I have been learning about the prefix/word "trans." Though it is commonly used by itself to determine people, of the LGBTQ+ family, who are in the process of changing their sex, trans is more commonly a prefix with other words to convey similar meanings.
Transfer
Transition
Transcendence
Transmute
Transfix
Translate
You get the picture. "Trans" simply means undergoing a process of change.
Dying is nothing but a change.
Very rapidly after death, the body perishes: cells decay (as they do everyday), but the heart stops producing what is needed to keep the body regenerating those cells. The body is a system that follows a process of order. This ordered system allows the soul to be housed in a physical body that lives, moves, breathes, and has its being.
When the body expires, the soul is no longer housed in the physical body. Instead, it is released from physical debt, being freed into its spiritual actuality.
Within this construct of exiting time and space, we visit the concept of the soul outliving the body. If you can imagine, a consciousness primarily existing in physical nature, then in a twinkle, the soul transforms into a non-physical nature. (There's that word "trans" again.)
When the person transforms from physical nature to non-physical nature, this is what we know as death. They are no longer with us in the body. However, they continue in soul form. Their person transforms.
The moment of death is so intriguing to me. Beyond the mystery of "what happens after death" is an answer that most tend to overlook. I believe, at least for my journey, that the answers we find through our questions of death is a leading cornerstone to what life is all about: transformation.
First of all, I have the foundational belief that we come into physical life to transform. The life we have during this space-time moment allows us to trans. By that, I mean we have the tools and opportunity to change who we are in a spiritual state.
The point of death is a magical moment that joins both space-time and eternal-time. In the nature of death, we find a fair conception of both worlds. Many who are in the last stages of death are beginning to review their life. Did they achieve what they came here for? Did they learn what they needed to? Did their life, as a collective review, lead to any transformation of their soul?
This point can be stressful, no doubt, for those who don't ponder life after death. A possible reality of non-existence might sound taunting rather than transcending. Perhaps even those who may believe in life after death might not have a comfortable or familiar relationship with death.
When I volunteered in hospice, their philosophy rocked my world. I value that perspective! So honorable, it is to assist the dying in their natural process of leaving the body. Just to assist in something natural. Dying is a natural process. Everything in nature has its time; everything in nature goes on and leaves in body.
When this process of the ordered system occurs, it is time for the dying person to take with them all they have learned in order to transform. We make little changes here on Earth, reflected in our mind and in our body. We gather these growth milestones by achieving them in order of how we learn them. To us, here and now, it appears to happen in 1st, 2nd, 3rd format. However, during the short phase of dying, one does a full life-review and the cumulative changes made here in space-time is automatically reflected as a lifetime on the eternal-time side.
Metaphorically speaking, it is like a point collection. In a single lifetime, you collect so many points. Upon death, these points add up to become a cumulative whole. Another metaphoric example is collecting dollar bills. When you collect 100 $1 bills, you cash it in and get one $100 bill. Likewise, the changes made here on a spiritual level reflect into a new transformed soul on the other side.
Death is the moment we "cash in" and see how well we gambled it. Death is the moment we put on the new suit we bought - the transformation we accumulated.
To me, death is a special moment of graduation. It is a celebration. I recently had some members of my family pass. I decided it didn't make sense to cry because crying from despair meant the presence of attachment on the physical plane. Better yet, I decided to be happy for them, to celebrate their life, in hopes that they are now in a better place. By a better place, I mean both the common view of heaven and/or the new state of being they are transformed to.
When someone dies, I have noticed my inkling of thought toward quietness and stillness, for a moment, honoring their death as a transition into something new.
