We often think about the Dead as beings who don’t belong here and therefore must be moved on. Indeed, those who haven’t crossed over and who haven’t walked their path toward Compassionate Being status will cause more harm to humans than not, even with the best of intentions.
However, if we stop thinking about them in the negative for a moment (that is, about where they don’t belong), we can meditate instead about what happens when they are situated where they do belong, in right relationship with the Universe.
As Eckhart Tolle said: life is not the opposite of death; birth is the opposite of death. Life continues through all of these phases, whether in this world or the next. Just as there are lives that we are meant to live here, so are there lives and purposes that await the Dead. So what is a good life for the Dead?
When we depossess a being or otherwise help a deceased person move out of this world (what’s called the Middle World in shamanic-speak), we are bringing them out of their limbo and revivifying them—setting them back onto the course of their own destiny. It’s the life that their natures (as nonphysical beings) are calling for. Just as the physical humans are charged with making Life (capital “L”) live in this world, the Dead have their own part to play in the after-life—either becoming Compassionate Ancestors who help their descendants live well or in another role where their consciousness fits in the larger Cosmos of the Seen or Unseen Worlds.
In a manner of speaking, we are all seeds for one another. The living are the seeds which germinate physical reality, being cooked by our experiences so we can grow into Spiritual Sprouts for the next world. (For more on these ideas and extraordinary languaging, read Martin Prechtel’s books.) The Ancestors cultivate us in this way—exposing us to whatever conditions—whatever extremes of heat and cold, abundance or lack, etc.—we need in order to finally crack open and activate the most precious part of ourselves. The deceased are the seeds of Ancestors-to-be; by helping them cross over and reconnect with the Divine, we are planting a garden of Compassionate Spirits who, when they are ready, may help us live good lives in the Middle World.
The Compassionate Ancestors, in turn, cultivate future generations as they inject our lineages with their accumulated experience and wisdom (the true blessings of the Ancestors) which sprout into life-giving attitudes and understandings that feed our wild and blossoming hearts.
Destiny is not a divine edict imposed upon us by a fierce and fearsome external deity. Destiny is the dictate of our own true natures…what happens when we unleash our True Selves (the Truth of Ourselves), and allow its wriggling, warm and untutored movement in this or another world. It’s Life feeling itself in its myriad forms.
When we release the Dead into THEIR lives, not only are we tending the field of life in this world (becoming being true gardeners and caretakers of the Middle World’s energy field), but we finally release the nutrients that our world has to offer to the next. When we die, we take our accumulated experiences, lessons and matured natures and bring them into the Spirit World. That is, we become the humus of experience and humanity that enriches the world of Spirit. The world of Spirit, in turn, nourishes physical humans through its guidance, unconditional love and wisdom. The more alive we become in this world, the richer our gifts when we return to the Other World. The richer our gifts, the greater the blessings the Other World bestows on our descendants. This is how we partake in the great cosmic cycles of life.