by Estelle Nora Harwit Amrani
April 3, 2005

from Vibrani Website

This is not easy to write without sounding a little condescending. I apologize for that - I’m more motivated by a need to express another wake-up call for humanity. Terri Schiavo’s and the Pope’s deaths are very interesting events, and a HUGE reflection for people to see themselves and what they value, and fear. I am saying what I feel and think and I ask you to consider what I’m writing.

This has been a week of death. A week of obsessed and biased media, violent and rude religious fanatics, and idiotic politicians (who I consider betrayers to the Constitution) butting their big noses into people’s private affairs. It’s a crazy week of people frantic about death, unsure of what really happens when someone dies, when someone is in a coma, when someone is truly dead. People had to confront their own mortality. Everyone dies. I will die, you will, too. Life in the body is temporary and terminal. Get it? So what is your life all about? Have you prepared for your eventual death? Do you talk to your kids about death as you do about life? Or, is it a taboo subject? Do you talk about your eternal spirits that live on after the body dies? Do you talk about choices?

Are you sad that the Pope died? Geesh! The media doesn’t shut up with commentaries, interviews, news clips, and constant camera images of the weeping masses acting as if the world had come to an end. The White House even put its flag at half-mast. I have a lot of trouble understanding people who are crying and carrying on about an 84 year old man who lived a very full life, traveled around the world more than any other Pope (and more than most people ever will in their lifetimes), with the full financial backing of the Vatican. Why not be happy he had such a great life? He died the way he wanted, choosing not to be kept alive artificially, even though he said doing the same for Terri Schiavo (who was pretty much dead for 15 years but kept alive artificially) was murder. He lived his way - but would he allow Catholics the same freedom, even though he often used freedom as his mission? He fought Communism, attempted to bring peace to violent areas, he lived through the Holocaust, he did many "firsts" as a Pope - and that is nothing to ignore. However, he also kept trying to control Catholics to obey his word and that of the Church.

I’m not saying the Pope was a sinister man. He wasn’t. He truly did what he felt was right for himself and his religion. I think he was a pretty decent guy, also doing things that were human (imagine that). For instance, I liked hearing that a woman who came to a mass asked him if he’d officiate at her up-coming wedding... he agreed to do it. He was very bright, accomplished in many areas. I also feel he has his own spirituality that few knew of, and unfortunately didn’t teach others about how to do that on their own. He wasn’t perfect, and I’m sure he’d be the first to admit that. Was he my father? No way. He wasn’t anything other than a man who lived his life the way he created it, and that included having way too much power for one person over others.

What I find incomprehensible are the hysterics, the lack of faith, the ignorance, and the fear in the people mourning his death. Let me put it like this: if you believe in a God, why do you have to pray for those who die? Do you think their soul will be hijacked on the way to the other dimensions and dragged into hell? Don’t you trust God knows what It’s doing - what the Pope’s spirit co-created for himself? Why not celebrate the Pope’s life, if it meant so much to you?

Are you afraid of the future? Oh dear, what will people do without a Pope? Think and choose for themselves? Will people know whether to follow their natural instincts and intuition (and inner wisdom), or fear that if it’s not stamped with the Church’s approval they will be condemned and damned? When will people realize that everyone is DIVINE and don’t need a middleman between them and the Source?

Why do people DOUBT themselves so much? Every single one of you is born unique with the ability and gift to be whatever you want to be, to access information from a multitude of dimensions, to contact your own angels or guides, your own higher self/God connection. That doesn’t take a book, it doesn’t take a Pope, a rabbi, a priest, or guru. It takes you doing it, is all. It takes self-trust and responsibility. It takes loving yourselves and feeling worthy enough, and opening up to love, which means lack of fear, in order to do it.

• But, can you feel worthiness if the Church keeps telling you you were born sinful? Can you do it if the Church tells you that women not fully equal, can’t hold equal positions in the Church?

• Or, if the Church makes the decision for you what you can or cannot do with your own body?

• How can a Pope know what it’s like to be married, have sex and children so that he can give advice to others?

• Why shouldn’t priests marry?

• Maybe having a normal sex life would prevent priests from molesting children, that has become so prevalent in the Church?

• How does the Church make you self-responsible and self-loving enough to trust you to live your own life without their interference and judgment?

I see the Church as keeping it’s followers as little children; indeed it is a parent-child relationship. The Pope and priests always being called "Father", and then there are the "Mother Superiors". It’s like the children always needing parents’ approval and permission. And these little children need the Church as parents, sometimes as a scapegoat, sometimes as having all the answers to things they’re to lazy to find out for themselves. Do you want to be this kind of child your entire lifetime? Don’t you see the lies and manipulations, the well-orchestrated pagentry that goes on? Do they do it for you, or for themselves? To keep the gold in the Vatican, power over the masses through fear and ignorance? Yup.

It is bizarre for me to see a large part of humanity still spiritually immature, and to see the planet so polarized. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in two worlds here on Earth. And yet, it’s also fascinating to see what dramas are being played out right now. To imagine what is the pay-off on each side. What would be your ultimate pay-off? Would you rather go through life living it with someone else’s idea of what you should be doing, or your own? I think that the events of the past week, and those coming up this week (because I don’t think it’s over, yet) are giving everyone this great opportunity for introspection, questioning, growth - the kind you do with yourself. The stuff you won’t find all the answers to in the bible. This is your own work, your own creation. Finding out who YOU are, why you’re here, and to start doing it because you know it’s right.

So why cry for the Pope? Do you cry for yourselves? Take the helm and steer your own life’s ship. Celebrate your divinity, your own life. If anything, use the Pope’s life of carrying out his own mission as an example for you to do the same. When your physical life is over, you will be the judge of how you lived. Choose wisely.