787 thoughts on “Sympathy, Snow and a Robin”

1. Very interesting and also true in that sympathy does not allow us to feel what is truly there but actually masks and covers it ‘so I was left with the conclusion that sympathy is what we ‘do’ in the avoidance of this Love.’

2. Sympathy is a false way of being that has an array of pre determined body movements that go with it. When we are being sympathetic we tend to knit our eyebrows, cock our head to one side, push our lips slightly forward or pull them out towards our ears, place our hand gently on another’s arm or leg, cry with another, round our shoulders forward etc. Everything in life is a movement and all movements are either true or they’re not and the movements that are connected with sympathy aren’t true at all and therefore lead to even more movements that aren’t true.

3. I’ve had a number of experiences with sympathy and it is really poisonous. Yesterday I realised that I was being sympathetic towards a group of people in my life. Which is great because having this awareness can help put a stop to it. It doesn’t deserve to be expressed as all it does is make a mess.

4. When we appreciate another in essence and whatever they bring, then the level of Loving-appreciation we are holding for others brings in an intimacy that we are also living and sharing, thus eliminating any form of sympathy.

5. Sympathy as you have shared Colleen, cements us into loads of emotional upheavals but when we understand that we will reincarnate and get to live as we have lived in our past life then the responsibility that this level of awareness brings opens us to the appreciation of being Love to the best we can, so we can then complete in every situation with another with the most Loving attitude so nothing is left unsaid. Know that their next incarnation whatever it will be has at-least seen and felt the Loving level of connection we have shared.

   1. Appreciation is a never about physicality but about our essence, it also comes with a confirmation and authority from our Livingness and all three, appreciating, confirming with authority bring a True purpose, thus we are deepening our Humble-appreciative-ness, with humble being our Soul-full connection. Sympathy is a pathetic way of trying to disconnect us from our essence and only thinks about physicality.

   2. Sympathy feels horrible to receive, ‘ I had no need of drawing pity from others, or of wanting to make myself a focal point of attention by having others feel sorry for me.’

6. When we don’t really love and value ourselves the love we have for others can seem – feel and be – quite hollow for it has emotion as it’s base.

7. When we see ourselves as victims of circumstance, we will always fail to take the opportunity that is always on offer to grow from the experience and the potential.

   1. We are always offered an opportunity to learn and grow from situations.

8. “When I shared that I was attending a funeral, the first and immediate response from people was to connect deeply with themselves and with me”. We naturally want to have deeper connections with each other and go beyond the superficiality of social chit chat. Something like the passing of a loved one can offer this. Sadly I too have seen how quickly we sabotage this opportunity with sympathy and platitudes to cover our discomfort.

   1. People do want to connect, so is sympathy a way of not feeling uncomfortable about a sharing, or situation?

9. When one person doesn’t go into or need sympathy when there is a death, there can be a social awkwardness. We have learned to override the initial connection and exchange pity and niceties, instead of feeling what to say. We have become uncomfortable going to these depths with ‘strangers’, yet it is what we all crave as a natural part of relating.

   1. I agree Fiona that deep down we all crave going deeper with each other but in order for that to happen and for us to feel comfortable with it we have to be prepared to and be comfortable with going into greater depth with ourselves, it’s impossible to dive into the depths with others if we’ve been thrashing about in the shallows with ourselves.

10. Perhaps the reference to snow is not so far off the mark as every flake of snow has a different form but when they melt and pass on from one form to another they flow as one in the water.

    1. A beautiful example and sharing Mary.

11. Many people run a mile when something even slightly a bit deeper than what they were prepared for gets presented – like, truer truth, truer love, and I totally agree that sympathy and niceness are the severs that stop any deepening.

12. Sometimes an impulse can come from the depths of our being but we don’t let ourselves express it, because on a mental level it doesn’t fit in with our scheme of things. When we do this, it is like closing ourselves off from the possibility of a divine plan and we dull our vitality and connectedness.

13. It is interesting here, how sympathy has basically become the socially accepted norm, when there is a whole other level available to connect with each other. It’s almost like sympathy stops the deeper questions being asked, and it stops the opportunity for an honest inquiry into how one is actually feeling.

14. Thank you Coleen, it’s quite an observation to realise the interplay between love, letting love in, and if not sympathy is there as a kind of substitute – “sympathy is what we ‘do’ in the avoidance of this Love.”

15. If we were all raised to know that “we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?” how different would our conversations be around the passing on of someone in our lives. Gone would be the need for expressions of sympathy, to be replaced with a deep and meaningful conversation about life and its many wonderful and most natural cycles.

    1. We would certainly be more responsible, and perhaps realise the purpose of each life, to return to the fullness of love we each are as souls, and then return again and again to support all those who are yet to get there.

       1. I too feel that this understanding would naturally bring us to more responsibility and that would be embraced not avoided. And then the choice to “return again and again to support all those who are yet to get there” simply becomes a given and something also to be embraced.

    2. The need for expressions of sympathy; I am not sure where they come from but they feel disgusting, ‘An incongruity arose because I was not holding myself as a victim of this circumstance, a natural part of life, but felt that it was simply this person’s time to pass on.’

16. Sympathy is a horrible feeling, it stops any true connection with another and takes away the opportunity to read and feel the truth of what is going on.

    1. To read and feel the truth of what is going on is always important, ‘it was the right time for this person to pass on (not pass away, pass on), that they had been sick for some time and that this was the next part of an ongoing cycle for them.’

17. I think a lot of people, myself included in the past, think of sympathy as being an expression of love or care but I can see now how it actually doesn’t support and that there is a difference between sympathy and being compassionate or understanding of another and what they may be experiencing. There can naturally be a sense of missing someone when they have passed over and we can be understanding of this for sure but with sympathy it’s like it adds to the emotion rather than truly helping…

18. Sympathy with people is the attachment to our own creation in disguise, although once sympathy is understood for what it is and no longer confused for love, care or compassion but known as a most selfish emotion the disguise is exposed as ugly falsity.

    1. Absolutely Alex, there are so many words that have an emotional pull that create a disconnection from our souls.

19. Sympathy – the age-old trap/comfort of joining and hiding instead of being the beacon in the night.

20. Death can be an uncomfortable and taboo subject for many, and so when people are in the discomfort that they feel, they can say things that do not come from the depths of their hearts.

    1. It’s definitely a subject we could benefit from being more open about, because being unprepared for something so profound and inevitable as death is not an easy or loving experience at all. We really need to talk about it, so we have opportunities to learn and grow and embrace it.

       1. Talking about someone passing on, as is happening with this blog and the comments, helps us learn and grow, ‘Initially there is an attempt to connect with another on the subject of passing on or death. However, if either person is not open to receiving love, there is a very distinct turning away from the initial impulse to connect through Love, and then sympathy follows superfast on the tail of this turning away.’

21. Sympathy – avoiding to take responsibility for one´s own lack of connection with self by focussing on someone else.

    1. Spot on, and in the process we also disempower the other from how they could be more full with themselves.

22. It is lovely that mentioning a funeral ‘short-cuts’ the small talk and connects people to something deeper. However, the tendency to then go into sympathy without even waiting to hear how the funeral attendee feels is quite imposing. Surely when someone may be feeling raw and vulnerable we should hold them and give them space to speak, rather than suffocate them in sympathy.

    1. Suffocating people with sympathy is unfortunately still more common rather than connecting with another and giving them space, ‘That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?’

23. Much for us to learn as humanity to know clearly the difference of true connection through love and its false substitute through sympathy and alike, otherwise we will stay caught in a lesser version of who we are in life, without being fully aware of the loss of quality in love as it may look just fine, but will not be the real deal we know it can and should be.

    1. Sympathy is a plateau, it’s a set point that ensures that we don’t go anywhere at all.

24. Even death is made into a game of images. These images grab our movements and when this happens seeing beyond them is not easy.

25. How lost are we when we go into sympathy, are we not judging, not only the dead person who’s time of departure was hopefully when it is best serving them for there next incarnation, but also the friend who needs only to be loved for, anything less is a judging imposition because we think we can somehow tell what you are going through.

26. It feels like sympathy comes after judgement, which comes from our beliefs and/or ideals or mental pictures of how life should be. Life doesn’t match so we judge, then sympathy comes in. If I observe, feel and understand a situation there is no judgement and no sympathy.

27. It is interesting how you describe sympathy as an emotion that creates separation. All emotions create separation and that is particularly striking when we are indulging in an emotion such a sympathy, which we think is helping the other person whereas it is doing quite the opposite.

28. Sympathy is a smack in the face, because whilst believing you are doing a ‘good’ job, you actually drain yourself. The smack comes there after when we are confronted with how you feel inside your body: feeling the the tension inside boiling of not having expressed your truth, which is held in the body anyways. Absorbing the illusion of going into sympathy, whilst you could have walked and talked the truth with that other person.

29. This shows how uncomfortable people are with death which is strange really as the one thing you can be 100% sure of in life is death!

    1. Maybe what we are uncomfortable with is life even more than death. Perhaps one of the things that death reflects to us is where we have not lived our life in full and now it is over or too late.

30. “This began to sever the connection we had established at the start and it was immediately evident how this emotion separated us.” So true, any emotion brings a separation and if we choose to fall for it, then the following conversation will be one that can make us feel less, and seek comfort in the sympathy being offered.

31. When we have a conversation with someone about death, we flounder as to what to say, and try and ease the conversation yet if we were truly expressing and communicating we would find there is a wealth of things to talk about without feeling the need to go into sympathy, it may be the end of this life, yet it is in preparation of the next.

32. You describe very well the ways in how we can disconnect from others when we are in conversation. Sympathy is one and talking about the weather or a standard topic is the other one. I find it not always easy to deal with this as when you want to truly have a more in-depth conversation it can be very hard because we are so conditioned to respond in those above described ways. And people can feel like you put them off because you don’t feel the same way or don’t like talking about the standard topics or the weather.

33. As a health professional, I often wondered why people celebrate the birth of a newborn. When we see this tiny beautiful being in its pure essence but seldom see this in an older person, and yet they are no different.

    Why aren’t death, dying and funerals seen as a celebration? We accept the four seasons, a cycle of birth (spring), maturity (summer), autumn (dying) and winter (death) ready for the next cycle – there is no sympathy or emotions, it is an acceptance of life and human life cycle is no different too.

    1. Thanks Shushila, a great comment, we don’t need to assume each death has to be sad, we could indeed celebrate each life and respond with the understanding of cycles, just as nature so clearly reflects.

34. A blog that gives us a pause to consider how we have responded to people when they have told us about a death. Perhaps we get drawn into sympathy because this is how we have been conditioned to behave and it is what is expected. Knowing this and not wanting to fall into it there could be a tendency to go to the other extreme and be cold and detached. Neither of these responses are loving. To deal with this with love is to hold someone in love, meet them with love, and stay connected to our own love. From here we can observe without getting drawn in to the drama or pushing it away.

    1. It’s a good point about the coldness and detachment instead of the warmth and love, or even just staying open and being willing to learn and grow. I love the bit about neither getting drawn on nor pushing it away, just staying connected as best as possible and being ourselves in our stillness and love.

35. Passing over is a sensitive subject, perhaps we feel awkward in communicating around death and dying because we feel awkward about understanding what it means for ourselves? It’s an interesting topic that we as a society do not talk about, we’re not willing to explore and it creates awkwardness when it occurs.

36. Reincarnation is something we need to talk about more. I love the fact that here you speak of celebrating someones life when they pass on. It seems more often than not we do not truly celebrate someone that has passed on but get engulfed in emotions of sadness etc and I agree we are human and so of course it is natural for some different emotions and feelings to arise when someone close has passed on but if we truly had an understanding about our life, our purpose and reincarnation then maybe we would see this differently. And you are right when we go into emotions and sympathy it ‘takes us out of the present moment and the opportunity to connect, and into our minds.’ which is never helpful or true.

37. I have found that when I don’t know what to say, I may say something quite silly but even silence can then be quite awkward. Some situations can simply be quite difficult.

38. We often use sympathy and imagery to stop going deeper and to really feel that what is presented to us means for us personally.

39. “Sympathy is what we do in the avoidance of this love” I would agree we feel anxiety when we don’t know how to respond in the face of someone’s passing on. It will take much more understanding to helps us find another way to respond to another persons passing on.

40. Sympathy can make you feel smothered when someone imposes their expectation of how they think you should react when a close relative has died.

41. Over the last few years I’ve learnt how horrible sympathy feels when it gets dumped on me. On the other end I’ve had thoughts coming in of being heartless if I just say nothing but that doesn’t feel true. Sometimes what a person needs is the space to feel sad and grieve because it doesn’t last forever. Sympathy and the mental ideal pictures of the future actually stop that flow of emotion from passing and leaving.

    1. Yes Leigh, the imagery and sympathy we tend to use is in our avoidance to feel the deeper message behind such losses when people pass over, the deeper message that we are all equal in physical life that too will come to a natural end one day.

42. Sympathy would have no place at all if we allowed ourselves full awareness of the cycles of life and the natural unfolding they cannot help but be. Whether it be loss of a family member, of a home or possession or maybe an illness we may be experiencing. They are all part of the ebb and flow of life and have consistently been so since the beginning of physical life on this planet. What if we allowed ourselves to reconnect to the fact of reincarnation, that we come back time and time again? Could there then be nothing but love and joy and acceptance of these conditions/events knowing that there has been a purpose for them? that perhaps we are clearing the way for our next life by discarding through illness and anything that takes us away from that joy and love and acceptance? No room or need at all for sympathy.

43. Death is very challenging for people, and staying in sympathy is what people are ‘supposed to do’ . But I have found that when I express how I feel about the cycle of life and death, without attachment to emotion, many people light up and find it very refreshing to not have to keep up the sympathy game.

    1. There are many things we can believe that we ‘should do’ and games to uphold that we don’t even call everyday soical interaction because it is silently expected until one breaks away from that silently agreed life. The more I feel how to live, I feel like a small kid that ignored those socially agreed/enforced standards.

44. Sometimes people react to death as it can trigger in them the regret of all the things that they have not done and expressed in their own life.

    1. Great comment – snow at Christmas and seeing a red robin are good symbols of things people living in Australia but with a connection to the UK may be missing in their lives.

45. Because of the lack of education about dying, I think most of us can be unsure of what to do around death. I don’t think most people’s true sense is to be sympathetic, it is more that they do not want to come across as callus or uncaring. I have much understanding for others struggling in this department and so my approach is to support those that may be worried or sympathetic by showing how light and loving death can be.

    1. It’s actually quite incredible that such a significant thing (as death) which is also something that affects us all is spoken about so little. In fact, it feels like we actively avoid talking about it until we absolutely have to, hence our acute discomfort when it does come up. Avoid, avoid, avoid and then bang wallop there it is right in our faces and we’re often left floundering around in our own discomfort as well as in the discomfort of others. Thankfully we will all get to the point where we understand death to be the most natural and even joyous part of the great cycle of Life.

46. How often do we speak in awkwardness and not in truth?! I know I have done this so I sat an cringed a bit when I read your blog and how uncomfortable it felt for you and no doubt them!

    1. I can recall situations when I felt so awkward when expressing to a person who had recently had someone close to them pass on. And I can see that I used this awkwardness to hold back what it was I really wanted to say and instead replaced it with something nice and often meaningless. I also know that if I had been raised to speak openly about death and dying from an early age there would have been no awkwardness in my expression, simply truth.

       1. How good would that be to talk about the cycle of life and not feel afraid of uncomfortable about what will, without a shadow of a doubt, be part of all of our lives.

47. The ideals we have about what true love is prevent us from experiencing true love with others. But that can be corrected very quickly with the support of the Ageless Wisdom.

    1. Yes and there is nothing like the experience or you could say reflection of someone who is living and expressing in a truly loving way to show us there is another way. Unimedpedia Love: http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-love.html provides some great quotes on what love is and is not

48. Like the image of snow and a robin is rarely a reality, actually is an an emotion, so too is sympathy that we use to withhold ourselves from connecting with the greater truth of life we all innately know but avoid to be aware of.

49. Sympathy is a killer – it can restrict our natural Impulse connect with others and express with love.

    1. Maybe that is why Sympathy has a pathy in it as it is almost a pathological disease.

50. “sympathy could well be what cements us into this belief that we end forever, that we pass away, rather than that we pass on to the next phase of our ever unfolding, divinely sustained life.” I feel this is absolutely true. Sympathy is a very neat way of avoiding the truth of reincarnation – a lie we have all bought into as a way to ignore our responsibility to live with energetic integrity, truth and love.. For if we believe we have just one life then we can easily believe we have the right to do whatever we want in order to ‘be happy’ in this life. If however we live knowing the truth of our cycle of reincarnation, we understand that every choice we make is one that will pave the way of our next life – karma or Love?

    1. Sure Lucy, we can believe that there is only one life because we do not want to take the responsibility for the reality that we are captured in, an endless cycle of birth and death.

       1. Hence the buy in with sympathy or regret. There is much to consider here.

51. Sympathy separates us, it makes one party lesser and artificially elevates the other by way of being able to dispense a sugary balm that does anything but soothe what they are feeling. Sympathy kneecaps any true connection unless the conversation is brought back to truth.

    1. There is not an ounce of sympathy or emotion in Love and there is no true connection without love. So yes, sympathy creates separation which is not surprising because in order to express sympathy we must have first separated from our true selves and then whatever occurs after is a consequence of that.

52. I know I used to be in sympathy a lot in my personal relationships, but I now know the harm it brings to others and offers no true love or support whatsoever.

53. yes there is an enormous amount of baggage just waiting to be dumped upon us if we buy into the the normal patterns of reactions to death dying and moving on in general.

54. Sympathy, if we subscribe to it, immediately makes us feel small and dependent and creates a place of coziness away from the truth of what is happening.

55. When it comes to death and dying, there are many ideals and beliefs, and actually, just like anything in life, we can all feel what is not, even when we may play along with that, and to recognise and embody and live what is, and not holding that as another ideal, is something we all are learning.

56. It is fascinating how ‘what people resort to in order to express closeness’ truly separates us.

57. “…. sympathy could well be what cements us into this belief that we end forever, that we pass away, rather than that we pass on to the next phase of our ever unfolding, divinely sustained life.” So true Coleen. Learning and knowing about reincarnation made a huge difference to me when subsequent people I knew passed over. No need for sympathy at all. Sympathy separates us.

58. Sympathy has often irked me, when I have received it and when I have given it. I think you are bang on the money Coleen, that it separates the truth when people give/receive sympathy. It takes away from the truth / naturalness of the event.

59. Yesterday I was witness to a conversation where someone was informed that another someone’s mother had just died. The response from the person being told was; “Oh, that’s great”. It was Earth shattering and such a joy to hear. It was true – it was a great thing yet we are so accustomed to the social norms of going into sympathy around death.

60. I love this question, ‘Why would we substitute sympathy for Love…’ I’ve always had a penchant for sympathy but never more uncomfortably so than in regard to my mother. Especially as a teenager I asked myself why and how was it that I could go from hurt fuelled rage and anger towards her to what felt like heart-stopping sympathy and oscillate wildly between the two. I was always afraid of losing my mother (she always had an air of fragility) and now she is elderly this is very much the case. Reading this I am going to explore how sympathy is absolutely the tool by which I prevent myself from accepting and understanding what her way of being is reflecting to me to learn and grow from. I know that so far I’ve refused to observe what is there to the depth that actually brings healing to us both and all around us.

61. Great blog Coleen thank you for sharing, the fact the many people do not understand the truth about reincarnation, gives rise to the idea that once people die that is it, this lie fosters the feelings of sympathy. People who do have this understanding about reincarnation can appear quite unfeeling to others because we do not indulge in grief and loss but have an appreciation of the cycles of life and one’s journey within this.

    1. Pretty much everything in life can be viewed through the tiny viewfinder of the spirit or the all-encompassing understanding of the soul and this, of course, determines how we see things and our reaction to that thing. Death can be seen as a tragic event that leaves all those ‘behind’ grief-stricken and at times paralysed or it can be seen as a natural part of life that continues to hold each and every one of us as an equal and integral part of life, supporting us to move onto greater and grander versions of ourselves.

62. Great subject matter but on a practical level I imagine a stranger might not know the details or circumstances of how your relative died. Some of us are taken suddenly or die very young, which can be a shock, others are sick for a long time and passing on is almost a relief for them and their family. I understand that death doesn’t have to be tragic but what are people suppose to say? That they’re not sorry? The natural response is to say that you are sorry for someone’s loss. The robin and the snow for me are an offering of what you might be blessed with by nature in a harder time, it’s quite sweet really. If we want to model a life free of sympathy, all we need to do is not go into ourselves, like you talk about in this blog, you simply hold the space and offer much love and appreciation for what people are offering you.

63. This is a great blog, I love what you have shared about how we connect with others but then often sever this when we start to open up, that if we don’t live with this level of openness all the time it can be hard to go deeper in moments like this as then we start to feel the gap in what we have been living.

64. A relative of mine passed over not so long ago this year, after being diagnosed with what is termed an ‘aggressive form of cancer’ only a few months before he passed. What I got to witness and hear, was many words about the ‘cruelty’ of this cancer… as something perhaps random that had occurred and/or he had been unfairly ‘smitten’ by God/suffered a horrendously harsh blow in life, and unlucky ‘draw of the cards’…
    Again, this highlighted how there is much understanding to be built – and awareness chosen, potentially… around illness and disease, around our state of being, way of living, harboured emotions and more, that can contribute to a condition in our own body. And so much understanding yet to be built in our families, communities and society, around what actually may be offered by a disease such as this – for the person going through it, as hard and difficult as it may of course be, and all around them.
    Dare we go there? As Universal Medicine has from day one? And look deeper? To me, such foundations are what hold me in life – it is an absolute blessing to ‘go there’ and understand more about illness, disease, and the energy behind all things.

65. Well said Coleen: “What would happen if we had more understanding about our cycle of physical life and passing on…”
    Someone’s passing is not necessarily an easy event for those around them, nor themselves… Yet when the truth of reincarnation is denied, it’s as though there is no foundation whatsoever that holds anyone in the understanding of what is actually occurring. ‘Death and dying’ becomes an intense burden to be experienced as such – but does it have to be so?

66. You are pointing out something very significant here, Coleen. Sympathy offers to ‘calm’ something that doesn’t need to be calmed, but felt. It’s clear that avoiding or hiding our feelings behind sympathy is not a supportive way to deal and truly accept these natural situations of life.

67. I find it particularly interesting, that as is shared here, when we initially share a loss of a loved one that there is an immediate sense of those you are sharing with being very real, still and present with you. Then there is that point that many get to, that ‘oh my, what do I say in this situation’ the point where they feel uncomfortable in their own steadiness, that naturally supports, that something has to be said or done. In a way it is true, but the ‘what do I do in this situation’ is not about what was shared, it is about ‘what do I do with my own natural tender loving presence that I just connected with?’

68. When we go into sympathy with another we contract, feel less and ‘needed’. As you have pointed out Coleen what truely serves another is if we express our love, tenderness and divinity, thus making a true connection

69. We are here with each other in this great ‘soup’ of life until such a time that we feel how natural it is to be openly connected with each other and how unnatural it is to live in separation to this.

70. What I have observed recently is that whenever there is a sense of loss… it could be a relationship breakup and we are holding onto them we can potentially attract sympathy because we have not accepted the situation in full knowing that in this case the relationship has ended and we are to enter into the next cycle that supports both parties to evolve. As I observed I realised I had a choice either to go into sympathy or be with me. Although I initially felt sympathy and the feeling of being pulled into the other’s story it wasn’t long before I clocked what was going on and brought myself back to me because I know that by connecting to me I am being love.

71. Thank you for sharing Coleen. Your experience highlights the lack of connection that many people accept as being ‘normal’. When you make it about connection you give yourself, and everyone you connect with, an opportunity to feel how grand we really are.

72. Sympathy is a very deceptive emotion that is so full of pity and the mentality of misfortune that it drains us of any wisdom that will bring true clarity, understanding and compassion to any experience.

73. Great observation Coleen. Sympathy is a friend to many who are avoiding a deeper connection and understanding of life, and we have all had a tendency to not want another to feel sadness and quite happily fill them with joyful imagery in a false attempt to put them out of any pain we perceive them to have. Both cases are neither a support or true love, but merely another step away from a deeper love that we can truly offer.

74. Sympathy or any emotion is a rejection of love, sympathy for any person’s passing over is a rejection that we are multi-dimensional.

75. Sympathy seems to stem from us wanting everything to be ok. We have an image of what “ok” is – we don’t want others to feel sad for example. But this is such containing of someone and doesn’t allow for them to move through what life presents. It’s like we want to protect them from life – but this never serves any one and in fact is quite imposing. Basically we are saying that we don’t think they can cope.

76. Interesting to view sympathy from the point of love and the ongoingness of our lives, that it is deliberately keeping us away from this fact, keeping our emotions running the show. It is trough leaving sympathy that we can truly connect and see the path that life takes and see it as an ever ongoing way to learn and return back to our essence.

77. Anything we use to substitute love with will never give any satisfaction to our being and will keep us going round and round in circles.

78. People often feel awkward and don’t know what to say to people who have had an event occur such as a death that they interpret as being a negative experience. In such situations, they often resort to the ‘endorsed response of sympathy’. In my experience sympathy feels like a heavy shroud which wants to smother me and if I stay steady and do not become party to it people often see that it is not needed and feel relieved that we can speak openly about the situation without emotion. If we buy into it, we are further cemented in the belief that we are a victim and we use the situation as a form of selfish identification, getting a perverse enjoyment from being the centre of attention.

79. Whenever we go into an emotion or into our head we have left our body. Love can only be expressed when we are still and connected to our body.

    1. …and our heart.

80. If we were to truly feel then we all know that we do not die. Physically yes, the body deteriorates, but the inner light will not ever cease, it cannot.

81. I agree that sympathy and also the belief that we have to go into sympathy when there is a death drives a wedge between people. To go into sympathy you have to see the other person as somehow missing something or worse off than you. This judgment creates an inequality and stops us from feeling that we are complete, whole and equal at all times, whether we choose to feel it or not.

82. I am reading this blog for advice and some guidance for attending a funeral for someone who suicided. I can already sense the dark emotion-laden room full of questions as to why and the feeling that someone other than themselves needs to be responsible; this was a previous experience for me! I will be myself and hold my light in a room that I am sure will be filled with darkness.

83. Sympathy feels awful on the receiving end and even awful going into it myself. A lot of the time it is ourselves sympathizing with ourselves if we were in the other person’s shoes. This serves no one.

84. Going into sympathy is a good marker that we have contracted, making ourselves small to make others feel comfortable…but what truly serves another is expressing our natural divinity.

85. I agree Coleen! We don’t want sympathy, we would rather celebrate and appreciate what it was that this person had to offer the world.

86. I see emotions like hooks – we can be bated by them and get sucked into the story or the want to enjoin in a feeling with someone – or, we can hold steady in the knowing of who we are and that emotions are a misunderstanding of what is actually going on. From there, we offer a different point of reflection for people that is not entwined with emotional upset.

87. It is clear to me that we use sympathy to avoid feeling the love that is so abundant in everything and in all of us and actually is the ultimate binding factor in our human relationships. When we allow this love to be part of our lives we are also asked to be intimate, vulnerable and transparent which is sometimes too much and instead we go to sympathy to not have to feel this love we actually are looking for all our life.

88. Death “passing away” and “passing on” they appear pretty similar but bring different images and reflections to them. The ‘away’ feels completely different to the ‘on’ in that it seems not to have an end but a beginning, the on feels more like a cycle. I know it may seem minor but from this article I will be more careful with how I use these words. I know I have shared many ‘away’s’ with people over the years and now the ‘on’ will be in use. It never made sense to me growing up, about death. What, you live and then die and you’re gone? I just couldn’t get my head around it and while I asked questions for a while it then went into the “it’s just a part of life” box that still didn’t give it any sense but just parked it out of view. This makes sense and also where I build awareness to the “cycle of physical life”, “What would happen if we had more understanding about our cycle of physical life and passing on, rather than believing that once we draw our last physical breath, that’s it – we are gone?”

89. It is true that there would be a totally different experience of the death of a loved one and of ourselves if we fully embraced this as simply another stage of someone’s evolution, that we pass on as you share not away, forever gone. When we allow ourselves to connect soul to soul you can do this with the living and those that have passed over.

90. ” That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle? ” If this were truly understood, that there is no end to us, simply a continuing cycle of life and death, it would immeasurably change how we viewed and lived our lives.

91. Your words here Coleen beautifully articulate how there is an energetic quality that the truth has – anything else just doesn’t match up. We like to think we can say anything and ‘get away’ with it but that’s simply not the reality. The supercool thing is we can tell whether something is true or not by just listening to our body.

92. Sympathy in any situation is undermining, as we feel the person who is subject to our sympathy is in a lesser state than ourselves and cannot handle the situation they are in, whatever the situation….in subtle and not so subtle ways this makes them feel less/unable and us feel more capable…..there is no love, equality or true connection in any form of sympathy.

    1. I was just speaking with someone about this yesterday, how we may feel uncomfortable when we really feel into what we are imposing on another when we sympathize, but that it is far more loving and supportive to see it for what it is and that we are all equal.

93. Well said Coleen, sympathy keeps us stuck in the illusion and belief that death is it instead of appreciating and accepting the end of a cycle and the reflection that the loved one offered us throughout their life.

    1. I agree Anna – ‘..sympathy keeps us stuck in the illusion and belief…’
       No matter what that belief if, the moment we choose sympathy we are actually choosing to not be aware of the bigger picture and the choices that person is making.

94. Seeing death as a celebration of one life lived and a beginning of another is something that is not so often discussed in today’s society. If the death of a loved one was shared more honestly and openly with our friends and families it would alleviate the sympathy and remorse that settles in and offer a much deeper space to reflect, enjoy and honour the love, life and celebration of our amazing living cycle.

95. I recently attended the funeral of a family member. The family is often in a lot of tension with many family members not talking to each other and long held conflicts in place. At the funeral and around this death these tensions dropped away momentarily and everyone came together, spoke to each other and you could feel the opportunity to let go of this as you realise carrying the hostility is not worth it. Observing the passing of another can sometimes make you stop, reflect and offer new opportunities for how you live your life.

96. So when we reject love, we allow other things like sympathy to drop in, and your sharing has made that very clear Coleen, and given me a clearer understanding of what sympathy is, and how in fact we are falling into images with this, rather than just holding that connection and accepting what is presented by life. For in fact sympathy and images are ways we do not accept and embrace the cycles of life, in death and passing on and otherwise, if we can let these go and just stay with what is felt it offers us a possibility to accept with grace with life offers us no matter what the circumstances, and that is in fact Love.

97. Thank you Coleen for a great article leaving me much to ponder on. I feel sympathy comes party because there is lack of understanding of the cycles of life, that death is not the end as many think but that reincarnation is part of a system of evolution.

98. Sympathy in this instance does seem like a block to delve further. I enjoyed your words on how sympathy also comes in when love is not chosen. The thing about love is that it brings forth so much wisdom, with that wisdom we know so much, for example, we just innately know that life does not end, so death is a new cycle beginning. In that love and wisdom, there is much responsibility for self and others.

99. What you offer us is true ponder on our responsibility; how we have taken them or not, and or have we have a relationship with either responsibility or not. And to feel the oh so clear truth that once we allow emotion in, we lack in connection. And that if we express in emotions we actually leave connection behind. Love the example, so raw and real. And what you share in this sentence is blowing our minds all away: ‘This began to sever the connection we had established at the start and it was immediately evident how this emotion separated us.’
    Thank you Coleen, by the whole of humanity for enriching us , our world with truth..

100. It seems that for many our automatic response when we hear of a death is to go into sympathy. To know that we pass over and that it is not the end is something we don’t talk about enough. Death is a sensitive subject and not everyone wants to talk about it but it is an inevitable fact. If we were taught from young that death is not the end we would grow up with a much better understanding of what happens to us all. I had always felt from young that we don’t just die and that death was not the end so I feel we do know as children but we get caught up in the emotional ties as we get older.

     1. We get caught up in the emotions and the ideals and beliefs of what to say and how to behave when it comes to death and dying.

101. Sympathy is suffocating and comes loaded with the emotions of the person offering sympathy. Connecting with love and celebrating the life of someone who has completed another cycle of living can be beautiful.

102. A contemplation well worth considering. That sympathy locks us into outdated and untrue constructs, yet it is an emotion easily chosen if love is not held in the grace of the moment.

103. It seems that collectively we generally have an unease and difficulty handling death and dying and perhaps this is why we feel that we want to have sympathy for others when they are experiencing the grieving process. No so much for them but for ourselves?

104. We belong to a love that is all-encompassing and as far reaching as the far ‘corners’ of the universe we live within. This love never dies, although the vehicle through which it expresses through, our human body, will eventually cease to exist. This being the case in our individual lives and then for us all in the future yet to come when we outgrow the third dimensional way of living that provides for us, through what we call space and time and also form, the marker by which we can see how far we have deviated from this Love. That we are so uncomfortable with what we call ‘death’ simply shows us the degree to which we are uncomfortable with our true evolution and so we introduce tools such as sympathy and romanticised images to not feel the undying expansion we forever belong to and can never not ever be a part of.

105. Sympathy is such an accepted emotion that people feel uncomfortable when we don’t respond. I feel sympathy is leaving us empty, on the other hand love leaves us full. I always had a difficulty with feeling empathy to others, and I can see why, it is empty and it doesn’t bring us anything.

106. This is certainly worth pondering Coleen, ‘perhaps collectively, we use sympathy and mental energy – ideals and pictures with great longevity – to distract us from the truth of a situation.’ I know there are times when I still get caught in this way, I am learning that is ok to not have to have all the answers and to allow the space to let the situation unfold naturally instead of controlling it.

107. Thank you Coleen for a great article, I used to think that sympathy was showing love to the person, but that was before I came to understand that we reincarnate and that this is not the end forever but another normal cycle of life and death which we all pass through. It is ignorance of this truth that allows sympathy to be the so called normal way of expressing when when loss and sadness become a part of life.

108. Gosh this is a great read, I can feel how I have in the past struggled to accept love from people and so have instead tried to draw them into sympathy for me. This allows me to stay in the belief that I don’t deserve love and it also doesn’t ask me to make different choices or to really look at why I am in the situation that I am in.

109. I have observed this often Coleen in myself and in others where we can slip into cliche when faced with a situation like death or loss – but that sympathy we slide into actually cuts us off from an honesty, a rawness and a connection with another, we substitute a pale imitation for the real thing.

110. A fascinating observation Coleen… emotion does indeed separate us, even though it is frequently the mechanism by which we enjoin and feel more ‘together’ with one another.

     1. Great point Jenny. Emotions are the glue that binds us but they are not the love that truly unifies us and thus sets us free from such bonds.

        1. Yes Liane, the irony of love is that it asks nothing of you and holds you in nothing but the freedom of your own choices. Emotions on the other hand are imposing, binding and manipulative… all in the name of love, but yet without an ounce of it in truth.

     2. Emotion is separation, it’s not possible to feel emotion if we’re connected to ourselves because there is no emotion in the truth of who we are, so in order for us to feel emotion we have to first separate from who we in truth are and then it’s open slather for anything to come in and come in it does, it has a right old party!

111. Great understanding you have on the difference between truth & connection and sympathy, how fascinating to feel that where there is a great opportunity to express honestly between two that emotions, or holding back gets in between – like an iceberg between two ships – and severs the line of communication that was otherwise leading two people to be very real, natural and raw with each other.

     1. It’s that rawness that we all avoid like the plague, much safer to continue along the same old behavioural tracks that we’ve always been on but so very suffocating. We miss out on the beauty of each other and of ourselves, a beauty that’s found in the rawness of life, in the vulnerability and in the truth. Getting honest is the first step, learning to say ‘geez, I’m really uncomfortable right now’, or ‘hey this is new for me, I’m a bit lost for what to say’, or simply not saying anything at all. We don’t have to be polished actors, we can let the whole thing crumble, it’s ok and more than that I’d say that it’s actually a necessary step to let the charade just fall down on itself because then the rebuilding from the truth can begin in earnest.

112. I have found that when people go into sympathy with you or for you, they are looking for a way to support and connect with you, what if our expression was broader and deeper and rather than sympathy we were actually able to express a celebration of their passing and the beginning of a new cycle of life.

113. I love how you open up the possibility that death is a passing on and not the end. We go into sympathy because we think death is final and we sympathise with what we see as a loss rather than celebrating that the person is at the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new one.

114. Sympathy has become a ‘normal’ human reaction when someone has gone through something unpleasant. But you point out something pretty huge – in that sympathy does not allow space for love – love being a holding that puts honesty first rather than sympathy.

115. With a recent funeral experience, I also observed this initial connection or solidarity that happened between myself and those who were so supportive.

116. On reading your blog Coleen I was reminded just how much images and pictures feed the emotion of sympathy; which, as you clearly point out, is harmful to us and others. The question you pose is true and powerful;
     “That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?

117. I think it comes from an education around what topics are acceptable to discuss and which topics are not. We are very good at falling into the trap of being polite, and giving safe and stock standard responses, despite the fact that anyone who is on the receiving end of that response is fully aware of how utterly ingenuine it is. It’s almost like it’s protocol that we say certain things and there is an understanding and acceptance amongst us that just allows it to continue because we’re too afraid to get real about what’s really going on.

118. I find I get myself into a conflicting headspace when I’m faced with someone who has just had someone close to them pass on. On one hand I feel very clear about the fact that if that person needed to move on, then that’s exactly what needed to happen, no matter their age/situation. But at the same time, when I witness the person grieving and their deep emotional pain, I start to get pulled down by that and the sympathy kicks in and I lose sight of the bigger picture/plan.

119. Sympathy as much as it has been idealized as being a good human trait it is actually an ambush to keep us from being truly compassionate. ie. to fully understand, accept and let be a person be where they are at and holding them in the grace of such presence where they can come back to their true self in their own time.

120. Sympathy is sadly as you’ve said, a socially accepted and endorsed response that from experience, creates separation amongst people rather than connection and can hinder the most beautiful and honest conversations about death.

121. I do feel very much so that the understanding of cycles is very important, the way we live is deeply determined by them. But by being not aware we think it all ends at death, while the cycles continue.. It is this ending that people react to with sympathy, letting themselves not feel the love that is in the living cycles.

122. “That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?”
     Wise words indeed Coleen; offering another understanding and love is the key.

123. Awareness and understanding that we don’t know the hurts others are holding for this lifetime and what they have carried through to resolve in this life time, allows others to let go of their hurts, in their own time, without judgement.

124. Having grown up in a household where death was considered a taboo subject and the belief that the mere mention of someone dying and what they died of would mean that you would curse yourself or someone in the family, made it difficult to have the much needed and natural conversations about death and dying. Maybe if we were more open and saw dying as a natural progression we would not have such a hard time in dealing with others when they are going through a bereavement.

125. I agree – feeling sorry, having sympathy or empathy for others are not what is needed. The best form of inspiration for others is us being full of ourselves and reflecting what can be lived.

126. “We use sympathy and mental energy – ideals and pictures with great longevity – to distract us from the truth of a situation”. This is so very true. As a humanity we do not like to take responsibility for ourselves and we do this by avoiding situations that need to be dealt with and distracting ourselves with things, anything from food, alcohol, being super busy etc. It is important that we start to address our irresponsible behaviour.

127. I would say in general we are awful at dealing with death, it’s something we dread, fear and normally fall apart over. But I wonder if a big part of this is simply the way we view it as the end, instead of understanding that we live in cycles and that passing over is a natural part of those cycles. It’s like we have become disconnected to our natural understanding of life and how it truly works.

128. Absolutely Coleen, we have no need for sympathy, it feels horrible to receive if we are honest, ‘the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?’

129. Death is an amazing science, that fascinated me already as a child, unfortunately “death” is not a topic we usually converse about. There are of course a lot of studies on “death” from people remembering past lives through hypnosis or near death experiences to religious writings like the Buddhist bardo and others. Serge Benhayon sometimes touches on this subject in his presentation, which re-connected me to that vast science that dying is.

130. “…what had initially felt like a heartfelt connection seemed to turn into more of a mental conversation of sharing happy thoughts.”
     I like what you highlight here as I experience this too, that often this initial heartfelt connection is not acknowledged and deepened but shied away from and “glossed” over with some mental conversation that just feels superficial.

131. “Why would we substitute sympathy for Love, especially in the area of someone’s passing on?” It is like a belief we have in our present society, that when we hear of someone ‘losing’ someone close to them through death, it is necessary to express sympathy for their loss. But when one understands that we are living in cycles, that we are going around and around, returning to the same point to then go around endlessly, giving us constant opportunities to evolve, until at some point the present life will end, and in time and with reincarnation, the process will again go on, everything makes such sense. The passing over stage is only a step in the never ending process. We come back again and again to continue our learning. So it is such a natural process that at a certain point we will pass over, on to the next stage. Yes, when we ‘lose’ someone we may experience some grief, a sense of loss, but it is all a natural process. I have found that when someone has expressed sympathy to me, it actually makes me feel much worse, it brings in an emotional aspect which is most uncomfortable. Far better to find other practical ways to support someone who is going through a grieving process, expressing sympathy does not truly help at all. Showing loving care is far more supportive.

132. Thank you for this beautiful clarity into the consciousness around death and our reactions to it. It has always struck me how we so often relate to death in a way that seems as if we are totally unprepared for it, possibly because we aren’t. Death is something that is such an unknown to so many of us, that when we actually come face to face with it we don’t know what to do and instead slip into niceties and platitudes. There is nothing wrong with that, and as you said, it is only sympathy. But it is covering up the fact that one of the most important parts of life: the ending of it and preparation for the next one, is so rarely given the energy it needs.

133. There is not an ounce of emotion in true Love. Love is a holding of another with a deep understanding that we are here forever evolving on our way back to the divinity we are all from and this life is just a mere speck of our return back.

134. Sympathy is an interesting one. By sympathizing we do not trust that the person concerned is ok and has a way of dealing with the situation. We imagine ourselves in the situation and project how we think we would feel onto someone else. In this we do not hold them in love or meet them for who they are.

135. I appreciate your outlook on people close to us passing over, it’s something to be celebrate because they are starting a new journey

136. Sympathy can show up in any moment in our every day lives. We can seek it in a false form of love from another at the expense of ourselves; we can want to save another or even try to make another feel better but it is connection to ourselves that we truly miss. I have come to realise that there is nothing grander than the connection to myself and it is simply my choice to hold this connection and stay with myself.

137. Hello Coleen and I agree with what you say. I have also found that at any point if we are willing to hold what we feel is true then you will appreciate the magic others bring no matter the subject or response. In other words the only way sympathy will touch you is because you have made a choice that way. We can’t stop people from saying what they see they need to or from responding like this, we can only hold what we feel and see all that is said and then from there make our own choice. If we are complete in our choice then we take this wholeness to the next meeting or relationship. No matter what the heading there is always and forever a reflection for us.

138. Hi Coleen, I enjoyed reading your blog and it is so true how sympathy stops that true connection to another. When my mum passed away I felt, like you, it was her time and therefore a real acceptance of her passing so no sorrow or grief. I know there were some who found it strange that there could be that level of acceptance of passing but it truly is part of our cycle of life and feels much more supportive of others when we can accept it is their time to pass.

139. There is a sympathy card industry out there, that feeds an attachment and belief in it. We can begin to crack this, in the way we express about the passing over. Instead of going into sympathy, we can ask people how they feel about the loss and their relationship with the person. There is an assumption people need sympathy, when what they want is love and understanding.

140. Death is probably one of the most sought-after things to know and it is a wonder why there is images. We have all heard the stories from generation to generation, just like ‘dreamtime’ in the indigenous culture, passed onto us from our elders so “it must be true”. I heard a story just yesterday talking about their near death experience of seeing ‘the light’ at the end of the tunnel and images of people they knew.

     It is very interesting because it is death that we should know nothing about it or it needs to be proven however, when you connect to what Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine presents all is known by the very fact that it is our next realm we evolve to and it is our divine right that we can connect to it. Evolution is not hard as we may think. To be ignorant or to think we are not equiped to know the mystic and therefore evolve is a lie we have been fed.

141. What has drawn my attention is that the first response of everyone was to deeply connect with themselves and with you, and then the socially accepted sympathy and distractions crept in. This shows that there is a deep and natural sense of understanding of life that is within us already, which we have learned to go against. An important point. Because it shows that deepening our understanding is not about learning something new, but about stripping away the layers that we use to mask what we already know.

142. We all crave connection and intimacy, but unfortunately we are not willing to open up to experience that connection in full, and so we settle for second best – the polite handshake by the water fountain and a brief exchange about the weather – as though such menial sharing will fulfill us in the quiet moments of the day. It would be better we said nothing, and although faced with the awkwardness of the moment, allow the space to realise that eventually such awkwardness passes away and we are left in the glory of another’s company – and that is enough without another word being said. If we give ourselves and another such space, we come to realise that it is not speech through which we connect, but a much deeper impulse that surpasses even death. Then there is nothing to sympathise about for we realise that in fact nothing has truly been lost.

143. Hello Coleen and great points on sympathy. I have found in any relationship it is always how you are that sets the tone. In other words we can choose to take what people say in any way we wish. Most people may find it difficult to speak about death because it reminds them of something personal to them and they just don’t know how to be which reflects other things. If we have an awareness or an understanding of them then they can see the world how you may have been seeing it. With ‘our’ awareness we could support another to understand death differently from how we are with them or at least give them a choice to.

144. “That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?”
     I love what you have expressed here Coleen, so simple yet so wise. Let’s celebrate our ongoing-ness.

145. I noticed when someone close to me passed away recently, that when I spoke to people about it happening, they were reminded of their own history and wanted to discuss the journey they had had with a similar event. My being open and in acceptance of the passing of my relative was allowing them to bring up old issues that still were experiencing but were still holding on to.

146. I have noticed this too, sympathy comes in like a wet blanket and the sparkle of life fizzles out, if we let it. Being held with true love and understanding allows for that sparkle to remain.

147. It would be a grand thing if we as humans fully understood that death is just a passing and that life is a continual cycle that just goes on and on until we fully get why we are here in the first place. Sympathy is no substitute for love but its still ok to miss the person, its the same as if they were going away and you weren’t going to see them for a while.

148. My dream is to see a Robin in the snow, totally joking. I have never heard of a Robin in the snow being something that would help me deal with a relatives death. We human beings are funny, the things we come up with….. You can feel people want to help but the truth is the help is often born from an uncomfortably and an expectation on how we should all feel at certain times. Death is a hard one, I often say silly things to people around this time, I panic that what I am going to say will offend them and so sometimes I actually say things I don’t even mean!

     1. I’m actually very comfortable telling people that I don’t know what to say because there are times when I don’t.

149. Understanding the truth about death and not going into sympathy is deeply healing for others that get caught in the beliefs, ideals and behaviours, going through the motions of how we are meant to respond to and deal with death. Many of the expectations of society around death are total illusion.

150. Something we don’t seem to learn about death is that it is another cycle in our cycle of life. From my observations of people who have been in this cycle is that there is so much incredible learning and growth that takes place. I have been very inspired and humbled by those who have surrendered to this part of life and shown me the beauty of death.

151. Thank you for raising the questions in relation to truth here Coleen. I feel there is an assumption that we engage in distraction because the truth of the matter is too painful to deal with. However, the more I feel into this the more I sense that there is something deeper we are avoiding – not the superficial pain that seems apparent, but a deeper understanding of truth. It is a truth that gives us a level of responsibility that we are do not like to accept or appreciate and hence would rather ‘stay in the dark’.

152. I wonder how often we fall into established patterns of expression like sympathy and hope in response to such situations. These patterns feel like a ‘less than alive’ state of being where we ‘follow the script’ rather than truly express what is felt in the livingness of the moment. Perhaps Shakespeare was right when he said ‘All the world’s a stage’ and we are rather unwittingly regurgitating our lines rather than truly engaging with and living life.

153. It is fascinating that you mention in your blog that initially when discussing such a common, unifying event such as the death of someone we know, that there was a connection, an understanding with a complete stranger. And then the sympathy came in to sever that connection. Perhaps there is a belief here that we cannot be intimate with strangers? Or a general avoidance of feeling close or connected to others for fear of being vulnerable?And so we have developed clever standardised ways of responding to situations that allow us to avoid this intimacy or close connection with others.

154. I have in the past often found myself at a loss in situations where sympathy is the polite response – be it a death, or a loss of some kind or a problem someone is facing – I feel like being sympathetic just isn’t enough, it feels like an empty way to respond and so it is finding a way of commenting the understanding and love without emotion and getting involved in the problem yourself that I am exploring.

155. “That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?” Seeing death as the next part of life’s ongoing cycle is a beautiful way to accept the natural part of life and is something that needs to be shared and discussed more readily. This would give everyone a greater understanding and appreciation of passing on as a celebration of one cycle ending and the beginning of another.

156. Most people are not comfortable and don’t know how to deal with death. We all have a way with the birth of a child. But by the time it comes to death there is an awkwardness around the departed. There are so many variants. Their age, traditions, religions, how they died and how they lived. No surprise Coleen that hearing about attending a family members funeral the conversation turned to the weather and about the little birdies.

157. Sympathy is a real killer, it is a judgement on and over another. Effectively it says you have something or are going through something that I should feel sorry for you about. It voids all sense of responsibility and puts the one who holds the sympathy on the high horse as somehow they are above it or better than that person. Love is a beholding energy and quality and the more we are this the more other people will be given the space to also be the love that they are also naturally so.

158. As a society, it seems we are generally very uncomfortable talking about death and dealing with it in general. If we are not choosing to live in the fullness of who we are, maybe an aspect of sympathy is us not wanting to feel and acknowledge the reality of how we are living, preferring to hang on to our pictures instead, making us ‘feel better’, despite the falsity of what we’re accepting.

159. My feeling is that people go into sympathy because of their own fear of death, believing that it is the end. Many people stay away from the subject of death and dying and don’t want to go there, so I agree Coleen, going into sympathy could mean an avoidance of love because if true love was being lived, and it was realised that death is not the end but a passing-on (to another realm of existence), then there would be no need for sympathy.
     And yes, snow and robins at Christmas are a romantic ideal that has been perpetuated over the years, daft considering it hardly every snows at Christmas in the UK anymore!

160. Sympathy is only a seemingly ‘auto’ response when we are attached to the illusion that life is finite.

161. Sympathy is an auto response but it offers no actual support to any situation. When we go to sympathy I can feel we are taking a step away from the responsibility we have to read and understand any given event or occurrence. Sympathy creates a path of avoidance from what is really going on, which is the fact that there is no such thing as fate or luck, but choices we make that create energetic outcomes.

162. I have been deeply sympathetic for my entire life. It would hit me like a bullet in my stomach and I could feel myself just wanting to completely absorb another persons problems so that they would not suffer. In the end I became like a walking pack-horse with huge saddle bags hanging down burdened with every other persons emotions claimed as my own. Eventually I have come to realise that this was a grand scheme of mine to avoid taking responsibility for my own choices, for my own hurts. And once this hurts of mine have slowly been taken care of, the need to carry other peoples emotions has gently faded away, and now I am actually a much stronger support to those around me which is all I ever wanted to be in the first place.

     1. A great example Shami Duffy, how we can become puppets to our emotions when we place greater value on anything outside of ourselves, whether that be people or things, instead of honouring the all-loving, multi-dimensional beings we know ourselves to be on the inside, first and foremost. I can so relate to this.

163. I love the way you have fully claimed the truth in this situation Coleen; claimed and expressed beautifully;
     “That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?

164. Wow sympathy is the enemy of intimacy…. but yet it is seen as such a good thing to do, but does sympathy really connect us deeper or is it a clever ruse to hide behind and protect ourselves with?

165. How often do we just follow a certain protocol of responding to a situation because this is what the majority do and fear breaking that pattern by stepping out of line with the standard accepted response? What if we just allowed ourselves to really feel what is going on in every moment and then simply respond based on that feeling, not a rehearsed, standardised response?

166. I am reminded of Homer Simpson when I read this blog and had an image of him repeatedly saying to himself ‘think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts’! Rather than stop and feel the raw truth which can sometimes be confronting and uncomfortable, we can use our minds to distract ourselves from the truth and reinterpret what we feel into something more comforting but perhaps not so real.

167. This blog reminded me that many of us still feel very uncomfortable when discussing death. Perhaps it is because it reminds us of the cycles that we all live by and the accountability and responsibility that we all have to each other and the planet?

     1. Yes, Andrew it is a great reminder that generally there is an uncomfortableness around death. My feeling is it is that it has become easier to go into sympathy and the terribleness and emotions of death rather than simply connecting to the simplicity and fact that it is not really ‘the end’. However in this we would have to look at and take responsibility around the life that has just been lived.

168. Your conclusion that sympathy is what we ‘do’ in the avoidance of Love is something powerful to ponder on Coleen, for if this is indeed true, and it certainly feels that way for me, then what other emotions do we ‘do’ or let loose in the avoidance of love? Perhaps every single emotion there is? We imagine a human being devoid of emotion as being a robot, and this may be so if it weren’t for the other qualities that make up the soul, the bit ‘inside’ the human. Qualities of love, joy, truth, harmony, gloriousness and stillness will always be there in spades and I think these are the first qualities that people connect to automatically before they let the emotions have their way.

169. I love what you write here Coleen – so many great points of reflection. It seems that what we call death bring up lots of emotions in most people. One thing that occurred to me when reading this is that many people react to death because it brings up in them the knowing that they have not lived their life to the fullest and all the emotions associated with that regret or moment of awareness.

     1. Another thing that death can reflect to us is loss. We may mourn the loss of another, but really the reflection is how much we mourn the loss of our true connection to ourselves and through that to ALL others. When we are truly connected we know there is no such thing as death. Yes, the physical body dies but we do not – we simply pass to another form and continue our path of evolution / return.

        1. I think you are spot on Nicola, that it isn’t necessarily the loss of the person that is missed, rather what is mourned is the relationship that was never had but knew it was possible when the person was alive.

        2. Yes Nicola and Suzanne, I feel there is truth in this and we don’t just feel this loss at the point of death it can be at the end of a relationship, a friendship or work situation. There is a knowing inside that we did not make these times about that which we are – Love.

170. That you right of not passing away but passing on in the context of our being in a cycle is so important it changes the whole way we can be with death.

171. Sympathy, as written about here, can never be equated to the deep through and abiding feeling of love that it is possible to feel when one is in connection with ones inner heart.

172. Yes that’s true and having sypmpathy can cause more problem, with emotions going up and down. I use to get caught up in the sympathy game for many years.

173. It is interesting that death is one of those subjects that is a little taboo – it is occurring all around us but we often don’t discuss it and when we do I feel a lot of people aren’t sure how to talk about it, and so fall back on sympathy and politeness because it is an automatic response and creates a gap between you and the person

     1. I agree Rebecca and I have noticed in myself that there are many moments in life when I feel unsure about how to respond to something. I have also noticed that if I am unsure that this is a give away that I am not connected to my body and to myself and am trying to intellectualise my way through life using my brain. Perhaps if we all were more connected to our bodies and to our feelings it would mean our minds would not dominate so much and we would not doubt or second guess how to respond to any situation?

174. It feels as though we all have a lot of hurt and sadness that lays undealt with and when a situation such as the passing of a relative is presented to us, sympathy is a response to go into as a protection to not deeply feeling our own hurt and pain that we have not dealt with. How can we bring true inspiration and understanding to another if these issues lie there?

     1. Great question Joshua. There is often so much unexpressed between people. I can relate to this myself with my own family members, which then maintains a wall of protection between us. Definitely something to ponder on here, and an opportunity to let more love in.

175. For too long have we seen death as a bad and difficult thing as the end of everything. As we have lost sight of the bigger picture we have become so attached to this one lifetime that letting go of it seems the hardest thing ever. But if we realise that death is just another part of the ongoing cycle we are inevitably part of then we can celebrate the life that has been lived and the next step that has arrived for the deceased.

176. I love how you expose Coleen that we use sympathy as a way to pretend we are connecting but actually are shying away from true connection and the potential for letting each other in. It is a learned response that we often do not even feel not as it has become so automatic. In that we lose the observation of where the other person is truly at with any given situation.

177. Sympathy feels like a wet blanket that has been put over your head. It offers no room to breathe, and thus no space for true healing to take place.

     1. Adam I like how you share that, sympathy does not allow true healing to take place, it causes more emotions.

     2. An apt description Adam Warburton. A wet blanket over ones head can only but dim ones light, and interfere with ones natural connection to God.

178. This opens up the possibility to some really beautiful conversations that will begin to unlock the so called mysteries to life and death, which I have seen families be completely devastated by someone passing over.

179. I was speaking to a family member the other day and caught myself going into sympathy with them, I could feel how this got in the way with us truly connecting. It was a great lesson for me to listen and accept what was being said and this allowed more understanding and an opportunity to deepen my relationship with them.

     1. Sympathy is often misconstrued as connection. Most people are often so numb with coping with their day to day grind, stress and busyness, that when they experience an emotion like sympathy, triggered by an event or memory, they are tricked into thinking that it’s a natural human response and what we do when we feel we need to console or support or be understood by another. When the truth is that emotion is a specific energy that’s fed to us to bring denseness to the body, and therefore blocking our ability to connect with ourselves, let alone another.

180. I have just experienced what happens when we go into sympathy. Visiting a family member who is very ill, I was quite sure I wasn’t going to fall into the trap, but the energy of sympathy is very subtle and I was caught out, and responded to her energy of need by offering to change all my plans and stay longer with her. It took one unconscious moment, and once I had let myself choose this option I gave away my power and became very exhausted. I could feel the change of energy in my body and my energy. At the time I did not realise what was happening, I felt I was supporting her and arrogance came in about the “good” I was doing her and the fact I was giving up my own attachments. But I did not hold myself and my body has suffered. Before this incident I was indeed supporting her by accepting fully who and how she was, and listening to any feelings she felt to share with me, and just being me and enjoying being with her, but once I was “out of myself” it became a struggle for a while till I realised what was happening and turned it around by claiming myself again. The impact of this choice to go into sympathy for one moment led to many moments that benefited no-one.

181. I have experienced at work, being super busy and rushing and asking someone how they are, sort of in passing, only to be told that they have recently lost a loved one. It really does make you stop for a moment in the business of life and connect to that person. If you can do it with love and understanding, it is such an amazing moment for both, but I find sympathy sort of gets in the way of listening and feeling where someone is at with the situation.

182. True Brendan and sympathy can also bring emotions into a situation where there is none. I remember once, I felt guilty for not being emotional, thinking there was something wrong with me, so I used sympathy from another to allow myself to feel emotional ….crazy really…..

183. You offer some interesting perspectives Coleen on the subject of death and how we currently approach it and how we could. What you say is true in that if we saw death as someone passing on, completing one cycle before embarking on the next, perhaps we would be much more accepting of what is occurring and much less emotional.

184. I used to think I liked sympathy because it made me feel I mattered. I didn’t matter or even like myself much so I was looking outside of me for connection. More recently, I had surgery and I could really feel the yuckiness of sympathy. I was celebrating the opportunity I had for the clearing and deeper healing, yet there were people who, despite meaning well, I didn’t want to be around me. Appreciating the fact I have moved on so much.

185. I’ve always found it difficult to feel the depth of emotions that many people display around what I would consider the natural passing of life. If there is regret about someone passing away early from an illness it would be more related to the lack of willingness we have in seeing the bigger picture of what illness and disease is and what the natural cycle of life and death offers us. Reincarnation changes our perspective on death as we no longer see it as the end, and therefore sympathy becomes obsolete.

186. Just as the sun cannot stop shining, even when we perceive it to be night, so too our light never be put out just because the human eye fails to see it.

     1. gorgeously expressed Liane and so it is. So it is for us to learn once again to not look with the eyes in our head but the eyes in our heart for they will always see the light.

187. Sympathy and sentiment exist when we disconnect from the knowing that we are all One and as such are a part of a great loop of life that endlessly cycles around and around. Bereft of this knowing we recoil at anything that asks us to pause and hence truly feel the truth of the situation at hand. We have come to view death as a full stop (.) … rather than the comma (,) it is, for it is the pause… before we move onto the next level of expression. But because we are so hung up on the seeming finality of this transitional point, we become alarmed (!) and seek to avoid going deeper because the real issue here is not that we are scared of death, the issue is we have disconnected from love and do not want to be reminded of it. There is no hiding in the world of energy and thus, when we pass over, there is not the denseness of the body in which we can hide.

     1. Ouch! “()..” “Love” once reconnected to, feels amazing and what hurts us and makes us go into “hiding” is the pain of not living the love we are.

        1. Great point, it’s not living the love we we are that causes the pain.

     2. I love this Liane “We have come to view death as a full stop (.) … rather than the comma (,) it is, for it is a pause”. Death, moving on to the next stage of our evolution. Thank you.

     3. So true, Liane. The epidemic at hand is not a fear of death, but a fear of truly living.

188. Thank you Coleen, for exposing the ill beliefs we hold about someone passing on in life and for bringing clarity of the natural way of our evolution and when we see it in the broader picture we understand such a natural event is an opportunity to celebrate and appreciate another.

     1. Thank you, Francisco. Reading your comment I can feel that ‘evolution’ is another term to which we need to bring truth also. Current definitions of evolution make it about ‘nature – red in truth and claw,’ ‘survival of the fittest,’ or, at best ‘reciprocal altruism.’ None of these terms or their related concepts accurately describe the way our essence expresses through the physical body in order for us to return to our true selves. This offers a completely different view of evolution.

     2. I love how it feels when reading what you share Francisco,”. . . bringing clarity of the natural way of our evolution and when we see it in the broader picture we understand such a natural event is an opportunity to celebrate and appreciate another.” The more sharing and understanding we can feel the more we may be inspired to live our full potential knowing that it plays an important role in not only our evolution but that of humanity.

     3. How awesome it would be for our children to learn this from an early age. Equipped with a true understanding of evolution, there would naturally be more awareness and appreciation for our role/responsibility in the bigger picture as well.

189. Well said Brendan, it is like saying to another: “here I’ll carry your burdens for you” if this is how we live we end up with a body that is burnt out and exhausted as there is no true care and responsibility being lived.

190. I agree Katie, it is an image that we hold to that if we show sympathy for another means we care and love them but as you have said it is an imposition encouraging them to be less by continuing to wallow in the same behaviours.

191. ‘Why would we substitute sympathy for Love, especially in the area of someone’s passing on?’ This is such a great reminder Coleen, understanding that sympathy in any situation clouds an issue making it very hard to see the truth or offer love to another.

     1. I agree Anna, sympathy is yuk in any situation. Sympathy bears no relation to love or truth, it is an emotion and always harmful. If I ever catch myself going into sympathy, then it is clear that I have a personal unresolved issue or hurt that I need to bring more awareness to and deal with.

192. Thank you Coleen, indeed sympathy takes away the opportunity for us to appreciate and understand the blessing and joy of what passing on means and to mention the burden that it places on our bodies.

193. Often when a conversation starts off about things like the passing of people, accidents etc, we instantly go into connection – we feel the person and the conversation flows from that place of love and understanding- put in life we so rarely have conversations like this and so to hold it is hard and we slip into politeness, sympathy or auto pilot.

     1. I love what you say here, Rebecca and this part makes sense “.. but in life we so rarely have conversations like this and so to hold it is hard and we slip into politeness, sympathy or auto pilot.” and demonstrates that expressing from our heart is a needed and necessary way to support us to stay in that moment in love. Thank you.

        1. I agree, and it is something we need to practice and learn to do more in life.

     2. Yes. It often seems that after that initial connection we don’t know what to do, how to follow on as you quite rightly say and we “slip into politeness, sympathy or auto pilot. How great it would be if we could acknowledge that that initial connection between us were enough and no more need be said. Sometimes holding another in love needs no words.

        1. Yes elainearthey, that initial heart connection is priceless and shows us what we are instantly capable of. Now we need to develop a familiarity with the feeling so that it becomes our normal, rather than retreating back into our protective shells typified by polite conversation. Sympathy feels like a polite safe way of creating a sense of togetherness which is actually just a mental joining.

        2. I agree, and start to explore how to take that initial connection into the rest of the conversation

        3. Yes, I agree Elaine and what I am feeling is that we if still have times within ourselves when we feel ‘we are not enough’ how are we going to consistently value the simplicity and divine quality of connection with another?

     3. This is what I enjoy most about funerals, that is how open people are to connecting and appreciating.

194. What you share Coleen on sympathy is so important, we need to break through these beliefs and ideals that society holds around death been a bad thing and very final. When we understand re-incarnation we can accept dying much easier and know that this is an opportunity for us all to grow and evolve.

     1. So true Anna- death is often seen as finite and this draws us into emotions such as sympathy. But if we understand the truth of reincarnation there is acceptance and the knowing that another cycle will commence and therefore death can be seen as a time of celebration instead of mourning and despair.

195. Quite right Brendan. In sympathy we enjoin and become part of the situation, rather than offering a steadiness and equalness to the person, so they can find another perspective other than the normal response to death and dying. Not going into sympathy actually offers people space to feel what they actually feel, rather than having to play the sympathetic role.

196. I love the confirmation of your love for your relative and the understanding that they are going onto the next cycle in their lives. There is no need for drama or sympathy in this case, as death is a part of life and another opportunity for life will come again. I find the sympathy really gets in the way of us being able to fully celebrate someone’s life or allow people to express anything other than grief and loss.

197. It is great what you have shared here Coleen it helps to break the ill consciousness with dying and sympathy. I agree with Rosanna in we need to look at the quality in which we are living first with the purpose of true evolution and that this needs to be celebrated throughout our entire life. There is a much bigger picture in regards to us, how we live, the world and universe at hand to what we are currently not allowing ourselves to be aware of. It is time for this to change.

198. It is very cool to consider that we overlay truth with emotions – in this case sympathy – so as not to feel the vastness of who we are and the big picture we are part of. It doesn’t make any sense of course, but it is a current human condition and habit so important to look at and ask questions around. Interfering with the natural initial connection we all feel with one another is at the nub of all our ills and problems.

     1. Interfering or avoiding connection in any context, in any way, needs to be something we acknowledge and investigate every time it occurs, I agree, Matilda.

199. When we see death in this way, we are more likely to celebrate the person and the life lived, this time around.

200. Great ponderings Coleen. What I have observed with death and dying is that those who are witnessing often feel a helplessness because the ‘doing’ becomes less important than just ‘being’ with the person. Sitting and being with someone and allowing them to be where they are in the dying process is not as easy thing for most. The same can be said for people who are grieving. We can often feel helpless because there is nothing we can say that will change how they are feeling, so we energetically offer sympathy to take some of that load. Now this may sound helpful, but the truth is that it is not – as you have shared very beautifully Coleen. In sympathising we take on something that is not for us to take on, thereby making it toxic for our own bodies and the person we are sympathising with is in effect being considered less able to deal with what life is presenting them. With all of this ‘well meaning’ behaviour we cut off the thing that is likely to be a true benefit, the openness of each other where we can share honestly where we are at, so that we ourselves can process what we need to. One very wise person once called this observing but not absorbing.

     1. I love and feel the absolute truth in your point that the witnessing of death is about the ‘being’ and not the ‘doing’ to which we are all so accustomed in all other areas of life, Jennifer. Surrendering to this absolute fact is one we resist to the nth degree and end up creating sympathy, emotion and drama – which is crazy – there is no way we can feel the truth of death in this maelstrom of emotion; perhaps this is why we create it? We don’t want to know the truth on some level. And post death, in preparation for the funeral, we often make it about the type of coffin, the colour of the flowers, who will be invited and sit where, who will read the eulogy, what songs should be sung and in what type of church. All of these arrangements can be conducted with deep respect and in a sense of honouring the deceased and friends and family. They can also be done to avoid feeling what is going on for oneself, for others, and perhaps, also for the deceased.

201. This understanding brings a whole new light to the process of dying and that we can have a relationship with it that’s not about sympathy but about celebration of a life lived, and the evolution offered. This also brings home to me that the quality of life lived with the purpose of evolution, is one to be celebrated throughout and not just at the end!

     1. Beautifully said Rosanna, ‘that’s not about sympathy but about celebration of a life lived’. How amazing if we lived and claimed this more in our lives, to celebrate another passing over instead of the grief and sadness that casts a shadow of what is a very beautiful and natural part of a cycle.

202. It’s funny how hard we try to make things better for people with comments like – ‘Well, at least it might snow for Christmas.’ Instead of knowing and understanding that we all go through difficult moments, and difficult times can help us grow exponentially, open our hearts, and deepen our love and understanding of people.

     1. The willingness to see ‘difficult moments’ as opportunities to learn more about ourselves and life, opens up our world and understanding. I wonder why we are so intent on not having these ‘difficult moments’, trying to cover them up or pretend they are not there.

        1. Yeah! Great point! We try and avoid ‘difficult moments’ at all costs yet they can truly open up our world and support us to learn and see more than before.

203. Absolutely Katie. It is only through understanding truth of our Soulful quality that will allow us to feel at ease with the passing over of a loved one, not the consoling with sympathy that keeps us held in the belief that we are only of this physical life.

204. Well said Susan. It is so true that we have been sold a huge lie. When we choose to become aware of how much we are avoiding that which make us uncomfortable we will then discover the truth and release our bondage to a belief that keeps us held in the dark.

205. There is such a strong sense of taboo around talking about death in our society. We have accepted the belief that our last breath is the end which creates a sense of futility about life itself. Yet through avoiding sharing honestly about how we feel of death and life itself there is a mystery that has developed and this lack of true understanding has us reaching for ways to manage this uncomfortableness through using sympathy and empathy and other picture of how to be with this. Yet in truth the cycle of birth, life and death should be celebrated at each point equally so, as it is a cycle to which there is no end. This is the cycle through which we choose to enter the world which offers us all the opportunity to evolve and marks the degree of evolution we have achieved so we can return with a greater understanding of who we are, what our purpose truly is and live it together.

     1. This is very true Carola. I have just started working full time in palliative care and talking about death is core business, so to speak. One of the things that I have always known but is now meeting me face on is how any health professionals struggle with this topic too. So in the team of 2 that I am working in, we are released on heavily for these type of conversations. But we often struggle with these conversations because we know that people are grieving the loss of the lives they have not lived, and the choices they have not made – which reminds us of our own….big time.

        1. Those conversations would make for very insightful reading, Jenny.

     2. I agree, Carola – equal and ongoing celebration of birth, life and death throughout. We need to address as a collective what inhibits us from doing this.

206. What if instead of waiting for death, we connected ‘immediately and deeply’ as you say Coleen with each other every day? What if we appreciated every human being that crosses our path, instead of waiting for them to be taken away? Perhaps then we would have a rather different understanding of the nature of life? I feel we would know there is a richness and care that never dies or goes, that death is only a matter for sorrow if we lived with stuck in the belief that life is just this one time. It seems we have our view of death upside down and this is causing our life to be more like that of the walking dead.

     1. Great points Joseph. We seem to only value things when we are going to or have lost them. Appreciating each other all the time would not leave us with the regret when it is too late, that we didn’t connect deeply enough.

     2. Beautiful, Joseph – we are more dead while in the body if we fear death – a natural and grace – full blessing, which holds us in love for our next incarnation.

207. If these wise words Coleen: “That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?” were shared with all children from an early age it would change the way we approach death and the heavy weighted feeling of bereavement would be replaced with the celebration of a life lived. One by-product would be that Sympathy cards would no longer be needed, perhaps to be replaced by Celebration ones instead.

     1. Well said Ingrid. Being aware of the cycle we are inescapably a part of empowers us to live with the purpose of knowing who we are and why we are here. With this awareness we come to understand that we are part of a Divine plan through which the way we choose to live has an equally potent effect on all.

     2. Hospitals would also be very different places if sympathy wasn’t the normal response to death. There can be so much joy in a family coming together to celebrate a person’s life and passing. Perhaps we just need to just give ourselves permission to feel this way.

208. Coleen for me this is true: “. . . sympathy could well be what cements us into this belief that we end forever, that we pass away, rather than that we pass on to the next phase of our ever unfolding, divinely sustained life.” When my father and my best fried died I was astounded how calm I was. For me it was a knowing deep inside of me that they were pass on and so I felt a sadness that they are not in my presence anymore but also a joy that they will have an other go on earth.

     1. In my experience with patients, a lot of people who are dying don’t like or want sympathy. People who are dying can develop a wonderful perspective of what matters in life and let go of all the unnecessary and false things. They are often at peace with dying long before their family are. We need to offer dying people and their families deep care and connection, not the perhaps well meaning but stifling effect of sympathy.

209. To ‘think happy thoughts’ doesn’t take away the pain but rather dulls our ability to see clearly, to understand the truth.

210. I find when I feel sympathy it’s a bit like being on a sinking ship! It seems like it’s a massive world-wide lesson for us all to observe and support a person who is not feeling ok, without jumping into the ship with them.

     1. Yes it’s very big Meg especially around death and dying. To not be sympathetic is seen as heart-less and often creates a tension between those who have ‘gone there’ and the one or ones who haven’t. We do indeed need to learn to be with someone who is down in some way, without going down with them.

211. Beautiful Coleen I love all your sharing and that “That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?” How lovely this is to feel.

212. I love what you have presented here for us to ponder on Coleen about what sympathy truly is and its harming effect on society. Both my parents had life changing illnesses several years before they passed on and when they did it almost felt like a relief as they were no longer in pain, discomfort etc and I knew that they were finally free to move on to their next life. But those close to me didn’t see it as I did and their sympathy came in cloying waves that I just wanted to run away from. I know that they thought I was being detached from normally expected emotions, but in fact I was simply celebrating the end of my parents lives with the knowing that they were always in my heart.

213. I agree Nikki, it is worthwhile to realise our own unresolved emotions and issues and beliefs around death and dying to ensure we don’t inadvertently impose those things onto another who is experiencing this kind of situation. Learning to observe ourselves and others is what allows that space and understanding to be.

214. The passing on of another feels like it offers us a moment to pause and feel into the meaning of life and how we each feel with this truth – that life does not end with death. Sometimes during my life I have found this quite a daunting feeling – there is a comfort that life is a package that we can contain and quantify – and control, maybe? As we let go of the control we can feel the sense in reincarnation and how life evolves and offers us opportunities to change and become empowered to live life in a way that is expansive and sustainable.

     1. Susan I love what you have shared here, it’s very beautiful. There is so much more to life that we have lead to believe and death is just a a tiny snippet.

215. It’s also spot on that in the face of sympathy, connecting to the truth of what is occurring, as you did, which is actually quite a joy-full state, feels ‘wrong’. It is not that it is, but currently it is considered ‘normal’ to assume another will feel devastated by the ‘loss of a loved one’.

216. Coleen I love what you’ve shared, it is deeply insightful and helpful in understanding the direction conversation takes in these type of interactions. I have recent personal experiences very similar to what you’ve shared, and while the conversations didn’t get to images as you’ve outlined, they most definitely ended up in sympathy after a few moments of initial connection.

217. A very though provoking article for the many who who are awkward around the subject of death.’That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle? A beautiful statement.

218. The imagery and romanticism around Christmas is strong and one that I have been looking at and dismantling the last few years. I see that as a child, I loved it all and pursued the traditions because it gave me happy moments to look forward to; emotions that substituted the real connection that I live now. I love that I can instate traditions based on love and connection for our family moving forward without the illusion and hype that we have continually fallen for around each of the significant events in the year.

219. We really have been given such incredible tools for life, as students of the Livingness. To understand the cycle of life and death, to know that we continue to reincarnate ongoing and to understand the significance of letting this life pass, with the blessing of those left living, so that the new incarnation can begin with a new body and new choices …. To understand this and know that we do not need future points of happiness to sustain our joie de vivre; this is an incredible platform to live a rich and fulfilling life and one which we can offer others who have not yet discovered this for themselves.

     1. Yes, Emma, this understanding opens life up and makes sense. It also instills a steady and sustaining sense of purpose and responsibility.

220. On hearing someone has died, I have noticed that when people go into sympathy, it feels like in that moment there is an absolute refusal to be truly understanding and feel the truth of the situation instead opting for going to a pretence version of ‘polite society’ understanding to show they care. Personally I find the energy quite false and insipid and being more about making themselves feel better.

     1. Yes Samantha, there is an instant response to hearing of a death that is more about what is expected, than anything true. I have long felt there is a great discomfort with death as a whole, and that rather than feel the enormity of what can be felt in that moment, not just about the persons life and choices, but the bigger picture we are all part of, we rather revert to the expected sympathetic response as a default bypass.

221. Yes. Katie, sympathy has the same degrading energy as niceness

222. I have little issues around death. When my mother died a few years ago, I could accept and appreciate her passing, I could feel her power and how she had chosen that the cycle was complete for her at age 81. My mother was a very important person in my life and I do still have moments I miss her presence in my life, but never have I wished for it to have gone differently, it was all perfectly constellated for all of us.

223. Two significant people have passed on in my life, one 20 years ago and one 2 years ago. Since coming to Universal Medicine and understanding about cycles, death, reincarnation and Karma, both these experiences were very different for me. One completely took over my life and I fell apart, holding it together on the outside but consequently in not allowing what I was really feeling to rise up, I becoming very sick later. The other I processed in a few days noting all that came up for me but remaining in the knowing that I am love and anything I felt was there for me to clear and about me, not her. I mourned the relationship a little and how some things had played out but mainly celebrated this person and the beautiful relationship and connection we had, given where we were both at, in the full knowing she was still close and forever felt. With a deeper understanding of life and death there is no need for drama as I chose the first time however with death still being misunderstood and a taboo subject people shy away instead of staying with what they are feeling and allowing that opportunity for healing and instead go from the unknown into sympathy. So it is with deep appreciation to the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom and my understanding of what life is really about, I now do not fear death at all, it is a blessing, an end of a cycle and the beginning of a new one.

224. Thank you Coleen, “images” are absolute killers because they come from ideal about a situation and like tying our hand behind our back then expecting someone to feed themselves it does not happen. Same with images, they are like having your hands tied while the energy feeds you what ever it wants. All images are the same, could you imagine the world being flat, which was once the image that was held? Can you imagine there being no energy, when now we know everything is energy! Thanks to the presentations by Serge Benhayon we now understand “everything is because of energy,” which is not an image but an energetic fact. So to choose the energy we connect to brings clarity in life or images! The divine connection to the Soul brings clarity. Otherwise we are stuck with the images that feed us the latest what ever to keep us from feeling the truth!
     For more on Serge Benhayon or another perspective go to;
     http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=SERGE+BENHAYON

225. Knowing that there is more to life than just the eye can see has helped me appreciate that death is not the end. This understanding brings a whole new light to the process of dying and that we can have a relationship with it that’s not about sympathy but about celebration of a life lived, and the evolution offered.

     1. I agree totally Rosanna that the evolution that is possible if we were to change what has been adopted as the normal when someone has died, the grief and the sympathy, to one where we celebrate the person’s life, has the power to change how we approach life and death. It feels as if a huge weight would be lifted from every single one of us and we would look at the quality of our lives through very different eyes.

     2. Beautiful Rosanna. When we understand our relationship with our Soul we will understand that there is and can be no end in death.

226. Coleen, I love the way you have expressed this. I have struggled with the idea and feelings of sympathy, feeling like there is more to this connection than being in sympathy and being sorry. We clearly have a deeper connection to one another and this connection is not broken when someone passes over.

     1. Yes Amanda, I agree, the connection stays, and this is beautiful. I had this experience with my mother passing over and felt such a deep connection to her after her passing.

     2. Beautiful, Amanda – the connection is never broken – so true.

     3. Great highlighting of the point that connection is definitely Not about sympathising – connection is mutual expansive and deeply confirming. Sympathy is like being covered in concrete.

        1. Yes agreed Coleen, it is true what you say about the way sympathy feels… it is like a thick, heavy blanket descending, not dissimilar to sadness… an instant kill-joy if we let it in.

227. When I first attended a Universal Medicine course I wasn’t aware of how hard my body was in protection, because I had learned to soften my hardened body and my movements through Hatha Yoga. But it was there, tangible in my thoughts and during the nights I was pressing my jaws together. Also there was lots of sympathy which gave me a similar illusion to be well connected with people whereas it was sympathy that protected me from real contact.

     1. Sympathy exposed here as the saboteur when it comes to us connecting with each other honestly and openly.

228. And the funeral was gorgeous – I did not need an ounce of sympathy and spent the day enjoying seeing so many people celebrate my Mum’s life.

     1. Beautiful Simon, I also recently attended a funeral of someone close to me and felt very similarly. Each time sympathy was expressed it felt jarring to the way I felt. For many however I noticed they stayed with the openness and love that was present and in this the feeling of celebration of that persons life. I also gave a tribute and had many people come and spoke to me afterwards, very touched by what was expressed, and not at all in sympathy. It’s very beautiful to hear accounts of funerals like this… and to see that many are open to shifting to something more inspiring.

        1. And what could be better than celebrating everything that someone lived… with all the people that they touched. We drop the hum drum, day to day, and instead take a moment to appreciate someone in full. Something we should do more often when we are alive!

        2. Yes exactly… it would serve as a great reminder to do more of this while our friends and family are alive too and not just wait for their passing before we appreciate in full what they have brought to this life. I even wondered whether to have a celebration of my mother’s life now, before she is gone, so she gets to feel the appreciation of all those she has touched.

        3. Jenny and Simon I love your sharing, thank you. True celebrations of life.

        4. Thank you both for what you have shared here. Re-writing the social norm about funerals AND providing great points of inspiration for how we live – every moment an opportunity to appreciate.

        5. Yes Matilda exactly.. and this is such an important arena to begin doing so… held as it is currently with beliefs and ideals about how we should be… heavy, bereft an sympathetic. Attending a funeral is, for the most part, a very draining experience, far from the joyous celebration it can be.

        6. I would say, have the appreciation ceremony, Jenny – we are always connected.

     2. I remember feeling joy at my mums funeral too – by Joy I don’t mean an elated state but a deep openness and acceptance within myself of everything I was feeling.

        1. Yes beautiful Abby… and what I have felt underpins this joy is knowing that all is exactly as it needs to be, for everyone. There is a deeper settlement in the body with that acceptance you speak of, which is very different to the usual experience of attending a funeral.

229. My Mum passed recently, and while she was not sure what to expect, her feeling is that while we pass out of sight of the people we have known in life… as we cross over the horizon and fade from view – we emerge into a new vista, and there are others to welcome us in the next stage.

     1. That’s a pretty cool way to look at dying, sensing there is a new vista ahead and this is most definitely not the end.

230. Yes Linda, that is how it feels to me too. We use it to distract ourselves from connecting deeper with the other, as we are faced with the finiteness of our physical lives here on earth, something we feel difficult to accept as a reality as we believe that we are unique individuals and have control over life. Being confronted with someone dying makes us aware that in fact we have no control at all, but are subject to a grander cycle, the endless cycle of life and death and that in that we are all one and the same.

     1. Hmmm….reading your comment, Nico, I can feel how death does actually clearly indicate that we are all part of cycles that we surrender to in wisdom, or resist in stubborn defiance. Death exposes the reality of cycles also in terms of the timing of death, which is determined by the Soul – not by the personality, the relatives, the church or even spirit – it is an impulse from Soul. This brings another dimension as to why we would go into sympathy – not only to avoid feeling what is going on within us, but also what is going on with this cycle, which is determined by the Soul. Quite a revelation there!

        1. Indeed Coleen, the ending of our cycle on earth is determined by our Soul in which we have no control but only can surrender to. Avoiding the truth of that, that we are living in cycles which are ruled by a grander cycle, is needed by the spirit to keep us in the belief that life is only a one off and in that we do not have to take any responsibility for the future life on earth. As in the state we die, we will be reborn with and determines our life in the next incarnation into a human body, and with that on a grander scale how we will live together as a society.

     2. That is so true Nico – “Being confronted with someone dying makes us aware that in fact we have no control at all, but are subject to a grander cycle, the endless cycle of life and death and that in that we are all one and the same.” I am wondering why we not learn that death is part of life and that we will return at the kindergarten or at school – it would made death a bit lighter.

        1. That is my wondering too Ester, it would make the way we would live life and in that appreciate death completely different. In fact death is the end of an incarnation on earth of which we know we will return to in another incarnation, until this cycle comes to an end and we stop to return to this earthly lives.

     3. Which is why learning to surrender through life is so important. Not only does it help with our control issues, but will go along way when it is our turn to pass over.

231. We are taught that death is something to be feared as we are not taught about the cycle of life, the passing on. We worry about what is next. Is heaven or hell waiting or a nothingness perhaps? So it is natural to have sympathy if inside we are unsure of what is next. Knowing that we are only passing on, I am not fearful of death and when I hear of others passing, I don’t go into much sympathy as to me there is no end.

232. Wow beautifully said Mary. We are going against nature and the flow of life to try to cheat death.

233. Yes I love how Coleen, you expressed it as passing on. And not focussing on the loss but the celebration of this moving on.

234. This is a beautiful example of how going into sympathy can inhibit true connection with others.

235. Yes Coleen, passing on, not passing away, so true to make this distinction. It has a lovely feel of continuation. When there is acceptance of the fact that it is not ‘the end’ but instead completion of a cycle for someone, and hence their ongoing healing, there is no space for sympathy, only joy and celebration for their continuing journey.

     1. Yes, Zofia, that belief of an end – a permanent end- I feel does a great deal of damage to the human psyche.

        1. True Coleen, a great deal of damage…and allows one to be irresponsible with life

236. “Why would we substitute sympathy for Love, especially in the area of someone’s passing on?” This is a great question and one well worth pondering on the reality of passing on. A trick that so easily keeps us from the truth, as it is set up as ‘expected’ that that is what is the appropriate response when someone dies.

     1. Yes Sandra, it feels like an accepted way of response when someway dies, but but to me with going into sympathy we deny the fact that this is natural part of our endless cycle of life and death, and put the emphasis on life and ignores that part of the ongoing life when not in a physical body.

        1. Well said Nico, more to sympathy in particular around death than meets the eye.

237. “At least you might see a Robin”… so often we try to distract people out of what they are feeling. Feeling a loss when someone passes is normal. But comments like that aim to take people away from their pain as though it is a bad thing. I know for me, when there has been pain that I have not felt, it only gets stored in my body where is can have a much greater impact on me than when I simply feel the pain and allow for it to pass and not have hold on me.

     1. Yes Nikki, if there is pain it needs to be felt, otherwise it gets dulled and remains dormant but un-resolved within our bodies. Sympathy is a classic way to dull our feelings, as it doesn’t allow us to heal what is there, it is more a buffer to stop us deeply feeling what is there to be felt. Compassion on the other hand allows space for someone to feel what is coming up and express how they are through their actions and words.

        1. That’s the word I was looking for – compassion! Compassion feels very holding whereas sympathy feels very squashing.

     2. This is what is done with children a lot of the time, distracting them when they feel sad, from the moment they are born. It is quite a strong pattern for humans to avoid feeling pain and sadness and we forget that just allowing ourselves to feel it in the moment is the ‘best’ way to deal with it.

        1. It is quite astonishing how much this is done to kids. They are told they are alright or plainly distracted away from what they are feeling. This sends the message that feeling what hurts is a bad thing.

        2. This is very true Katinka, and working with children I am aware of when it feels easier to do this for whatever reason, usually a lack of time. However I understand the long term implications on the child if whatever they are feeling is not simply allowed to be expressed and usually this is all they want – to be met in that moment and not fobbed off again.

     3. Yes to this, Nikki – we are so quick to interfere with people’s feelings when we perceive them as bad, which totally stifles the opportunity to learn and move on.

238. Great blog Coleen which gave me much to ponder on. When my father passed away 13 years ago I wavered between wanting sympathy and being disgusted by it. Now, when looking back I can see how when I wanted sympathy it was all about me and because I wanted attention. Then when I would get it, it was not what I wanted at all. What I really craved was love – which cannot be expressed via sympathy.

     1. Thanks Nikki, with your comment you make me think of the passing over of my father, which is some 15 years ago. I can recall I was deeply touched by this loss and the only thing that I needed was just love but that was not how I expressed myself and instead I was looking for sympathy as well. But this only brought me self-pity and no love and true connection at all. So with that sympathy I have withheld myself and others to truly connect with one another and to express in that connection the love that we shared for my past over father and the love we have for one another.

        1. Looking back at that time, I can feel how much love was around yet no one really knew what to do with it – myself included. Sympathy seemed like the right and good thing to do and offer yet it took away from the love that was waiting there and bursting to be expressed.

239. Sympathy is a creation we participate in to make ourselves feel comfortable and to delay living what is true.

240. I am now feeling how insidious sympathy is. It drives us to contract in oh so many situations, not just around dealing with death.

241. You make some very interesting points Coleen and now that you mention it I can really feel how sympathy kills connection, sympathy takes us away from ourselves and puts a wedge between us and others. That sympathy is not all it is cracked up to be. Compassion on the other hand is based on understanding what is going on for other people in each situation rather than tainting everyone with the same brush of emotional responses. Compassion opens us up connection, connection to our inner-most knowing and connection to others because they feel met and understood. The two are quite different.

     1. I, too, am learning to re connect with true compassion, Jeanette – truly beautiful and deeply honouring and so, yes, it brings true understanding.

     2. “Sympathy kills connections”, that is powerful.

        1. Agreed Katinka, there is no true connection with sympathy

        2. It is logical too, when we go into sympathy we are not holding the other person as equal and therefore no true connection can occur.

        3. This is true, it’s another method of seeking comfort, so we can ignore what we feel and avoid responsibility

     3. Jeannettegold thank you for awesome comment – sympathy really kills the connection . . . compassion instead is an offer.

        1. Yes, compassion really supports another person as they know they are understood.

242. Definitely Mary I heard that at a debate recently they were saying they could see us living until we are 150 with some drugs that they have developed. First up ‘why’ why on earth would anyone want to live to 150, but if you are disconnected from the cycles of life then of course you would want to be here for as long as possible. So much is lost in this focus on the physical life being ‘it’ we are part of something so much grander and divine.

243. Another thing I just realised from your blog is the romantic picture that people have about Christmas and it snowing, and the cute little robin….. it reminds me of the romantic picture some have of going sailing. Having grown up sailing I can let you know from years of experience that being at sea, dealing with storms, getting a wet backside almost every time you go ashore in the dinghy, carrying your own water, pumping the bilges etc – there is no romance in it at all. It’s all one big illusion and a distraction from life in general yet those who have not ever done it have a completely different imagination of what life on the sea is all about… ah yes, the cocktails on deck at sunset, the gentle breeze in your sails and it’s all smooth sailing.
     When I think about it, there are many of such pictures, all around the world, held by different people and if you look into them, you can see how they are there as something to look forward to, almost to make the rest of life be okay or as a reward. Thanks for writing this which lead me to ponder all of what I have now shared.

     1. I love what you share, Rosie – those pictures do not ever deliver truth, in whatever contact they are delivered.

     2. Thank you Rosie for expanding on this, we do seem to be looking all over the place for rewards to make life okay. It is a continuous search for something outside of us to fill the emptiness we feel inside and its a vicious circle for we will only feel more empty.

     3. And it is not only the pictures, even if we see a robin in the snow but are not content with and appreciative of ourselves we will not be able to appreciate the beauty and clarity they bring as we are not open to their true bringing but only to what we have made them to be to make us feel in a certain way.

     4. Your comment made me laugh Rosie, I’ve never been sailing but I definitely imagined it to be more romantic and serene than that! You’re right loads of pictures we have are there to make the rest of the world seem more ok. The picture postcard of a snowy white Christmas with the robin I’m sure leaves millions of people disappointed every year in its unrealistic delivery of the truth.

        1. Sorry to burst your image Meg of sailing off into the sunset. If you need any more image breaking on the subject, just ask. I have lived it and know it for real.

244. I enjoyed reading your blog Coleen and I can see how people will often not want to talk about death as it triggers old hurts of their own that they may have not ever dealt with, and in that moment, they will reach for whatever distraction that they can find.

     1. and when faced with death there is possibly a lot of regret for not having done this or said that and wanting to be in the past.

     2. I agree Rosie and therefore I would love it if death would not be such a trigger. How much lighter would it be if death would be a “normal part of our life” so to speak.

     3. Very true, Rosie. Having something like the death of a loved one or even an acquaintance can be an enormous event in our lives, especially if it is something that we have never experienced before, and do not have any support in how to deal with what we are feeling. Without that support, coping mechanisms will kick in to try and deal with the enormity of it all, and that usually means trying to distract ourselves from what is going on.

        1. I see what you mean Naren, but it is what we make of it. It is how we choose to deal with it. And are those coping mechanisms just old patterns of behaviour that we default to when we don’t really want to feel or be aware?

        2. Absolutely, we are well practiced at distracting ourselves from what hurts. But as you say, it is how we choose to deal with things that matters. And learning how to deal with things differently comes with making different choices as to what to do when we feel hurt, without perfection or a need to ‘get it right’.

     4. Yes absolutely Rosie, if there are things we haven’t healed for ourself around a loved ones death or dying then it will come up when faced with that situation happening for another. And in that moment we have the choice to distract ourselves from what we’re feeling or allow ourselves to feel and process it in order to heal.

        1. I have been a master of not feeling by finding distractions everywhere but it has never done me any good. Since coming to the presentations by Serge Benhayon, I have started to feel for the first time in my life and instead of running a mile, I am staying with whatever it is I am feeling and I have healed so much. The reality is not as bad or as hard as the image I had of what it would be or may be like if I did feel.

     5. Our fear of death stops us from choosing to truly live, a choice we can make in any moment…

     6. Yes Katie, there is certainly that reflection of not having truly lived. When I was younger I used to wonder if there was life before death. Since meeting Serge Benhayon I have discovered there certainly is life before death and also there is no death!

245. Coleen I had a similar experience with my close relatives passing, I felt so confirmed about the cycles of life and the fact of us having a soul, an essence that can be felt by their death that I didn’t feel any real sense of bereavement which was difficult when interacting with others who go into auto pilot sympathy! But those I spoke with about feeling his essence on his passing totally related to this and often had a similar experience. My sadness at the loss of the physical has come later and I just feel it and accept it knowing that he has gone to a different phase of his cycle, he is forever felt.

     1. Beautiful, Vanessa. I felt joy for the essence but mourned the loss of the very specific relationship we had in the physical – that will not repeat identically ever again – nothing does; but the essence is, as you so beautifully express, ‘forever felt.’

        1. Lovely, Coleen. There is a real honouring of your relationship in this, and the respect for as you have said, the unique point in time that you shared.

        2. This makes sense as our essence never dies and is interconnected to all life.

        3. That is so interesting Coleen, because when my late husband passed on I was aware of the cycles of life and his unique essence that I knew was always going to be there, but this was before I met Universal Medicine and I had read many psychotherapy books on the process of bereavement, so I overrode that knowing and succumbed to thinking I had to go through all the emotions expected of me. At the time I was also confused by the difference between emotions and feeling, and many people think emotions are expressing your feeling, so they feel they have to emote sympathetically to show their love and support, which of course has the opposite effect from what they intended. .

        4. I see you have precisely summed up two pivotal areas there, Joan, about passing on: 1. the apparent confusion between feelings and emotions is very widespread and needs our attention as they most decidedly not the same thing at all. 2. the overriding of our innate knowing in the face of such confusion and the social obligation to go through the motions of emotion and sympathy. Awesome confirmation and expansion of what is shared here – thank you

246. Such a great article exposing how emotion and how we feel people should react with our emotion can create a separation rather than acceptance and understanding.

247. I find also that alot of people dont actually know what to say so try and ‘lighten the mood
     ‘ and bring in a joke or totally disregard it all together.

     1. Yes, often people want to fix things and for everything to be ok. Allowing someone to feel what they are feeling, and giving them the space to do so, is hugely loving.

        1. Well said Nikki. I often try to fix but can feel it is imposing. And to me sympathy feels imposing too. I often react when others feel sorry for me but to just observe it and then lovingly bring truth to it as how Coleen did is very supportive for everyone.

        2. This is definitely true.

        3. nikkimckee that is what I really appreciate since I have experienced that a friend allowed me to feel what I was feeling and giving me the space . . . that was really magic for me. Now I offer the same – space and I have to admit that this is actually hugely loving.

        4. Very true Nikki…and as a society we have been well off the mark with this one…which ends up being at everyone’s expense.

        5. This is a really supportive way to be Nikki rather than sympathising, actually allowing and honouring what that person is feeling. To me that then allows true healing to occur, and is as you share, hugely loving.

     2. Yes, and because of our own uncomfortableness around expressing we choose foods such sugar and coffee/ tea which make us racy so as to stop us from reading the truth of the situation; or we eat cake or drink alcohol to dull us to not be aware and fully present.

     3. I recognise this also Heidi. People holding back to what they truly feel to share but instead make light or joke to lessen the intenseness of the situation that was created by held grief of a loved one passing on. To ‘celebrate’ the shared life of said relative/friend who passed on would impulse forth a much lighter way of communicating and conversation would be flowing more naturally with no hesitation or loss of what to say or a need to fill a space with empty words.

        1. Yes – definitely, Marion. I observed that some of the regret experienced by people was also attributable to not appreciating the deceased in full while they were still in the body. This is something we can all work on on a daily basis – to appreciate ourselves,, others and life to the max so that there is nothing left unsaid or undone when a person passes on.

248. When my sister passed on I remember not understanding when people would say that they are sorry. I remember as a child hearing people say this whenever someone would die and I was baffled then thinking , well it wasnt your fault. Instead of delving deep to say what they really are feeling they just say sorry.

     1. Basically we haven´t learned to deal with death honestly, open and unloaded from ideas, beliefs, emotional turmoil and social conventions, and how then do we develop a light and sincere way of addressing certain issues when no one ever showed us to do so in a healthy way. We need to learn it by our own experience and choice, a willingness to face all the aspects being touched around death and thereby overcoming the impositions known from young.

        1. So well said, Alex – I completely agree – there are few role models sharing a different way with death and what constitute a healthy and natural response, outside of Universal Medicine. Prior to this, I used to advise friends to bring the Buddhists when I passed on – not because I was Buddhist – but because they at least had respect for the body of the departing person. If we don’t have the truth of life and death, how can we ever respond in a way that enhances either?

        2. Its so true Alex, we have not had up until now any real guidance as to how to be with death, how to really connect with what we are feeling and express that with love and lightness. When I consider all my experiences with death, either relations passing over or family pets dying, I have always seen these deaths as a personal loss. These days when a death occurs, I am able to actually feel what it means for that person or being and celebrate it as an amazing moment of transition and evolution. Being able to connect to the bigger picture supports me to feel my loss but not get swamped by it, cherish the relationship we have shared and instead celebrate their death as the natural progression of life.

        3. You beautifully describe the whole picture of what is a natural and complete way to be with death and every aspect involved.

        4. Beautifully said, Rowena. Through Universal Medicine I gained a total different picture around death, which supported me accompanying the death of relatives. To know and accept that it is the right time to pass over for them is already a huge healing and to know that they again will be on earth is empowering.

        5. Death is such an important part of life, and one of the greatest unknowns to us simply because we have chosen to not engage with it honestly. Therefore we have a lot of ideals about what it is or is not, or what it should or should not be. But so much of this is based around trying to avoid what actually happens to us, and not wanting to admit that there is so much more to us than just this life and just this body. A body that has a point in time, enhoused by a being which is timeless.

        6. Alex this is one of the healthiest comments I’ve ever read about death – it’s so delicately understanding of life and so wise in its addressing of it.

        7. I totally agree with you, Alex. And to add, all these institutionalised religions self-appointing themselves as the expert and the authority on this matter also has a lot to answer for as well. With the endless supply guaranteed, it is a very lucrative business opportunity for them.

        8. Beautifully expressed Rowena, as rather than mourning the loss you are actually celebrating the life and connection you had and seeing the bigger picture that this passing over is just the next step in that, being evolution.

        9. Thank you Rowena for what you have added here, a beautiful and light summing up of death and how to embrace. When we understand that life is one continuous life then we can fully appreciate and celebrate that one time the deceased has just had in life with understanding.

        10. this is true Alex and yet we innately hold this with ourselves as I have seen very young children deal with the death of a loved one or a parent in a way that has deeply inspired me. Adults tend to say they do not yet understand what is going on where as what I see is that they understand it way better then we do.

        11. we hold within an innate knowing of the bigger cycle we belong too. It is only in growing up that we get impositioned with the ideas and beliefs you speak of Alex and in losing our connection to the bigger picture we get more and more attached to the temporal life we live. As you say we need to start unravelling this and we need role models to shows us what is true in death (and living).

     2. Yes, death is awkward but saying that you feel terrified or very angry or hurt about death or something similar might not feel appropriate for the person. It becomes much easier when we feel we have an understanding about death. Then we don’t need to say anything or will have a good idea what to say that is supportive at that moment.

     3. ideals and beliefs can be very entrenched especially around someone dying.
        They stop us from feeling the truth about reincarnation, and the true celebration this can be.

     4. What a gorgeous comment, we can learn a lot from the wisdom and innocence of children.

249. A powerful account Coleen of how our many pictures, our ideals and beliefs, sabotage true connection with each other… and how sympathy does the exact opposite of what our minds think we are offering!

250. When Henry Thoreau lay on his death bed, his Aunty was said to have asked him “Have you made your peace with God”, to which he replied, ” I did not know we ever quarreled.” Sharp to the end, he was effectively saying that when you live a life of connection, there is no fear of death, for it is known that is not the end, and thus no need for sympathy upon one’s passing.

     1. I like his answer, It does not leave any room to argue only space to accept that there is more to us than this one life and human body.

251. Sympathy suffocates truth.

252. We seem to impose on another the ideas and concepts of how the death of a close one should affect us either from our personal emotional experience and or the cultural agreed on view. Both don´t leave any space for a true connection where each one is free to share their state of being, understanding or way of dealing with the experience of someone passing over or on. Death and dying are actually topics or a theme in life worth to be shared about as much can be learned – on how to live, how to prepare for death, and what thereafter.

253. Love asks us to be more, to go deeper, sympathy caps us from allowing us to feel what it is we are really feeling. We are so used to not allowing ourselves to feel what is true for the moment that we allow sympathy to come in and reduces our ability to express.

254. Katie, having read your comment I can clearly feel the imposition that comes with sympathy. It has a slightly smothering, cloying feeling to it. It reminds me of the witch in Hansel and Gretel and should be avoided in the same way.

255. In order for us to connect with another, we have to first connect with ourselves. It feels Coleen that those who you spoke with, were, initially connected to themselves. However by choosing to stay with the truth of the situation, you offered no ‘get out of truth card’ for another and that for many feels way too confronting. We have become dependent on each other to keep the pretense going and so when someone ‘breaks the rules’ and comes up with truth then we retreat quick smart into ingrained patterns of behaviour. Sayings are one such time tested repetitive way of avoiding the truth.

256. Thanks, Coleen, there is a lot to consider here. “We often seem to have a tendency to use ideals and images, to distract ourselves in potentially emotionally charged situations” – it feels so true that we resort to stereotypes and images when we are not willing to embrace the truth and the opportunity to evolve.

257. These days I tend to see sympathy as taking on the view that another person cannot handle the life they have, which is of course very false, because we are all strong capable people, and so, I have come to the conclusion that to truly love someone is to let them live their life without being imposed upon by me and my need to sympathise.

     1. Truly beautiful what you have expressed Shami. Sympathy is degrading and holds another less – which is imposing.

     2. This comment perfectly illustrates the gigantic chasm between sympathy and love. I can feel the oceans of space in just the way you express Shami. And can feel that in your company I would be given the space to see and feel everything – with zero judgement and absolutely no sympathy. The gold here is that I am pulled to this, to be more, I can feel the allowance of me. Quite the opposite of what it is to be amongst the clawing, dank, suffocating energy of sympathy. Wow Shami – thanks for making it so feel-able!!

258. There is so much in this one blog, Coleen! Sympathy, reincarnation, death, traveling, small-talk and more – you shed light and love on all those topics, so it’s definitely worth a couple of re-reads. For me this time it struck me that sympathy can take ground only after I choose to resist the love that is otherwise offered in the communication. Revelation.

259. Sympathy falls a long way from love. It is only through love that we feel connection, any ounce of sympathy puts up a barrier between two people.

260. We are all ongoing and there we have no need for sympathy. When I observed people in their ongoingness it is so different how they are able to move forward, but in that moment where they leave thir bodies sympathy would hold them back, they have to take the choice to passover.
     Sympaty in truth is holding everybody back and not allows to express true love. Sympathy falls for something which is not supportive , not healthy, not bringing us closer to one another so that we feel equal. Sympathy can lead to illness and disease.

261. Death often evokes sympathy, and perhaps even more emotive is a miscarriage, which an ex partner of mine suffered recently. I could feel the expectation was there that sympathy was the calling card that should be played, the ‘normal’ response, yet as Coleen expresses, that does not take us to the truth of the situation. The truth lies in everything being energy and the healing of such an event is found in reflecting on why the miscarriage occurred, not seeing it as fate or extreme misfortune but being willing to accept our role in all life circumstances. This for many will not be easy to accept but that only highlights how far we have strayed from taking responsibility and being willing to discern the messages our bodies are constantly giving us. This starts as simply for me as, stopping and asking, how does my body feel in this moment?

     1. Yes – we attribute bad luck to so many socially misconstrued ‘negative’ events so we don’t need to own up to our part in it, hey, Stephen? And if something ‘good’ happens – well – it wasn’t your choices – you were ‘just lucky.’ Both are totally false – it’s all about choices and cause and effect.

262. Sympathy makes no sense when we hold understanding of the bigger picture. Could it be that sympathy is an avoidance of responsibility and of accepting our own and each other’s choices?

     1. Very true Kylie. The more responsibility we take for our own choices, the less we then give to others as we see them as responsible for their choices too.

263. It’s very simple. Sympathy like many other emotions stops our clarity and true support from being there. Without going into these we are actually much clearer, more aware, can bring more understanding and can know the best way to offer true support to another.

264. Interesting the image a robin conjures up – definitely a traditional image for English Winters – hearing a robin sing and seeing one brings light to a dark, cold Winter.

265. Death is still very much seen as an ending, a loss and a sadness. It is our attachment to life and the value we put on making it last as long as possible that stops us from feeling the truth. To know that this is only a part of out journey would mean we would have to be more responsible for how we live. So much easier for us to go into the emotion, the funeral and feel the “completion” of it all and then carry on with our life as it was before. Thank you Coleen, a great sharing.

     1. And also if we were really honest and saw passing over as just part of a cycle, we would need to bring honesty and responsibility to the situations and families we incarnate into. This would support us more, as we would lose the ‘poor me’ mentality and just see what it is we need to clear and develop each life in order to move on, deepen and evolve. There would be no judgement.

     2. “To know that this is only a part of our journey would mean we would have to be more responsible for how we live.” So true Anne. You have nailed it. We are so avoidant of the responsibility for how we live.

     3. To be responsible for how we live would mean we make choices for the future beyond this life, knowing that we can’t shirk our responsibility, we can’t take our health and relationships for granted and abuse ourselves and others but actually choose to nurture ourselves and connections with others.

266. Sympathy is so restricting and although the person may not be aware is offering no true support, by suggesting some sort of distraction as in the example of the red robin or a white christmas it’s often because the other person who is expressing sympathy doesn’t truly know how to respond. There is no sympathy in love. Knowing and accepting re-incarnation and the responsibility that comes with it, when someone close passes on although it is only natural for us to feel sad for the physical loss, we can also feel joy at the persons passing-on, on to their “next phase of their ever unfolding divinely” evolving path.

     1. This is true Deidre. It’s so important we being this level of understanding to others while holding ourselves and others in love. People often do not know how to deal with things and do tend to revert to all they know. Hence the further need for true reflection and stillness.

     2. Beautifully expressed deidremedbury . . . .’it is only natural for us to feel sad for the physical loss, we can also feel joy at the persons passing-on, on to their “next phase of their ever unfolding divinely” evolving path’ There is often a lot more joy for the loved one that has passed over in death than we feel we can admit or express because it does not fit with others expectation of how we should be after someone has died.

267. I find a lot of people feel sadness at the death of another, as they will be missed. Yet they do not know how to tend to this… And without knowing the truth behind dying and reincarnation it’s an end that is feared by most and so this plays out in the conversations when it’s brought up – as it brings up our own beliefs and experiences around dying.

268. My kids felt what it was like to be on the receiving end of sympathy when our dog died, a dog who hated to be cuddled in emotion, but would always sit beside the person who had stuff going on that needed support. As a result, we all learnt how to deal with the issues that went on but not dump and run. After her passing on it started a great conversation about how those emotions are so heavy and loading. We learnt from our dog that sitting beside someone and being there was far more supportive for both parties.

     1. That is beautiful Lucy, the wisdom of Dog.

     2. How gorgeous Lucy… essentially your dog was observing how someone was feeling, and refusing to absorb and or be a part to any emotions… what a gift your dog was for your family – so how can anyone be sympathetic or sad about this… appreciation is key.

        1. It was the most amazing gift which most of the house didn’t appreciate till she was gone. I had noticed it but didn’t appreciate the amazingness of the reflection. When we were all talking after she had gone we saw it as one of her greatest gifts to us. So it really turned her passing into a celebration of the gifts she brought us.

     3. That’s beautiful Lucy.

     4. Wow Lucy, this is so heart-warming, your dog had so much wisdom to share for the family, feels as if she was a dog learning to be in true service, so beautiful.

     5. A beautiful example Lucy of holding a supportive space for someone without taking on their stuff.

269. Sympathy is used to avoid the path of responsibility to give and receive true love.

270. ‘If either person is not open to receiving love, there is a very distinct turning away from the initial impulse to connect through Love’, this line was a clear exposer to why we choose sympathy, a avoidance of love. Not only could I feel it in the case you have describe Coleen, but I could feel it in all cases where sympathy arises. Sympathy avoids the path of true love.

271. “sympathy is what we ‘do’ in the avoidance of this Love.” There are so many things we go into when we are not fully wanting to connect to the love that we are.

     1. …and yet, we are so accustomed to ‘sympathy’ being normal – along with being good, nice etc.

272. Thank you for sharing Coleen, indeed, ‘Why would we substitute sympathy for Love’?, it makes no sense. Sympathy in my experience smothers whereas love creates space and empowers. Polar opposite yet many of us, me included, have had sympathy ingrained in us as the way to be, logically it makes no sense when we stop to look at. There is no point jumping in the quick sand to help someone else as you only end up getting stuck as well!

     1. I love the analogy with quicksand, James – that is so accurate!

        1. I know its great! And it is exactly what happens we jump into save someone instead of showing them the way forth. After all if no one has a reflection of someone living lovingly then how can they be inspired to do the same. It is amazing how much we learn by observing others.

273. My father passed on when I was 20. I was full of grief but even through that emotion, I could not cope with the sympathy. It felt so burdensome – the sympathy sticks to the one being sympathised with – each expression of sympathy joining with the last and becoming heavier. The sympathiser though is left feeling good about themselves for ‘saying the right thing’, oblivious to the fact they have just dumped a heavy load on the person they are sympathising with. All it takes is for us to let ourselves feel what is really going on – let ourselves feel how ridiculous it is to say to the bereaved “I’m sorry for your loss” and we will understand that a simple “how are you?” is so much more supportive.

     1. I so agree Lucy, We only need people to be themselves and we all feel supported. Most of the times at family funerals in the past I felt like I was counselling all the people offering me their condolences as death had brought up all their own undealt with loses and fears. Makes sense because the word condole means ‘with grief’ so people are actually coming toward you with their own grief. . . little wonder that it feels burdensome and like a dumping..

     2. To see sympathy as dumping a heavy load on another is fresh way of looking at it, Lucy. I used to have to say “Sorry” to bereaved people due to cultural obligations but it was so disempowering of them. I have indulged in sympathy in my own experience of a family member passing and can see how I wanted the attention and to be carried. It was like I had to be sad because that’s what I thought was expected and a part of me got identified by the sadness. But I recall a distinct time, more than 10 years later, when I chose to let go of the sadness and sympathy towards myself. It was very freeing.

274. A great sharing about how sympathy is debilitating in relationships and actually incidious. I wondered whilst reading your blog what would have happened if you were really honest with them and shared what you felt about sympathy? Would the connection and conversation have deepened. As I write this I can feel this is definitely something for me to look at as well in how honest I am when speaking with others? Thank you.

     1. Whilst reading your comment Vicky I had the realisation that when we only meet people momentarily as in the situation say at an airport immigration desk and we know we only have a couple of minutes with that person at best, that we override the impulse to take a conversation deeper – I know this has happened to me.

        1. I love what you are sharing here Vicky and Julie, how we condition ourselves according to the situation instead of being open all the time.

275. What was brilliant was that Coleen noticed the sympathy worked as a connection cutter. If it’s natural for us to be in connection together then sympathy is something out of place and not part of the natural order of relationships.

     1. Sympathy is definitely not part of the natural order of true relationship, Melinda – thank you.

276. The image of snow and the robin that was spoken of seemed to have been brought up to detour you away from your depths, as if something “nice” was needed as a consolation prize for the fact you were experiencing a loss. This is itself shows how we hold others, as if the event is something to just ride out, an unpleasant thing that needs a diversion, and that we don’t have the depths within to move through it with clarity, understanding and even joy amongst the natural grief.

     1. Well said Melinda, so often we are unable to truly stay with the tension that often arises in these times and often we grasp at any relief we can possible muster to make it all okay. There is nothing more amazing than connecting with someone and holding a gentle, still, accepting space for them to navigate their way through the experience with “clarity, understanding and even joy amongst the natural grief.” Death can bring a myriad of emotions to work through, but the more we are able to see the bigger picture and what that person has moved onto, the more it is possible to feel joy for them and for us, as we all experience another phase of our evolution.

277. I fully agree Brendan – it is well worth pondering on and discussing what sympathy actually does and not just take it as a given that it is a supportive thing…

278. When you feel sorry for someone you place them below you and this is simply not true. We are equal. When we don’t sympathize we have an opportunity to take the conversation to a deeper level and we allow the other person to express how they really feel.

     1. I agree Kathryn and we also allow the other person to develop and deepen their understanding of the situation rather than staying or getting caught up in the emotional turmoil of it.

     2. Hmm, I’ve never thought of it that way before Kathryn – when feeling sorry for someone puts them as less.

        1. No, me neither Emily. But it is true. We are not holding them as an equal Son of God and in truth we are imposing on them, placing them in a box based on our perceptions of the situation.

        2. Well said Josh.

        3. I am with you Emily and Joshua, I hadn’t neither and I like what you add Joshua, when feeling sorry for someone we simply press them into a box, make them small, as we have an image of how they must feel and what they need, all the while we ourself are sitting in a box. In fact isn’t that with any emotion we display, we sit in boxes looking at other boxes or join each other in boxes but the fact remains that we are staying in boxes and miss the bigger picture.

     3. love this Kathryn. I feel that when we sympathise we are taking it on and then also not supporting the other person to also see the bigger picture.

279. Sympathy is awful. To give and get. It completely disconnects you from the other person and in the example of someone passing on it prevents you from truly expressing the relationship you had with that person.

     1. Oh gosh yes. I have really felt this and have also chosen to allow it in. Sympathy is like this clawing, clammy blanket being forced on to you that then sticks and starts to wriggle at your skin like zillions of creepy crawlies! Well – that’s how it feels to me! But, of course, we can choose to not take it on and leave it from whence it came. Which is not only a great healing for us, but also massive for the person delivering the sympathy – because they get the opportunity to feel how it is coming from their own hurts and neediness.

        1. Otto, I love the way you express. You have definitely not outgrown the little boy you once were, feeling so clearly and being able to express so aptly and palpably what certain behaviours do to us and invite us to be if we let them and/or are unconscious of them.

        2. Feeling this stuff in the body and expressing it visually and physically like this is very supportive for me. This stuff is so very, very real and treating it this way enables me to really get a handle on it.

280. What this shows me Coleen is that most people are not very comfortable with death. They feel inclined to adopt this type of response when faced with someone who openly offers them the opportunity to talk about death and hold death in a different light.

     1. Yes rosannabianchini, very true, people do not feel comfortable with death because of the tangibility or material aspect being what’s important in life, ‘seeing to believe’ comes to mind.. i.e unless we see it we won’t or can’t believe it without the ‘proof’. When the intangibility aspect of energy is looked at, things become very different and in this, the space opens for real acceptance and joy for the passing person whose energetic body has moved to a further place of healing or evolution. In short, death, dying, passing on or over, is growth and development. And hence nothing to be sorry about or in sympathy for this.

        1. To view dying and passing on, as growth and development really does challenge all that we have been taught in this society about the process. With this in mind death then becomes the start of a whole new possibility, rather than the end.

281. We talk of death as if its a bad thing. It can be sudden or shocking in the way it happens, but it is a natural part of life. I feel once we begin to look at life differently we will start to see death differently too. This has certainly been my experience. Sympathy is a real distraction away from what is truly there to feel.

     1. So true Debra. When life is looked at differently, so too is death. It so is a natural part of life, and so it seems there is no sense to make it a terrible disaster.

        1. True Emily. We could be celebrating death as we do birth, a symbolic and significant time of transition; but never a beginning nor end.

        2. Reading your comment Emily, I could feel how we love the drama and misery we place on death, it confirms the place we don’t wish to move from.

     2. This blog got a great conversation going across 3 generations last night and it was amazing to hear the different approaches and views. Such a blessing to just be with people and not judge anyone for what they believe as it has come from their experiences, but to allow spaces to understand. By us all sharing we were all opened up to different ways of looking at life and death. It really was a blessing.

        1. That is awesome, Lucy. I would’ve loved to hear that conversation. Maybe you could write about it sometime?

        2. Yes, maybe Coleen!

        3. I love what you are sharing here Lucy. Simply by sharing and giving each other the grace of space to express without judgment brings us so much closer and opens us up for appreciation and understanding while any argument or insisting on our view only brings a wider gap between us all.

        4. Yes, to have had a conversation with any one of us needing to persuade the others would have shut the conversation down completely. It was a gem of a conversation.

     3. I feel that sympathy is indulgent

        1. I agree Heidi, but I would love to offer some understanding about indulgence. I had a realisation that the way I was behaving the other day was really ingulgent and mid way through ‘my poor me/ poor you’ blah my gorgeous husband brought in some common sense. I suddenly felt the poison of what I was doing, what I was indulging in and I realised it was like an old sweater, it felt familiar and comforting. My indulgent moment was nothing to do with anyone dying but your comment and my oh so recent experience helped me understand why the auto pilot comes on when sympathy comes to call. Great to start these conversations so we can share in a different way, with no judgement but with understanding.

282. There is so much awkwardness around the subject of death. Its something many fear. I remember not even wanting to make a will because the idea of contemplating my death made me feel very uncomfortable. We don’t talk about it enough, so when someone dies we are not used to expressing our feelings.

     1. To me it feels like talking about death is talking about responsibility, which many don’t wish to. If we did talk about death the truth of reincarnation would arise and in turn the responsibility we all hold in every action.

        1. I so agree with this. It is absolutely essential for many, many people that reincarnation doesn’t exist. After the lives they have lived, the notion that there is another waiting for them – that will be a direct reflection of the one they have just lived – is a pill that they are never gonna swallow! Way, way too much responsibility.

        2. Absolutely. And so a perfect way of avoiding this responsibility is to make death emotional, dramatic and to distract ourselves away from what is actually being offered to us ongoingly.

     2. Yes Debra, it is so interesting this awkwardness around death when we have all lived and died about 2,000 times before! You would have thought we would have a handle on it by now!

        1. When put like that Kathleen, it exposes the thick of the illusion we choose to live in, that many lives and still not acceptance of reincarnation….WOW.

        2. I agreed Kim ,this is certainly a dense place we use as a playground. Really is time to make our way home now.

     3. It is interesting that the subject is avoided… it feels kind of safe when you are young and inquisitive but know that its a long way off, but as we get older… not so much. For me I noticed that when life was not going so well, the thought of getting older and getting nearer to death was slightly terrifying and a little terrifying. A sure sign that I was not taking responsibility for who I was and what I was getting up to.

283. Coleen, it is great to read how you have accepted this persons passing, ‘I was not holding myself as a victim of this circumstance, a natural part of life, but felt that it was simply this person’s time to pass on.’ this is so simple and so refreshing, in our society death is so strongly associated with grief and sadness rather than acceptance, how much lighter life would be if we could accept that it is sometimes time to pass away rather than spend years grieving, feeling bitter or sad for the loss.

284. Sympathy can be such a well rehearsed response to someone passing. It is the go to response that we think is needed rather than remaining steady and open to what the person truly feels about it.

     1. Agree entirely Matthew. As I wrote above, I’m quite sure that lots of people are going to sympathy because they feel that is what is expected rather than what they genuinely feel. My point being that once we allow ourselves to be more honest with what we are actually feeling, the truth of the cycle of reincarnation will be seen and felt by many.

     2. I agree Matthew, it is like an auto response. Somehow if you also feel sad then that is showing you love and care for them which does not make any sense. As you say remaining steady is what is needed.

     3. Yes spot on Matthew, ‘Sympathy can be such a well rehearsed response to someone passing’ And it is often used for lack of anything else to say. Often people feel quite freed and relieved by the passing of someone close as it draws the end to their suffering and as it can be very distressing to watch someone you love struggling with dying. But instead of feeling free to celebrate those very real feelings you get the feeling that they are almost obliged to be sad and down and out in order to fit the expectations of others.

     4. Yes, it is a well rehearsed response as are so many habits in our lives. We do it because we have done it before and it has worked as it doesn’t rock our world. But if we want true change and not being stuck in the same old stories that simply do not feel true to us we need to learn to stay steady as you say Matthew by allowing us to see without negating what we are feeling.

285. Thank you Coleen for unraveling sympathy. With sympathy we make things blurry and deny us the access to truth.

286. ‘However, I also saw clearly that, perhaps collectively, we use sympathy and mental energy – ideals and pictures with great longevity – to distract us from the truth of a situation.’ This is a very true observation Coleen, we like to distract ourselves instead of allowing us to see what there is for us truly to see and learn or confirm. With that we very much limit our whole perception and only allow us to see a very narrow part of life.

     1. Yes, in sympathy, we have disconnected to the whole, the all, and we blind ourselves to understanding.

287. ‘to celebrate the passing of this person’s life.’ Thank you Coleen, this line alone is enormous. We learn to mourn when somebody dies, you speak of celebrating and passing over.

     1. Exactly it is not the normal way to see and feel death but I absolutely was able to feel this way with my father’s passing it was a real celebration of his moving onto to the next phase of his life. I also had the experience a couple of years ago of feeling someone’s passing, I just suddenly felt that person had died and I could feel how joyful she was to be free of her body and to be with her soul, there was nothing to feel sad about only a wonderful feeling of connection. From that experience I really have a much greater sense of what it is to die and it is to be fully aligned to love.

288. People are generally immensely uncomfortable around the subject of death and dying because they’re confronted with their own unknown, their own uncertainty and fear about death. So pleasantries abound and sympathy is a learned, copied response; an easy custom and practice to assume, so we’re ‘doing the right thing’ and overcoming any awkwardness. Any foray further into the subject can take people out of their comfort zone and so the use of imagery, particularly with positive associations, is used as a convenient deflector. I agree that more awareness and understanding of the process and cycle of dying, death and passing over would mean the subject would not only be discussed more openly, but be embraced into the way we plan our futures and live our present.

     1. I agree Cathy. I also think that there might be larger proportion than one might think of people who are actually more open to it than they are letting on. What I mean is that there is such a mega-heavy consciousness around death, mourning, funerals etc…that it takes a brave person to put their head above the parapet and appear to be more open-minded about the whole death thing. Could this be? My experiences of being much more open about dying and honest about the fact that I don’t feel sad or mournful about the recent passing over, has led to some surprising conversations and revealed that there are plenty of others whom, if given permission to be more honest, feel something along the same lines. But don’t let anyone see you smiling or giggling!!!

     2. Gorgeous Cathy, ‘more awareness and understanding of the process and cycle of dying, death and passing over would mean the subject would not only be discussed more openly, but be embraced into the way we plan our futures and live our present.’ If the cycle of death and passing over were discussed so that it was not this unknown event then this would change everything, there would be no need for spending years grieving about the loss of someone close to us, it would allow us to take more responsibility for how we live our lives if we knew that we were coming back to do it all over again.

289. Yes, Elizabeth, and with the amount of socially endorsed sympathy in the world, that is a humungous amount of missed / avoided opportunities for true connection with others – such a waste!

290. Going into sympathy when someone dies is so ingrained for a lot of people- it’s what we are taught to do from young; in certain cultures if you don’t show sympathy you are being disrespectful.
     Sympathy is huge amongst health professionals – in fact as nurses and midwives we are taught to be sympathetic. I used to be like this, but now feel how non supportive and harming it is. There is lack of true understanding and acceptance of the situation.

     1. Yes – so ingrained that we buy sympathy cards, Loretta. How would it be if we were to send Love cards instead?

        1. I have always found sympathy cards to be quite insipid with the emotion they are loaded with… so far from the true support that can be offered in loving presence that is free of emotion or social politeness.

291. Yes Brendan sympathy is a very “common emotion” and it is accepted as being normal to be sympathetic when someone is going through a painful process of some sort. I have never found sympathy expressed towards me as being supportive instead it feels smothering, so delaying me from going through the normal healing cycle.

292. I was in a situation recently when a friend shared an upsetting incident that had happened to him. The pull to go into sympathy and even to side against the person who had ‘conducted the harm’ was palpable but I could feel that that would have left my friend sitting in cement. I chose to gently share that the incident was reflecting something very valuable to my friend. After I left my friend shared that he felt much lighter and had a much clearer understanding of why the incident had happened. Sympathy has nothing to do with truth.

     1. I love that, Alexis – “Sympathy has nothing to do with truth.” That is truth 🙂

     2. What a beautiful reminder that sympathy doesn’t serve even when we it is considered the loyal thing to do when a friend is hurting. It has no place in a true relationship.

     3. That is great as often we hold back because we don’t want to upset people with the truth! So rather create false sympathy to collude with their feelings, no true love in this exchange but is the one most commonly used.

     4. Sympathy is up there with being Nice. Its the sugar coated part that makes life seem more palatable.. but the problem is that it stops us from getting to the bottom of what is really going on. Consider if we do not pay attention to what is really going on, but blindly carry on not feeling, not changing. We delay our own growth, and just keep going round the same issues again and again.

293. Coleen, reading your article reminded me of a saying that I heard said many times growing up in England and that is ‘cheer up, it might never happen’.

     1. Wow, that line stinks of disregard. Avoid all feelings or you will have to feel, and that may lead to truth.

294. Thank-you, this is a fascinating observation Coleen, objectively undressing the path of sympathy.
     It feels like we use sympathy as a way of holding onto this life, a stubborn refusal to see ourselves as anything more than flesh and bone, rather than the grand custodians of energy, equal to the stillness of snow and the delicate beauty of a Robin.

295. Coleen, I never have seen sympathy out of this angle, like an energy we hold to not let go what belongs already to the past. This gives me another insight to get more aware where I still carry sympathy.

     1. Yes, wow using sympathy to hold onto hurts rather than seeing clearly and allowing oneself to let go of what no longer is present. Yes, I did not seen it like that before.

296. Many people struggle with what to say when you share with them that some-one close to you has died. They have not come to terms with their own inevitable death and project this onto you with out even realising most of the time what they are doing. Death is a huge unresolved issue for loads of people as they do not know that our soul is eternal and it is just the physical body that we have chosen to express through in this life that dies.

     1. Yes so true Mary-Louise, many do not know how to handle death in any form or manner. I can understand though for if you did not know that life is eternal it would be extremely hard to come to terms with death.

        1. That’s exactly it kathleenbaldwin, “knowing that life is eternal” puts everything into context and with this comes the understanding of reincarnation, karma and responsibility for being a certain way in life. So if there’s a real struggle with the dying aspect there is attachment to the deep down knowing that one can’t get away with things, and hence in this non acceptance, fear of death = fear of knowing life has been lived with little responsibility for which there is redress and necessary healing. Fearing death itself becomes anti-evolution.

        2. Yes Zofia and we usually approach death as we have approached life so if you fear dying you usually feared living in full for all the same reasons you have mentioned; not wanting to take responsibility and not being able to appreciate and accept life.

        3. Agree Kathleen imagine if you believed that you live and then you die and that is it for eternity. I would be freaked out as well. Does not make sense to believe that , because what would be the purpose of being here on earth?

        4. Yes Mary-Louise and scarier even still what if you believed you were going to rot in the fires of hell or be stuck purgatory for eternity!

     2. I’d totally agree Mary-Louise. So many people come at death from this sense of sadness, fear, dread so its not surprising that its a subject that is avoided. Having a strong sense of the soul, of what happens next is an incredible support and instead of being afraid of it, it changes the whole process into a fascinating next step.

297. I am very grateful to Universal Medicine teachings for the understanding that death comes to us all with an acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle. It puts sympathy in its place. The people you spoke to Coleen would have felt how you felt differently about the death of your loved one and you gave them an opportunity to feel this for themselves, great service on your journey.

     1. Thank you, Gill.

298. I agree Brendan this is well worth discussing as a topic. We often champion sympathy as a great thing, but when it has been given, or I have sought it I can feel the imposition.

299. Beautiful sharing Coleen and love how you expose that the initial response of others was to connect deeply with themselves and you and that it was only when they subsequently went into sympathy that the connection was lost. Really exposing of the damage we cause by going into sympathy with another to avoid what it brings up for us and thus we shut our connection with the other person down so they are left feeling more bereft than before.

     1. Yes I am sure we have all gone into sympathy – I know I have and still do a lot, the more subtle versions of this sympathy is in pretending we don’t know the truth of all things, encouraging and colluding with energetic ignorance. We are all so invested in the status quo that we will happily go with ours and others choices to be blind to the truth of life.

300. If we were taught from an early age about ‘life’s cycles’ and how from leaving this world ‘passing over’ to the next part of our journey (cycle of life) there would be no room for sympathy, empathy and all the emotional trappings that keep us held in grief/sadness. Yes the bigger picture would be seen/felt. More would openly celebrate family/ loved ones as they then ‘pass on’ to the next phase of their “ever unfolding, divinely sustained life”. Clarity was only brought to me of this continuing cycle of life through the many presentations from Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine – I thank God for that too.

     1. I too thank God for being brought the understanding of life cycles. I would have thought that one would be less appreciative of a loved one knowing they are not gone forever but actually this understanding has brought me greater appreciation of them as I’m appreciating them in a greater fullness of who they are.

301. It is absolutely revealing to read this. Sympathy but also small talk about things like ‘at least it is going to be a white Christmas’, totally make us less than we truly are. Instead of talking about what is truly going on these topics are often used.

302. Really interesting the vast difference between using the expressions ‘passing on’ and ‘passing away’ one I can accept as truth and the other just feels very empty. In conversations in the past I have used both, until now when I actually felt into those words from this brilliant sharing Coleen – thank you.

303. The ideal image of a Snow covered tree and a Robin is something I recall from my childhood growing up in England, the looking forward to something better than we felt, the hoping an event would change what was going on. So many different images and emotions invested in one image its quite amazing to consider this. Yet where was the love? It’s great to reflect on what you’ve shared about sympathy instead of love. It’s a topic that is black and white yet one where we’ve chosen grey.

304. There will come a time when sympathy will be so last year or last decade when we all wake up to the fact that feeling it, giving it or wanting it doesn’t do anyone an ounce (.028kg) of good.

305. lt is so common indeed Brendan within my own experience and l see myself repeatedly choosing it many areas of my life. This blog has just served to take my understanding of this insipid energy a step deeper.

306. “sympathy is what we ‘do’ in the avoidance of this Love.” This is enlightening for me Colleen as l am deeply pondering how we use sympathy as a mask to block ourselves from expressing love. When you take the word away and just feel the feeling of the energy of sympathy it feels so empty and lacking in any true holding. Then feel the energy of love. Wow, what a difference. Thank you for your insightful blog.

307. Its as if when we meet other people we bring with us a deck of cards. When a situation or conversation goes to a point we would rather not feel, we lay down a joker to change the subject and direction. The jokers I have seen used are the weather, politics, sport or TV but really it could be anything. When we play this card trick there is part of us that thinks it is safe and has won, but in reality all that occurs is we miss out of something much greater – connection with someone close at hand. You show Coleen we all have the opportunity to play the ace of hearts so to speak- to be love, and no longer take part in this protection game.

308. You have reminded me of that saying people often use “There but for the Grace of God go I”. It seems to be sympathetic but looking at it now it feels to me like a curse upon the other person. It feels like an entirely selfish saying which just means that we are more concerned for ourselves than what has happened for another, as in “How lucky am I to not be you?” Too harsh? I feel not.

309. Wonderful questions Coleen,
     Sympathy, it feels like I am being drowned when it is directed at me. I have felt a disempowerment and some difficulty breathing, it is as if no one trusts me to be able to deal with whatever it is, when in actual fact I can. We all can. We just need someone to stay steadily and solidly with themselves and with us. No trying to fix or commiserate. Just being understanding and staying connected. To me that is love.

310. A great blog Coleen. I can see what you are saying here, and agree we don’t know enough about the dying process or passing over of the Soul and the fact that we don’t “end” at the point of death. Therefor we naturally go into sympathy for the person with the perceived loss of a loved one. We often don’t know what to say in the event of a loss either, what does that person feel about death?, and we tiptoe around the subject in case we are seen to be off the mark with our comments. The more our passing is talked about and made a natural event in the world, the easier it will be for us all to show that love instead of sympathy for each other.

311. “Why would we substitute sympathy for Love…” A great statement Coleen, why would we?… Sympathy is a common automatic response that stops in its tracks the expression of love which helps us see the bigger picture, and bring understanding.

     1. It is indeed an amazing question Johanne “Why would we substitute sympathy for Love…”. Could it be that we’re serving our own agenda by choosing to not really connect to somebody. So the denial or Love has a purpose, to not having to take Responsibility. First of all Responsibility for dealing whatever issue arises in ourselves (e.g. sadness, hardness, fragility, etc). And secondly the Responsibility to express our lived Truths when sharing our life experiences with others.

        Hence, not taking responsibility not only harms ourselves, but also robs the people around us from the otherwise strong Love and Wisdom that lives inside us all.

312. There is an immense harm wielded through sympathy… It is effectively saying you are less than, that’s why I feel sorry for you. Sympathy breeds separation and superiority, it is in fact the complete opposite to love.

     1. Yes I see more and more how insidious this emotion really is.and what an effect it has had in my own life, something to be super aware of. I have also noticed that it is used extensively in the media to manipulate the reader or listener, often not in an overt way but hiding in the shadows, so to speak.

     2. Beautifully expressed Katerina and I too can feel that sympathy is “the complete opposite to love”; in fact it often feels that it shuts down the true expression of love that is possible in that moment.

     3. Katerina- I had never considered the harm that sympathy wields like you clearly put it…’ It is effectively saying you are less than, that’s why I feel sorry for you. Sympathy breeds separation and superiority, it is in fact the complete opposite to love.” Great to expose this.

313. Great article Coleen and love your probing questions “Why would we substitute sympathy for Love, especially in the area of someone’s passing on?” and “What would happen if we had more understanding about our cycle of physical life and passing on, rather than believing that once we draw our last physical breath, that’s it – we are gone?” Could the simple answer be that Love encompasses Understanding.

314. I often wondered why we say ‘I’m so sorry’ when we hear of something ‘bad’ happening to someone or a loved one passing over. Why do we take the blame for it, like it’s something we’ve done or try and show remorse towards the person? I would say ‘I’m sorry to hear that’ – but why apologise, I’ve done nothing wrong? In saying this, I’m not sure the reaction I would have if someone told me news like this, perhaps all we need to do is listen and allow space.

     1. Rachel I agree with you, especially the fact that we don’t need to apologise, but to listen and allow space is just what is needed for most people in this situation.

     2. You make a great point here Rachael, saying I’m sorry in this circumstance is almost an automatic reaction, as though it is expected – I know I have done it myself, and the words have come out of my mouth before I know it.

     3. Yes so often people use inappropriate words because they feel the need to fill the space but as you say listening and allowing space can be more beneficial.

     4. Its so true Rachel, we so often say “Sorry” when we are not truly sorry and the situation is not our’s to be sorry about. Learning to just listen and allow space is sometimes all another person needs and to also ask questions. So often our response to dying is to not talk about it or the person who has passed over, hence the snow and the robins. Connecting to our stillness, to one another in these often uncomfortable moments without feeling that we have to fix it for the other person is very powerful. Surrendering to the process of death is not a failure, it allows us to appreciate those who have died and celebrate life on a deeper level, no apologies needed.

     5. This is a great point Rachel. I recently had a customer share with me that her dad had just passed over and my first thought was to say “I’m sorry,” but I stopped and felt to just be with her and not say a word. It felt like a really lovely breathing space and I could see her shoulders relax and feel a lot more at ease in her body. It was a lovely moment to simply stop, listen and allow the space for her to simply be. As she left she said thank you for allowing me to share with you.

     6. Totally agree Lucy, and that is the reason why we constantly reach for our goto distractions that will take away the edge of not living our day in our fullness of who we are.

315. I Love this blog and its ability to make us ponder on Sympathy and how it can be used as you say as a substitute for love and acceptance .Also the power of imagery and how we can tend to go there or use it rather than feeling deeper or holding ourselves true to what is happening . Could the imagery be a distraction for us from feeling the truth or our truth in the situation ,hence not allowing us to go deeper in understanding.

316. I love that you raise this question Coleen, “What would happen if we had more understanding about our cycle of physical life and passing on, rather than believing that once we draw our last physical breath, that’s it – we are gone?” Having attended many presentations by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, and been open to the possibility that perhaps there is more to life, and death, than this very physical plane that we live on, I have come to understand that when we die, it is not the end of us, but just the end of that particular cycle in one body. Having been able to appreciate this for myself, I have gained a deeper understanding of passing over, and am now able to talk about and accept death in way I would never have thought possible. Knowing that it is not the end opens up a whole new world of possibilities, but also brings with it a responsibility to live in a way that does not harm, but offers others the opportunity to see that there can be another way.

317. I’ve been especially conscious of falling into sympathy for another for some time now. It’s still a bit of a habit, and I find it often creeps in when I can relate to an experience another is dealing with that I haven’t quite yet let go. So I find myself feeling sorry for that person because on some level I believe I’m the victim of a similar circumstance. What’s interesting is that when another gives me sympathy I feel extremely uncomfortable with it and in that moment when I’m the receiver of it, I feel very clear of the fact that I am not a victim and therefore do not find that emotion supportive in any way. When we accept that everything happens for a reason, then we have an opportunity to learn, grow and understand and it opens up to the world and everyone.

     1. Thank you Elodie, l have been nursing a relative through a major physical operation and l feel very much at times that l fall into sympathy energy.
        To understand that everything is a choice that we have brought to us and it has a healing blessing for us, then this can really give me another angle on the whole situation.

     2. Yes – seeing yourself as a victim is definitely an invitation to sympathy to enter that door, Elodie, I agree completely.

     3. Yes Elodie, this exposes sympathy as selfish as it is more about what it reflects for us that has not been dealt with or healed than it is about the other person. As you say when it is directed at us it feels awful, an imposition, because in truth we know we are not victims.

318. This is a really insightful blog Coleen, thank you. Sympathy is a lack of acceptance. If we cannot accept events such as someone’s passing or the choices another is making, we do not have the ability to bring true understanding to a situation. We interpret it or layer the situation with our own beliefs or unconsciousness. I witnessed an expression of sympathy only yesterday, where sweet biscuits were made and offered to my friend, as a way to alleviate what she had thought was deep grief. They came laced with the emotion of sympathy. Afterward my friend and I were having this very discussion that you are bringing here Coleen and it was a great opportunity to look deeper at what was really going on. After my friend was on the receiving end of the interaction she came away and said she was now feeling sick. The interaction was also laced with the energy of sympathy and even though it was offered in ‘goodwill’ and with “these will make you feel happy” it was in truth not supportive at all. Not absorbing others emotions is also something to be aware of.

     1. This is awesome Victoria, your example helps me see more clearly how the energy of sympathy manifests in seemingly innocent actions. lt feels devious and cunning, stealing in like a thief in the night.

     2. Definitely, Victoria, and what I have observed is that sympathy is all bout absorbing the emotions of another and draping yourself in them – wearing them like a ‘look at me’ piece of clothing for all to see.

        1. Yes, sympathy also assumes there is a victim and so there is need for a saviour.

        2. Yes – well said, Victoria – so true.

     3. True Marika, the biscuits full of butter and sugar interesting are numbing in our bodies and an attempt to sweeten life, a substitute for truly feeling what is going on. If we choose to ‘cover’ or dull what is there to feel there is no opportunity for true healing in a situation

319. Thank you Coleen for a great article, I for one, could say I have gone into sympathy for others most of my life, believing that this was caring, somehow showing love, but I know now it is an avoidance of feeling our pain and going deeper. The pain is great when we think we will never see the loved one again that this is indeed the end of their life. When we don’t have the understanding of reincarnation this is what we substitute.

320. Our lack of understanding makes us feel uncomfortable and therefore we tend to choose to go into sympathy to bury what is coming up for us to feel, because lack of understanding equates to lack of responsibility.

321. This blog opens up so many questions around life and death and asks us to question if there is more to life than this life? Perhaps if we fully accepted that we ‘pass on’ and not ‘pass over’ we would have to start taking responsibility for all our actions.

322. I have noticed when I felt uncomfortable about a situation I used to often go into sympathy. I was also relating sympathy to a way of expressing love, but this was not true love. This blog exposes the harm of choosing sympathy as it definitely disconnects us from one another. Leaving us feeling heavy and encourages us to indulge in our emotions. Instead if we choose to stay connected to love, we are able to truly support, bringing true connection and evolution to each other.

323. ‘Going into sympathy would have made this love appear ‘wrong,’ so I was left with the conclusion that sympathy is what we ‘do’ in the avoidance of this Love’ – we don’t know what to do when someone presents ‘love’ or openly holds in their presence the ability to accept, appreciate and celebrate life’s natural cycle devoid of ‘an’ emotion of some type, it leaves many of us feeling exposed and hence we will ‘grab’ at sympathy, old sayings, mentally constructed comments completely un-connected to the sharing in order to move on from an ‘uncomfortable’ moment. Loved all the questions you have posed Coleen and the responsibility we all share in, in bringing more awareness to the words we use in all conversations.

324. I remember in the past when I spoke to somebody who shared they were going to a funeral or they had cancer or another big such life event that I had no idea at all what to do. I couldn’t console them and I did not want to impose on them, so I said either nothing or something quite irrelevant. Coleen’s travel companions might have been in a similar position and reverted to offering hope as an alternative?

325. “We often … use ideals and images, to distract ourselves in… emotionally charged situations… to give us something to aspire to for the future – to give us a future. This takes us out of the present moment and the opportunity to connect, and into our minds.” This raises an important point about the way we use distraction in many situations where we don’t want to feel the truth of what is occurring. We can then use these techniques to ensure that we are never actually living in the present, never truly connected to our body. Maybe it is this exposing of lack of true connection that is so confronting.

     1. Amazing Lee. Living in the present gives us a whole different way of understanding life, and when I have found I am free of an emotion, an ideal and an image in a moment – there is a feeling of true connection and perspective.

326. Beautiful Coleen, so much wisdom shared in this reflection on dying and sympathy. The concept that when we die we pass on to the next chapter of life rather than pass away is an awesome way to re-imprint how we view death. Imagine if an infant mourned the loss of leaving the womb and received much sympathy for this, their world changed forever now no longer alive in the womb attached to the life sustaining umbilical cord? We celebrate this form of moving on as birth. I find it lovely to feel death as a passing on to a new beginning, no need for sympathy. Thank you for sharing this Coleen.

     1. Lee this is absolutely extaodinary! I so agree, deaths can be celebrated as moving on, from one life to the next. Holding onto one life and thinking it is it, is a very protective and reduced form of understanding life, when in fact we are so much more.

327. When sympathy is expressed, it literally feels like prison bars are imposed upon us, there is no connection and no love in sympathy but deep harm as we all hold each other back.

328. Sympathy is a movement that caps us in the hold of emotional love so that we will not live what is true love, as only in true love will there be true unity with no separation.

329. Coleen as I was reading something that came to mind was how much the image of sympathy is deeply ingrained in our society. Sending relatives a ‘sympathy card’, for example, is considered normal when we hear that someone close to them has passed on. Often people make a fuss of us and are perhaps kinder than usual in these circumstances, which can be soothing and comforting to many people as they enjoy receiving a reward through the sympathy. No wonder people quickly fall into the emotional traps that are so prevalent at such a time and that loving understanding of life cycles comes a distant second.

330. Love the way you have described sympathy Coleen, it is like a mental exchange, but it never really goes anywhere! When we say things because we think we have to make it better, we have not understood a person and a situation.

     1. Harry pure gold as always, “When we say things because we think we have to make it better, we have not understood a person and a situation”. There can be no understanding in disconnect.

331. Coleen – thanks for bringing up a common situation: going into sympathy. Sympathy is something that in our current society is seen as being a beneficial thing – people relate sympathy with empathy and connection. In other words, there is a belief that if someone can feel sympathy for another then they are connected. So what you present here is a different aspect of sympathy – an aspect that shows that sympathy is perhaps not the way to truly connecting with another, but rather that sympathy for another can stop them from really feeling what is going on. The importance of feeling a situation fully is that it allows us to explore our deepest feelings and to heal and move on, without which we are just burying things only for them to come back and resurface much later in a more ominous way.
     Essentially this means that when we go into sympathy with another, we actually encourage them not to feel, and hence to not heal and not to grow as a person. Wow! When we look at it this way, then we get to see that sympathy is in fact a way to hold back another, to stop their evolution, to smother them.
     And here comes the oooops because for so long many of us have thought that doing the sympathy thing was the right thing to do!

     1. Brilliant comment Henrietta, what you have shared is spot on. It certainly does stop us from connecting to our feelings, caps our evolution and connection. It feels so imposing to go into sympathy whereas love is never in anyway imposing.

        1. When we let ourselves really feel what sympathy does, it is not a pleasant feeling. I would in fact equate it to a feeling of smothering! And that is certainly not something that is loving as you have said Chan! I’m so loving this thread and its unfolding!

     2. Precisely so, Henrietta – in schools empathy is seen as the bigger sister of sympathy and a ‘higher’ version of it but both emotions are seen as positive and as indicators of emotional maturity. Not so – both of these emotions separate us from who we are and from true connection with another.

        1. Empathy and sympathy are as you have said Coleen, emotions that block us from really feeling what is going on. However, when a person is dulled from feeling the deeper aspects of themselves that lie there waiting for discovery, then empathy and sympathy (as well as other emotions) become the thing we ride on because it makes us feel ‘alive’ from an emotional perspective. Many of us live our lives emotionally, not realising the lie that this is. When we let ourselves truly feel, we get to discover the difference between feelings and emotions, where emotions are the entertainment and distraction that keeps us from developing a deeper connection with ourselves. But should we not be pulled by the emotions, and allow ourselves to connect more deeply, a whole new ‘world’ opens up, or rather, we re-discover our true strength and connection with the wealth that lies within than needs no emotion to sustain it.

     3. Wow – Henrietta, you have just exposed the energy of sympathy to manipulate, to take another off course and to the hold back the love we are. It also exposes the degree to which we do not want to feel the truth within ourselves. So much to ponder here.

        1. Spot on Christine – sympathy is a way of manipulating another and thwarting our own and another’s development. And why would we do this? Could there be a part of us that fears stepping into responsibility? Do we drag our feet and then some and use sympathy as an excuse to not grow? As you have so wisely said, there is an avoidance of truth here, conspired to keep up small and our own complicitness to not grow into the grandness that we all come from.

     4. Ah Marika – you have presented yet another deeper facet of one of our many societal issues! How true that by going into sympathy with another, we not only hold back their evolution, but we also retard our own! Gives you shudders when you look at it like that!

332. Brilliant sharing Coleen thank you.
     Could it be that when approaching, or even with the thought of the so-called ‘end’ drawing near we feel the underlying knowing we have not lived anywhere near to the fullness of who we are and that in that moment the pain of that is too great to bear, so instead we go with ‘that’s it, the End, how sad!’ A precise and cunning detour to responsibility.

     1. Agreed Giselle and could we say the reality of another passing brings up the reality that we too have not lived our lives to the full and instead of feeling it we dive into emotion to offset the comfortableness of feeling we are not living ourselves in full.

333. “..sympathy could well be what cements us into this belief that we end forever, that we pass away, rather than that we pass on to the next phase of our ever unfolding, divinely sustained life”…What a great exploration of life and death and how sympathy can play such a big part in the death cycle. Well actually sympathy plays a big part in many ways – illness, disease, death, job loss etc…but in this case yes…life/death/life/death – it is a natural part of life and a major cycle. But we fight that, I resisted reincarnation for many years and now know it to be true. Thank you for opening up this can of worms as sympathy is a BIG one and exposing how limiting it is.

     1. Sympathy smothers. I remember when my mother died I appreciated people wanting to express their care and love, but when this expression became construed with sympathy I felt a bit smothered and could feel in these exchanges that the person in sympathy was in fact processing something more personal to them.

334. What occurs to me Coleen is that we have an uncomfortable relationship with death because we never fully understand how to embrace life and live it in full.

     1. Bingo! Rachel.

     2. Spot on Rachel!

     3. Ouch! So true but not something we want to hear.

     4. This is so true Rachel, brilliantly expressed. By avoiding examining and understanding our relationship with death leads us to fear it and deny that it is a natural, loving and evolutionary process.

     5. Wow, a lot to contemplate in the sentence you have shared Rachel.

        1. Get life true and our relationship to death takes care of itself.

     6. It’s like the end of the day isn’t it? We don’t want the day to end because we haven’t embraced it and lived it in full.

        1. Exactly Lucy! Great and true analogy.

     7. We have an uncomfortable relationship with life, therefore death is an unfulfilled ending that feels wrong because the way we live our lives feel wrong as well.

     8. Wow Rachel, what a strong point. We are uncomfortable with death because we have never fully embraced life. I have observed this to be true, the more content and full-filled with life someone was – the easier their passing the less content the more traumatic the passing. What a study this would make.

        1. I agree Laura. What a call to make an honest appraisal of our lives, with no berating for what we chose. How empowering this is. For we cannot live in full when held back in anxiousness about our demise.

     9. Absolutely feel what you are sharing here Rachel, as if we are embracing life and living it in full there would be no fear of death.

335. Coleen it’s wonderful how you’ve brought such clarity to how sympathy basically separates us form each other. I’ve had very similar experiences and stood there a little confused to begin with. When sympathy has been expressed there’s an expectation to have to go along with the social norm of it otherwise there is a judgement that can then come at you – you’re heartless, cold-hearted etc. I have felt the judgement has a sting of jealousy to it. Here is someone who is at ease with the rhythms of the universe and has an understanding beyond ones own self-interests.

     This shows just how toxic sympathy is. It’s a force used to keep us in the status quo of being at the mercy of whatever event presents itself. It in no way wants us to connect to our power and our fragility and humility. So when it is not gone along with then attacks can arise. I’ve feared this in the past but actually when I’ve stayed with truth then this supports me and offers a reflection that we do not have to stay prisoners to sympathy.

     1. That is wonderfully expressed, Karin, and confirms many aspects of what unfolded for me around this time. I completely and absolutely agree that sympathy is a force wielded to maintain us in a status quo, closed off to Truth and Love, and cemented into irresponsibility and guarded and manipulated hurt.

336. ‘We often seem to have a tendency to use ideals and images, to distract ourselves in potentially emotionally charged situations like this one.’

     This feels very poignant in relation to Christmas. To use an images of a perfect Christmas to gauge its success is a very effective way to distract from the potential that Christmas offers: the time to be with family, some of whom one seldom sees, and/or oneself. But what if there is a truth that actually we may be with people but avoiding the potential of connecting deeply with them and ourselves. This is a deeply painful realisation because we know this is how we live the whole year round but are confronted with this more so as the focus is on family and time out from usual routines.

     So rather than feeling where one is at in ones relationship with one another and oneself it seems easier to pin hopes and dreams on whether or not Christmas is Christmas according to how many ideals are being ticked. That it was very mild during the UK over Christmas I heard, and even fell for this one myself, that ‘it didn’t feel like Christmas.’ How often do I pin what reality should be like and work really hard to achieve that because it conveniently takes me away from what is right there around me to observe? And what if the gold of a situation is missed because I’m not paying attention?! An awful lot I’d say.

337. Because we’ve lost connection with the ungoing cycle of life, it’s like we don’t know how to relate to each other when somebody passed on (I love this). So in this unknowingness we’ve chosen – almost collectively – for sympathy to dwell in. Which is very sad as in the moments that we might miss someone, we actually get lots of reactions loaded with sympathy which don’t have an ounce of True support in them. Life as an ongoing cycle, how easy and simple could life be if we would all live by this fact? That would take enormous pressure of our shoulders.

338. This blog is a great calling out of what sympathy is and exposes sympathy for being the ‘sticky’ emotion that it is. Sympathy feels like it sticks to you, is very debilitating and absolutely kills any true connection with another. I remember how horrible it felt when my parents passed over and people expressed sympathy towards me. I remember just wanting people to be themselves with me and connect.

     1. We could say sympathy is the ultimate connection killer.

     2. I can also relate to this when my sister passed over. There were times when I would have loved to have talked with others about her life or how I was feeling yet the sympathy from others inhibited this, they were not able to do this.

339. This reflection is chock full of goodies to ponder Coleen! From sympathy to life cycles to the empowerment of understanding. Your expression and appreciation of life is a joy to read and a true lesson for life. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.

     1. Thank you for such a beautiful confirmation, Bernadette: I appreciate it deeply.

340. ‘…we use sympathy and mental energy – ideals and pictures with great longevity – to distract us from the truth of a situation.’ How oblivious was I and are most of us to this truth. When we believe that life is about birth to death then what is in between invites and investment of emotion that is disempowering and futile. I can feel how when I invest in anything other than the present, both disempowerment and futility lurk close by!

341. “Why would we substitute sympathy for Love, especially in the area of someone’s passing on?” – Great question and love the answer you have proposed. What I felt to add is that for many sympathy and love are considered to go hand in hand or be the same thing, that sympathy is an expression of love, I know I’ve thought that in the past. However what I know love to be now is an entirely different quality to that which comes with sympathy and can say it is very worth considering and exploring the difference between the two.

     1. Absolutely worth while to detail for oneself the huge difference between sympathy and love, yes Fiona.

342. Coleen, what a great piece of writing, I love that you were able to feel the lack of connection that came in when sympathy was the emotional response. Sympathy is something I find to be quite uncomfortable to feel, as it does not express to me the truth in any situation but instead is very imposing and dramatic. Our approach to illness and death is much better seen through the eyes of personal responsibility and a never ending cycle of life, this way we can approach all situations with no need for romantic ideals or pictures of how life should be, there need be no snow nor no Robins.

     1. Very true, yet as it is so unfamiliar to most, it is worth remembering that we may need to walk the talk to show it is possible to be with someone and not go into sympathy and for them to feel how much lighter and more supportive this is. They then in turn offer that to another.

343. I find it very interesting to read your observations, sympathy is such a nothingness, I alway feel an emptiness when people go in sympathy with me, or I observe the emptiness within myself before I go into sympathy… It is all about not feeling what is there and choosing this empty and on the surface emotion to cover it up and go into what we think sad occasions are about, while in truth we all know that in your example death is not the end, but just part of the cycle of life.

344. I have found this blog very insightful and timely for me to read. This has helped me to understand more of how I have used sympathy to avoid connecting more deeply with myself and accepting the endless power and beauty I feel when I do deepen.

     1. Awesome sharing Abby, so honest and revealing how we can choose sympathy to avoid being in our power.

     2. Agreed Abby, I could also feel how I have used sympathy to lessen my connection with . Sympathy is such an accepted emotion, and one that is considered noble, when in fact, it is creates nothing but a distraction from deepening our understandings of each other and life.

345. Love the distinction you make between passing away and passing on. This will be the way I describe this process from now on too.

     1. It’s amazing the difference a simple preposition can make to the accuracy / inaccuracy of our expression, isn’t it Elaine? The change of one small word can bring truth or abject lies….both lay in the detail.

346. Great blog Coleen and I love that you don’t judge someone who goes into sympathy. The truth is I, like many others who will read this I am sure, have been brought up to believe a person dies, that is the end, they are gone. You lose them when they die and everyone feels bad for the person in pain from the loss. To be honest it is hard to watch someone in pain from grief. But when I truly connect to what would support the person who is in that deep pain, my sympathy is not top of the list of support. In fact it just loads them further with emotion they just don’t need. So it is self-less to walk beside someone, to be love with them, rather than sympathise.

     1. Beautifully said, Lucy

347. When our density is widely accepted once we pass over, there be no sympathy but purely celebration of a life and the cycle they lived.

     1. Beautifully astute Luke. There are though, still huge stigmas about death: my father would NEVER discuss it and so when he passed over some years ago, we didn’t even know whether he wanted a burial or a cremation; and these stigmas and associated tensions and emotions would evaporate immediately should reincarnation be generally accepted. For now, all we can be is the love that we are.

        1. I agree, it might just open up conversations and take away fear.

        2. Great to know maggie, thank you for sharing.

     2. Very true. And Iove how Coleen clearly clarified ‘passing on’ not ‘passing away’. This is part of our natural cycle. And it makes complete sense to celebrate the person even though we may be sad about the loss of their physical presence.

        1. Good pick up Johanna. Yes it should be time to celebrate someone’s passing.

348. Great observations Colleen. I have noticed that people absolutely use sympathy as a substitute for love. Many mistakenly believe or seek it out because they think it is love! As you have pointed it out, far from supporting the expression of love it actually inhibits it as no real truths are felt, they are simply covered up with emotion. I also love the wisdom you bring to the cycle of life and death and the constant process of re-birth and passing on because this is a necessary part of our evolutionary process.

     1. “Many mistakenly believe or seek it out because they think it is love! ” yes this is true and I have often heard ‘oh they showed no sympathy, where’s the love in that’. Reading this blog and the part sympathy really plays in any interaction definitely gives us more to consider and understand in our own behaviours.

349. I am absolutely blown away by this blog Coleen, it has never been so clear to me that sympathy is a holding back and a hardening against the natural impulse to express and receive love. This is a game changer and it shows me that my attempts to win love through receiving sympathy are more than futile!

350. I remember feeling awkward and often didn’t know what to say to someone who had just experienced a bereavement. You are right, Coleen, there is a kind of stuntedness that made me think I ‘had to’ say the right thing, instead of just allowing what is there to be felt.

     1. We all seem to do whatever it takes to not feel what’s there to be felt – that we cannot but feel even through our best efforts not to, and in the process disempowering each other to build upon the connection we have to All.

351. What a beautiful blog you have shared here Coleen. “That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?” Seeing a death of a loved one as a passing on rather than passing away frees us from the emotion of the passing and also brings greater clarity to the whole cycle of life in its entirety. Death is an ending of one cycle and a beginning of a new one.

     1. I am so pleased to have a deep knowing of that too kellyzarb, I knew it as a child, then I bought into feeling like life ended with heaven and hell, now I know and can feel the grace of the cycles of life as well as the many cycles within that big cycle. This blog was a perfect way to end the cycle that has been this day. 🙂

        1. Yes Lucy when I was young I found it hard to fathom how death could be the end, but to know that what I felt was true. That death is just an end to one cycle and a celebration of a new one just beginning, makes so much sense to the whole cycle of life itself is hugely healing.

352. For me sympathy feels disempowering and does not reflect back to the other who he/she truly is. In a sense it carries a distrust in life and leaves us out of connection.

     1. Absolutely Mariette it feels to me that sympathy is more for my benefit than the other person to avoid feeling and connecting with them.

        1. I love what you share here: sympathy is more for our own benefit and is in that sense a protection. We lose our presence and there is no true connection.

353. Great to have this conversation – not only how conversations about death and dying are often uncomfortable but then how we often change the subject to something totally different to avoid what we are truly feeling.

     1. Yes, what a wonderful conversation to have. Death is certainly something that can carry so much. It is the reminder that we are responsible for how we live and so how we die (and reincarnate) and that can be very problematic if one doesn’t want to address the truth of our choices. For example when a loved one dies we feel the level of our connection with them. How understanding were we of them? Did we get to know who they really were or just react?

        Just in writing this I have a greater understanding of how tricky the fact of death must be for some. I feel my responsibility is not just to myself to live responsibly but how loving it is to reflect an acceptance of this cycle for offers to feel.

354. Coleen, this is a blog with a deep awareness of how we interact with each other in the face of an event such as death. Death has the potential to bring people closer together and share a loving connection, but as you have so clearly described here we often jump out of this simplicity and into other ways of communicating. It is a reflection of what we do everyday as a way of dealing with an array of different challenges. We smile and make a light comment which obscures any connection we could otherwise have.

355. Coleen thank you for a groundbreaking blog blowing apart our ideals around the ‘dying’ process and how sympathy locks us away from the truth of it and the love we are. That truth is we pass on, we don’t pass away, and we return to live and learn once again in a body. If we were educated with this understanding from young much of that false sentiment and sympathy around ‘dying’ would dissipate as we would no longer give it energy and we would embrace the purpose of life that we’re here to evolve and return to the love we are.

356. Sympathy although well meant by those that offer it, does not as you say Coleen, come from connection but from an imagining of what is expected, not what is felt to be true.

357. The weather… always a conversational staple when an awkward silence or emotion arises. We’re not very good at handling the tension we feel – or should I say avoid feeling…

     1. Exactly Victoria, the perfect outside alibi!

     2. Yes victoria, when conversation turns to the weather, it’s actually a great marker for us to clock that there’s actually something going on that we don’t want to feel 😉

     3. Ha! so true. It’s our go to for every awkward situation. And the funny thing is we all know it…we all know what’s happening but instead of talking about the awkwardness and actually getting beyond it, we just accept that ‘that’s the way it is’, and carry on with the falsity of the interaction. There is no learning, no evolving when we do that.

358. You are right Coleen, there would be no need for sympathy, snow and robins if we all understood reincarnation.

359. Sympathy spoils a lot of human interaction that could otherwise be spent on truly connecting with one another. It is easy to think that sympathy is what is acceptable and socially required, but it’s actually a real downer.

     1. It is indeed a real downer. Well said Gabriele.

     2. Yeah true, I can also feel how I have also at times wanted to drag people into having sympathy with me to confirm my lack of self worth and in this I then haven’t needed to make the changes I deeply knew where needed that would then change the circumstances around me.

360. More and more lately I have experienced how sticky sympathy can be and I would totally agree with you Coleen as you say about sympathy being a cover up to avoid feeling our disconnection from love and each other. To quickly avoid the fact that we chose to separate we take the stance of a lesser being that requires sympathy – it’s like an attraction towards focusing on misery and the more ‘sad’ emotions and the issues and woes that have been dressed up as issues and woes in human life. But all of these come from choices and the only issue we really have is having chosen to separate and thus not be in the joy of that connection. What I am also learning is that reacting to my choices doesn’t work and pandering is actually not healthy for anyone, when not pandered to we are given the space to stand up for ourselves. Cover it up all we want are all the pictures, ideals and beliefs that will ‘make it better’, we can’t escape that life is shaped by our choices.

361. I have always struggled with people that are offering sympathy it would feel in many, many ways quite imposing, a blanket of heaviness, but rather than seeing this I would sometimes react to it and that then feel uncomfortable in myself. I feel we use sympathy to avoid going deeper in expressing what we really want to say.

     1. Me too Alison and I have also struggled when the shoe is on the other foot – not knowing quite what to say. I have come to realise that this is caused by going into the energy of sympathy which stifles true expression.

        1. Yes – sympathy absolutely does stifle true expression, Tamara.

362. Coleen an interesting look at what happens when others go into sympathy around the loss of a loved one. I can understand how this must feel, when as you mention that some of us do not see the Loss of someone as and actual loss but rather a moving into another energy, and in fact something that is naturally occurring for us all at some time an “acceptance and celebration of the next part of our cycle.”

363. Amazing blog thank you Coleen. It made me see more deeply why sympathy feels so ugly to receive, it often makes me feel very uncomfortable. It feels very good to realise this and to start living in a different way, confirming what is true and explaining my true feelings to others when they go in sympathy as well as catching myself if I go into it.

     1. I am starting to notice more how much I can at times go into sympathy to avoid feeling what is actually going on, when I do this my body bloats, I often over-eat and easily get exhausted.

        1. Yes it is huge to realise the effects of these seemingly harmless emotions/actions on our bodies. It is not only bad food choices that can make us feel unwell.

364. “What would happen if we had more understanding about our cycle of physical life and passing on, rather than believing that once we draw our last physical breath, that’s it – we are gone?” A great question Coleen. Thought-provoking blog – thankyou.

     1. I agree sueq2012 – there is much to be understood about the cycle of life and death, and that it is in fact a cycle and not a linear experience. We choose to ignore these signs sometimes, that so clearly show there is reincarnation and past lives. That each of us is drawn to a particular era that has happened in the past, simply because we have probably lived it.

365. Sympathy certainly hinders any notion of love, it’s a heavy draining energy that keeps a sore festering and unable to heal.

366. It is as if we feel almost awkward and uncomfortable to talk about death. If someone has experienced a loss our default is sympathy because we associate death so hugely with emotion. So I love how you have just observed other peoples reactions and seen it for what it is – a way to smooth over things rather than talk about the truth of what is happening. And sometimes it is as simple as not trying to say something nice, but just asking the person how they feel at that moment. We get caught up in trying to fix things without wanting to feel things first.

     1. Very well said Hannah – you have covered so many aspects that commonly arise around how we deal with the subject of death.

367. Thank you for sharing Coleen. I also recently attended a funeral, and realised the opportunity they offer us to celebrate the deceased person and re-connect with family members, old friends and so forth. Although I did not know huge numbers of people there (as it was my grandmothers old friends), I could see how much they appreciated her and I heard some incredible stories about her generosity and care for others. It’s gorgeous to celebrate someone after they pass on instead of mourn and sympathise with one another.

     1. One of the things I enjoy about funerals is the perspective they present to us. In this I find we tend to make the space to appreciate one another and to connect more deeply.

     2. I agree Susie, I recently attended a family funeral and I did appreciate the love that everyone had for the person who had died. There was sadness that this wasn’t expressed to them in their life and that we hold back so much of sharing and really living in deep appreciation of what those in our lives mean to us.

        1. Absolutely MW, there is no need to wait for an occasion like a wedding or birthday to celebrate someone and appreciate who they are, or even a funeral – why not express our appreciation of that person all of the time?

     3. A beautiful sharing Susie of what we can truly bring to a funeral.

368. Sympathy is an energy that keeps us stuck where are at. If we go into sympathy, effectively we are saying to someone “stay where you are, it’s OK” rather than asking them to be more, to evolve. It’s illusion to think that sympathising with someone helps them in any way.

     1. Thanks Donna, your explanation of sympathy as “….effectively we are saying to someone “stay where you are, it’s ok…” made it really clear for me to see the harm we cause (to ourselves and another) when we go into sympathy.

        1. Absolutely Hannah, there in evolution is sympathy just irresponsibility in not offering them a space to see that there are lessons to learn from taking emotions out of the picture.

        2. Exactly Samantha, when we take emotions out of the picture, we can address what is actually going on with simplicity and ease.

     2. Agree, but we certainly weren’t brought up to feel that way. We’re told that we are cold hearted if we do not respond to seemingly bad situations with a ‘sad face’ and ‘poor you’ eyes.

        1. Spot on, Elodie – in schools now we even teach children how a sad face should look!

        2. I agree Elodie, this is what I was taught along with at times to hold everything in, it is not ok to show any emotion – more ideals and beliefs ‘blown out of the water’!

     3. So well said Donna.. That’s exactly what sympathy does.

     4. I remember feeling stuck and helpless when my beautiful caring mother went into deep sympathy when I was laying in bed with an illness in my school years. I can recall how it actually made me feel worse and I wished she would stop it and just be her natural caring self.

     5. Great comment Donna, we are lying to ourselves in believing we are supporting another when we sympathise…. denying the fact we are just choosing to make ourselves more comfortable with a ‘normal’ response so to deflect what we don’t want to feel about death and the emotions this brings up in us.

369. A powerful blog Coleen exposing the ‘safety of sympathy’ commonly used in bereavement and other stressful situations. Having recently experienced a death of a very close friend, I have also felt the effect of being on the receiving end of sympathy, which feels hollow and false from this instant disconnection to not feel any pain or hurt within them. Which prevents a deeper and true communication together. I am in complete agreement with you here –
     “That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?”

370. Great also how you discover how ‘sympathy’ does hold us back from really understanding what is going on and from developing together. Sympathy confirms disconnection.

     1. So true Sandra, sympathy does indeed “confirm disconnection” – ironic as it is generally believed that in showing sympathy we are showing that we “care”.

        1. A great lie we have been sold. Going into the emotion of another does not support, it just leaves you both feeling the same.

        2. Exactly Johanna, well said.

        3. I know, it’s crazy to consider this — the common belief around sympathy being the exact opposite of what it actually is and does. Sympathy gives the person relief from what they’re feeling and puts them off the hook from being in connection with themselves and the other. And the person asking for sympathy gets to stay in the notion that they are hard done by, whatever it may be, instead of feeling their grand responsible part and that there is nothing less about them and nothing to feel sorry about.

        4. I found that as a general trick – to cover our ‘ill behaviors’ as the opposite. It is Evil dressed as Good.

371. Great call to realize how ‘feeling sorry’ for each other does hold us in disconnecting, in fact it supports us in an irresponsible state of being. In fact there is no such thing like ‘sorry’ – just responsibility.

372. Thank you Coleen and a great question to ask “What would happen if we had more understanding about our cycle of physical life and passing on, rather than believing that once we draw our last physical breath, that’s it – we are gone?” So often we use sympathy in an attempt to mask the fact that we feel insecure and afraid of the subject in hand. How amazing it would be if we were able to be honest with one another in the face of death, to be able to express how it does feel scary because it is an un-known that we have received very little education about. I am so appreciative of Serge Benhayon’s teachings, because he does go there and reveals so much of what we can expect and how we can choose to be within ourselves when we die, and the responsibility our friends and relatives have in supporting us through the process. There will be a day when this is common knowledge and once it is, our conversations around death will be so different. We will feel confident to connect with others at this precious time, celebrate the deceased person’s moving on and offer true support to those who are processing the change.

     1. “There will be a day when this is common knowledge and once it is, our conversations around death will be so different”. I so look forward to that day, Rowena, when we can all openly discuss the fact of death with anyone, and we all understand that it is not truly the end, but just another cycle, that the person who has passed on will be returning once again to learn what needs to be learned in the new cycle. It is such a shame that nowadays there is so much fear about death, it is a fact of ‘life’, that it is not truly an end, just a part of an ongoing process.

     2. This is beautiful Rowena and completely the opposite to how the majority of us are now when it comes to death and dying. Many feel abandoned from their closest friends/family when they are going through the last stages of their lives or have a close family member who are, because everyone feels uncomfortable and not sure what to say or how to be with them. How I feel about death and dying now compared to before listening to Serge Benhayon’s presentations has massively changed. There is more of an understanding and responsibility with how I live and how I die and I don’t feel the same angst and fear that I used to.

373. Sympathy is an attempt to alleviate another’s pain or discomfort in order to maintain our own comfort. Being present with someone in our fullness, without taking on their pain, and allowing them to feel the hurt instead of burying it under social conventions, is far far more supportive.

     1. Absolutely Naren. There is so much emphasis on giving another sympathy when they are sad, whereas in truth this is literally a way of avoiding feeling what is being triggered as a result of the others sadness. It does not support anyone and only allows the pain to be avoided, so burying it more deeply.

        1. True, Sandra. If you dig a little bit you will find that sympathy is much more about ourselves than it is about the person who is suffering.

        2. Well said Naren and Sandra. Sympathy is never about the other person, always about ourselves and how to make ourselves feel better.

     2. So true Naren. This exposes the truth of sympathy. Sympathy in no way supports anyone involved. As you say, it is social convention maintaining a deep level of comfort.

        1. It is an attempt to connect with another when we have not connected with ourselves. We do want to care and we do care deeply, but there is so often no facility within us to not take on the burden of another’s pain, so sympathy ends up taking its place. It holds the other at a safe distance.

     3. So well said Naren. Giving that person the opportunity to feel their own stuff is enormously supportive for their own healing. By absorbing it for them, it just further delays that healing.

        1. And learning how to let go of needing to fix someone else is enormously healing for us. It allows us to feel what our responsibility truly is and how to live with that responsibility.

     4. It is Naren, far more supportive and far more loving then looking down at someone in sympathy and seeing them as less then. Everything comes down to choices and when we sympathise with someone what we are really saying is this happened to you and it takes away the healing of responsibility for that person.

        1. Yes, you have really hit on one of the core points of illusion behind sympathy, Aimee. If we do not see our own part in choosing the life that we have, and why we are where we are, we tend to think that life ‘happens’ to us and we are the eternal victim. Sympathy only feeds these thoughts, and the lack of responsibility that goes with them.

        2. Totally Naren, holding another in the knowing that we are all equal and we have our lessons to learn and our hurts to heal, allows us both to be responsible and deal with our own stuff without having anothers emotions piled on top.

     5. Yes, people use sympathy in the belief that they are helping the person who is going through the pain of losing someone, all in good intention, but actually it is harming to the person who has to deal with the hurts and losses that they are feeling, rather than burying them deeper in their body, and becoming even more emotional.

     6. For some it is confronting to hear this but it is true- the greatest moments of support have been when someone is able to hold themselves and offer love. Love is not taking on another’s pain and going into it with them, when someone holds themselves but is open to you it allows you to find your own way again.

        1. Well said MW, ‘…when someone holds themselves but is open to you it allows you to find your own way again.’ This is truly being love with and supporting another.

     7. So true Naren – sympathy is used as a double-sided cover up which only serves to keep us dis-connected.

     8. ‘Sympathy is an attempt to alleviate another’s pain or discomfort in order to maintain our own comfort’ – ouch.. the illusion of making it about another when in fact it’s just done for our self.

        1. One of the deepest illusions that we play out on not just ourselves, but everyone else as well.

374. Often when we are being sympathetic, it is because we have decided that this is what you do in certain situations. Our voice changes in pitch, we have a concerned look on our face, words like “oh dear” spring from our lips. These are socially conditioned attempts to let another know that we care, but at the same time they do not give the totality of ourselves to be felt and the deep support that is in that.

     1. Socially conditioned attempts at letting people know we care – absolutely. ‘Polite society’ is so deeply imposing, unsupportive and in total denial of what is truly needed and can be offered in any moment should the situation be read and responded to in true connection.

        1. It does not take much to peel back the facade of the ways we so often show we care, to reveal the self motivation behind it. But the tragedy to me is the fact that people really do want to care, we really do feel the hurt that others feel. We just do not know how to connect to ourselves and not take their hurt on as our own hurt, so instead we end up keeping the other at a protective distance and not connecting with them fully, which is what is truly needed.

375. I have always observed where in a conversation when somehow a close family member is mentioned and the question is asked how are they? When the response is they have died when it was years ago, it kills the conversation. It cuts off the normal to go down the sympathy path required patter.

376. Coleen thank you for bringing up a number of really important points to consider. Especially the fact that “We often seem to have a tendency to use ideals and images, to distract ourselves in potentially emotionally charged situations”. This strikes a strong note with me as I can really see how it affects everything and comes up at any difficult time. Be it work, home, friends, relationships, passing overs – they are all times when we can let ourselves be taken by images and distractions instead of feeling the truth of that moment. A wise lesson to take into my day.

377. Sympathy is such a powerful emotion that distracts us from taking responsibility and dealing with painful feelings and unresolved hurts.

     1. It is indeed Jonathan, nothing more and nothing less. We created so many ways to not feel the truth, it is incredible when we honestly look at it.

     2. Yes, Jonathan, sympathy given to someone who has had a loss is extremely disempowering to them, can make them even more emotional, and then distract them as you say “from taking responsibility and dealing with painful feelings and unresolved hurts.

     3. Absolutely Jonathan. It allows us to wallow in the emotional turmoil rather than see and deal with what is happening.

     4. Spot on Jonathan – and sympathy also allows us to indulge in a false sense of comfort .

     5. Well said Jonathan.

378. Beautiful Coleen, ‘we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?’ This feels great and so true and yet it is rarely accepted that we pass on, more that we pass away and that that’s it which I guess is why there is so much sadness. If in society it was common knowledge that we pass on and that it isn’t just ‘bad luck’ that we pass away at a certain time then there would be no need for the huge grief and sadness that is suffered when we lose someone, I know for myself I grieved for years at the loss of a family member not understanding that they were simply passing on and that they were ongoing.

     1. Yes – that belief system hurts us very deeply, Rebecca.

379. When a close family member passes over we mourn the loss of their physical presence but if you set them free to explore their next cycle of life you can feel a deeper connection to them as the shared love is forever with you in your heart.

380. These are very important points you raise here which I can relate to. When we have a bigger picture or overview of the cycles of physical form life and formless life as a continuum then there is no need for any sympathy for understanding and awareness of the gift of form life becomes truth we feel from within. However if we don’t want to feel the truth that our body holds then we project our own emotional issues with the fear of death as one example. The fear of death and belief that there is only this life now is what is driving humanity to stay in comfort, supposedly compassionate and ignore the cycles of life we see in nature.

381. Understanding that we never really die and that our spirit and soul are eternal, and death is just a natural part of the cycle of life, we never really lose anyone and until this is understood there will always be sympathy surrounding the death of a loved one.

382. We tend to have a completely wrong way of looking at death in that to not show sympathy for someone that has just lost a loved one may seem cold or uncaring. It is as though we have been programmed to act in this way. Loving support is all that is needed, if it is needed, otherwise just love is all we need and emotions just get in the way of that love.

     1. Absolutely Kevin – emotions get in the way of love… and the true clarity love offers each moment we embrace it.

383. Coleen what also came to mind whilst reading your article were the various body positions, inflections in the voice and facial expressions that accompany the ‘sympathy package’. All of these things lead to more of the same, which is why people who respond to any supposed ‘bad news’ with sympathy, also unwittingly subscribe to a whole plethora of false ideals and beliefs.

384. Thank you for sharing your experiences, Coleen, it is true how people have a strange reaction to death – many don’t know what to say and avoid meeting the bereaved person (if they’ve heard the news) or, as you experienced, they go into sympathy. It makes such a difference to our bereavement when we understand about reincarnation, it makes it simpler to let go of the physical connection, knowing that they will be back in a few years to complete another cycle of life.

385. Letting go someone who had died is very freeing. Naturally, knowing that this is not the end of the journey but a crucial time for them as well as they have to prepare to come back supports the letting go. It is a time to celebrate the journey that was shared and the divinely designed order we belong to that continues supporting both of us equally.

386. Thank you for sharing your experiences, Coleen, it is true how people have a strange reaction to death – many don’t know what to say and avoid the meeting the bereaved person (if they’ve heard the news) or, as you experienced, they go into sympathy. It makes such a difference to our bereavement when we understand about reincarnation, it makes it simpler to let go of the physical connection, knowing that they will be back in a few years to complete another cycle of life.

387. By the time we get into a conversation with anyone about anything our choice of what to say has already been made. The quality of our movements dictate the quality of our thoughts and therefore the content of our speech. It is pure illusion to think that we are free to think and therefore able to enter into thoughtful discussion because all discussion is pre determined by how we moved prior to that moment.

388. Coleen, a very full bodied article that asks us to consider much.

389. Coleen this is a very simple clear account of your experiences with the travel and experiences of the process of funeral, death and the sympathy that we can all go into which separates us from being the love we are. What a beautiful realisation of the truth of what really goes on and how true love can hold us and makes all the difference and allows the natural process of our cycles of life to simply be. A great reflection highlighting the negative harmful effects of emotions and sympathy that can occur if we let them.

390. Sympathy is a way that we witness and learn from early childhood on. Very early our parents can go into sympathy with us for a dis-ease that in truth is the completion of an old cycle and very healing and needed for the baby. We think sympathy is a form of connection although it is a form of separation.

391. “That the actual truth is that we are all ongoing and that in our ongoing-ness, we have no need for sympathy, only the acceptance and the celebration of the next part of our cycle?” A very important question that is actually a truth as in our true grandness there is no end only expansion.

392. Sympathy negates our true grandness and is part of a consciousness of reductionism that keeps us small in the realm of the physicality and within the capacities of a human being expressing from the wayward will, aka the spirit, and not impulsed by its Soul.

     1. Boom! Can’t say clearer than that!

393. It resonates with me Coleen, the fact that sympathy is withholding us from feeling the truth about life, that life has in fact no beginning and end, but that it is an continue cycle of physical life and death, which means that we only on the physical level experience a beginning and end, while in truth it is not, as the end is the beginning of a new life on another plane, a plane we will return from to start a new physical life on earth. If we stay with the sympathy we completely ignore this fact and only concentrate on this one life and with that we make ourselves and others much less than we actually are. We should, as you say Coleen, celebrate the physical death of someone for the moving on to the next cycle, the cycle of life and death we are all in.

394. Great exposure on the ill and detrimental effects of sympathy Coleen. This has been an enormous confirmation for what I have felt today and for a long time. When someone is in sympathy for another they are in affect putting up a wall and saying I don’t want to know how you truly are in this situation because from my mind I am projecting on to you how I would feel in that situation. So in truth they are sympathizing for themselves, and completely dismissing what is really going on in front of them. Then in come the pictures that they need to make themselves feel better in that situation or what they heard when growing up that would make them forget.

     1. Great point Aimee – projecting onto another how we would feel in their shoes is exactly what’s going on in this situation. We are uncomfortable with ourselves so place huge expectation on the other to behave in the way that will make us feel better about ourselves.

        1. Yes Lucy, and fit in to the pictures we have around death. I have heard many conversations over the years around death where people were judging and comparing who is more distraught and grieving more than another… and making it wrong if others were processing it in a different way. I love how Coleen has presented another way from her experience and shows that it is a very personal experience which needs to be respected but also one that touches everyone around us too.

        2. Absolutely – we impose onto another a picture of how they should be behaving based on what we believe is normal and okay – it is destabilising when the norm or the picture of the world as we think it is meant to be is challenged, creating an uncomfortableness within… highlighting that maybe we have got it wrong… So much easier then to dismiss this by assuming someone is heartless because they are not emotional about the death of another like their picture tells them they should be, or just play the sympathy card regardless of what is truly needed in that moment and sweep the uncomfortableness… and lesson within, under the table.

395. I caught the sense in your sharing Coleen, that people just did not understand your capacity to not feel sorry for yourself or the deceased person. There was a default ‘should’ response that took over because it was inappropriate to celebrate the decision to let go emotionally and still travel all that way to the funeral. Dedicating time and energy to things without investment is not well understood to people, yet it is the essence of living with freedom and true service.

     1. I love your comment Simon. Your understanding in the lack of understanding, the puzzlement of those who Coleen spoke to is beautiful. It is an unusual response to death, but to me this shows how much we have been hoodwinked by the pain and suffering associated with the passing over of a loved one. Take away the sympathy and those who need to are left to process the passing with space to feel what needs to be felt, without the expectation of how they ‘should’ be reacting.

        1. This is such a great point Lucy for when not imposed upon by sympathy and all that comes with it, people are left alone to feel the truth of any moment and the lessons within and to feel what is there to be felt rather than what is expected.

        2. Exactly Lucy, over time you can feel how one interaction after the other between people has left no space for another to feel for themselves what truth has already been laid before them.

396. Great you bring the points raised here up Coleen. I reflect on the fact that in many occasions in my life I have actually not wanted to share in full the details of a situation in case someone goes into sympathy or another emotion such as excitement. Both are not the truth and feel like a disconnection from truly being with me and appreciating what is going on for me. Whatever emotion we choose from it is never true Love

397. You raise an interesting question here Coleen – “Why would we substitute sympathy for Love” – my sense is that we also substitute love for so many other emotions, pride, anger, jealousy, sadness etc etc. As you suggest all because it feels more comfortable than being open to love.

     1. Its true, and absolutely so so ridiculous!! How is that anything other than love can outweigh the choice for love, it completely baffles me!

        1. It could be because the love we have been told is love and then been hurt by, is not really love at all. It could be because we feel for something false and rather than call out the falsity, we thought it was what we deserved and needed to make do with!.

     2. True Joel, it is as though we are more comfortable in the “doing” of emotion rather than the simple “being” love calls us to.

        1. Agreed, as long as I am active, doing, even when sitting still, I can still choose to stew in some thought process…all to avoid what I am actually feeling

     3. Yes, Joel, it is so strange that we so avoid love, by substituting all these other emotions, including sympathy, for love, when in actual fact what we truly want deep down is love. How crazy we are to be avoiding what we all so dearly crave for. I find that sympathy is something that actually something that makes a person who has had a loss in their life feel even worse, it becomes disempowering for them.

     4. You’re right Joel. I know I’ve substituted several other emotions to avoid love because of this ‘idea’ that love will end up hurting me. Not the case, in fact all the substituting is what is harming me the most.

        1. So true Elodie- the very thing that hurts us the most is not having love and knowing we haven’t chosen this.

        2. I agree Elodie, so then what holds onto pain in the face of a light that will ease it? could it be pride?

        3. We choose emotions instead of love to remain comfortable from the fact that love is forever deepening. There is more, always more to deepen to and that is love.

     5. So true Joel. We all want and deserve love yet look to replace this with almost any type of emotion. Could it be that the love that we seek is actually the love that we have not first given ourselves?

     6. Absolutely Joel, anything else other than true love is a bastardisation of the truth about love. We have so lost the true meaning of words like love and as a humanity words “will” and need to return to a universality of true meanings! Love has absolutely no emotions and is simply what we have all been searching for in our varied and different ways. “There is a very distinct turning away from the initial impulse to connect through Love,” being open to love becomes the most natural thing once we lose being uncomfortable around true love with the understanding of what love is without any emotional attachments.
        For more on Love go to;
        http://www.unimedliving.com/voice/whats-on-in-the-world/when-you-say-i-love-you-does-it-come-with-love.html

     7. So true Joel – and in this substitution of love we have lost the true meaning of the word. Love is not emotional, needy or sympathetic – it understands peoples choices, cycles and all the space in between. We are held by love always, in God’s Atma, it is not something we can own or give to another. Perhaps this is where we have fallen from the truth.

        1. “We are held by love always, in God’s Atma, it is not something we can own or give to another.” When I react to statements like this it is exposes my separation to my Soul.

     8. Very confronting but true Joel. I can feel that in relationships I have gone for a whole range of other things instead of love, in particular attention and security.

     9. Well said Joel, that leaves a bit to ponder on. Love comes with responsibility, letting go of our walls of protection and being vulnerable, letting ourselves be truly seen. Sympathy maintains the wall and the veil, it’s an emotion we can hide behind — like all emotions in fact.

     10. But then the question of why is love not feeling comfortable to be with in the first place. Love is love. Coming back to something we have left would feel uncomfortable but in the case of love this uncomfortableness is actually love too.

     11. “all because it feels more comfortable than being open to love.” To allow the hardness in our bodies to drop away feels like a giant leap – the beauty is that once we open up to love we realise that the leap is into something we deeply know and are.

Comments are closed.