"When you as an eternal soul planned your current life, you were not concerned with what your mind might come to know. Instead, you wanted to experience the feelings that would be generated by life in a physical dimension. Life challenges are a particularly powerful means of creating feelings, which are, in turn, vital to the soul's self-knowing. These feelings cannot truly be comprehended by the mind; in fact, the mind is a barrier. In many ways life is a journey from the head to the heart. We plan life challenges to facilitate this journey, to break open our hearts so we may better know and value them." - Robert Schwartz
My father passed away of old age this Wednesday. It was only this Tuesday that I heard from my sister that he had been in a critical condition for one week, during which he refused not only to receive any medical treatment but even to eat and drink. On the following day I heard from my mother that he passed away. I'm still trying to digest the significant of this event. He may have found the death of his ego before the death of his physical body found him.
I may be swept by currents of strong emotions on the coming days, but in the meanwhile I remain quite serene, partly thans to the Jewish "mantra" with which we start the process of mourning - ברוך דיין האמת - as it enables us to see the death of the physical body from a totally different perspective.
Having heard and read many witnesses of life between lives regression hypnotherapy, which I myself received from the author of the above quote, I've also come to adopt what may be an unconventional and even un-Jewish view of the death of the physical body. I see it as a transition in the journey of the soul from life to afterlife after completing a series of challenges it planned before it incarnated into the physical body it also chose before its birth. From this perspective the death of the physical body can even be a cause for celebration, at least for the departing soul, if not for the bereaved family members and close friends who aren't aware of such a journey of the soul.