Birth pamphlet, Part 4
In our culture we avoid two fundamental moments of life
BIRTH and DEATH
In our modern civilization birth until recently
almost always took place in a hospital setting,
under anesthesia.
Sometimes even in total
unconsciousness.
What a crime to humanity
Later newer forms of anesthesia
enabled the woman to “see” her delivery:
Sensation dulled.
Natural Childbirth then appeared
Thanks God!
Yet, many times even under NATURAL CHILDBIRTH
very technically guided,
Birth’s full glory is not
allowed.
See: all our civilization emphasis is only on the five senses:
We are very materialistic,
we strive to be scientific, modern,
enlightened.
However, there are sacred dimensions to human reality
we cannot ignore without damaging
life.
We have forgotten many ancient spiritual truths.
Our entire civilization is now in peril.
I very much belief that we need to examine
the ways of birth and death
The moment of birth is a Spiritual Experience
a
feminine Initiation
“ A Right of Passage”
for the mother.
And for the child,
a Cosmic Moment in the truest
sense.
The awareness of the
experience of death
is another cosmic Moment equally camouflaged
and avoided in our modern society.
Growing up in
more than half a century ago
in
a society of very knitted family ties,
I was fortunate enough to
actually be present
as a teenager
at the death of one of my great
grand aunts,
in
my grandmother Mama Clara’s house.
The priest, my
grandmother, my mother,
my
uncles, aunts and I,
were
present around
at the moment of her death.
We were all in prayer,
united in love and reverence.
Four generations!
The priest had finished administering the Extreme Unction,
one of the Seven Holy Sacraments of
the Catholic tradition.
That ceremony for me was an experience of profound significance,
which left an indelible mark on my entire life
With holy oil on cotton balls, praying in Latin
the priest touched different parts
of
preparing the way for the soul to properly
exit.
Rites similar to this exist also
in
other religious and cultural traditions,
Tibetan, Egyptian, etc.
My Catholic tradition inherited this knowledge
from our very ancient past.
I am grateful that the tradition I was raced in
had
not discarded this knowledge.
After my Great grand aunt’s extreme-unction
we continued to pray and wait
in a circle of love around her bed,
until the last breath,
the last exhalation:
For such is death!
Birth On the other hand is an inhalation,
before that glorious Earth shattering
first cry…
I belief all people should witness birth and death,
two transcendental
sacred moments
which
frame our physical existence.
These moments are a natural, normal Rite of Passage
inherent in life itself.
They are times when families and friends
should congregate reverently
to witness life.
To be present for human “bondings” of love
Fully inherent in the sacred reality of human life
Birth and Death are gatherings of love.
Not isolated semiprivate experiences that happen in hospitals
somewhat “disinfected of real Life”
–The absence of children
for instance-
and oriented mostly toward medical
considerations.
When I was on my twenties, the smallest guru,
a mother gerbil,
taught me childbirth, when in front of my eyes.
she gave birth to her litter.
I had been called to the side of her cage from my sleep.
(My High Self -hovering over-
summoned
my physical-self awake.)
Entranced I observed the tiny creature act fully present at
birth:
she
attended to the process,
experiencing
life in a heightened state.
She cleaned, stimulated,
brought to breathing each newborn.
She cleaned herself. Ate
the placenta, started to nurse:
I saw a halo over her,
as the force of life was magnifying
the sense of self
in
this tiny creature giving birth
One by one she attended to the delivery of each babe,
going methodically through all the
required Motions
She had nine gerbils that hardly resembled the adult animal.
They were tiny pink blobs
with eyes shut.
I could barely count them,
yet the mother gerbil was now fully
caring for them,
her
fist litter
Closing my eyes I can recall the forces at work in my body
during
the birthing process:
something
akin to seismic movements
in the emergence of mountains
Of course there was great discomfort,
tremendous effort in this awesome process,
yet not necessarily PAIN.
That distortion is a product of fear
and of psychological and spiritual
repressions
When birth came to me I
acted in a way
I have not yet heard
described in childbirth education:
I welcomed each
contraction; I “plunged into the sensation,”
I fully experienced the
contractions, trying to monitor them,
to
very consciously participate in their work:
the
progress and process of labor
“I rode the wave,”
with excitement, anticipation and
love.
I lived each contraction
with heightened Self
I simply acted like my gerbil.
I want to make a point about an attitude of fully facing Life
Death, birth, conflict, etc
As opposed to an attitude of flight or avoidance
I feel apprehension when I
sense
too much emphasis placed on “techniques”
in
the “prepared childbirth movement”
The Spirit of Birth,
the attitude, the process,
the mystic of it all.
Is what must be emphasized
In childbirth education we must also encourage
the
honest exploration of core issues
and
underlying realities of the Feminine Nature,
to allow women to fully recover their birthing rights.
Birth is a “BABTISM”
Let us become humbled by Life,
and in front of BIRTH, place our awareness
not on Matter only, but more so on Spirit.
To me Incarnation is the keynote of the Feminine.
And BIRTH is the prototype of incarnation.
When we place our trust ABOVE, the “Below” will work.
Matter is dependant on Spirit.
We are not just body, but also soul and above that Spirit.
This is an important philosophical distinction
A CORNERSTONE
“Release toward the Touching Hands”
is a beautiful sentence Sheila Kitzinger,
a Natural Childbirth Educator from England
after being exposed to techniques of body awareness
developed at the Esalen institute in
during the late seventies.
“Trust is a Way of Knowing,” Or “Life knows Best.”
are sentences that convey to me the “birthing” attitude:
Yielding, flexibility, spaciousness, receptivity,
Belong to the feminine
More than breathing patterns,
Birth demands,
proper attitude and INTENT,
“BEING PRESENT”
“Entering The Sacred”
Let us not kid ourselves
Techniques cannot replace awareness or consciousness.
Only Love Prevails!
Techniques simply help.
It is time for women to wake up and claim womanhood.
Natural childbirth is not gymnastics.
Aids to meditation are not meditation itself.
The meditative moment, the moment of connectedness,
of communion, of love, can only happen when we let go,
when no longer tied in techniques
we are able to surrender into the act:
to simply “BE”.
When we are no place-else, but present in the Present:
Completely immersed!
Then, and only then: we respond with our whole being.
Birth is a transcendental religious life transforming experience
What enables us to receive its fullest blessing
is an attitude of reverence toward Life
We women must wake up to
full conscious awareness
of the Birth process
and the importance of mother-child bonding
during the critical stages of instinctual
unfolding
that immediately follow
birth
Pilar, April 2002
A FIRST EDITION OF
THIS PAPER WAS
THE HOURS AFTER BIRTH
IS ANOTHER ESSAY
I LOVE TO SEND TO ANYONE ON REQUEST
PilardelaLuz@Earthlink.com,