What you call “salvation” belongs to the time
before death.If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think ghosts will do it after?The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten —
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.~ From Kabir’s “The Time Before Death“
Stephen Levine quotes a portion of this poem in his book A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last. It stops me in my reading this morning.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think ghosts will do it after?
I’ve been breaking the ropes for my ancestors as best I can for some time now. It isn’t the dead that are burdened by all the things that capture and ensnare us. It’s the living we leave behind.
What would happen if we were to live now, present and grounded and authentically alive? What ropes would unwind from not only our own wrists but those of the people around us? What wounds would we never inflict upon others due to our own pain? What salve could our own healing provide?
Healing happens across time and dimensions. It expands like a soft light. It’s within reach, right beneath the pain, waiting to be found.