Death and Life

Letting Go

If you have inner peace,

Nobody can force you to be

A slave to the outer reality.

    - Sri Chinmoy

'The last realm I visited was Helheim, the realm of the dead. Beautiful in its own way, silent and tranquil, yet in some places full of suffering and terrifying. My teacher there was the Keeper of Helheim, a gracious and merciful woman, Loki's daughter, the Goddess Hel.'

Hel taught me about love. She made me see that we are creations of Eternity and all suffering is self-created and of our own choice – whether this choice is conscious or not. Detached, selfless love, and devotion to selfless action can alleviate our suffering and free us eventually. If we love without attachment, we love divinely. Divine love comes directly from the Goddess and has to flow through us freely in order to be offered properly. Love is the essence of everything. It should never be possessed, because as soon as we try to hold onto it we lose it. Love with attachment is an illusion. We need to realize that it is not ours to give and that we are merely instruments who pass it on so that it can spread. If we love with this awareness, then Love has the potential to bring life (light) into dead matter. Love can illumine and change the world.'

These words made me nod in agreement, much to my own surprise. I would never have expected a story about Loki, a Norse god, to fascinate me. Even less to contain spiritual truth I could agree with. But there you go. Never diss anything before you've examined it.

How did I come across that particular piece of literature? That's a long story. And not one I'm planning on delving into right here...

But intriguingly, it rang completely true. After all, I'd once experienced this state of consciousness myself: that one time when I had been running and my heart had suddenly opened up, flooding me with unconditional gratitude and love. To no one in particular, and for no specific reason. Which had been an utterly blissful experience! And it had been at this point that I'd realized that those qualities are always within ourselves (I'd even go so far as to say that they are, in fact, the essence our inner existence or what the author personified as the Goddess).

Unfortunately, we usually don't feel them, because our heart is not open enough. But once it opens fully (which had been an act of pure, unexpected grace when it had happened to me) - and not just to a very limited extent the way we mostly feel it when our love is directed to something or someone in particular - then there's nothing and nobody you need anymore. Except for this endless, infinite reality of love, gratitude, bliss and everything else that is part of this stream of delightful consciousness. Which might sound very self-centered, except for the fact that the love I had experienced at that time had been all-encompassing and all-including. It had simply swept away all limitations, leaving me breathless and in awe of the wonders of our existence.

'Hel taught me about detachment, devoted service and that by acting without egotistical desire and surrendering all acts to God/Goddess we open ourself to the flow of Divine Grace.
All these were not new concepts to me, but it seemed that I finally started to internalize them.'

I paused reading for a moment. This sounds exactly like the Bhagavad Gita, I thought, when Krishna asks Arjuna to just be his instrument.

'Hel gave Ella had a different name, while she was there, Hel called her Khaalida Bala. Khaalida meaning "immortal, deathless", Bala meaning "child".

Khaalida's eyes went wide at the sight of countless bodies, women and men, writhing in agony, snakes wriggling between them, oozing poison from their sleek bodies that burnt their victims skins. Something in Khaalida's chest contracted in pain, before it expanded with indescribable compassion.