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A Sacred Journey
June Michael
Sometimes we have to stop and look back over the past to see what we have learned in order to move forward. January 16, and September 11, of 2001, will forever be imprinted in my consciousness. I faced my own personal challenge as well as a universal one. On January 16, my sixteen year old son, Antoine Aparicio who had multiply disabilities made his transition after a yearlong illness. On September 11, I mourned with the rest of the nation the transition of thousands of innocent people who lost their lives in the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City and a section of the Pentagon.
On that same day, I picked up the book I had written, The Path to Truth: A Spiritual Guide to Higher Consciousness, and read the passage where I describe how “Death is a shift in consciousness that when we let go of the physical body our consciousness is still intact.” Then I read a part of The Bhagavad-Gita, the sacred text of Hinduism, which states, “The soul neither dies nor is it born.” I knew that I believed in life after death and reincarnation, but I needed to be reminded of God’s laws. I was faced with the transition of my son and thousands of other souls.
I was in pain. I felt like pieces of my soul had left me not once but twice. I knew to be healed, my soul needed to be whole again. I went looking for those pieces.
My sacred journey started with the ritual of water, crying. I cried a river. Someone said to me, “Don’t cry, be strong.” In the Healing Wisdom of Africa, Malidoma Patrice Some says, “One of the things all humans have in common is loss, be it the loss of loved ones or the loss of dreams, be it the loss of a job or a relationship. In all of theses situations, water rituals are necessary.”
Tears heal. It is a way for the body to respond to the build up of emotions. Grief allows us the time to reflect upon life and heal. A piece of my soul returned to me as I released the tension created by the physical, emotional, and mental separation from my son.
I received a letter from a former coworker who experienced the loss of her daughter in a terrible car accident. She recommended grief therapy. A bereavement support group is a sacred tribe and a safe place to grieve. You learn that you are not alone; neither is your loss unique. In The Art of Happiness, by His Holiness The Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, the Dalai Lama tells the following story:
In the time of the Buddha, a woman named Kisagotami suffered the death of her only child. Unable to accept it, she ran from person to person, seeking a medicine to restore her child to life. The Buddha was said to have such a medicine. Kisagotami went to the Buddha, and asked if he had such a medicine that will restore her child. The Buddha replied that he did know of such a medicine but he would need certain ingredients to make it. He instructed her to bring him a handful of mustard seed. Before she set out to procure it, he added that the mustard seed must come from a household where no child, spouse, parent, or servant had died. Kisagotami searched everywhere but she could not find any household where the Angel of Death had not visited. When she returned to the Buddha without the mustard seed, he said. “You thought that you alone had lost a son, the law of death is that among all living creatures there is no permanence.
Another piece of my soul returned when I experienced the support of my sacred tribe. During the month of September, the nation was warned of other possible threats. I kept looking over my shoulder for the Angel of Death. Would he or she come again so soon? It was through meditation that I learned my most valuable lesson about death. We are not in control of the wheel of life or death. When it is time for the soul to rest from the planet of physicality, the Angel of Death helps that soul off the wheel of life. We fear death because we don’t understand the law of nature.
I contemplated on the law of cycles. I realized that we are made of the same energy as a rose. Like a rose that blooms in the summer and dies in the winter, we also go through the cycle of change. I knew deep within my soul that my son still spiritually existed. My belief in the divine laws of God sustained me. I moved through another phase of healing and one more fragment of my soul returned to me.
Facing the fear of death helped me to shift my perception about it. I learned that we have to accept that death, however it comes, is a part of life. It means transformation not finality. It is truly comforting to know that the spirit of my son and the spirit of others that departed from this plane of consciousness live on.
Death also teaches us about life. The biggest lesson that we have to learn is to live in the now, let go of the past and not worry about the future.
I imagine my son and the other souls--- as so beautifully stated in a Hallmark card I received--- “stepping onto a shore and finding it heaven; taking hold of a hand and finding it God’s hand; breathing new air and finding it celestial air; feeling invigorated and finding it immortality; passing from stormy tempest to an unknown calm; waking and finding home.”
My soul is whole again. This does not mean that I am grief free. I still succumb to sadness and tears. And that’s ok, because tears heal and grief takes time. | 
