Two days ago I learned that another friend had committed suicide – this on the heels of two other friends’ suicides in February. Here again, I experienced a shock and a why – though, I suspected what the precipitating circumstances were in this case, and I was correct – love, relationship and loss – more complicated than this.
During the night and the next day I found my mind and heart circling the big WHY? of suicide and the sadness that seems natural when life ends too early and too tragically.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) nn 2007, suicide was the tenth leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 34,598 deaths. The overall rate was 11.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 people. An estimated 11 attempted suicides occur per every suicide death.
Almost four times as many males as females die by suicide. I wonder if that is because so many men are more estranged from their feelings than women.
As I look at the 2007 figures for suicides involving young people, I now remember that last May, a friend of mine was distraught because a close friend of hers daughter was believed to have committed suicide by jumping off a well-known bridge.
Children ages 10 to 14 — 0.9 per 100,000
Adolescents ages 15 to 19 — 6.9 per 100,000
Young adults ages 20 to 24 — 12.7 per 100,000
When I think of my friend, I see her with a bright smile and a happy heart – part of what seems to fuel the endless why.
Making the turn toward the real, reality, the truth, True Nature, God…. however you refer to that most sublime, all encompassing life force, is, for most of us, not an easy or simple thing. For most of us, it’s a process – a process of continual unfoldment as we turn, turn again, and again and again.
Turning toward the truth usually involves many instances of falling asleep, choosing a goody or two over the truth, the occasional inertia or better idea that takes us back to our habits, familiar life or comfort zone. Our ruts are deep, which leads us to believe that it takes effort to abide in the truth. It takes effort to get out of the ruts and increase our capacity for the truth – until the truth grabs us by the heart or dazzles our minds in a manner that the gravity of our ego life begins to ease up.
Another form of turning again and again toward the truth involves discovering and revelation as what we once thought of as “the” truth broadens and deepens. So, we continue to turn toward the truth as we are opened up and refined.
Fundamentally, turning toward the truth means reversing the mirror. The quest for reality or the life of truth is something to be gained. It’s not something we are going to achieve and put into practice in our life. The truth is the life. What we bring to the truth is our little ego-life – which seems pretty big and significant to us, since it includes everything we see and believe.
Turning toward the truth means bringing our life – moment by moment – to the truth, living in accordance and alignment with how we know the truth. What we read last night that hit home, what we learned in a workshop last weekend, what we experienced in our work sessions or daily practice – we bring that to the truth by applying it and living it in our daily lives.
I’m not not talking theory here. I’m talking rubber meeting the road, walking the talk – and not in an easy way, but in a life or death way. No room for excuses or the champion (judge, jury and executioner) of excuses the superego / inner critic.
Turning toward the truth means reclaiming my aggression if I’m aggression intolerant, standing my ground or staying the course if I’m weak-kneed — all-in-all — no matter what our conditioning, turning toward the truth involves a vulnerability far exceeding what we thought thought was needed when our heart or mind was touched by that first scent of the real that set us seeking.
The Agony, Loss, Suffering, Sadness, Emptiness & Perhaps Peace of Suicide
Recently, two of my business peers suicided in the same week.
My main source of income comes through Internet Marketing and specifically helping my brother and his wife with their real estate business in San Ramon, CA. It was a sad day when I heard that a friend and real estate colleague who I admired and liked had committed suicide. It took me aback as he always seemed so positive and he did so much to help others. According to friends, he had a history of depression and had recently broken up with a woman he was madly in love with. He went to his storage shed and put a gun to his head.
A few days later, I heard that another Realtor and colleague had also committed suicide. It seems his financial challenges brought him to a point of despair and hopelessness that led to suicide.
These aren’t my first intersections with suicide or death. In my family, suicide has always been frowned upon and carried a stigma of cowardice and personal deficiency. I think my father contributed most to this attitude, which isn’t surprising being the military man he was – heavy on judgment and short on compassion and empathy.
As I reflected on the loss of these two friends, the lives and circumstances they left, and the shock felt in the local communities, I recalled the times I had felt so despondent and hopeless that thoughts of suicide entered my brain. As a teen, I think I had more than a few thoughts of suicide as I went through periods of inadequacy and feeling like nobody gave a damn about me and that my presence would not be missed. Those moments of angst were imbued with a distorted sense of martyrdom.
As an adult, I once followed a stream of suicidal thought into a very dark place. It was that exploration that helped me to see the value of deep psychological and emotional exploration. That inquiry has served me well as I have encountered other times when depression, emptiness and hopelessness seemed all-consuming.
What I notice with these two recent suicides is loss, sadness, love and appreciation for two very different, but the same, friends. I notice that my everyday separating boundaries become porous and the experience is more we than me and them. I am blessed to recognize no sense of judgment from my past conditioning.
There’s a lot of sweetness and appreciation for us all.
Humble Origin: 1200–50; Middle English ( h ) umble < Old French < Latin humilis lowly, insignificant, on the ground. See humus
Humus: < Latin: earth, ground; akin to Greek chamaí on the ground
Soul without Shame posted a quote on Facebook today about Self-Evaluation vs. Self-judgment. This got me to thinking about humility. My friend, Greg, tells me that humility is the objective assessment of one’s strengths and weaknesses. I hear this as a clear objective look at oneself or one’s situation… and I always include motivation to know more, to see more clearly.
We need to acknowledge our humility, which is not just being good and spiritual. Humility means to objectively see that you do not know, not to think that something is wrong with you because you cannot know. Nobody can know. You cannot know the mystery. The only thing you can know about the mystery is that it is unknowable and untouchable. You see it, you perceive it, but you do not know what it is. The moment you try to penetrate it, you forget you are trying to penetrate it. – A. H. Almaas – Diamond Heart 4: Indestructible Innocence
Taking note of the above, we could say that humility involves being on the ground, grounded. We could be aware of the vastness and magnitude of reality in relation to our limited perspective. We could see what we see – and want to know more, have more revealed to us, to get more intimate with ourselves, to be more in harmony with life or the divine. We might feel blessed or the presence of grace to have insight, frustration, confusion or even feeling lost.
Humility might include an understanding or intimation that we cannot “do,” an objective hopelessness that what we might feel is needed to satisfy or complete is beyond our capacity to do or even know what is needed next. So, humility, seeing things clearly, can include a profound vulnerability. We might be scared or full of wonder.
Just pondering humility…
Words can Kill
The world comes knocking at the wise man’s door like all good guests laying problems at his feet quietly, he feeds them as gluttonous appetites ravage the evening’s meal bloated with their own assumptions they raucously depart hidden in the corner a hungry servant died on table scraps
How to Succeed in Taking on Big Business or Big Government
Did you get a chance to watchThrive? If not, I recommend it. Did you watch Cancer: The Forbidden Cures? [iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/25279346″ width=”100%” height=”480″]
It seems almost everyone is upset with the way things are being done and run these days – BIG Governement, BIG Business, BIG Pharma, BIG Banking, BIG Agra… There’s a lot of stress, energy and vocals, but very little effective action, it seems.
The Occupy Wall Street movement seems, to me, like a dismal failure. Why? My observation is that ranting and raving and getting attention is usually not very effective. It works for hungry 2-year-olds or even a 5-year-old with a cut or a bump, but that’s usually because someone who really cares is within hearing distance.
The reason that movements like Occupy Wall Street and others fail is what? – no one cares? the system is too entrenched? the BIGs are in control?
The Occupy Wall Street movements seemed to quickly devolve from a noble quest to just another scene for repressed anger and immaturity to run amok for individual acting out or to be co-opted by more focused anti-social elements. I didn’t see anything that I would characterize as effective action.
Imagine that every person that attended a Occupy Wall Street protest, or every person that found themselves on the wrong side of the mortgage melt-down, or every person that has been hurt by the economic down turn did something simple like take their money out of the Big 3 banks that are controlled by three large and powerful families and started using a local credit union or community bank. Imagine if everyone of those people help convince 5 other people to do the same.
In detective shows and novels they say – follow the money. Hit them where it hurts is another well-known phrase. Some make the case that our individual accounts are just peanuts to the big banks, so take the peanuts away. Doing something other than just bitching and complaining is a step.
Many feel cynical and fatalistic about changing the political system with its current entrenched emphasis on “political divide.” Voting for or against a particular Presidential candidate does seem very effective. Should we Throw Them All Out? Probably, it seems it may be the only way to get the message across that our representatives are elected to serve the country and not themselves… Did you see the 60 Minutes segment?
Here again, we probably need to first deal in peanuts and then work our way up. Local community and state governments as well as Congress.
The challenge is that it takes effort and commitment for the long haul, because change will not happen over night. Many of us are challenged in those areas. We want it now and thought it doesn’t change, we manage to eke out a little emotional discharge by sounding off or acting out in ways that support the positions of the “powers that be.”
I have or am in the process of closing down all my known ties with the big 3 banks. Chase Bank keeps sending me offers, telling how they want to serve my needs. This in spite of the fact that two years ago they, canceled to credit accounts because I wasn’t their type of customer. A recent incident with Chase Bank helped to reinforce my stance.
The reason I took the time to write this post is that I have several friends dying from cancer and it seemed too obvious that the way the AMA and Big Pharma are in business to keep cancer treatment alive and well as opposed to actually finding a cure is the same as the way the financial mess is being handled to support Big Banks at the expense of the consumer.
Two days ago I learned that another friend had committed suicide – this on the heels of two other friends’ suicides in February. Here again, I experienced a shock and a why – though, I suspected what the precipitating circumstances were in this case, and I was correct – love, relationship and loss – more complicated than this.
