Today, approximately 200,000 people died. Some died by accident; others by murder. Some by overeating. Others from starvation. Some died while still in the womb. Others of old age. Some died of thirst. Others of drowning. Each died their death as they must. Some died in surrender with their minds open and their hearts at peace. Others died in confusion, suffering form a life that remained unlived, from a death they could not accept. There are 6 billion of us on the earth and all 6 billion must be dead, on a schedule, within this lifetime. If we seriously considered our inevitable end (on this earth plane, for now), we probably would do things differently. When we consider transcendence, all that we hold dear may not be of the utmost importance in the end. What’s worse, is that we may spend our lives intensely attached to what we think is important, only to find that when we face death, we may have missed the real importance of life.
Death isn't just about aging or being terminally ill or having a fatal accident, it's also about the little deaths we experience throughout our lives: little deaths of parts of ourselves, little deaths of things or people we had to leave behind. Everyone experiences little deaths, and sometimes large deaths, throughout their lives. Even if your life has run smoothly, and you have been rather free of impossible situations, the one you can't avoid is the inevitability of death. Contemplating our lives from the perspective of eventual death from time to time can play an important part in giving our lives greater meaning. Death should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid.
We live in a society conditioned to deny death. It may be for this reason that many, at the time of their dying, feel so confused, and guilty. Like sex, death has been whispered about behind closed doors. We feel guilty for dying, not knowing how to live. The ways of a lifetime are focused in our death. Those who live in what are called "material societies," whose technology has allowed the acquirement of goods and less effort for survival, who have measured self-value by wealth, perhaps have a somewhat stronger tendency to identify themselves with the body. Our society spends billions of dollars each year on cosmetics, girdles, toupees, face-lifts and hair dyes, pushing away the lessons that the decay of the body would have us comprehend. In a world where starvation is one of its greatest agonies, this country spends more than four hundred million dollars a year just to lose weight.
Observing the body's decay, the change in metabolism as we age, the middle-age paunch, the lowering of energy, the graying at the temples, the lessening of muscle tone, the loss of hair, how can we deny the inevitability of the falling away of the body. Experiencing the loss of loved ones, seeing that all we have ever known is in constant change, that we are the stuff of history, how can we disregard death? Struggling for satisfaction from moment to moment, we think of ourselves as either fortunate or unfortunate, little realizing the teachings of impermanence. We seldom use illness as an opportunity to investigate our fear of death. Illness is considered bad fortune. We hold to models of good health and youthful vitality. We only think we are O.K. if we are healthy. But how, in this fixed idea of the acceptable, do we learn to open to the impossible? How do we allow ourselves to come into the unknown with an openheartedness and courage that allow life its fullness?
In the funeral home we put rouge on death. Even in the casket we deny our transiency. And yet, the acknowledgment of impermanence holds within it the key to life itself. The confrontation with death tunes us deeply to the life we imagine we will lose with the extinction of the body. We imagine we will die only because we believe we were born. We don't trust that sense of endlessness or edgelessness within. Our suffering is caused by holding to how things might have been, should have been, could have been. Grief is part of our daily existence. But we seldom recognize that pain in our heart, a deep weeping, a mourning for everything we have left behind. Being terminal just means that at last one can acknowledge that death is real. It doesn't mean that they will die in six months or even die before the doctor who gave the prognosis. It simply means that they acknowledge that they will die at all. In a society based on material gain, which imagines itself to be the body, which holds health so precious and fears death so much, it is often hard to understand that death is natural, even necessary for the continuance of life, both inner and outer.
You Will Never Get Out of This Alive
Where does our life energy go when we die? Humankind has been trying to answer this question since the beginning of time. The first law of thermodynamics teaches that energy cannot be created or destroyed. We have a life energy wave level that cannot be destroyed. In that case, it makes sense that death is nothing more than a falling apart or recycling of our Created Self in order that it can be freed to function again in a different, higher order. We are not just things that eventually burn out or break. Death is the complementary opposite of life. When we face death, we go from one complementary opposite to the other with the following shifts in thinking. First what are the things we think about as we reach the end of our life? Most likely, we think about these things: "Was I happy in love, money, career, health, or fun?" "What did I want? Did I get it?" "Was I good to my spouse, parents, children, coworkers, and friends?" "Did I make matters worse?" We question our actions. "Can I forgive? Am I forgiven? Am I guilty? Did I let something unspeakable happen?" "Did my life have meaning?" Then, if we had it to do over again, what would we do or perceive differently? What would we do differently if we were to have the opportunity to go on living? A new lease on life finally puts us into the right gear. We change our values to a higher level. Our day-to-day priorities change. We simplify everything and make different choices, especially realizing that changing the exterior is either not possible or not important.
Our quality of life and quality of work alter. We do better on the job, we're more careful, more conscious of detail, we see the big picture and work for that good, and we take better care of our health and everything around us. As we approach the end of our lives, we get pretty wide-eyed in our perception. We even start contemplating the shower nozzle! Every drop of life is more important to us. Our attitude and temperament are better. We are forgiving, accepting of ourselves and others, and we're at peace.
Near Death Experiences
People who have had near death experiences, people who have come close to and survived dying, have numerous feelings after coming back to life. Some feel anger at being revived, others are ecstatic in the glory of it all. As they approach their lives again, they reassess their affairs and life goals with a more philosophical approach. They wish to resolve any loose ends with people and settle all their personal affairs. They may speak more freely about their true thoughts. Often, they wish to celebrate life by doing things like taking the vacation they never took. They approach life with a new-found peace and a new-found sense of meaning. When people are challenged with crisis often they experience the dark nights of the soul--extended periods of dwelling at the threshold when it seems as if we can no longer trust the very ground we stand on, when there is nothing familiar left to hold onto that can give us comfort. If we have a strong belief that our suffering is in the service of growth, dark night experiences can lead us to depths of psychological and spiritual healing and revelation that we literally could not have dreamed of and that are difficult to describe in words without sounding trite. We have several choices regarding where we go from the dark night. We can suffer a while and then go back to our usual and unsatisfactory habits; we can throw in the towel and self-destruct; or we can make a transition, expanding our circle of possibility, and emerge with courage, insight, and a new drive toward our dreams.
If you just get on with it after a serious problem or series of problems, without taking a deep soul-searching look, you will repeat the problem in a similar fashion. You will just go on with a false exterior, perhaps even be a little cocky as a form of self-protection. In contrast, you might take the rough times quite seriously because you realize that you could be gone tomorrow. If each morning, we could really contemplate this, we would have more satisfaction with ourselves and our behavior on a daily basis. If we would center or balance ourselves each morning with preparedness in how we wish to carry ourselves through the day, we would do more admirable things and avoid doing the foolish things. If we have spent our whole lives making constant comparisons with what we have and what we don't have, when death faces us, we will surely believe that our life was unhappy. When we constantly spend our time comparing what we have with something else, we will make our happiness impossible. Happiness is a feeling that is held only in the present as our current reality. Where there is no comparison, unhappiness becomes the impossible. Happiness exists when the mind is not removed from itself, when it remains in the present time zone, and when it declines to contrast itself with other times or conditions. Happiness is an attitude, a feeling of satisfaction that can only be felt within, by being content with whom we are, not what we do or what we have. If we haven't fully realized this about our happiness, then we will surely realize it as we face death. As we grow older, we mellow out about the rat race of life. Much of what was important becomes unimportant. Life is seen more simply, and what we thought were the little things, become the greatest things in life.
A Personal Obituary
How would your obituary read? Not necessarily the public one, although recognizable accomplishments to demonstrate what an individual accomplished and what that person cared about is fine, but how about a personalized summary report on yourself? How would your friends and family speak of you? What would they say about you at your memorial service? Perhaps, from time to time, we should do a personal checkup on ourselves. If we take time to plan our day, our week, our year, and our vacations, why not take time to plan our overall lifestyle and lives? But before you plan your future, you must make an assessment from the past to the present. Put it on paper where you will be more realistic and honest, and then you will be more committed to your personal plan. Otherwise, your personal analysis is just a hazy, fragmented bit of nothingness, subject to change with the slightest breeze.
Dying in Wholeness
Seventy-five percent of the population takes their last breath in a convalescent home or hospital. Most die in institutions where death is considered the enemy. Many approach death in physical and spiritual isolation, seldom encouraged to open past their imaginings and fears, cut off in heart and mind from the loved ones who might share this precious moment. Unable to trust their inner nature, removed from life itself, they enter with painful insecurity and confusion into another realm of being. Many cling desperately to a rapidly degenerating body, hoping for some incredible miracle, anguished by a deep longing for fulfillment never found in life. There are those whose death is an inspiration to all about them. Who die with so much love and compassion that all are left filled with an unnamed joy for weeks afterward. Few participate in their life so fully that death is not a threat, is not the grim reaper stalking just beyond the dark windowpane. Most fight death as they fought life, struggling for a foothold, for some control over the incessant flow of change that exemplifies this plane of existence. Few die in wholeness. Most live a life of partiality and confusion. Most think they own the body. Few recognize it as just a temporarily rented domicile from which they must eventually be evicted. Those who see themselves as passengers in the body are more able to let go lightly. In this culture, we look at life as though it were a straight line. The longer the line the more we imagine we have lived, the more whole we suppose ourselves to be, and the less horrendous we imagine the end point. There seems to be much less suffering for those who live life in the wholeness that includes death. Not a morbid preoccupation with death but rather a staying in the loving present, a life that focuses on each precious moment.
There are few whose participation in life has prepared them for death. Few who have explored their heart and mind as perfect preparation for whatever might come next be it death or sickness, grief or joy. How many reach back for the hellishness of the known rather than opening into the unknown, with the patience and warmth that makes room in our heart for all others and ourselves? In some societies, death brings the whole tribe or family together in celebration and acknowledgement of the continual changing nature of life. During these celebrations, often a deeply spiritual context for this passing allows many to have profound experiences of their own true nature. For these societies, death is a continual opportunity to let go of the illusions of life, to see it as it is, and open in love to all. There are those whose death bring them fully into life and strengthen their confidence in something sensed to be ongoing and untouched by the demise of the body. Those whose lives have been fearful come to the moment of death with a new openness that allows them a sense of completion they have seldom known. There are people who at the time of their death, their pain and fear has so closed them that they can't say good-by to those they love most. So much business is left unfinished that all about are bereft of the contact they so desire. There are those who cry out, "God, not me!" when given a terminal prognosis, and who, after a few months of deep investigation, quietly close their eyes and whisper, "Sweet Jesus" as they die.
How can we die in wholeness when we have lived our lives in such partiality? When we have lived our lives so much in the mind's precious idea of itself, how can we die with our hearts wide open to the mystery of it all? Where will we take refuge? Where will the confidence in the perfection of the moment come from when we have so often pulled back from what we feared? It is difficult to think of dying consciously when we notice how incomplete we feel, how frightened we are of life. It is almost as though we were never completely born, so much of ourselves is suppressed and compacted just beneath the surface. So much of ourselves is postponed. So little have we investigated what has caused us to retract in pain from our lives. So often our inquiries into who we are have been "called on account of rain" because it was too painful to go deeper. We speak of dying in wholeness yet we see there are aspects of ourselves that have never fully seen the light of day. We see how much of ourselves is submerged, feels yet unborn, how much we push away life. It is as though we have never fully touched the ground of being. Never placed our two feet squarely in the present. Always shuffling and toe tapping, waiting for the next moment to arrive. If we examine our fear of death we see in it a fear of the moment to follow, over which we have no control. In it is a fear of impermanence itself, of the next unknown changing moment of life. To become wholly born, whole beings, we must stop postponing life. To the degree we postpone life, we postpone death. We deny death and life in one fell swoop.
Fear of Life
There is so much of ourselves we wish not to experience. So much fear, guilt, anger, confusion, and self-pity. So much self-doubt, so many weak excuses. Is it any wonder, considering the bizarre insistence of our conditioning--the conflict of one value system with another in the mind--that we feel so incomplete? We are trying to protect ourselves from who we fear we are. We dare not share our minds with anyone, even ourselves. We are so frightened of who we might be, of not being loved or lovable for the convolutions of our thoughts. This persistent elimination from awareness of unwanted states of mind leaves us constantly feeling threatened as we look and say regretfully, "That can't be me, that fear isn't really who I am. Anger isn't me. That self-hatred, that guilt, can't be who I am." But there it is. And you wonder who you really are. How do you open to that which you deny? That which you think somehow shouldn't be there even though it is? We wish we were otherwise and that is our hell, our resistance to life.
Our fear of death is directly related to our fear of life. When we think of dying we think of losing something called "me." We wish to protect this thing at all costs though we have very little direct experience of what this "I" refers to other than as some idea that seems constantly to be changing. In death, we fear we will lose our "I," our "me-ness." And we notice that the stronger this idea of "I," the more distinct is the feeling of a separation from life and a fear of death. The more we attempt to protect this idea of "I," the less we experience anything beyond that concept. The more we have invested in protecting something of "me," the more we have to lose and the less we open to a deeper perception of what dies, of what really exists. The more we hide or posture or postpone life, the more we fear death. Protecting this precious "I," we push life away, and wonder at its meaninglessness.
Until we have nothing to hide, we cannot be free. If we are still considering the contents of the mind as the enemy, we become frightened, thinking we have something especially wrong with us. Not recognizing the mind as just the result of previous conditioning, nothing special. That all these states of mind which we fear so much can actually be mulched back into ourselves to become fertilizer, the manure for further growth. In order to allow these materials to compost, to become rich fertilizers for growth, we must begin to make room in our hearts for ourselves. We must begin to cultivate the compassion that allows the moment to be as it is, in the clear light of awareness, without the least postponement of the truth. We often relate to ourselves as a puzzle from which many pieces have been removed. We gaze at a very distorted and confusing image we have constructed and are bewildered. We look at this puzzle of ourselves and notice only the fractures, only the surface mind of separation and partiality, and wonder, "Who is this really that I am?"
When we focus and identify with our fracturedness, we become afraid of ourselves. But as we allow ourselves to penetrate deeper, working to acknowledge these things, to let go of our partialness and hiding, the fractures no longer obscure the whole picture. It is like going beneath the surface of a wind-torn sea, to the stillness that is untouched by surface conditions. And we begin to penetrate the surface commotion and find that guilt and fear and anger, and all the mental smorgasbord that has been stashed there, are nothing to be afraid of.
We imagine that these things we have suppressed are who we really are. But by starting to acknowledge these qualities, to bring them into awareness, to open to them with some compassion for this human condition we find ourselves in, allows us to go deeper to what underlies this seemingly solid reality. As long as we are pushing parts of ourselves away, we cannot go deeper. Most people are afraid of confronting all the stuff they have pushed down because they still think of it as being who they are. We are frightened of all the forbidden mind states that we have pushed below the surface of awareness to protect our self-image. Yet, we see that we must suppress nothing. In suppression we push below awareness what we imagine is unacceptable. In this very act of suppression we enslave ourselves. We have postponed life once again. Nothing can be free of its prison of darkness until it has been brought out into the light of awareness. Suppression pushes things out of awareness where they become inaccessible. Tendencies that motivate us are still present but we no longer have access to them because they have been forced below that level of awareness. So each feeling must be acknowledged in its turn, allowed to exist without judgment or fear in clear awareness where it may be seen for what it is, an impermanent, oddly impersonal state of mind passing through. We imagine that we’re caught in an unworkable situation, that life is a punishment instead of a gift.
Each time we identify with anger as "I," or with doubt or guilt as being who we really are, we suppress that state of mind and can go no deeper. Whenever you call anything "I," that's where you stop. That's the depth of penetration. That's where you get off the elevator. But if you stay open to anger, and let anger be there, you go deeper. You begin to experience the space anger is floating in. That moment is not a moment of anger, but a moment of clear awareness. And then you stop identifying with yourself as anger. You are observing anger, but not becoming lost in it. We begin to stop thinking of these different qualities of mind as being "I" and start to open to the space, the wholeness, within which the events are occurring: a non-judging, exquisitely merciful space that we have access to in the heart, that doesn't cling or condemn any object of the mind. This space is the essence of mind itself. It doesn't call itself by any name. It just is. It is the space of is-ness itself. It is the root of that which we refer to when we say, "I am." It is the awareness that we mistakenly call "I."
Our experience with the world has become like looking into a mirror that has shattered into hundreds of pieces, broken from a single unified reality into some splintered reflection of what is seen, of what is imagined to exist. As we look at this fractured reality, we notice with dismay certain parts of the reflection are not what we wish to see or want to be seen. "I don't want anyone to see my lust; that's not such a good thing to have. I'm not supposed to be like that. No one's mind is as crazy as mine." So we take a piece out. "If they only knew what my life had been like! Ah, but they don't." And that piece is removed as well. You notice your greed and self-interest, the sexual fantasies, the competition and confusion of the mind. And you start picking these pieces out. Because these are unacceptable parts of which you think you are supposed to be. You start removing so many pieces that when you look down at this fractured mirror it reflects back very little of what is real. It only displays those qualities you wish to project as being who you are, eliminating all the rest, eluding your wholeness. We think we have something to hide. Yet this self-projection is our imprisonment.
How miraculous it would be to see that all others' minds too were filled with the same confusion and fantasies, the same insecurity and doubt. How long would it take the judgmental mind to begin to release its grasp, to see through the illusion of separateness, to recognize with some humor the craziness of all beings' minds, the craziness of mind itself? To be whole we must deny nothing. We think we have something to lose, and the reinforcement of that feeling that there is something to protect cuts us off from life, leaves us a fractured reality through which we attempt to express our naturalness. But life becomes confusing when we eliminate the truth. When we wish not to experience certain qualities in ourselves, our heart closes whenever these qualities arise. We wonder, how can I keep my heart open when what I am experiencing isn't pleasant, when I see my self-interest, my fear, guilt, my doubt? When the predominant state of mind is confusion, can I still stay open to the moment? Or do I have to escape elsewhere? We show so little mercy to ourselves. We barricade the heart and feel alone in a hostile world. We seldom let go of our judgment and make room in our heart for ourselves.
Living Hell
The very nature of having to pull away from what is, of having to be someone else, makes life hellish. It is a resistance. And we live most of our life in hell. Anger arises in the mind and we become confused. "If I'm a spiritual person, I shouldn't have anger. I guess I'm not so spiritual after all. I mustn't show this anger." But anger is the truth of that moment, and if we push it away, if we pretend that it's not there, we've lost another opportunity for freedom, another reflection on who we really are and who we really aren't. Because we don't know what anger is, though we may have experienced it thousands of times. Just as we don't know what fear is, or doubt is--because each time they arise, instead of using this mental state as an opportunity for investigation, it becomes an emergency, a threat to our self-image. Seldom, if something arises which threatens us, do we go straight into it. Instead, we attempt to dodge it, to elude the next moment, to escape. We wish to rush away to the safety of a false reality, a fractured being, in which we somehow feel safe. We are constantly attempting to escape from the truth. We are frightened of the open space of investigation, frightened of becoming vulnerable to the truth of the moment, open to what is. We want to capture the world, to control reality and turn it into some image of ourselves. It’s that very attempt at control that is at the root of much of our suffering. Attempting to re-create the pleasures of the past, to barricade the future from the pains of unfulfilled yearnings. But events are one way one minute, and another way the next. And sometimes the truth is that there is anger or fear or greed, that there is lust or ignorance in the mind. All of which is O.K., because these too are opportunities for seeing deeper, for going beyond the identification with these states as being all we are.
But if it isn't O.K. that these states arise, there you are pulling back from the present, acting your life instead of opening to it--in a conspiracy to deny the truth with each person you meet, neither admitting the groundlessness of the other. It is the social game. Because it's not polite to admit that both of you are hiding the truth of your being. In the same way that it is not polite to be angry or frightened. In the same way that we fear we will not be loved if others knew how our mind worked, if we were real. Anger is a good example of how we hide our experience from ourselves. For many, anger is a very unacceptable phenomenon on the one hand, and a very compulsive way of acting on the other. But when anger stimulates investigation, it becomes a contemplation on life rather than a distraction from it--then the escape syndrome, the resistance to life, becomes recognizable and we start to come out of hiding. We start to emerge into the light. The mind condemns itself for being what it is, though it fears letting go into the freedom that would release it from its bondage. The mind cries out in pain for what it is leaving, fearful of what is yet to come. To the mind, even hell is acceptable and preferable to the unknown. We berate ourselves for the contents of the mind, for the anger and doubt, for the fear and loathing. And it is this very act of judgment that continues the judgment of the mind that causes us to feel separate from ourselves and all else. It is constantly rating us on our behavior and participation, and seldom disappears long enough for us to merge with our experience, to become one with life.
To be without anger means we have no desires, no models of how things should or must be. No desires means no frustration. No frustration, no anger. If the mind doesn’t cling to anything being any way at all, then there’s no anger. Our anger is a kind of spontaneous combustion that occurs when our idea of things becomes cramped by reality. Our models, our ideas of who we are and how the world is supposed to be, create a cage. Each concept becomes a bar that blocks the reception of the truth. Each idea of how things are limits our ability to experience them as they really may be. We can't go beyond our idea of the world to actually touch the world. When we move beyond our models and ideas, we feel threatened and defensive. Confronting some reality that opposes our self-image, our sureness confuses and upsets us. We don't know who we are because we think of ourselves as our ideas and old models. The world is constantly confronting us with the truth. We are constantly withdrawing. Our experience is pain. Confronted with a reality that does not confirm our image of how things are, we begin to panic. We look for someplace to hide. Many beings die in hiding. They are still relating to death and life as though it were outside of them. Just as they relate to anger and fear and their difficulty with others as though it were coming from outside, as though they were a victim of their feelings and their thoughts, rather than the space in which all this mind-stuff is unfolding. We choose to trade off reality for the safety of the cage. No matter how small. No matter how painfully we have withdrawn from life.
When we contemplate the possibility of death, we become that presence that knows what the soul needs to know. Connecting with our Greater Self is the way we can tune in to ourselves and our lives with our mind and spirit fully connected. Prayerful contemplation allows us to be in a clear and rather divine state, and we are sharper and wiser. Stilling the mind and asking for focus and clarity brings us to a place that knows all that we need to know at the time we need to know it. When we are faced with a necessary life transition, we have polarities of thought going on from thoughts of the past to worries over the unknown future, and from what is going on in us internally to what is going on all around us that we can't seem to control. However, as we mature or reach midlife, we become a little more subdued and are better able to integrate the past and the future. We are better able to integrate who we are with what we want. Again and again, plunge into the very thing that makes you afraid so that, in the end, your fear will be eliminated. Think of tackling your fear as a means of conquest and building spiritual and emotional muscle. As you start each day, comtemplate your daily plan and visualize yourself going through it, especially when you will be taking on new challenges that worry or frighten you. If you are in balance, with the mind, body, and spirit connected, you can overcome your fears about what threatens you. We humans are creatures of habit, and when it comes to our fears, we look into the past as a basis on which to see what frightens us. The past doesn't have to control your future. Giving up the past is the key to inner freedom. We must come to a point where we no longer let previous programming rule our lives. Set yourself free to take risks, tackle the unknown, and make it happen for yourself. Any situation that you are involved in can be changed in some way so that it ultimately becomes a successful learning experience.
Endings Are Beginnings
When we go through the realization of an ending taking place in our life, we sometimes feel detached, empty, disoriented, disassociated, disappointed, disenchanted, and disidentified. There is no normal order of reactions to endings in our lives. However, when it comes to dying, there are specific stages to the emotions we feel during the process of death or grief. The following stages are sequential: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. The following reactions are varied based on our needs and drives: stoicism, rage, guilt, terror, cringing, fear, surrender, heroism, dependency, ennui, need for control, and fight for autonomy and dignity. All of this depends on our personality and psychological history. Certainly, some people do not accept their death, or for one reason or another, some don't even have the opportunity to find some kind of closure or tie up their loose ends. It is important to allow whatever string of emotions and thoughts come through us during a crisis in order to process them and ultimately reshape ourselves as improved human beings. We should let ourselves or others go through their own series of reactions to endings. Whenever we have an ending or little death, we must disengage, being lost enough to find ourselves. When we choose to disengage, we can feel somewhat empty or disenchanted. This is the time that people can possibly nose-dive into psychological depression, as they long for deeper meaning in their lives. It is advisable to use this nothingness time to unlearn what isn't helping us, and then learn new things in new ways. Ultimately, at this point we would use our possibility thinking to see new and better paths to take. When we have some trauma or important loss, we may go through a process of questioning the meaning of our life and what we value.
When we experience the dark night of the soul, we have the opportunity to reframe our thinking and make significant changes in our lives. These changes are real, not just changes in positioning ourselves. We change our reality. The reason that most people are afraid to die is that they never really lived. Instead of living and creating the life they want, they try to softly tiptoe through life so that they can arrive at death safely. These are the people who live lives of quiet desperation. Since there is no way you are going to get out of this alive, you might as well live life to the fullest while you are here. In the end, you will not be as sorry for what you did, as for what you didn't do but wanted to do all along.
Who Is It That Dies?
Coming to the end of our life, we look at our participation in the past and wonder how we can die fully when our life has been lived in such partialness. We wonder who, beyond all our self-projections, it really is that dies. We have gotten so used to looking outside of ourselves that we have forgotten to ask who it is that's looking. We participate in our natural spaciousness so seldom that we have come to believe we are whatever arises in the mind. When our confusion arises in the mind, we contract into an incomplete puzzle of things. We lose our natural spaciousness. When we think of dying, we think of losing who we are. We think we will no longer be able to be this or that which we imagine ourselves to be. There is nothing within this universe of change that you can call "I" for very long, nothing you say "I am" that is the whole truth. In fact, much of the time we feel like we are pretending to be someone else simply by pretending to be anything at all. But we notice that when we simply say "I am" that there is just space, just being; that this "I" does not refer to something separate, to something outside of ourselves, or even to the body or the mind. It is just a sense of presence, of being. When you say "I am" and when I say "I am," we are referring to the same being. We are referring to being itself. Everybody's "I" is the same "I." It only becomes separate, and a religious war, when we attach a this or that to it. When you say "I am this," the universality of being is lost. When you say "I am this joy or this fear or this mind or this body," the truth is shattered like the mirror. The One is broken into the many.
We are constantly trying to become someone or something. "I am this" conveys the idea that I am not that. But if there is envy in the mind, or fear or guilt, how do you incorporate these qualities into your self-image? Or can you just let go of that imagined self long enough to open to the contents of the moment, no matter what they are? How can you open and go beyond? How, when jealousy or envy comes up, instead of closing the heart, can you begin investigating that denseness in the mind, seeing how isolating such heavy emotions can be and how quickly these states of mind attract the idea of "I?" Seldom do we go beyond the emotions, thinking we must either express them or suppress them, never sensing that we are the spaciousness of being itself.
How, seeing the compulsive response of the mind to its contents, can you not feel compassion for that being momentarily caught in such pain? We cheat ourselves with so little compassion. We treat ourselves in ways that we would never treat another. Somehow we think it's O.K. to do it to ourselves because we've lost the sense of who we are. We've forgotten we too are the truth. Such forgetfulness causes great pain. When we speak of our grief, that is really what we are referring to. The loss of touch with our original nature. We've suppressed so much, so many parts of ourselves have been found unacceptable and frightening, that when these qualities arise we squash them down and tend to feel that this tangled mass is our "hidden identity." Because these states of mind so conflict with our models, they become yet more bars in our cage. Each instance of suppression makes the cage smaller.
We are cultivating ignorance by attempting to keep awareness from touching what is deeper in our "emotional dump site." We fear that is where our "real nature" lies because we don't see how anger or fear or jealousy can take us to the living truth. Discover yourself. Because you are the truth. And no one can take you there except you. Buddha left a road map, Jesus left a road map, Krishna left a road map, Rand McNally left a road map. But you still have to travel the road yourself. When you begin to recognize that you are the path, that all of life is but a reflection of the mind, then each experience becomes an opportunity to free yourself from your prison. At this point, you begin to see that life is an opportunity for wholeness, for opening to the truth. You start investigating "What closes me form this essential spaciousness of being? Who am I, really?" The mind creates the abyss; the heart crosses it.
We think we are our thoughts. We call our thoughts "I." In letting go of thought, we go beyond ourselves, beyond who we imagine we are. Behind the restless movement of the mind is the stillness of being, a stillness that has no name, no reputation, nothing to protect. It's the natural mind. Focusing attention on the sensations in the heart center, we notice each flicker of the mind's contractions, the momentary stagnation we think of as "I." Each contraction in mind, each feeling and thought is felt like a shadow crossing the heart; each time mind draws attention to itself, it reminds us to let go lightly of what obstructs our connection with our underlying nature. Then each previously threatening state of mind, so often thought of as the enemy, becomes an ally. Each fluctuation of the heart reminds us to let go into yet a deeper level of being. When the mind becomes full with itself, its denseness is so obvious it causes us to recall the freedom glowing in the heart and we open into it. Then the heavier the emotion, the more intense the self-interest and confusion, the more these states become teachings which remind us that we are not these painful densities, that we are rather the light that shines beyond. We are called upon to meet suffering in joy, instead of self-pity. We offer our heart as a vehicle to transform cosmic suffering into joy. We have pushed so much of our life away, held it captive so deep within us that when we begin to let go we notice how much our expectations, concepts, and preconceptions have limited our experience. As the self-protection of the mind is no longer encouraged, we begin to see all that we have suppressed come into consciousness once again.
All of these old holdings rise once again into awareness. But the priority has changed. We are no longer trying to create "someone or something of value" out of this constant changing flow of mind. We are instead attempting to investigate the truth. In this investigation, no state of mind is preferable to any other. Only clarity of seeing is of importance. It is not what is seen so much as how clearly it is perceived. Then the investigation becomes what is the truth, who am I really, what is it that I call "I," what dies? Am I these thoughts? Am I this mind? Am I this body? The more we allow of the mind to exist within clarity and compassion, the less we are tempted to call any fleeting moment "I." The less we are lost in identification with the superficiality of "I am this or that." The more we experience just consciousness itself, no longer so distraught with its contents or clinging desperately to its joys. We experience just the spacious stillness of being, without any need to define who it is that is being. Or what is being. Though the mind may scramble for a dozen definitions and limitations, the experience itself is limitless. And the small mind is seen floating within the vastness.
Then one day there comes a moment when you're angry and all of a sudden you recognize anger. And you open to it in investigation: "What is it to be angry? How does it feel in my body? What does my mind do?" And settling back into a chair, closing our eyes, we begin to move toward that which blocks the heart, instead of pulling away from it and allowing it to mechanically close us to a fuller experience of the present. Examining anger or fear or guilt or doubt, we begin to see the impersonality of what seemed so much "I." We see that the mind has a mind of its own. That anger and fear and all these states of mind have their own personality, their own momentum. And we notice that it is not "I" that wishes to do harm to anther but that the state of mind we call anger is by its nature aggressive and often wishes to insult or humiliate its object. We watch the fantasized conversations and arguments of the mind, the shadowboxing that has so often left us breathless and alone and at last we begin to relinquish our suffering. Then we begin not to cling to states of mind that barricade the wisdom of the heart. Once again love and trust open between beings. Then all which previously kept us isolated in mind--our doubt and anger and fear--become reminders of the painfulness of not loving and become a means of opening to, rather than withdrawing from, life. We see how our fear of, and identification with, the ramblings of the mind has made life shallow. We begin gently letting go of all that rises into awareness. We just let the mind be without closing in judgment, and begin to recognize the ongoing process of arising and dissolution in the mind.
In recognizing the impermanence of each thought, each feeling, each moment of experience, we come to see there is nothing we can hold to that will give us lasting satisfaction there is no place we can solidly plant our feet and say, "This is who I am." It is a constantly changing flow, in which, moment to moment, who we think we are is born and dies. All that we would project ourselves as being is seen as transient and essentially empty of any abiding entity. There is no person in there, there is just process. Who we think we are is just another bubble in the stream. And the awareness which illuminates this process is seen for the light that it is.
We begin to give up identification with the mind as "I" and become the pure light of awareness, the namelessness of being. The body dies, the mind is constantly changing. But somehow, behind it all there is a presence, called by some "the deathless," that is unchanging, that simply is as it is. To become fully born is to touch this deathlessness. To experience, even for a moment, the spaciousness that goes beyond birth and death. To emerge into a world of paradox and mystery with no weapons but awareness and love.
