The Greatest Gift You Can Give to the Dying
“The greatest gift you can give the dying is to let them die in peace—not thinking that they must “hang on, or continue to suffer, or worry about you at this most crucial passage in their life. So this is very often what has happened in the case of the man who says he’s going to live, believes he’s going to live, even prays to live: that at the soul level, he has “changed his mind.” It is time now to drop the body to free the soul for other pursuits. When the soul makes this decision, nothing the body does can change it. Nothing the mind thinks can alter it. It is at the moment of death that we learn who, in the body-mind soul triumvirate, is running things. All your life you think you are your body. Some of the time you think you are your mind. It is at the time of your death that you find out Who You Really Are.
Now it happens often that the soul makes a decision that it is time to leave the body. The body and the mind—ever servants of the soul—hear this, and the process of extrication begins. Yet the mind (ego) doesn’t want to accept. After all, this is the end of its existence. So it instructs the body to resist death. This the body does gladly, since it too does not want to die. The body and the mind (ego) receive great encouragement, great praise for this from the outside world—the world of its creation. So the strategy is confirmed.
Now at this point everything depends on how badly the soul wants to leave. If there is no great urgency here, the soul may say, “Alright, you win. I’ll stick around with you a little longer.” But if the soul is very clear that staying does not serve its higher agenda—that there is no further way it can evolve through this body—the soul is going to leave, and nothing will stop it—nor should anything try to.
The soul is very clear that its purpose is evolution. That is its sole purpose—and its soul purpose. It is not concerned with the achievements of the body or the development of the mind. These are all meaningless to the soul. The soul is also clear that there is no great tragedy involved in leaving the body. In many ways, the tragedy is being in the body. So you have to understand, the soul sees this whole death thing differently. It, of course, sees the whole “life thing” differently, too—and that is the source of much of the frustration and anxiety one feels in one’s life. The frustration and anxiety comes from not listening to one’s soul.”
- Conversations with God, Book 1
