Leaves rustle when you walk through them. You kick them with your shoes, unaware that these are the husks of living things now discarded. The true essence of the leaf is no longer there. The living force has gone out of them and is being recycled all around you.
You go to your cemeteries and cry at the grave of your loved ones. Your think they lie there. With no disrespect we tell you this is just the husk, now discarded, to return to earth and be recycled. The true essence of the one you loved lives on and is there beside you as you talk to their grave. But know this when you sorrow: Your loved ones accompany you as you depart the gravesite. Wherever you go, as you hold them in your heart and mind, they are with you, for the spirit never dies and is never discarded.
The body served a purpose. It is well and good to revere it, but place your reverence first and foremost on Life, the Spirit which animates you and your loved ones forever. It is this Spirit you will recognize when you see your loved ones again.
In the physical body I've struggled to remember that the process of pain is from "nerve to muscle to bone" and back again; yet for years of saying this and muttering it and knowing it is true — matters not when one skips the more basic, "soul to spirit to mind to brain to body…" wherein reside those nesting pain carrying nerves and muscles and bones