Episode 036 - It's Just a Gimmick - Part 10

This episode marks the end of the series entitled, "It's Just a Gimmick." In the last episode, two things helped provide some welcomed validation for the seemingly metaphysical events I had   experienced around the sudden death of my father.           By chance, I had run into my old high school friend who confirmed to me that I had told him about the dream that I had about my father's death the night before it happened. Then it came true the very next day.             And then, a little while later, another friend I saw at a party, unexpectedly told me about an unusual dream he'd had where someone appeared, said he was my father and told him to tell me to remember the ring. He held up his hand and showed him a ring that started glowing with light.           These were significant moments for me, and of course, I shared them with my grandfather, who was a religious mystic and a firm believer in the profound nature of the experiences I'd had. He also had surprised me by being completely opened to all the new forms of thought I had been exposed to over the previous few years. When I asked him about it, he said, "Your religion's like a car. You drive it to get somewhere, and when you get there, you get out. It's the same thing with religion. It's supposed to get you to God. And when you do get to God, you leave everything else behind and go straight to him. Never forget that, Davy. Go straight to him…"           Now, as the series reaches its conclusion, I recall the last two times I saw my grandfather, both of which had a profound impact on me. Although it was nearly fifty years ago, his words are still very much alive in my heart.    ***                           I used to visit my grandfather a couple of times a month, but as time went by, he was getting more and more otherworldly and I started visiting him every few days. He was always happy and cheerful, but the end was clearly in sight. "Hi, Zayde," I said when I walked in on one of those last days. "What are you doing?" I was referring to the fact that he was walking toward the dining room. "Oh, I'm just waiting now," he said. "That's all I'm really doing. Just waiting." "What?" I asked. "Just waiting. You know, I'm just waiting for him to take me." He raised his eyes up, toward the ceiling. "I really don't know why he hasn't yet. Most of my people are gone, and there's not much left for me to do here anymore. So, I'm just waiting for him to take me." He sounded like a passenger sitting in a bus terminal, whose bus had been delayed. He didn't mind. He knew it was coming sooner or later. And he was happy to be finally going home. He sat down and started eating his lunch. I glanced around the place. It was exactly the same as always - same family pictures on the wall, same furniture, down to the old black and white TV set. To him, they hadn't gotten color right yet, so he stayed with his original console. I remembered sitting in front of it with him, watching The Lone Ranger, his Kal-El, a vessel of God. At the end of each episode, Zayde would explain its deeper meaning to me, as the daring and resourceful Masked Rider of the Plains would give us a wave, and ride off into the sunset, ready to right the next wrong.   *** The last time I saw my grandfather, he was sitting at his dining-room table, about to eat lunch. He began every meal with a small glass of schnapps. He had one on his plate and downed it like water. He started eating, but soon, after just a few bites, he fell sound asleep. His head was resting on his chest, and I wasn't sure if he was still breathing. He had a faint smile on his face, like a baby, falling asleep to a lullaby. At that moment, I could really see the family resemblance between him and my father. And as I looked at him, smiling in his sleep, I remembered my father's face, as he was lying in his coffin. He was smiling too. Of course, he was dead, but he still looked like he was having a great time.  I had often thought about that smile and wondered - was the reason he looked so happy because he actually was? Had he made a glorious transition into a higher reality, like the psychic said in that Lincoln letter? I wondered if there really was such a thing as a higher reality. And if there was, do you really have to die to get there? It didn't seem to make sense. Why can't you know that joy while you're still alive? My father had told me in my dream, that death was just a public relations stunt that God does to get people to think about him. If that's what he was trying to do, I really had to hand it to him. The whole thing certainly had me thinking.  After another minute, Zayde started to move a little. He lifted his head off his chest, opened his eyes and his slight grin turned into a happy smile. "Well, it won't be long now," he said cheerfully. Obviously, he was referring to the fact that he was about to die. But if anything, he was glad. He went on with his lunch, but when he finished, he looked at me somewhat seriously. "Listen to me, Davy, and pay attention now," he said. "We came to this Earth to learn. And not just about anything. We came here to learn about the highest. And I'm going to tell you something important. When we leave here, we actually get to keep what we learned. In fact, that's the only thing we get to keep. All the rest just goes back to dust." He got up and started walking me toward the front door. I figured he was going to take a nap when I left. "So, learn what you came here for, and don't get too distracted by all the other stuff. You know what I mean? Most of what's here isn't really real." We got to the door and he turned and looked at me.  "In the morning, always say to yourself - I want to accomplish what I really came here for. And then, at the end of every night ask yourself - what did I learn today that brought me closer to God?  Remember, it isn't what happens here that really matters. It's what you learn. That's what it's all about." With his soft, contented smile in the afternoon sunlight, he really looked like the embodiment of a learned soul.  "The higher your understanding gets, the more gratitude you feel in your heart," he said. "And when you leave here with a heart filled with gratitude, you've done your job. Then the journey was worth the trip." He put his right hand on the crown of my head and said some prayer in Hebrew that I didn't recognize. His pale-blue eyes were lit by a warm, steady flame, and he gave me a soft stroke on the cheek. "So long, Tot-a-la," he said. We hugged each other, and I left. A few days later, as he was giving a bar mitzvah lesson in the synagogue, he died peacefully among the ancient texts.   ***   This completes the ten-art series called "It's Just a Gimmick." It was pretty extensive, so let's take a very quick review of it and I'll add a few questions that I'm still processing as a result of them.  Again, like the rest of our Stop Making Yourself Miserable podcasts, just let the ideas in and see where they may lead you.  When the series began, I was in the middle of a very steamy teenaged summer romance, that was just about to get steamier because it seemed like I might be getting the house to myself for a few days. But suddenly, everything changed and I had to go to my first funeral. It was not a major personal event for me, but it was my first real experience with death, which would turn into a far deeper and more dramatic encounter just four months later, when my father unexpectedly died from a sudden heart attack. What happened to me, both before and after the death, is detailed extensively in the series, but some deep questions bean to occur to me.   First of all, besides all the grief and sorrow I was experiencing, I had to process the fact that I had dreamt my father's death in detail the night before it happened and the dream turned into reality the next day. On a fundamental level, it made me wonder about the nature of time and the nature of reality itself. Maybe this whole thing isn't exactly as it seems to be. Maybe there's more to it. How was it possible that I was able to perceive events in exact detail that hadn't happened yet? And, on top of that, in just plain hard reality was the fact that my father had died as he was in the prime of his life and experiencing tremendous success. He had just had finished personally assembling the greatest team in NBA history and had significantly expanded the size and scope of his law firm, which was going great guns. And then he drops dead in an instant. What does that tell you about what's really important about life?  At that impressionable age of 16, the fact that anyone can die at any time hit me like a ton of bricks. No matter who you are, you have no guarantee that you're going to get your next breath. Nobody does. And in the face of that, what does it all mean?  What am I really doing here, anyway? Then six months later, still in the midst of intense mourning, I had this incredible dream where my father appeared to me. He seemed healthy and happy and looked great. After a moment, I got upset when I remembered that he was dead, but he told me that his death wasn't real. He said it was a trick. He went on to explain to me that there is no such thing as death at all. It's just a gimmick, a public relations stunt that God does to get people to think about him. It was such a strange way of putting it, and he was so light about it that he was chuckling, but what if it was actually true? What if this whole life is just a set-up to elevate us to a higher level of understanding. What if behind all of its horrible sadness and tragedy, the truth about death is that it's just a gimmick? (Which, by the way, is where the title of the series comes from.) Then, as the dream continued, my father had me give him back his ring, which started vibrating and soon the whole room was filled with a bright light. When I woke up, although I was sad that he was actually still dead, it the happiest I had been in since he had died. That light seemed to have something joyful about it. It all left me with a ton of questions, which only got a zillion times deeper when the ring disappeared out of my gym locker, just a few hours later. Again, something that had happened in a dream that become matched in real life. I still have absolutely no idea how it could have happened, not to mention the event a years later, when my friend, who knew nothing about my father at all, had his outrageous dream about the ring. Anyway, all of this led me to take the road less travelled, the path of inner growth. And I found that on that path, although a ton of questions may come up, they are soon met with a ton of answers. And amazingly, after a while, you find you have far more answers than questions. And, of course, my grandfather's short, but loving words to me at the end of his life speak for themselves, and speak volumes.   Again, it's all a lot to consider, and we each have our own individual path, but for me, I have found that just by opening up to the idea that there may be deeper meanings to this life has a sneaky way of helping them take shape within. Well, that's the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart opened, and let's get together in the next one.