A Joyous Perspective on Life and Death: Dying to be Loved.

 

Have you ever wondered what a 'will to live really means? Will is something attuned to an urge, a drive. A life urge is an alignment toward health, appreciation, love, intimacy, creativity, honesty, and passion. Conversely, a death urge is a withdrawal into the wound pool, where younger personality parts feel rejected by others and, most importantly, unloved by ourselves. In a death urge, we can struggle with the will to live, descending into sadness, illness, depression, and hopelessness.

On a small level, it could be said that you alternate between life and death urges each day you are alive.

 Even one negative inclination could be thought of as a tiny death urge. Awareness is the key. When you look for the deeper roots of your unconscious desire towards decline, you can change direction from self-negation to self-love. 

Most of us have at least one aspect of ourselves that has not felt deeply seen, loved, or accepted by others.

When we perpetuate this outer rejection on an inner level, an unconscious part of ourselves might be in so much pain that it wants to die. And while a death urge does not necessarily mean we will actually die, we can become ill, depressed, or suffer in ways that make daily living difficult. 

And, a death urge is not always predictable. This is because the soul has healing methods that you might sense as a choice when you meet a seemingly insurmountable health issue far beyond our conscious decision-making process. How many stories have you heard of someone being 'miraculously healed' even when all medical science stated they were on the way out?

I witnessed a close friend meet this recently. They shared with me that they could sense their body telling them they could slip into the urge of death. But something in them shook its head no, and they decided to work against the urge and choose life, not for their family or anyone else in the world, but for themselves.

And then, mysteriously come back more vibrant than before. 

They realized that those parts of themselves that wanted to give up and die longed to be loved, not by that outside of them, but by them. I think they found the truth about our purpose in life, which is to be vibrantly ourselves. To have the courage and dedication to live our truth, even when we are facing rejection. Your spouse/partner, family, culture, or religion might reject, deny, ignore or criticize who your need to be or what you need to express. But you can stand in your truth and choose to be here anyway.

Most of us have experienced the inevitable gaps in love and connection as children.

But no one tells us we all have the job of learning to love ourselves unconditionally when we are adults. In fact, this is often called 'selfishness,' 'self-centeredness,' and even horribly misnomered 'Narcissism.' When we face down our death urge, we realize that as adults, no matter how much we long for perfect love from other struggling humans, we will not be able to receive it unless we learn how to love ourselves first. And, when we do not know how to unconditionally love ourselves, we have to use our intuition to find a way.

Connecting to a spiritual support system dramatically accelerates our ability to re-bond to our inner younger selves and find unconditional love.

In my personal experience, I have had to ask for spiritual help to love all of myself. I believe loving all of ourselves involves inviting the "higher help" we disconnected from during past hurts or traumas. When we ask for spiritual help with self-love, we can reach such profound states of inner embrace; we might wonder why we ever ignored and rejected parts of ourselves in the first place.

Take some time to get quiet, get centered, and get connected to yourself with the help of your Higher Power. You might find they have been holding your hand all along, but now you can learn how to squeeze it. 

Love

Joy