Saturday is Prose & Poetry Day here on the blog, a time to take a moment once a week to relax the mind, open the heart, and access the soul through the gift of prose from one of the many books of The New Spirituality, and through the poetry of m. Claire, author of the forthcoming volume, Openings.
This week’s prose…an excerpt from Home with God…the excerpt refers to a letter that I received two years ago, and my reply…both of which were published in the book…

Hello, Neale…My name is Maureen, I am 49 years old. I lost my fiancé six weeks ago due to a massive heart attack. He was never sick, always had check-ups, no medical problems at all. To say the least, I am devastated.
I read in the CwG books that we choose our earthly life situations. I assume that means our deaths also. I times I feel angry with my fiancé for leaving me. It took me 40 years to find him, we had a wonderful relationship, very easy-going, caring, loving, and humorous.
I am at times paralyzed. This is not my typical behavior. So, just as I assume he has chosen his death, have I chosen this situation for myself—or am I just part of his model of life? Please help me with any understanding that you have.
Sincerely, Maureen Leeds
This is my reply…
My Dear Maureen,
Please hear me at the depth of your soul when I tell you how sorry I am that this has occurred in your life. I do not want to give you “easy answers” here that make it all sound so simple and make you wonder why any of this should be a problem…
Maureen, this IS a problem, and a huge sadness, and you have every right to feel the way you are feeling, which is angry and sad and confused and frustrated and searching for answers.
The first thing that I want to advise is…

that you allow yourself to have all the feelings that you are having, without trying at any level to control or regulate or limit or restrict them. Just have your feelings and let them be what they are from moment to moment.
It is remarkable that you should present me with this question today, because I am just now bringing through my next CwG dialogue book, called Home with God in a life that never ends. And in that book I was just now exploring this idea of the soul choosing when it is going to leave the body and return Home.
And yes, it is true that in this latest CwG book, as in all the others, God is telling us that nobody dies at a time or in a way that is not of his or her own choosing. Yet God also makes it clear that this may not be a conscious choice, but may have been chosen at a level of awareness to which only the Soul has access.
If this is the case, it would mean that your fiancé did not choose at a conscious level to die when he did. At that level, his death may have been as much a surprise to him as it was to you. I suspect that it was. I do not believe that your fiancé consciously chose to leave you.
It is true in my awareness that sometimes the Soul chooses things at a subconscious or a superconscious level that it would never choose at a conscious level, and that it does this in order to fulfill its Larger Agenda. Dying nearly always falls into this category. Very few people choose to die when and where and how they do, consciously. I believe that Christ did. I believe that the Buddha did. I believe that other souls have done so, but I believe that this circumstance is very rare.

Try, therefore, not to be too angry with your fiancé, but rather, allow yourself to direct your anger toward the circumstance which took him away from you just as you were really beginning to enjoy your life together. I deeply understand and appreciate how devastated you are, and as I said, you have a right to be.
In terms of understanding all that has happened, however, I believe that it is possible that one of the goals of the soul of your fiancé was to experience itself in Perfect Union and Wonderful Relationship, after many attempts in this lifetime, and many attempts in previous lifetimes as well. I believe that your fiancé was a gift to you—and that you were an even more extraordinary gift to him. You were what he, too, had been searching for.
I believe you entered his life as part of a “contract” or “agreement,” allowing him to experience himself, at last, as much, much more of Who He Really Is. I believe that he felt more “himself” with you than with anyone else he was ever with. Not only in this lifetime, but, perhaps, in many, many lifetimes.
This may all be a little hard to take, Maureen, on a human level—so I am going to ask you to see if you can “jump” to a very high spiritual level to understand what I am going to say next: I believe it is possible that your fiancé died of happiness.
You are right, Maureen, he never did have a seriously ill day in his life. He was in good condition, he did have his check-ups regularly, etc., and there was no earthly reason for him to die so suddenly. There may, however, have been a spiritual reason.
He may, quite simply, have finally finished his earthly agenda—with your help; with the assistance of you, the Friendly Soul with the specific intention of providing him that last assistance so that he could return Home, and then move forward with his evolution.
You showed this wonderful man, Maureen, just how wonderful relationship could be, and just how wonderful HE could be inside a relationship. As I said, Maureen, I believe that your relationship created a context within which he could have an experience of himself unlike any he had ever had before. I will go further. I am willing to bet that he actually told you this. I am sitting here believing that he actually said this to you in so many words—that he never experienced himself before the way he experienced himself with you.
And so, Maureen, your fiancé left his body suddenly, gloriously celebrating what he had found and what he had finally experienced of himself: the fullness of Who He Is.
The great sadness that you are being asked to bear is all part of the enormous, unspeakably wonderful and spiritually generous gift that you have been invited by Life to give this very special “other” (which is really just another part of you) so that you, also, may know Who You Really Are.
For your fiancé gave you a treasure as well (CwG says: “All true benefits are mutual”), which is the knowledge that you are capable of giving, receiving, and experiencing a wondrous love in human from—something which you had seriously begun to doubt before he came along. His intention, then, was to give you back to yourself. And this he did.
And so, the Divine Purpose for your relationship has been served and was completed in Divine Form and with Divine Timing. The beginning of your relationship in this form was by Divine timing (as I am sure you know, because I believe you both talked about this often), and the ending of your relationship in this form was equally by Divine timing, although I know it is very difficult to see or experience this right now.
I believe that you may be preparing to serve an even larger agenda in the years ahead, using this experience to bring help and healing to others who find themselves in many different life situations, each of which will be challenging to them at a spiritual level. I believe that you may be preparing to move forward in the joy of giving people back to themselves.
Some of these others whom you will encounter may be people who have lost their belief in love, who think that the right and perfect relationship is simply not possible or open to them, and who think they would be better to just forget the whole idea as a great hoax of the universe. You will be able to tell them differently, and encourage them to remain open, always, to the possibility.
Some of these others may be people who find themselves in sudden bereavement, who do not understand and cannot “see the perfection” in the moment at hand, but only experience the loss and the pain, and who may even believe that they simply cannot go on. You will be able to tell them differently, and encourage them to remain open, always, to the next grand gift of life, and to the next extraordinary moment of knowing and to expressing their highest notion of themselves, of God, of love, and of Who They Really Are.
Of course, all of this is conjecture on my part. I could be “making it all up,” Maureen, and I admit that. But I always see a larger purpose and a larger agenda at play in life’s events—including life’s most tragic events, and life’s saddest. I believe that at the end of our lives in our present physical form, all of this will become instantly and joyously clear to us, and we will rejoice and be glad in the perfect symmetry of it all.
I also believe, Maureen, that your relationship with your fiancé can never end, and that he is able to be there with you at any time you wish to call on his love and his spiritual energy to help you as you continue your journey, even as he continues his.
I believe that your journeys will always be together, even as they have been together for eons past. This is not the first time the two of you have been together in physical form—and this, too, is something that I believe you both recognized and understood. Nor, my dear Maureen, will it be the last. Indeed, your relationship never ends, ever.
It is ongoing even now, even in this very moment—for who do you think it is that brings you these words? Do you imagine it is me? Or could it be some other, speaking through me, bringing this message to you?
Do you believe that such a thing is possible, Maureen? Because, you see, I do.
Do not seek to “not be sad,” Maureen, during this time of loss. Sadness is one of the heart’s ways of honoring another. So, too, is happiness. You honor the soul of your beloved, Maureen, by feeling your sadness fully now. And you will honor the soul of your beloved, Maureen, by feeling your happiness fully, too, when the day and time for that comes—as surely it will.
As we await that day, my wish for you is to find peace for your soul, Maureen. May the peace that passeth all understanding be with you, and abide with you, both now, and even forevermore.
I flow my love to you on wings of prayer.
Neale.
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This week’s gift of poetry
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I knew that it would feel like this;
every pregnant moment, Ours.
I knew that you would come to me,
and open The Gift
like This:
lay the Timepiece in my hand,
a Golden Locket
God’s Keepsake
– an Ushering In
of What Has Been Promised.
I knew that The Thousand Years
were only points of light
that led us
through God’s thicket –
that Your Eyes
and Your Touch
and Your Voice
were My Own.
I knew that in each silence
slumbered another God,
who trusted Us
to tease It from Its sleep
with more than a feather-touch;
to awaken It through the World
of Our Loving.
*
The New Beginning of Time
began last night
My Love:
a Golden Locket;
God’s Keepsake.
(A Golden Locket – m. claire – copyright 2007 – all rights reserved)

For more of the work of this new American poet, go to www.mclairepoet.com.