between the children. They would all go off and play together.
I mean, there were all these little mini experiences of what the climax
was on Thanksgiving when she actually died. So this was…it set
the tone, and there were several other situations where we gathered
together like this.
The next point was when I met
her in the hospital, just a few weeks before she died. She was leaving
the hospital to go home and then she was going to tell her kids, ages
10 and 13, that she was terminal. At this point, when I came in, she
sort of connected with me right away, despite how weak and ill she was
and told me that she really wanted me to keep track of things, that
she wanted to stay as conscious as possible about this process. She
wanted everybody to know that she was dying. She didn’t want to
be left out of the circuit in terms of hearing about things. She didn’t
want things to be decided for her, she wanted to be present for important
conversations like conversations about her children. So she wanted the
collective to start already at that point. This was probably the second
week in November, almost four years had passed since the time we brainstormed
with her. And we had similar times over the years.
Somewhere in the fall I got the sense that she had that awareness, that
maybe it wasn’t about physically getting better but that it was
about healing a bigger system. And I think that bigger system was her
family. I would say over that four-year period many of the family members
weren’t on the best of terms, there was a lot of anger and resentment.
Mary Kaye had her own ideas about how children should be raised and
her children were, I don’t know how to explain it, just undisciplined,
and you know, when you focus on the process of the authentic self, it
doesn’t always come in a nice, neat package. They had their own
opinions, they were struggling with the loss of their father –
two young kids – and Mary Kaye just felt that that process was
important to allow them to go through it.
RAL: So it might
be about healing a bigger system and her healing was not necessarily
only about her, so again it’s a collective thing.
CP: Yeah. Absolutely.
And what I have found, actually, is that for some reason I have drawn
a lot of Irish Catholic women into my healing practice and so I’ve
been very conscious that I think this is a generation of women who are
really determined to end the unconscious cycles that are in their families,
whether it’s sexual abuse or alcoholism, or whatever those pieces
are. And they’re saying, “I’m not going to pass this
on.” And so Mary Kay was definitely one of those people. I mean
she had alcoholism in her family. She was very vocal about that, that
it wasn’t something that was healthy. She still has brothers who
are struggling with that. I think that especially in the Irish Catholic…in
a lot of the heritages, but especially with the Irish…the drinking
is just part of…it’s normal, you know? And it’s normal
because it’s a piece that’s helped to cope with the pain
in that culture. And having several drinks every day is, with us, not
a drinking problem, that’s just what we do. But that’s also
the collective, “This is what we do.” And then, there’s
a lot of women in this generation who are saying, “That’s
not how I’m going to continue to raise my family.” And it’s
creating a lot of rift.
RAL: I think oftentimes
women in particular do sacrifice themselves with illness and with sort
of absorbing these dysfunctions of people around them. But I think what
feels really different about Mary Kay is that she was conscious of it
all the way and she was conscious of putting the energy back in the
group and healing the group before she left rather than simply absorbing
it…and dying.
CP: And you know…that’s
a very…I just tingle on that one. That’s very true.
RAL: She had an
awareness. She was a beacon for the rest of the people on a very conscious
level…
CP: Yes.
RAL: …not
just, “Oh by the way, now I’ve learned the lesson afterwards,
but it seems she knew it right from the beginning.
CP: Yes. Absolutely.
And she did. And that was the profound piece of it. How, even when she
was unconscious…it seemed to be unconscious, because a lot of
the time I felt that she was there but she wasn’t communicating
with us, she was sort of out of it…but even then…and even
now. When you get a group of people together now who know her, there’s
just…there’s a compassion and there’s an honoring,
and you stop and you say…you know, you don’t get into your
“wa, wa, wa, wa”. You’re like, oh, you know, and you
start to have an awareness of other people’s issues. The egos
just sort of slip out of the way. And I think that is really the profound
part about it. Yeah, and so, in the collective, while I helped to facilitate
it, I think that Mary Kaye definitely appointed me to that position.
And then it was really her that facilitated that collective consciousness
or resonance that you’re talking about.
RAL: So, back
to the hospital room, so she appointed you, really, in that place when
you visited her…?
CP: I think that’s
when she introduced me to the other players of the game. I connected
with her sister Jane the year before, briefly, but we got close quickly.
In the hospital I met her mother for the first time. That’s when
I was introduced to several of her brothers for the first time. The
first person who entered the room after I had gotten there was her mother…and
Mary Kaye had me sitting right next to her and she started to explain
to her mother how important I was to her, that I was like her best friend
and a sister to Jane, so, you know, she started to say, “Look,
this person is very important to me.” I mean a lot of times I
would think that if a friend comes into the hospital room and is sitting
there and then a mother walks in, it’s almost, “Mother come
here, sit next to my side.”… but she didn’t do that.
She really had me sort of scootch closer to her, invited her mother
in, but really made that very clear, that this was going on.
RAL: So this was
a kind of anointment or appointment?
CP: It definitely
feels like it. And then she would keep looking at me as different people
started walking into the room. She would sort of look at me and she
would give me signals…like her brother came in at one point and
it was the first time her brother had seen her in several weeks, so
she looked dramatically different and I felt the wave of shock sort
of hit him. And she sort of looked at me and she sort of motioned to
me, “You guys go, I’m gonna be here for my brother.”
And it was before the words came out, the energy…I saw the connection
between her and her brother. She sort of swirled us out of the room,
and I got it, you know. And later she sort of like, “Oh my God,
what did I just do? I just whooshed you out. Are you okay?” And
I said, “No, I totally got it”, you know, and I kept trying
to explain to her each step of the way that I got what was going on.
RAL: So it wasn’t
always verbal?
CP: It wasn’t
always verbal.
RAL: Sometimes
it was, but sometimes it was really on an energetic, on a feel level?
CP: Yes. And that’s
how I operate. And I think that…again, she sensed that early on
in our relationship. She saw how I operated in different groups and
how I just trust that energy without getting my ego into it and going,
“Oh, well, what about this and what about that?” You know,
I just…there was that understanding, that nonverbal understanding
with her on that.
The other sort of striking moment
was at the end of the day that day I got there…I got there on
Friday and I guess she was going home on Saturday. So Friday night her
sister, who is six years younger than her, and her brother Peter and
myself – the four of us – were in the hospital room and
we were trying to figure out how we were going to coordinate telling
her children that she was terminal, how we were going to deal with all
of the people who were going to find out that she was terminal…anticipating
a wave of people who would want to talk to her and say goodbye to her.
And she was just sort of going through the people who were important
to say goodbye to and then she said that she just had to say that everybody
else will have to live with not personally saying goodbye to me. So
we were trying to figure out a phone system where she could find out…like
a caller ID so she could see who it was. If she wanted to talk, if she
didn’t want to talk… We got into this, again, this very
literal, logistic thing.
And so the four of us were sitting
on the bed telling stories about the family and the energy around Mary
Kaye kept sort of morphing, like, from age three to age twenty to age
fourteen to age ninety. I mean, I was sitting the furthest away from
her and you could just really start to see her energy slipping out of
this concrete realm that we’re in.
RAL: Because of
the stories?
CP: I think because
of the stories. The stories were about her. Yeah, sometimes they coordinated
with the stories. I think there was a point where she was imagining
herself older and I guess actually before this she was starting to slip
in…you know she would start to go in…the closest I can describe
it is like lucid dreaming. And she would sort of slip out and I would
see her go and she’d come back and she would like report some
stuff to me. And she went there, and she said, “Oh, I just gave
you a gift, this box.” And I was like, “Well tell me about
it.” And, you know, some people would think it was the morphine
but it was really that she was sort of slipping into…uh, I don’t
know how to explain it…
RAL: You think
of it as really different realms?
CP: Yeah! Yeah.
RAL: Not the right
now physical plane, here and now, time and space?
CP: Well, the
best way I can describe it is in a theater when you are trying to portray
different time frames, you have scrims up. So when the light is shining
flat on the scrim, it looks opaque. And then depending on where you
put the light…you can have several scrims in a row.
RAL: What’s
a scrim?
CP: A scrim is
just a big woven piece of fabric that, depending on how the light passes
through it, you can see through it or not see through it. So, it can
sort of create a dream scene or you can have a scrim where the light
is shining on it and then it can go up and then the next scene is behind
it, or it can stay down, just depending on how you illuminate it.
I feel like all of those scrims
are always there in our lives. And then, depending on where the light
passes through, that’s what you see. And whether it’s future
or past or whatever, it’s not a linear thing. It’s that
all of those things are happening all at once.
And I think that when you are
hovering on that transition of death, all of the future is just as available
to you as the past and it all starts to sort of blur together. But it
was interesting, I think, to watch somebody who’s dying. Not only
does that stage have a scrim, but the person herself starts to become
more fluid. And, again, I’m sitting there observing this. Her
brother and sister weren’t really that aware of it but I was just
noticing how this energy was really just starting to become holographic,
almost.
RAL: Did you say
something to the group about that?
CP: I did! What
I first did is I was sort of noticing it and…again, this is a
first-time experience for me…so I said, “Mary Kaye, how
old are you right now? You feel like you’re about seventeen.”
And she said, “Sixteen”. She was totally with me on what
I was saying.
RAL: So specific.
Like sixteen, not seventeen!
CP: And that’s
Mary Kaye, very detail-oriented. And I explained to her, I said I sort
of felt her going back and forth. I said, “I even experienced
you as a ninety-year-old woman.” And she was sort of nodding and
agreeing. And when I was telling Jane and Peter about it, they weren’t
shocked by it. They were sort of fascinated by it. So I think on some
level…I mean, part of it is that they trust me and they trust
Mary Kay…but I think the space, again, allowed for them to entertain
the idea without putting the judgment in. I think it’s the judgment
of a situation that prevents the collective resonance to happen. I think
that the collective resonance wants to happen always and then, depending
on how strong the resistance is, I think that’s what prevents
us from feeling it.
RAL: The judgment
in a situation prevents the collective resonance.
CP: Yeah. And
the lack of safety. So…fear. I guess fear, judgment… And
so, somehow I had the ability to sort of facilitate less fear –
lower the fear – in the group, whether it was in a group that
was intellectually on the same level like in the spiritual healing group
on the beach or a small family unit.
You know I had Mary Kaye’s
trust. On some level I had Jane’s trust because we connected before.
With Peter I think there was just an innocent relationship he had with
Mary Kaye. I think he was probably the sibling who had the least amount
of mother/child relationship with an older sister. I think older sisters
sometimes become mother figures for a lot of the younger kids. And for
some reason, Peter did not ever feel that way, so they had a very pure
sibling relationship. So just me observing that and talking about my
observations allowed him to say, “Oh, she gets me. I can trust
her.” And, again, I think that’s how I’ve been able
to lower the resistance factor in that.
RAL: So lowering
of the fear was about trust.
CP: I think it’s
about trust. I think it’s about speaking the truth. And when you
hear the truth, you relax. And if somebody says something to you and
it doesn’t feel like the truth to you, whether it’s conscious
or unconscious, you say, “We’re not on the same playing
field here.”
You know, I think that when you grow up in a family and the family is
saying one thing and your gut is telling you something else. If those
things don’t match, then there’s no trust. And then you
either buy into that, you rebel against it, whatever, but I think children
either - whether there’s chaos in the family or whether there’s
harmony in a family - if the child’s perception of what’s
happening and what’s actually happening match, then there’s
health. So it’s not about making it perfect so that your kids
are happy, it’s about making it real. You know, if you’re
going through a trauma, then your kids need to know you’re going
through a trauma.
RAL: That really
touches me.
CP: Doesn’t
that make sense?
RAL: It feels
right, right now.
CP: Yeah.
RAL: So, you were
in that group with Mary Kaye speaking the truth. The two of you were
speaking the truth about what was happening for her. And you, probably,
would also…I’m just imagining this…you were also speaking
the truth about what was happening in the group.
CP: Yes.
RAL: So you were
a mirror. You were reflecting back…
CP: Exactly what
I was.
RAL: …what
was happening for them…because of the trust level…
CP: Yes.
RAL: …and
the lack of fear. So their ability to absorb it and accept it…
CP: Yes.
RAL: You were
simply reflecting back what was their own truth.
CP: Exactly. That’s
exactly right. I felt like a mirror. That’s exactly what I felt
like. Yup. And because it happened in pieces…so there was history.
There were family members who I think Mary Kaye felt would get it, and
then we slowly worked toward the ones who were a little more reluctant
to allow the process, you know?
RAL: So in a way
it was concentric circles. Maybe that’s not a good image but you
were, it seems, expanding…
CP: Yeah, we were
expanding the space. We were allowing the safety to become stronger
as it spread out.
And then I think the next piece,
again because Mary Kaye orchestrated it, we told her children that she
was terminal. That was just with Jane and myself and her two kids. The
way Mary Kaye wanted it set up was she wanted Jane and I nearby but
she didn’t want us anywhere within earshot of how she told her
children. So she wanted that to be private, just between the three of
them. She had us leave the house and she signaled us when she wanted
us to come back so, you know, I think she really wanted her children
to feel the one-on-one, that they were really special, and they were
hearing it from her and it wasn’t modified for anybody else’s
ears. It was just for them. And then we were brought in sort of as the
support, to absorb the aftermath of hearing that because, you know,
she’s very weak and sick. And so we came back. So then there were
the five of us together experiencing the collective loss. And there
was comfort in that…relief. So that piece, she orchestrated too.
They ended up moving her to her
sister’s house where her kids were going to live and where she
was going to die. They did hospice at her sister’s house. And
Thanksgiving was just…I mean, how do you get a family together
who’s not really completely in synch? You know, the timing was
perfect. Thanksgiving meal at her sister’s house, which could
accommodate her whole family. Their sister is sick. You know, you just
make plans to be there.
And then that’s where Jane
really sort of picked up…you know Mary Kaye had always been the
one to say, “You know, we’re having a family meeting, we
have to get together” or whatever and Mary Kaye wasn’t in
that position anymore. So really Jane, with my support from the outside,
had the strength and the courage, basically, to say, “We need
to have a prayer circle for Mary Kaye”, which was kind of untraditional
for their family to do but she knew that…it was very clear that
Mary Kaye would have expected it or wanted it.
And then to tie it in she also
had a priest come to the house. The first run was a little more traditional,
a priest led it. We were all holding hands, and we sang a little Latin
prayer about peace. That was Thanksgiving morning.
And then Thanksgiving afternoon…
It was after dinner and we all gathered together in her room and that’s
when we had the larger prayer circle and we started off similar to the
one with the priest. We sang the song of peace and then we had a talking
stick that we passed around. And there were probably twelve children
there between ages five and eighteen, along with all of the adults,
and we all sort of all started off…you know, a couple people said
what are we thankful for, what it is about Mary Kaye that we like, that
touched us, or whatever. Everyone was sort of safe and I kind of blast
in with my (laughter) deep heartfelt story that brought everyone to
tears, which was basically that I felt that Mary Kaye had incredible
courage. As much as she hated anytime anyone said she had courage. She
said, “I’m just living my life!” So she didn’t
see it as a courageous thing but that she allowed us all to be together
with her. I said, you know, all of the relatives in my family in the
past were diagnosed with lung cancer or whatever and, basically, disappeared
for three years until they died. I mean, we weren’t allowed to
see them…and I said, “And I basically wanted to reflect
what an amazing gift Mary Kaye was allowing us all to share in by being
present as participants in this process.”
And then slowly everyone started
to get a little deeper with his or her comments. I mean everyone’s
sort of in the room feeling like they’re going to be on the spot,
and then when they found out everyone was just going to speak if they
wanted to… But by the end every single person in the room had
spoken. Except for one brother, her brother who was born right after
her. Physically he had taken on the flu and he was in there for a few
minutes and then he left. He was there for a very short amount of time.
And even at the funeral he was resisting the process. And, you know,
it affected him physically and emotionally. But everyone else, her mother,
her father who had Alzheimer’s and was taken out of the hospital
and brought there…and he was rubbing her arm. One of the brothers
said later that she had to know it was him because he always did that,
he always sort of rubbed the kids’ arms.
And then…the most profound
collectiveness, the resonance that you saw was amongst the children.
One child would say something and then another would say a similar thing
but each time a child spoke - maybe two or three times - each time they
said the words, even if they were words that were already said, you
could just feel it becoming their own. You know, it wasn’t necessarily
that the words organically came out of them, but once the words were
heard then they could speak them and they were their words. Does that
make sense?
RAL: Well, it
feels to me like progressively they were putting more of themselves
into the circle.
CP: Exactly.
RAL: The words
weren’t important, they were the vehicle…
CP: Yes! That’s
exactly right. That’s exactly what I’m saying. And then
even…you could feel where the resistance was. There were a few
people on the outskirts who weren’t going to speak and then there
was this really precious moment when the five-year-old daughter of Jane’s
noticed that one of her uncles hadn’t said anything and she just
walked up to him and handed him the stick. It’s like how do you
refuse a five-year-old? It was almost like that was the courage that
he needed to participate in that group. And, so yeah, in that sense
it wasn’t always easy to get that collective, but by the end,
it was amazing.
RAL: What did
it feel like to you, physically or energetically, when that happened?
If you had to describe a particular area of the body that you were sensing
more than others…?
CP: Well, I guess
the first thing that I felt was the energy was sort of hovering up…like
in the head, you know, sort of high up. And even in the room I would
say that the energy was sort of…it wasn’t grounded…it
was all sort of bouncing off the walls a little bit and, from an emotional
standpoint, it was probably not directed. Sort of buzzing around…up.
And then each time somebody had
sort of dropped into their…really speaking a truth and getting
a little bit more connected with Mary Kaye…then you sort of sensed
that everyone hooked into that. And then it would come down a notch.
And at the end we ended up singing again. Ali, her daughter, wanted
to sing Silent Night for her, which was one of her favorite songs. It’s
something that we all know, especially in an Irish Catholic family,
it’s something that you’ve sung over and over again. And
then to speak to words mother and child, you know, all of a sudden it
just became palpably connected to her.
So I think the place I felt it
the most, when all of us were speaking and things were sort of flowing,
was right through my heart and out my arms. So it all sort of hovered.
Maybe like my heart and my solar plexus. Like that’s the area
that I really felt that we all connected. I think that the concentrated
area for everybody in the room was really through their heart and solar
plexus.
RAL: Were there
any other comments afterward?
CP: No, that was
just my own sense.
RAL: So that’s
where you were connected with one another and her.
CP: Yes.
RAL: So it was
this sense of ‘coming down’. Maybe like authenticity. When
you drop to that level of the heart that’s…that’s
real in a certain way…?
CP: Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
RAL: And you’re
kind of dropping down… It’s interesting. Did the voices
sound different to you in the beginning and at the end…closer
to the end? Did they actually lower in pitch?
CP: (Pause) Lower
in pitch? Probably slower in delivery…you know? Just like there
was more time. There wasn’t a feeling of it getting rushed out
like, you know, there it is. Like you could actually allow yourself
to have the experience and then share it as opposed to like going [sound
and gesture]…here it is.
RAL: There was
more silence then…slower…
CP: Mm-hmm…
RAL: And more
space in between…?
CP: Yes!
RAL: More silence.
And probably people were more comfortable with the silence as time went
on.
CP: Yes, and I
mean at the very beginning people were thinking, “Well, we’re
in here, but we may have to leave shortly”. But by the end I think
that everyone lost track of time. I think people didn’t know whether
they’d been in there for twenty minutes or they’d been in
there for two hours…but the urgency of people needing to leave
totally diminished. Everyone just sort of lingered at the end.
RAL: Mary Kaye
was involved in this? Was she was present there, or was she in and out
again?
CP: She was there.
My experience with her was that she was feeling it, receiving it. At
that point she was not interacting with us at all. Her eyes were virtually
closed, yeah, and there wasn’t a lot of response. At the very
end – not at the end of this but the end of the night, cause people
sort of trickled out after this - one of her brothers came up to her
and said goodbye to her and that’s when she… I think the
word goodbye must have triggered something in her and she opened her
eyes and she really tried to connect with everybody. And then everybody
who was still in the house came back to her and we sang to her again
and she hummed along with us. But I think while all of us were in the
room she really received. And we had talked about this before she died,
that this whole process really needed to be about her receiving, and
I think the only way that she really received was to not engage, you
know? She often overextended herself.
RAL: So you really
gave her, ultimately, what she needed in life. You gave her the ability
to receive and she really did.
CP: Yeah. And
she allowed it to happen, too, you know? I mean that’s the piece…you’re
right, I don’t think everybody in the room really understood how
profound an experience it was. How much she really received in that
place …I mean, she had it all, she had everyone she loved in that
family in that room with her on that day. And it was two days later
that she finally died. And with an incredible peace, too.
RAL: Peace. That’s
so beautiful.
CP: It is really
beautiful.
RAL: Beautiful?
I mean, it’s not so sad…although….
CP: Yeah, there’s
definitely sadness there but there’s not anguish around it….at
the eulogy when Jane spoke she said, “I’m standing up here
without pain. Not because I’m out of touch, but because Mary Kaye
gave me this huge gift to transition with her and I have total peace.”
And her children, too, are so at peace. Not that there won’t be
difficult times and each stage that they go through is going to be difficult
for them without either parent but there’s no question in either
one of their minds that her love is there for them at any time. And
you can’t pretend like that’s there. You just know it.
RAL: Do you think
that the healing effect will stay with that family?
CP: I think so.
I mean, I think people will sort of start closing off and going into
their shells on a certain level, but I think that especially with Mary
Kaye’s children, the one thing that Jane keeps saying is how emotionally
available they are. And that’s a very new experience for Jane.
I mean Jane, even herself, is not always emotionally available, and
Ross, Mary Kaye’s son, really is allowing her to stay in that…
And the brothers have started to pull away a little. But, you know,
when you have that amount of expansion, you’re going to have contraction.
So it’ll be interesting. You know it’s really very similar
with the body. Somebody can have incredible expansion in their body
and feel really relaxed and open and then they can come back and say,
“Oh, I feel as hard as I did.” But as soon as you have the
vehicle…you know, as soon as somebody touches you…then you
open much quicker. So I think the fact that they were all in that expansive
place means that it will be available to them. You never go back. You
can’t go back to that other place, especially in such a safe and
open place. You may not be the one to initiate it, but if you’re
given a situation you will open to that place again.
RAL: Tell me something,
Cathy. What value has your experience of this had for your life or your
work? What is the meaning for you?
CP: I guess the
piece for me is that it allows me to really trust what I’ve always
known. It’s really the first opportunity that I’ve had to
fully put myself out there without judging myself and have this profound
experience unfold. And it’s also given me a lot of faith in the
human condition. That despite all of our differences and our resistances,
the piece that - and I think that’s what I carry in common with
Mary Kaye – is both of us strongly want connection and that on
some level that really is a yearning that we all have. You know, some
of us decide that it’s not worth the sacrifice. We all just have
a different value on what it would take to get it. And some people say
that it’s worth everything. Other people say that it’s not
worth as much as something else.
RAL: And what
would it take to get it?
CP: Like a universal,
collective?
RAL: For all of
us. Just for all of us as human beings. Wonderful what you said about
we each put different values on what it would take to get it so some
of us decide not to try, but what do you think it would take for me
and you to have that level of connection on an ongoing basis?
CP: I think it
would take the tolerance of walking through life with our pain and fear
in a conscious place. I think that especially in this culture we spend
a lot of time avoiding pain, taking it away, we put a really high emphasis
on euphoria. And that if we can understand that the real aliveness is
on both ends of the scale, that the pain and loss is really not as unbearable
as we imagine it is. I mean, that was clear, you know, to have these
twelve children sitting at this dying woman’s side and really
being okay with it. I think that’s our biggest fear, I mean how
do you…I don’t want to expose my children to…
RAL: Loss…in
general.
CP: You know?
And to understand that what you’re losing isn’t really a
matter of having or not having, it’s about the transforming into
something else you need to accept. I don’t think any of those
children feel like they’ve lost Mary Kaye. And you would think…especially
her own children…that that would be just tormenting them. And
it’s not. Because I think energy just transforms. And we know
that from a scientific standpoint, that you can’t destroy matter.
Matter just changes form. And by experiencing the full cycle of life,
then you can trust that piece. I think it’s fear - fear of pain,
unknown, change, whatever. I think that really the underlying thing
is fear of loss.
RAL: This is really
important stuff. You really ought to put some more time into…
um, organizing…this is really important stuff.
CP: Yeah. I feel
like that’s definitely what I need to do.
RAL: ‘Cause
I’m feeling it now and I think that the underlying themes…I
mean I think you could go deeper on this, too…because you said
things before about fear stopping…the ego thing and the melting
of the ego…what keeps the ego here, what keeps those boundaries
around it…well, it’s fear and lack of trust. But then if
you go to a level beyond that, what is it that we’re fearful of?
Ultimately, I think, loss.
So if you can break the cycle
of the fear of the loss, …yes, it has tremendous implications
for this particular situation…you know, facing death, which we
all have to do…but then in a bigger sense, in terms of collective
resonance and life…it has great ramifications, too, for the possibility
of letting go of the ego so that you can experience the group love,
the collective resonance.
