LIVE AND LET DIE

There is a song from “before my time” by the great singer Paul McCartney called and emblazoned with the phrase “live and let die.”

Pithy lines like this can cross your mind a million times without changing meaning; it is as you experience different levels of life that the meaning of the very same phrase you’ve heard over and over again changes.

When I was younger—say 7/8 years young, it meant to be peaceful. Don’t get in the way of what is meant to happen. For example, don’t fight when an ‘ok’ will do—mostly to not create drama between my parents or don’t upset my teammates.

When I was a little bit older—say 13/14, it meant be independent. I found a lot of pride in letting friends and peers around me be who they were as I found myself, just enough aloof to not mold with anyone whose energy I didn’t like.

At say 20/21, it meant be stoic. Strip the situation of all emotional charge or judgment, and just keep going. Looking back, this was kind of my way of just “plowing through” whatever I was facing because the emotions were misplaced and misunderstood, maybe?

At 25/26, it means be alive and rise above. Whatever was and whatever is, choose happiness. Choose however you want to feel because the past has no bearing on the present. It is entirely in my control to choose how I want to feel in any and every moment I am here.

Today, at 32, it means be light. I mean this is multiple ways: 1) be light as in don’t carry the past with you, be light as in don’t let a single moment or chain of moments drag you down, be light as in remain free and keep climbing and soaring; and 2) be light as in radiate your essence always and everywhere, unconditionally yet with and by discernment, be light as in be the authentic version of yourself in every situation, be light as in be the baby and the innocent Self you always have alive and kicking, everywhere.

It’s interesting to follow this journey through my life, and to recognize that the common thread in my adaptations and wisdom-pulling (yes, a few teeth were pulled, too—wisdom teeth), is: a pure intention to thrive.

That’s what we ALL HAVE.

Yet, we get cathected (when our mental and emotional energies get tied up in a person, place, or object) in past moments or moments that are trying to die inside of us yet we cling to for dear life (now there is a paradox!).

In the past few weeks, I’ve battled a nasty virus that has affected me on all levels. Mind, body, spirit.

I’ve spent the majority of the time laying down in misery, breathing, taming nausea and headaches in places in my brain I didn’t even know I could feel. Placating the buzzing madness of my brain that had an endurance I didn’t even know.

But, everything passes. That’s the Nature of Life.

And, here I want to share this beautiful passage from one of my most-cherished books and revered writers in my Life, Women Who Run With The Wolves by Christina Pinkes, Ph.D.:

The Life/Death/Life Nature Song

“What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more Life?"

What do I know should die, but am hesitant to allow to do so?

What must die in me in order for me to love?

What not-beauty do I fear?

Of what use is the power of the not beautiful to me today?

What should die today?

What should live?

What LIFE am I afraid to give birth to?

If not now, when?”

In this song prayer contemplation prose, Pinkes shares the energy of “live and let die” perfectly. That’s what a poem, a song, a dance, something non-verbal and that comes from a place that has already embraced that it could never be explained perfectly, can do. It’s magic.

The ‘non-beauty’ she is referring to is everything we don’t like, find ugly, find unnecessary, inconvenient, and just downright annoying.

So coming back to the ‘being affected on all levels’…

It’s natural. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. And still it drives me up the walls of my own body and brain.

I feel like a raging animal when I am sick. Wanting to bound up stairs and across trails, swim through oceans and rocky rivers, chase down bulls and horses…anything extremely wild and in nature. That’s part of me screaming out for freedom. Yet the immune system and nervous system need to rest. It’s experiencing fight-flight at the same time as rest-digest. Complete confusion for the system. No wonder it feels like an uprising within.

I know you, too, have felt this way.

Wanting one thing yet needing to do another thing.

It sucks.

But, the way in which Life flows into more Life is through Death.

And so, my lesson here is, when my body is fighting something, to ask: “what needs to die?” More aptly: “what needs to die in me in order for me to love?”

Because loving is living, this I know.

Many of us fear Death but it is a natural occurrence in Life. On a macro and on a micro level. Things are dying everyday. But how often do you consider what is rotting inside of you or trying to die inside of you for your greater good, for your next level of evolution, for your luminescence to speak out loud? And where does it lie in your arsenal of power to perform the kind act of a cue de gras to slough off that idea, that fantasy, that projection, that inauthentic version of yourself go.

Shit it out. Cough it out. Breathe it out.

Naturally, allow the past to go.

As one of my teachers, Joe Dispenza, says, in encouraging the listener to let go of old beliefs no longer serving them: “what did it ever do for you anyways?”

Coming back to Estes and her brilliant insights, she recognized that in the psyche, we all have a nemesis, and if we don’t open our eyes to that force, get to know it and how to relate to it, we will forever be in a battle with it convincing our Egos that we are winning. This is cathecting at its worse. Devoting…pouring, our energy into trying to convince ourselves that we are on top and in control when we are not. It’s a waste of energy. No forward or backward, just caught in an illusion.

Estes writes:

All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naïveté, inexperience, or foolishness.

So, retreating to my opening remark: as you experience different levels of life, the meaning of an unchanging phrase changes.

As you mature, grow, and become a more emboldened Self, the meaning of the same challenge is channeled in new directions.

Because, your psyche becomes stronger.

Estes describes the natural predator of the psyche as:

-a captor
-a dark man
-innate
-a specific and incontrovertible force which must be memorized and restrained (Estes, 43)

We fear this force because we don’t acknowledge it.

Once we do, we recognize that we are bigger than it. Like the monsters under the bed as a kid.

If you are afraid and remain afraid to look at the ghosts inside of your own soul, they will control you. I guarantee it.

But, if you can look at the predator in your own psyche, and if you can bravely ask the question within: “what needs to die in me in order for me to love? (again, synonymous with live), then you can live again.

Otherwise, you go on struggling, gnawing, neighing, reaching outside of you for an answer or solution when you could have just looked within and said “ok, you can go.”

I dare you to bravely ask this question to yourself today: “what must die in me in order for me to love?”

Let it go.

Peace always,

Abby Shaye