Death, death is perfectly safe; only the truth is the case.
That’s how my friend Nick Mulvey puts it. I say friend. We crossed on our life journeys once a couple of years ago; kindred spirits meeting on our paths. There was a resonance there for both of us. I saw his concert in Bristol. It was one of the most profound and transformative experiences of my life.
One man and his guitar; a connective force that moulded an audience of hundreds into a single complex energy of humanity. Connected and purposeful.
Ram Dass stated:
“Death is like taking off a tight shoe.”
He also states that as far as he was concerned his job was to push away his humanity, until he realised that he didn’t take this incarnation by accident. All form is lawful, there are no mistakes in the universe.
Do you want to be the victim or the creator?
Community is expanding across your physical form; transcending your life and values to connect in energy with another, understanding their understanding of life; enriching your perspective of what that means.
Expanding your awareness of the possibilities contained within life.
My idea of God contains this concept; the rich interwoven tapestry of experience in the universe.
Death is present in the northern hemisphere changes of the season; Christmas being an old celebration of the midwinter understanding of life returning to the land, from the death of winter. Jungle climates have an interrelated understanding of life and death, everpresent.
Many things provide this understanding: animals, trees, rocks, cliffs, mountains, the endless undulating waves of the essential waving ocean.
Denial of death is prevalent in our western society; we have given our old people up to homes designed to shepherd them to the afterlife. We hoard them away there, in the late sunshine of Florida, California, or some other exotic place that provides the physical warmth — if you’re lucky; if you have means.
Does this ensure a regret-less end to life?
The signs seem to point to no.
“Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. As awareness calls for types of heroic dedication that his culture no longer provides for him, society contrives to help him forget.”
The truth being that we are all trying so hard to forget that we will die, that we forget that it is the one thing, if our total awareness is held, that ensures that we live.
The idea of death drives us to live life to the fullest, most visceral extent. Every cell in our body courses with excitement because we understand that it may not do so for very long. A blink in the cosmic eye.
‘The Hero’s Journey’ requires us to surrender and grieve parts of our old selves. Realising that initiating into new and exciting phases of life means that we have to let go of the previous mode that we inhabited.
We cannot do this without an understanding of death. We get stuck and frustrated in this transition phase, we experience such hardship around change. It gives me a job.
Death is inherent in the micro, too, it’s all around us. Go out for a walk, and you will see death intricate to life. The falling of autumn leaves, mulched by wet leaves, ripped apart by fungi who allow the left-over nutrients to reenter the life cycle of the soil.
One day, your body will provide such sustenance.
It is visible in the microcycle of our emotional lives as well. There is a need for the understanding of the death in emotion. Emotion wells; it births in our bodies, it stabilises and comes into being, then it loses power and must dissolve back into the resting state; a death of sorts.
Multiple books explore this transitory stage of life. The biggest we’ll ever experience.
“Life is over so quickly. It is possible to reach the end with no regrets. It takes some bravery to live it right, to honour the life you are here to live but the choice is yours. … Appreciate the time you have left by valuing all of the gifts in your life and that includes especially, your own, amazing self.” ~ Bronnie Ware ~ The Top Five Regrets of the Dying ~
“Life is precious because it ends one day, but death is not the enemy. The enemy is a wasted life.” ~ BJ Miller ~
“grief is optional in this lifetime. Yes, it’s true. You don’t have to experience grief, but you can only avoid it by avoiding love. Love and grief are inextricably intertwined.” ~ David Kessler ~
It seems we must all navigate regrets before we pass through the eye of a needle to the beyond; wherever that may be. Regrets lie in our body; they are carried in our muscles, the common ways that we recall memories into our lives — the remembrance of our being.
In death, we must let go of our body; thanking it for its service. We cannot take our regrets with us, they are but the aesthetic understanding of a life lived. They are loaned, and they helped us to achieve our purpose in this life.
And so, we return to that which made us. Dissolve back into the Great Energy of Spirit; the void that all life springs from. An animated void, full of possibility.
I believe the soul transcends the body; we have a bioenergetic resonance that extends beyond our physical. The heart produces a bio-magnetic field; the torus-shaped field of influence.
A celebrity walks into a room, everything seems more vibrant and visceral, a storm rages outside, the air becomes electric; all senses heightened.
Interconnection is evident in these forms.
Outside energy with the ability to change a life lived. Influence, confluence, outfluence. The nature of interaction.
In the UK we don’t have the convenience of climate to provide physical comfort. Death plays out in a slow and sombre affair. My elders lamented their boredom and disconnection from their family.
We were bound to the split of the nuclear family that has happened over generations, our heartstrings pulled by the inability to pop in and provide regular and practical comforts — our impotence a product of the geographical distance, and a great strain on our hearts. The biggest regrets form from circumstances you wish you could change, but can’t. You made your bed. You must lie in it.
The UK care industry deals with the dysfunctions that arise from this disconnection. A generational divide, the bridge that cannot be crossed.
Our lives are less rich from the loss of continued and grounded wisdom that elders can provide. I am assuming that the elders took the maturation journey and that they reached such understanding.
At the very least, there’s a wise nature that springs from living a full life on earth, ninety years of observing the convulsions, contractions, expansions and ecstasy of life.
Such significant initiatives in these areas include a nursing home that partnered with a kindergarten — completing the circle, allowing older people to care for and impart their wisdom across to the children, and vice versa.
Children can understand these concepts; often, we don’t give them credit for that. Death is inherent in the absolute reliance on the caregiver; our greatest fears spring from the translation that not receiving our needs as a child will lead to death.
“When we are young we are often puzzled by the fact that each person we admire seems to have a different version of what life ought to be, what a good man is, how to live, and so on…But as life goes on we get a perspective on this, and all these different versions of truth become a little pathetic. Each person thinks that he has the formula for triumphing over life’s limitations and knows with authority what it means to be a man. He usually tries to win a following for his particular patent. Today we know that people try so hard to win converts for their point of view because it is more than merely an outlook on life: it is an immortality formula.”
It’s a constant in our lives, even from very young.
In the book ‘Denial Of Death’, the author, Ernest Becker, imparts that:
“The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”
We must not be so scared of dying, it hinders us to live fully. We’re all seeking self-actualisation, and this is a part of the process, it needs to be honoured.
How do you embrace death as a friend on your life journey?
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Ahmed Adly on Unsplash