Marcia's Musings: The Conservation of Energy
/My mother’s younger brother died a few weeks ago at age 88. One minute he sat chatting from his chair with his daughter, seeing her on Facetime, and the next he slumped over quietly. He left this world on the long, last exhale in an instant without noticeable stress or pain. In what certainly stands as a sign of these times, my cousin virtually witnessed her father passing, his energy moving from one dimension to the next in full digital view.
The passing of this particular uncle affected me personally and profoundly. The first person on both sides of my family to attend high school and college – becoming a beloved veterinarian in rural Illinois – Uncle Garret encouraged, pushed, and helped me to attend college, the first girl to do so in the Zoet and Appel clans. He called me frequently throughout my college years because he knew first-hand the necessity to stay focused and committed to learning, to not weaken in resolve because you were the first person to do something. Throughout my life, he continued to listen and advise, sharing his feelings with me, too.
Uncle Hank (Henry Zoet, Jr.) and Uncle Garret (Dr. Garret “Doc” Zoet)
Homeward bound
When news came of his passing, even as I grieved for him, I worried that my mother’s older brother, 91, would not survive the shock of losing another sibling after saying goodbye to my mom only a few years before. Instead, elder brother Uncle Hank said these words calmly and assuredly upon receiving the news: “Homeward bound, homeward bound.”
It’s been a privilege to sit at the bedside of my mother, father, a beloved aunt, and a dear old friend as they moved on. As the end days grew closer, I asked each one of them the same question: How are you able to maintain such calm in the face of this, the last great, and unknown, journey? Each one answered differently, of course, the words reflecting their individual paths and beliefs. My father said, “I’m ready. Let the sun shine in.” My mother said, “I’m ready, and you’re ready.” When I argued that I never would be ready for her to leave me, she trained her piercing blue eyes on me: “I’m ready, and you're ready” with such clarity that I thought, “I better get ready.” My aunt, a well of wisdom for me and her children all her life, talked of faith and her trust in going to another place. My friend Felice said, “My consciousness is going somewhere else, Marsh.”
The more I reflect about my personal experience in observing these old people in their later years, the more I understand that each of them in his or her way talked about or hinted at a movement of energy that occurs at the end. Words like “journey”, “I’m ready”, “homeward bound”, “I’m going” describe an innate awareness of oneself as pure energy. It is at this juncture that their chosen faiths or belief systems intertwined with physics and the law of nature, as described by Albert Einstein: “Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.” This first law of thermodynamics is known as the Law of Conservation of Energy.
The understanding of the Self (with a capital S, as we like to say) as pure energy and Unchanging Awareness even in a world of constantly changing conditions and circumstances is key to yoga philosophy.
The acceptance that our energy bodies currently reside in our miraculous physical bodies permits us humans to hold the most profound of the pairing of opposites on which the 8-limbed path rests: Life and death. The physical realm and the energetic one. Having bodies with boundary, periphery, and personality even as we experience an energy realm without boundary, periphery, and personality. Energy that cannot be lost or destroyed, even when our bodies weaken. The ancient yogis and sages parsed this out over many thousands of years without sophisticated scientific instruments or research universities. They felt the energy in their own bodies and came to deeply understand it. It lives on to this day in every yoga class and Yoga Nidra session.
What we think happens when our energy moves on often turns on what we believe or where faith – if faith is present - resides. In the end, though, we won’t know until we ride that last exit exhale from one dimension to the next.
That used to scare me – I spent decades trying to riddle it out to release the fear. Oddly, the thing I most wanted to avoid – the passing of my parents, in particular – grounded me, another play of opposites. That which I feared lived next to that I wished to do - be with them at this momentous time. Their words and those of my other elders, shared freely and with steadiness, and my direct experience in being present at their passing, have assured me of the Law of Conservation of Energy. Isn’t it grand that our leave-taking from our human bodies is an act of conservation? Perhaps this great fact of science best speaks to why we should conserve all things from water to raw materials to the soil itself.
And, now, later in my own life, I’m starting to glimpse and feel the growing relationship my physical and energetic bodies have with each other, the dance they do and always have done since my birth in this human form. When that dance ends, and my energy takes flight (if it’s flight), may I hear Uncle Hank’s words: Homeward bound, homeward bound.
Homeward bound
