The angst that imbues the human condition is a symptom of the desire for stasis versus the reality that the fundamental nature of existence is change. All of us will, at some point, grieve for lost loved ones. This is an example of the yearning for stasis, which cannot permanently exist in a changing reality--it is, as the Germans say, a kind of Weltschmerz. We are caught in a condition in which we want our past lives (including our deceased loved ones) to return to the way they were at the same time we intellectually understand that this cannot ever be. The only way to rise above and survive this grief for the past is to recognize that the death of a loved one is just one of many types of change we will experience and that change is inevitable. It is a change we will all, one day, discover first hand.

What does this mean? It means that death is real and that the person in the form they once had no longer exists. BUT! It also means that they exist in ANOTHER STATE, another form, perhaps even multiple or higher forms. It also, in my opinion, means that when we die we are not going to be reunited with our loved ones in the same form that they once had and in the same form that we once had. We will be different and they will be different, but we will all BE. And this is okay. Because stasis--absolute stasis--would be the real death. Life is about change, about evolving, about discovering. You are only really dead if you never change. It is okay that people die. It is okay that you and I will die. It is one step--albeit a very profound one--in the course of being truly alive--not in the biological sense but in the spiritual sense of true being.