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TIMESKahlil Gibran The Prophet Suicide Hotline Mental Healthcare Links Circular Times Kahlil Gibran - A eulogy for the death of a mind – is there reincarnation, is there life after life?
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THE PROPHET
You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
Kahlil Gibran
1883-1931
revised passage on death
Then Almitra Spoke…...
Then Almitra spoke, saying, We would ask now of Death. And She said: You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? The owl whose night –hound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you would indeed behold the spirit of death. Open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. Your lust for death is but trembling of the Shepard when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour. Is the Shepard now joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king? Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling.
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim limbs, then shall you truly dance.
And now it was evening. And Almitra the seeress said, Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken, And She answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener?
Then She descended the steps of the Temple and all the people followed her. And She reached his ship and stood upon the deck. And facing the people again, She raised her voice and said: People of Orhalese, the wind bids me leave you. Less hasty am I that the wind, yet I must go. We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier, was, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the Earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heat that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken. But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again. And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak. Yea, I shall return with the tide, And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek your understanding. And not in vain will I seek. If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts.
I go with the wind, people of Orphalese, but not down into emptiness; And if this day is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day. Man’s needs change, but not his love, not his desire that his love should satisfy his needs. Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return. The mist that drifts away at dawn, leaving but dew in the fields, shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain. And not unlike the mist have I been. In the stillness of the night I have walked in Your streets, and my spirit has entered your houses, And your hear-beats were in my heart, and your breath was upon my face, and I knew you all. Ay, I knew your joy and your pain, and in your sleep your dreams were my dreams. And Oftentimes I was among you a lake among the mountains. I mirrored the summits in you and the bending slopes, and ever the passing flocks of your thoughts and your desires. And to my silence came the laughter of your children in streams, and the longing of your youths in rivers. And when they reached my depth the streams and the rivers ceased not yet to sing.
But sweeter still that laughter and greater than longing came to me. It was the boundless in you; The cast man in who in you are all but cell and sinews; He in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing. It is in the cast man that you are cast, And in beholding him that I beheld you and loved you. For what distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere? What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight? Like a giant oak three covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you. His might binds you to the Earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless.
You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link. This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link. To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam. To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconsistency.
Ay, you are like an ocean. And though heavy-grounded ships await the tide upon your shores, et, even like an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides. And like the seasons you are also, And though in your winter you deny your spring, Yet spring, reposing with in you, smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended. Think not I say these things in order that you ay say the one to the other, “He praised us well. He saw but the good in us.” I only speak to you in words of that which you your selves know thought. And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge? Your thought and my words are waves from a sealed memory that keeps records of our yesterdays, And of the ancient days when the Earth knew not us nor herself, And of nights when Earth was upwrought with confusion
Wise men have come to you to give of their wisdom. I came to take of your wisdom. And behold I have found that which is greater than wisdom. It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more itself, While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days. It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave.
There are no graves here. These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping –stone. When ever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors look well there upon, and you shall see yourselves and you children dancing hand in hand. Verily you often make merry without knowing.
Others have come to you to whom for golden promises made unto your faith you have given but riches and power and glory. Less that a promise have I given, and yet more generous have you been to me. You have given me my deeper thirsting after life. Surely there is no greater gift to a Woman than that which turns all her aims into parching lips and all life into a fountain. And in this lies my honour and my reward, That when ever I come to the fountain to drink I find the living water itself thirsty; And it drinks me while I drink it.
Some of you have deemed me proud and over-shy to receive gifts. Too proud indeed am I to receive wages, but not gifts. And thought I have eaten berries among the hills when you would have had me sit at your board, And slept in the portico of the temple when you would gladly have sheltered me, Yet was it not your loving mindfulness of my days and my nights that made food sweet to my mouth and girdled my sleep with visions?
For this I bless you most: You give much and know not that you give at all. Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, And a good deed that calls itself tender names becomes the parent to a curse.
And some of you have called me aloof, and drink with my aloneness, And you have said, “SHe holds council with the tree of the forest, but not with men. She sits alone on hill-tops and looks down upon our city.” True it is that I have climbed the hills and walked in remote places. How could I have seen you save from a great height or a great distance? How can one be indeed near unless he be far?
And others among you called unto me, not in words, and they said, “Stranger, stranger, lover of unreachable heights, why dwell you among the summits where eagles build their nests? Why seek you the unattainable? What storms would you trap in your net, And what vaporous, birds do you hunt to the sky? Come and be one of us. Descend and appease your hunger with our bread and quench your thirst with our wine.” In the solitude of their souls they said those things; But were their solitude deeper they would have known that I sought but the secret of your joy and your pain, And I hunted only your larger selves that walk the sky.
But the hunter was also the hunted; For many of my arrows left my bow only to seek my own breast. And the slier was also the creeper; For when my wings were spread in the sun their shadow upon the earth was a turtle. And I the believer was also the doubter; For often have I put my finger in my own wound that I might have the greater belief in you and the greater knowledge of you. And it is with this belief and this knowledge that I say, You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields. That which is you dwell above the mountain and roves with the wind. It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth or digs holes into darkness for safety. But a thing free, a spirit that envelops the Earth and moves in the ether.
If these be vague words, then seek not to clear them. Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things , but not their end, And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning. Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and no tin the crystal. And who knows but a crystal is mist decay?
This would I have you remember in remembering me: That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined. It is not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones. And it is not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt, that builded your city and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else, And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound. But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well. The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it, And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it. And you shall see. And you shall hear, and it is well. Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf. For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things, And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.
After saying these things She looked about herself, and She saw the pilot of her ship standing by the helm and gazing now at full sails and now at the distance, And She said: Patient, over patient, is the captain of my ship. The wind blows and restless are the sails; Even the rudder begs direction; Yet quietly my captain awaits my silence. And these my mariners, who have heard the choir of the greater sea, they too have heard me patiently. Now they shall wait no longer. I am ready. The stream has reached the sea, and once more the great mother holds her Daughter against her breast.
Fare you well people of Orphalese, This day has ended. It is closing upon us here we shall keep, And if it suffices not , the again must we come together and together stretch our hands unto the giver. Forget not that I shall come back to you. A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body. A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
Farwell to you and in the youth I have spent with you. It was but yesterday we met in a dream,. You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky. But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn. The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part. If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song. And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky.
So
saying She made a signal to the seaman,
and
straightway they weighed anchor and cast the ship loose from its moorings, and
they moved eastward. And a cry came from the people as from a single heart, and
it rose into the dusk and was carried out over the sea like a great trumpeting.
Only Almitra was silent, gazing after the ship until it had vanished into the
mist. And when all the people were dispersed she still stood alone upon the
sea-wall, remembering in her heart her saying, “A little while, a moment of rest
upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”
Recently, a close friend chose to end life, due to lack of ability to comprehend life itself, for life's sake. Death can take place in more than just the physical state of being; it will also take place when the mind is in a state of deprivation. Your soul shall live on, but, your spirit is twice hindered. There is no severing of self.
WE survivors of loved ones are often times victims of suicide aggression. We have the right to ask for harm to stop. We have the right to say no to manipulations. We have the right to continue experiencing a loving and creative life. Suicides do not have the right to take our calm, peace and joy from us.
For those who ponder suicide, Please Seek extensive treatment and guidance. Contemplate the ramifications of self inflicted actions that cause harm to one's self and others before acting out on any illicit emotion or mental delusion. consider the "All" in life.
Say no to your daemons, protect yourself and others.
Please Be kind.
1-800-784-2433
Suicide Hotline
Here is a good link that was sent to me on "The Wounded Healer."
This is a good article for the suicide and the survivor
Please read - if you have any questions or comments feel free to contact.
Help fight mental disease - call your local doctor of Psychiatry
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Intellectual, Scientific and Philosophical Studies
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Dr. Colette M.Dowell, N.D.
