Being born is as difficult as dying (Dying, 3)

My God, I'm always a bit allergic to insufficient fresh air, I have to choke quite quickly and You know my fear to suffocate. Now it seems to me that a baby -at some point becoming so big that he has to get out- is really having cramped and difficult times. You have already told something about the end of life, dying. But the beginning of life, the whole process of being born, is actually quite dramatically. So my question to you is: is the birth process not actually as difficult as the process of dying?

Being born is generally speaking as difficult as dying.

Like often in life beginning isn’t that easy at all.
Beginning with change.
Beginning with overcoming an addiction.
Beginning with being yourself as stout,  as gay, as an independent thinker.
Beginning with fighting against the regular social ideas as emancipated woman, as an atheist in a strict religious society, as a critic in a dictatorial country.
Beginning can be very difficult.

But beginning with life is really just as painful,  as confrontational, just as confusing, just as making insecure as dying is.

Take the foetus, safely vegetating in the womb.
There are, but we are assuming the ideal situation, no tensions. The mother's consciousness is 100% focused on the little one. In fact the last few weeks she has actually become the abdomen, the uterus with maximum love and attention and care for the little one.

But the little one has become big, the foetus has to go on. Signals are arising in the maternal body this huge special organ has to be divested. That this is not meant to continue, that this “innocent parasite” has requested enough from the body. Let's not get romantic about this. The body wants, no needs to repel this excessive proliferation in the body, it has to go away.

And this is for the foetus a very painful physical and emotional experience, it has to bugger off,  while it before was loved and cherished and cared for so much. A process of rejection has begun, it has to be mentioned in this manner. This is for the foetus drama number one.

Drama number two is to be squeezed through the channel of birth. People with claustrophobia will not be happy here. The foetus must squeezed out of the womb through  the canal of birth, which is stretched in a for the mother dramatically painful way. This pain, this anguish, this terrifying experience of the mother is the foetus experiencing in all its vulnerability and former security as a terrorist attack, so horrible, so oppressive, so painful, so strangling: these experiences -if it is lucky to be squeezed through the canal of birth for just a few hours- are intense for a small and vulnerable and helpless little being.

Drama number three is to have been born. First, the enormous anguish of the cutting of the umbilical cord and the need for breathing with not working lungs still full of amniotic fluid, but at the same time having lost the protective atmosphere and intimacy of the mother's body. The baby will breathe for sure,  the baby will get used to the autonomous independent life, certainly, but only when it feels something from the familiar smell and atmosphere of the parental body, the baby will fall asleep exhausted.

Overall, my son, it is true, being born is often as difficult as dying.

All babies and their mothers are blessed during childbirth.
 
My blessings to you all

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Dying is almost always horrible (Dying, 2)

My God, I am shocked really, again and again, how often people do have a hard deathbed. I was thinking really romantically about it. One grows old wisely, and passes  after a brief illness over to a better life. And what I see around me, people struggling with old age, being long-term sick and with pain and the loss of important functions often die suffocating.
I'm absolutely not afraid of death, but am I now very wary about dying. Would You like to comment on this issue?

It's true, death is horrific. The disease which afflicts the body and mind and is combined with a decline to dependence. The mind is affected by despair and pain. The sadness of leaving behind loved ones. A young mother who dies. An asthma patient dying suffocating. Someone with cancer in the bones, falling apart literally, breaking bones all the time and dying with horrible pains.
Even though the medical profession in some countries may still soften the pain and may accelerate death.

Life is a challenge, but dying is an ordeal.
God can not alter anything here. It is the downside of an earthly life in the making, in evolution.
It is the price paid by life to be allowed to exist.
It's the gruesome end of a life full of successes.
It's the flip side of the coin of physical life in all its beauty and success.
The prodigious growth of a foetus in the womb into an autonomous new earthly life.
The mysterious digestion creating with nutrition via nerves and blood vessels pliable muscles, clear-thinking brains and healing wounds.

My son, I could go on and on with mentioning all the marvels of the earthly body, that your question is becoming more insignificant, less and less important. Your question will be so relative that at any given moment you will call out against me

"Please stop it, I understand it, it is clear, Your message. I see that we people want to get of lightly. That we just only want the fun. We are getting a life of divine gifts, miraculous healings and impressive examples of ingenuity. The human body is the most magnificent of all instruments on Earth, see how pitifully still a robot operates! You've made your point. In the whole range of successes and wonders of human life it is not fair of me to extract just a tough case, increase it enormously and then mourning a lot about it. I rest my case. "

Meanwhile, the spiritual world is doing everything to support a human being during his deathbed with all the strength, endurance, love and peace that are just to forgive. And it is always temporary, afterwards the spiritual healing and a miraculous path in the spiritual world are waiting ahead.
Thank you for your sincere question.
All dying people on earth are very much blessed.

My blessings to you all

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During the process of dying God can become very close (Dying, 1)

I read the following text of a journalist who visited a hospice, "In the last The New Yorker is a long story about a nurse who accompanies men dying at home. I read that there are nurses who believe that working with dying men brings you the most close to God's presence on earth. You do not have to be religious to feel that sacredness lingering around bodies coming to a halt and - after completion - see the salvation on their faces. " *

Would You like to comment on this story?

We should not think romantically about dying. The evolution of man is not yet so advanced that people consciously leave their body without any suffering at the end of their live. This is meant to be.
There is a lot of horrible suffering what the dying and their beloved ones really learn to know. But ... ..this being said I'd love to go into the dying process and the presence of God.

Ideally, the dying has let go of his attachment with the matter, has retired from his loved ones. And is no longer concerned with the great passion of the ego, namely the outside world and what is in it for himself.

The dying has become silent, has lost hope, has lost his interest in performance and what others think of him. The dying has no more pretension and has lost his pride -the most important ingredient for the presence of God. Dying is a debunking process of vulnerability, you let strangers wash the buttocks and you are not able to do anything, you achieve nothing anymore, there is nothing to be proud of, the only thing left is the inner self.
Humility, meekness, modesty and vulnerability have emerged.
And then God is really happy to come.
Then God gets a chance.

Then the soul and its grandeur assert influence on the earthly personality.
Then sacredness and holiness show themselves.
Then salvation becomes manifest.
Then God will take Its place.
Then bystanders become quiet and humble.
Then the odor of sanctity comes into play.
Then comes the dying in the sphere of God.
All dying persons on earth are blessed.

My blessings to you all

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*Wim Boevink, Trouw, July 9, 2016

Vasil' Hopko (Slovak hero, 3)

Would You like to say something about the life of Bishop Hopko?

I love to, because Vasil 'Hopko has been a loyal and very brave man. All his life he has been  influenced by the spirits of faith and courage and love for Christ.

He was tortured and poisoned by the Communists, while he remained true to his faith. He refused to betray his oath of allegiance to Rome. He was especially filled with the desire to endure the trial, which was not to be endured by the Apostle Peter in his early years: to remain faithful to Christ in great danger of his own live.

For this is what Vasil'Hopko felt when he was pressed in prison to betray his oath to Rome, to betray his oath to the Catholic Church, to betray his oath to Christ. Vasil'Hopko persevered  under the most dreadful tortures. He has been tortured severely during a whole year, without yielding. And in his later prison years he was poisoned with arsenic, after which he has never been the same, but he has always remained faithful. And the Slovak people knew this and also by his example, they could keep one’s spirits up to continue to believe, despite everything. Bishop Hopko has by his courage nourished and supported faith in (Tjecho-) Slovakia.

He has suffered in his youth as well by the early death of his father and the departure of his mother to America in search of work. Oh, what did he crave for the love of his mother. What he has forsaken in the decision to become a priest in stead of following his mother to America! But a miracle happened: he had just decided with all his health problems to stay in Slovakia becoming priest, or his health problems disappeared like snow in the sun. This was one of the miracles he experienced in his earthly life.

So early he has forsaken his ego, his personal life, his intimate desires to serve the church, to serve Christ, to serve God.

After his imprisonment he has for four years campaigned for acceptance of the Greek-Catholic Church and was allowed for eight years to work for the rebuilding of the church. He did this with all the love and strength he had *, **.
Vasil'Hopko is very blessed.

My blessings to you all

* After his death he has been beatified.

**Bishop Hopko made his own the words of Bishop Gojdic:  "For me, it is not important if I die in the Bishop's Palace or in prison; what matters is entering into Paradise".

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