Shakti Das says:
Homage
"Oh newly born One
Innocent One
Born from unborn seed
Unborn One
Know the Mystery -- The Unknowable
Truly Inconceivable
Herein ignorance is destroyed
Therein Wisdom and Truth is KnownEternal Spirit is Always
fulfilling by bearing abundant fruit
By embracing it fully in the Here and Now
through the union of lover and the beloved
The Sacred Vessel -- Holy Grail
by discovering the body of the Cosmos as Universal Boundless Self
By bestowing Eternal Life and Living SpiritExcalibur -- The Sword of Living Water
By re-membering
Through eyes wide opened -- smiling
Through re-cognition
Still, Deep, Mysterious, Spacious and Unrequited
Free
Infinite Love
Immanence -- Sacred presence
of that self same true eternal Self
Inseparable
Here and Now and ForeverUnnamed ubiquitous unborn eternal seed
inherently enveloped within the fruit
Contained within
The implicate signature
of Perfect Divine Intelligent Order
Naturally Creating -- Evolving Spontaneously
Form within the formless envelope
The formless seed within the form
That inseparable Hologram of Love
Unbounded Space within the formBirth
Youth then
necessarily seeks union
with the form
which discloses and mirrors
the universal seed self essence within
all beings and things
taken as a whole
repeated again and again
the age old process of re-cognition
The Beginningless ContinuumMaturity
While the aged
Now wizened
seek union with the formless
Unwizedned they cling in fearful fixation to the everchanging
Seeking protection from the stormMiddle Age
In the middle between form and formless spirit
This sacred vessel is grounded and fructified
Here the path is open and fruit is born
The Source reveals and is revealed
(Through revelation/realization)
Through this innate union
In the Eternal NowWholy Balance
All ways possible
Between non-existence and existence
Unbiased in All ways
the two as the third makes four
as implicate self arising union
Natural and Spontaneous
Magical, mysterious, and Irrepressible
Ah Hey O -- Ema Ho!Unless, of course
We are fooled
To think
That this life of accumulation
are for things - dead objects
rather than true happiness and freedomRipening Wisdom
Living fully
Devoid of fear and reticence
We embrace the dying fully
No fear or hesitation
In physical dying
The old woman seeks
the formless in the center of all-form
the empty portalUniversal all pervasive matrix
from whence she came and thence she leaves
the causeless cause deeply buried within the seed
bearing the signature of all life
for all life to readThe universal open book
Thus the average man awakens from
the mere reflection -- symbols
of that inherent and essential eternal flame
and arises transformed as well as transfixed
In her/his ungendered and non-dual true and rightful form (swarupa)Thus --
One enters
"this" world never having left- never non-arriving
searching, curious, and trembling
In need of protection
As stable base
in the utterless magnitude
of her divine graceFearless except when confused
Except when divine remembrance of the light is absent/threatened
Thus grasping--sometimes
for the "other" one -- for ersatz Light forgotten!
Confused, lied to, dissuaded, abused, struck, snagged, drugged, and stricken down
then we arise -- eventually -- irrepressibly
AgainEventually
In a truly parallel fashion
One
leaves that realm which they have never really gone to
also in breathless silenceSahaj says:
"Born on the in- breath
Dead on the out- breath
Living/dying in the middle breath
It is not separate
Truly
both
have never really entered
nor left,
nor gone any where but
HERE - INSIDE- EVERYWHERE ALWAYS"
In Eastern thought, fear is an afflictive emotion or a klesha which is also translated as a poison as it sours life and causes mental pain (dukha) disease, unpleasant thoughts, and bad karma. As a positive rendering fear (and the other kleshas) obscure and inhibit the natural expression and flowering of our innate Buddhanature. Thus a yogi (one who has been trained in yogic technique) feels deep gratitude for having the opportunity to learn yoga and meditation methods in order to be able to break through tensions, cravings, fear, anger, hatred (which produce wind, bile, and phlegm disorders), the kleshas (emotional poisons), vasana (bad habits), samskaras (old traumatic memories/imprints), and past programming (karma). What a gift indeed and very stimulating, liberating, and exciting! That is how we can look forward to our daily yogic practice, not only as an elimination of pain and limitation, but as an unleashing of our evolutionary potential and true happiness.
Since in the East the mental suffering is caused by negative thinking (kleshas) which are mental/emotional habitual thought constructs and tendencies, which yoga practice can turn around and eventually entirely eradicate, painful situations are entirely reversible. Suffering is indeed a state of mind -- a state which we have control over. While physical disease, old age and death are considered inevitabilities (the body being impermanent), such need not cause distress or emotional/mental suffering (unless we become attached to them). Yoga gives the awareness of a continuous Living Spirit/Reality that includes physical existence (is not separate from it Here and Now), but is which also precedes and follows it. As such it is an awareness of what is and has always been.
In the materialistic West, which highly values physical “things”, form, status, symbolic representation, possession and control of things/objects (in short the entire milieu of i/it duality or ego) as being real and permanent, then physical death is greatly feared. This angst is not so widespread in the East which embraces both continuity between life and death (reincarnation), but also the impermanency of all things. In fact in Buddhism the fear of physical death is not listed as a separate klesha because its assumption that all things/objects are in flux – are impermanence. Impermanence of the body as well as the mountains and the stars are all morphing over time. All physical existence is subject to decay and rebirth yet it exists (or seems to exist static) only if we artificially freeze time in an existential moment. In reality of the great continuum really – all these things are on fire, dancing, vibrating, changing, decaying, and giving birth). All this is intimately known as our natural “Self” when the great Integrity is revealed/remembered.
The fear of physical death does not have to be a dominant factor haunting human life life. It doesn't have to sour or restrict our life. Rather for human beings to accept their temporary bodily presence "HERE" in the Great Continuum makes every moment more important and meaningful. Otherwise, thinking that human life was permanent some might become more than a bit lazy, complacent, indifferent or procrastinate -- dissuaded and distracted.
Here we will show that the child’s purpose in life is a means of bridging light, love, spirit, and heart into existence – in embodying such. This can be done only when we live in the eternal Now – grounding spirit as a lightning rod through the body connecting it with earth embodiment. When the ground rod is burned up, then it crumbles into dust – spirit then finds new vessels. This union of spirit and nature, sky and earth, crown and root, sahasrara and muladhara chakras, yang and yin, is the eternal way (Sanatana Dharma). It is the natural way of all things and beings. It is not an artificial invention.
“The fear in birth, which we have designated as fear of life, seems to me actually the fear of having to live as an isolated individual, and not the reverse, the fear of loss of individuality (death fear). That would mean, however, that primary fear corresponds to a fear of separation from the whole, therefore a fear of individuation, on account of which I would like to call it fear of life, although it may appear later as fear of the loss of this dearly bought individuality as fear of death, of being dissolved again into the whole. Between these two fear possibilities, these poles of fear, the individual is thrown back and forth all his life....”
Otto Rank
The Freudians and their offshoots (here we will briefly discuss Otto Rank and Ernest Becker in this regard) also attempted to understand fear, repression, denial, and neuroses in relationship to death. To a great extent they were correct in that they attempted to overcome the prejudice of the “other worldly” church institutions which manipulated people’s fears about death by promising them eternal life in heaven. This same fear (as long as it remained repressed and unconscious appearing as mere insecurity) could be manipulated by demagogues and tyrants promising “security, order, or future reward for sacrifice in the present. This was indeed a neuroses that was kept in check by the Church and state and hence was the psychological basis that supported ideology, manipulation, exploitation, and resistance to change and creativity.
Thus the tendency of the Western scientifically oriented psychoanalysts were to classify all religion and mysticism as a neurotic sublimation based on psychological fear and repression. To a great extent that conclusion held true in the West, and to some lesser degree in the East as well (such as the Eastern dualistic schools and “other worldly” or alien oriented Eastern religious schools whose heaven was elsewhere than HERE and NOW), but we will show that the psychoanalysts were, for the most part ignorant, of the embodiment or indigenous non-dualistic schools which did not reinforce this split between man and spirit, but rather taught sacred presence.
In short Otto Rank and Ernest Becker were pioneers in the West, but at best (when compared to Eastern Yoga) mere existentialists and materialists (albeit they had their reasons for being so). However in authentic indigenous/endogenous wholistic yoga we can see how this is not an either/or proposition – either spirit or matter, but a unification/integration of Mater with Father – spirit and nature existing in one co-creative parallel continuum from beginningless time.
It is not a question of life having an alpha (beginning) and the end (omega) within the Western bias, but rather that life now exists in a beginningless and never ending continuum NOW – and always did. The problem is that this living continuum has been widespread ignored, denied, and hidden remaining unrevealed to the masses until NOW.
In yoga then fear is only one klesha (emotional poison). The primary cause of the kleshas is this ignorance (avidya) of the NOW; i.e., fear comes from ignorance. The mental pain is entirely in our mind being caused by fear of life, caused by a false identification (the kleshas of asmita and avidya) – our negative conditioning (something that yoga deconditions/deprograms if done properly). Hence free from conditioning the yogi is entirely liberated – that is the Buddha Mind. It is this expansive Buddha Mind that can make fun out of physical pain and laugh at old age, disease, and death without anguish, however it is not always easily accessible by those who have not spent time cultivating this expansive Buddha Mind.
So to understand the Western milieu we go back to Ernest Becker who said that the fear of death leads to fear of life.
"Ernest Becker grasped the insight that a primary motive of mental life is the denial of death. The mechanism for this denial is the construction of a fictional, tragic-heroic self which is the center of our lies, delusions and immortality projects. "
~ Ernest Becker Foundation Newsletter: April 2000.
Here we see people living life devoid of the eternal Now as if material life and physicality were immortal. In fact this is how most young people are conditioned; i.e., that “reality is physical only” and that which we can not see is unreal. No wonder that birth and death become mystified and hence feared and life thus is not understood in context of its integrity.
As a consequence of this primal disconnection, aversion, fear, denial (read ignorance) or a covering over of the all pervading living light, then an arrogant armoring, fear, insecurity, and struggle against life, wilderness, and nature becomes concretized through the settling in of this fear through desire for security, order, power, and need for mastery over externals, hence Becker later said:
“Ecological devastation is the excrement, so to speak, of man's power worship.”
I will let the reader connect the dots, but in short all of life is permeated with living spirit. Take a powerful microscope and one will see all the atoms dancing, spinning and alive and space. this dancing in our cells and all of life forms a happy natural symphony for those who can hear and dance with it. The open third eye is like that powerful microscope times a hundred thousand.
So firstly we have to look more closely at the negative conditioning of the child which programs them to fear and repress the eternal Now – the beginningless continuum hence reinforces the split/repression. Becker and Rank were very astute in seeing the connection between the fear of physical death of the body (when the lights go out), with the fear of life in general and the institution of repression, denial, and ignorance (avidya). Of course physical death is built in to physical life from the get go. That is where materialism and existentialism stops. The problem is entirely one of false identification (avidya, asmita, raga, dvesa, abhinivesah — the classic kleshas). If one looks at fear of death deeply, I think it is mostly the result of gross confusion based on identifying solely on the body (represented as the wave in the classic ocean/wave analogy) while ignoring the ocean (the common continuum) hence this disconnection creates the illusion of ego (a separateness from the commonality of the continuum). It’s a denial of evolution and co-creation, of creation and creativity, of the vessel (the human) and its source of inspiration (eternal spirit); in short it denies us our true identity (swarupa) as being an intimate participant of that natural process of creation and evolution embodied here and now in sacred immanence. When we deny physical death, we deny and demean physical life. When such is dominant then the value of life is demeaned, hence murder, war, exploitation, slavery, abuse, violence, genocide, ecocide, and other abominations toward life and living things are made plausible.
Because of that artificially induced abortion/abomination, an unreasonable attachment to an untruth arises (avidya and asatya), denying the inevitability of physical death which is a mechanism built in to all created/living things. We do not have to fear change – autumn, spring, winter and summer all are beautiful!
We can understand and value the contributions made in the last century where neo-Freudians went looking for the primal fear – the primary cause for angst or neuroses, and with it the justification of denial and repression, and neurosis (as far as it goes). Of course the fear of death was in vogue for some time, but Ernest Becker (“Denial of Death”, Otto Rank, Rollo May, and others stated that the primary fear involved the fear of life, since physical death was built-in to physical life (all created/born things will morph, change, and become uncreated --all created things/forms are impermanent or on fire, Buddhism); hence one could not really live life fully without resistance (as death anxiety) until the fear of life/death was removed. In other words one had to accept the demise of the physical body as part of the deal, by honoring life. To that extent Western psychology has contributed much in understanding the Western psyche, however existentialism as well as materialism does not reveal the whole picture. I believe that honoring life without attachment can be done entirely without fear (devoid of dvesa and raga) and hence disagree with Becker when he concludes:
“ Fear of death isn't an illness that psychiatry should attempt to cure; we shouldn't pathologize fear of death. Fear of death is not an abnormality.”
Indeed if we really look into this fear more deeply, we see that at it’s basis is ignorance (avidya) – the false identification of the ego as a separate body – the wave separate from the ocean. Rather it is this connection of the wave AND the ocean that gives embodiment its juice – its NOW sacredness. For Becker and most other Westerners the fear of death was a fear of an individual death, hence the reality of ego was an assumption. In yoga that reality (of a separate ego) is a false assumption (not real).
Hence Otto Rank saw that fear of death involved union, transcendence, fear of fusion, interdependence, relationship, and even sexual intercourse (orgasm in the female); where for Rank fear of Life involved fear of separation, and individuation, which he placed creative expression. Obviously he saw creative expression as a result of ego, rather than evolving from the inspiration (juju) of the ocean/wave. Oh well just to mention Western Psychology. Of course Rollo May explores this as well, but I think Becker has a more spiritual perspective (to the point of ego, that is).
That is Becker did much to state (as did Wilhelm Reich) that mental and emotional stress./distress was not necessarily due to a medical fault within a diseased brain but rather it may be a sign of healthy reaction in not adjusting, conforming, or obeying to an abusive, exploitive, tyrannical, or violent society.
Becker was an American Jew who being a soldier at age 18 participated in the liberation of German concentration camps at the end of WW2. He wrote a Ph.D. thesis in anthropology which examined the mechanisms of transference in Japanese Zen, Chinese thought reform and Western psychotherapy. The published version of this work, Zen: A Rational Critique (1961). He became a student of the psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz shortly afterwards. Thomas Szasz was already making known his criticism of the medical model of psychiatry and the authoritarianism inherent in that model.
From Szasz, Becker learned to become a skilled psychiatric diagnostician and theoretician. In 1961 Szasz published The Myth of Mental Illness. It suggested a non-medical approach to mental illness which he called “problems in living.” Szasz encouraged Becker to see patients at the local psychiatric hospital and develop his own ideas. Few social scientists in academic psychiatry have been blessed with such an authorized opportunity. It was there that he came up with the ideas for the book Birth and Death of Meaning his first attempt to reconcile the fundamental human contradiction between mind and body. It is Becker's answer to his perennial question: “Who am I?”
Becker believed that to understand oneself one must accept the body, accept that humans are animals, who are born and die in a dualistic world of physical objects and evaluated meaning, and who fear the death of meaning more than the death of the body itself. True self-knowledge, Becker believed, required understanding of how self and society are woven out of the structures of meaning. Ernest believed that the most worthwhile intellectual questions of human nature, human destiny, and the meaning of life. They are the identity questions of adolescents: “Who am I and what is my relation to the cosmos? What is the meaning and purpose of my life and how should I live it. He believed that cosmic questions are the manifestations of a natural curiosity about the world. Society fears fundamental questioning and represses it. They feel it is dangerous because it could spread a contagion of doubt that would undermine blind loyalty to social authority. Ernest did not want to be an ideologue for society. He encouraged free critical thinking in his students, and as a result, made many enemies among the faculty and administration.
from a biography by Jacob Wischmeier
Thus to conclude Western Psychology’s attempts to understand the institutionalization of the fear of life into the human psyche and its devastating consequences, we must both appreciate the early contributions of Becker and Rank as well as recognize their limitations. In short, we would characterize their shortcoming as being overly objectivist and rationalist, materialistic, and existential lacking true insight into the true nature of mind and its possibilities. Becker although interested in Zen, was not a Zen practitioner, but rather an outsider always looking from the outside “in”. His most well known works “The Birth and Death of Meaning” , “The Denial of Death” (which he won a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction) and its sequel, “Escape From Evil”.
Thus we arrive at the fundamental difference between Eastern Indigenous and Western thought. To the Western philosopher/psychologist, the hero goes forth into a process of separation as individuation, ego, separateness, without the process of eternal return (the prodigal son,. hero, savior, bodhisattva, knight of the noble quest) -- without meaning or purpose other than to have lived. The Easterner or indigenous person rooted to earth mother, is often viewed by a Western mind as a mother’s boy/daughter, afraid to emerge from the womb or to live separate or independent. The fundamental Western error here is of course the delusion of separateness itself – the subject/object duality -- the Cartesian error of “I think therefore I am”. This is what we call over objectification where the observer is always isolated, separate, and estranged from the experience or experiencer. For a Westerner who is crippled by dichotomy, contradiction, irony, endless conflict, confusion, and complexity, it is the age old foible of what came first the chicken or the egg? No, not at all, as we shall see later.
The secondary false Western biased assumption is that creativity comes from separateness versus being connected to the creative evolutionary wellsprings of spiritual inspiration (spiritual fullness) due to a harmonious direct interactive living communion with the source of creation (Creator/creativity). Hence the chronic justification of conflict, angst, stress, tension, sorrow, strife, war, dichotomy, irony. and the schizoid character in so called Western culture. In the East, they simply call such delusional thinking, childish arrogance, sophistry, or ego duality. Similarly in indigenous space all is sacred, all beings are sacred, and linear time is an artifact. One abides in indigenous space and time at one with father sky and mother earth.
From this indigenous space human mothers and fathers are mere surrogates -- open doorways to the Great Mother who is married to the Great Father from beginningless time. All beings not only owe their origin from that source, but they are also intimately interconnected as one family. There is no separation from that space. This space is not derived from the human mind or intellect, rather despite of it. It is not an intellectual construction but rather a deep heart felt surety of natural-law -- the way it is.
Being beyond logic, reason, the Cartesian brain, the frontal cortex, or the human brain such exists as-it-is in a sacred and awesome fullness. It forms its own neural circuits with other living systems which become its hearts, legs, and arms. This felt sense is not limited to ordinary sense perception but comes from the activated heart consciousness -- an real connection with the neural connections inside and out in direct transmission and communion. This primary connection as a love of nature and life is called biophilia by Erich Fromm. This gets into other ways of knowing such as intuition and inner wisdom. a deeply felt feeling that rings our bells -- that rings true.
For many Westerners whose minds have become programmed to ignore the intuition, indigenous messages can come to them in dreams if they learn how to listen to them in waking life. Emptiness meditation is a yogic tool which releases discursive thought that the transconceptual and nonverbal information can come through. This can happen through other activities such as experientially based conscious breathing techniques, asana, life energy practices, chanting, music, song, dance, and other methods of altered states of consciousness. This can also happen naturally and spontaneously if we allow for it, like "being in the zone".
Dowsing Ouija boards, talking sticks, crystal balls, tarot cards, throwing sticks, reading stones, incantation, gazing, fire, and other such methods using ritual and/or other methods can help us let go of the rigidified habits and compulsions of the conceptual mindset.
Sitting in quietude -- or being quiet in nature -- listening to nature and letting nature speak is a common method. An extension of that is the vision quest or extended retreat, all of which frees the confining haunts of the ordinary overly objectified and eternalized mind (citta-vrtta). There are many more.
The basic idea here is that innate, endogenous, and indigenous all meet in the integrated state of Heart and Mind (HeartMind). That is a supersensible state of knowing. It is the simultaneous awakening of the Supramental in order to perceive and interrelate with the Supernature (of Sri Aurobindo)..
When we know intimately who we are in terms of the eternal now -- the unbeginning never ending, then the true nature of nature (creation is known). Or to put that in another way, when we investigate nature *transconceptually* we can trace it back through cause and effect all the way to its beginning. That is the only way to truly know the relative world of form AND the only way to know its source. We can not skip to formless beginningless Source, while losing our connection with form, the relative world of nature/creation and the creative force.
The human being is an intimate part of evolution and hence emanates from formless beginningless source, however human beings once they understand who they are in terms of creation/creator then no longer are limited to identifying with merely the human physical body. Rather a much larger transconceptual and trans-anthropocentric *REALITY* has become opened up to such beings -- to those whose neural circuits(nadis) have been opened and cleared).
Hence one knows oneself as kin with all --as cousin bear, deer, eagle, river, forest, wind and star... as well as a human animal. One understands their kinship, relationships, interconnectedness, and solidarity with all beings and things and stands there in alignment with the cosmos in awe and gratitude. One becomes an irrepressible mouthpiece for nature, truth, and freedom, even be it amidst the essence of deceit, corruption, and tyranny -- a natural uncontrived and honest rainbow warrior if you will, sharing purpose and meaning without guile or artifice. Speaking for nature, life (biophilia), integrity and healing, not against it. in terms of corruption, imprisonment, repression, oppression, disintegrity, disease, and love of death (necrophilia). Here all people, animals, trees, creeks, -- all of creation -- are listened to and spoken for honestly as an vital part of one's community. Here spirit and sacredness is not found elsewhere, but is acknowledged, respected, and honored HERE in All Our Relations. in a state of fundamental authenticity. This is the solidified meaning and purpose in life and brings fulfillment and happiness HERE. For us there is no other.
All that may appear "complicated" to the intellect, but really it is the result of a profound simplicity -- an unclouded and unburdened mind. HERE one knows endogenously the harmony of spirit and nature and acts in alignment with that clear vision. .
Physical death thus is known as natural transitional change of state within the greater context of the whole =-= the Great Continuity -- the Great Completion. In that egoless context there is no death, although the physical body may die and the earth and five elements seemingly disappear from sense awareness which is no more.
Fear and inhibition is not natural. What is natural is natural instinct, intuition, natural and implicate inner wisdom, and indigenous wisdom gleaned from billions of years of co-evolution and continuous inter-action. Healthy instinct and intact intuition does not equate as fear.
Other animals (other than man) living in the wild do not fear physical death because they are in general more connected with the interdependent ocean of love and light than human animals. They simply live on the planet and then die, but they deeply know that they are more deeply connected to the ocean than most humans normally presume. I am not saying that animals do not have intelligent intuitive and innate survival mechanisms. We all do, but if instincts are functioning properly in healthy fight or flight response when subjected to a possible life threatening situation, they do not involve fear or trauma. rather far too much of human values and beliefs (and hence the formulation and institutionalization of artificial fears and desires) depend on how we define quality of life, create preferences, formulate priorities and values, and desires and hence what we do not desire to occur, we fear. When that artificially conditioned quality is lacking, then our attachment can turn into disgust and fear. Many animals (including humans) welcome physical death when its time has come (albeit there are painful and painless ways to leave the body). Unless there exists physical pain, the pain is mental in origin/self imposed – it is caused by fear of life, caused by a false identification (the kleshas of asmita and avidya). There are built mechanisms that allow these passages to be painless in all animals such as going numb, unconscious or in shock. Animals know how to do this and recover from it better than most humans. This mechanism gone amuck in “overly objectified” humans, is causal in post traumatic stress disorders as well as many other maladies due to spiritual alienation and estrangement from life.
I'm not arguing with anyone of course, this is what truth reveals over time. Elders finally realize its truth in the sacredness of each moment, eventually. I have met many more people who have welcomed physical death because they have recognized that physical life in their body is no longer fruitful, pleasurable, or dignified. Yes, in many cases it is simply the kleshas again; i.e., that their raga (attraction/attachment) is outweighed by their (repulsion), but many are very forward looking to going onward -- free of their present worn out physical bodies without fear or attachment.
In life we also bear witness where fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, good friends, and bodhisattvas, who have sacrificed more than their own health and livelihood for the benefit of those they loved; where the fear for their own safety and well being was outweighed by their love for another. Although one could classify altruistic love in a more cynical way by saying that their fear of harm (himsa) to another outweighed their fear of physical death (harm to their own body). Again a cynic may say that they did not sacrifice at all, but rather gave birth so that something that they valued even more than their “own” physical life would live as if their action of a perceived sacrifice was, when viewed in another light, that of giving life (perpetuity) to a higher transcendent ideal. The historically popular solution is the creation of an “other worldly” religion around am ego fixation of a “cadaverous reality”. But I think that the “New Earth” paradigm (such as Tolle’s) goes along very well with indigenous Earth views which state that all we really have is a sacred Now; that we are all kin in a very large sacred hoop that is attempting to celebrate the sacred father/mother union in the timeless light of divine immanence.
History has shown that many people have sacrificed their own physical bodies for the welfare of others. I don't want to ignore that. In Iraq, Palestine, during WWI and WW2, almost in all wars and times, many soldiers sacrificed their lives so that their loved one's would live. Sure some were just following orders, but the truth is that many knowingly made that decision. Depending on what side of the fence one is sitting, some of the greatest abominations were committed in the name of sacrifice of the individual and/or life.
Such is obvious in war, but less obvious in peace. Yes, the average/ordinary person is afraid of death, because it is unknown to them (they are immersed in avidya and do not know their true nature). They can't imagine in their present state of coarse/gross confusion a life/reality without a body or gross physical form. It’s mostly unimaginable in avidya. They confuse their narrow vision (vidya) of gross physical life as being "Real" – as all there is -- because they lack spiritual vision (vidya). Again they are lost in avidya, the chief klesha. They are too attached to things (raga which is just another klesha) and hence suffer from dvesa or repulsion (which is the opposite klesha that includes fear). But dvesa (fear and repulsion) are not dominant (or any other klesha) for yogis. In fact effective yoga practice destroys the kleshas by definition.
There exist many possible karmic entanglements (we all have unique situational dynamics and it is up to us to work them out in vidya or self knowledge), but in the long run, in certain spiritual disciplines, many become graced on knowing the circumstances of their physical demise (or not) and are given am opportunity to accept it. By accepting it without fear, one accepts the beginningless and endless continuum Here and Now. Each moment becomes very sacred and life is enriched a thousand fold.
The above should not be interpreted as a anti-life diatribe please, but actually as a statement of the sacredness of the present – of the Eternal Now. THAT is all we have. Yes, we can very much extend our life spans, improve the quality of our lives and others by using yoga techniques to do so. Of course Patanjali and Buddha cover all this ground pretty thoroughly (karma, kleshas, impermanence of form/things, waking up, the bodhisattva ideal, yoga, etc.) Is not ignorance (avidya) just another name for denial of what-is-as-it-is (swarupa)? Is not denial, just another name for ego (asmita) and aversion (dvesa)? All the kleshas are of course interrelated.
In Buddhism more specifically, we plainly are presented with the idea of death as not just a change of state – one form morphing into another as endless evolution, but also there is quite a profound integration of the idea of the formless/absolute co-existing here and now since beginningless time, with so called form/existence, so to speak. Death to a yogi or a Buddhist is really death to the ego, to the delusion that he/she is separate and apart from all and everything else. Thus ego’s milieu is thus devoid of love (tied up in fear).
Buddhism plainly makes this clear in the very beginning in the allegory of the wheel of life and death held by Yama, the god of death. There are depicted the six realms of existence (with form) all tied up in samsara (suffering). The God realm (the realm of the devas) is considered one of the most unfortunate realms because they do not see their dissolution coming – they are the most attached to form and pleasures thinking that such is forever. their main disease/affliction is the klesha of pride or self centeredness -- always thinking within their own limited sphere. Granted a part of their mental felicity may be because there is no concept of death or scarcity, never-the-less when the karma that put them where they are expires, their dissolution/fall is very quick and terrifying. Because of their great attachment to the world of form and worldly pleasures (Deva Loka), their fear, mental anguish, and suffering is very intense. It is hence very unlikely in that situation to be reborn in a fortunate realm. Only if they are very lucky their next reincarnation in the realm of form occurs in the human realm, where they will have more favorable circumstances to obtain lasting liberation (from the wheel of samsaric existence).
Similarly the warring gods (asuras) in the neighboring realm also think that their form and form worlds are immortal. Hence they are similarly self absorbed and self limited, but their pride is tainted with jealousy as their dominant disease/affliction (klesha). Their fate is similar to the devas. Samsaric existence (dukha) is caused by ignorance (negative conditioning by the kleshas) where one identifies with I/it forms – subject/object duality. Waking up to our true nature or true Self is much bigger than limited identifications around temporary static objects, objects of thought, form, predilections, or belief. Rather the Buddha Mind is incredibly large, beyond comparison in its all encompassing/infinite true nature. That is always Now – always and all ways has been – will be – but we habitually ignore/deny it through negative conditioning – the negative conditioning which yoga practice is basically designed to entirely over throw.
A little more about the fear of embodiment (death/life) and the ego. Simply put, the fear of physical death is simply the fear of the unknown for most of us who mistakenly think that reality is equated with material things – who have been conditioned not to see, to close our inner eye, to repress, to ignore, and deny the all pervasive living spirit that is animating all. If we knew what we think we don’t know (what we don’t know because we think that we don’t know because of errors in the thinking process) – If we knew that, NOW; then what? Reality/life (as we knew it) would be very different! Part of the process I think is first UNknowing what we think we know – the surrender of the “self” imposed dualistic limitations of the ego/form based mind upon the Vast Reality of what is-as–it-is -- endless possibilities. It is belief that holds us static, imprisoned, and ignorant. That is what we must surrender over and over again -- that is what must die in order for us to live in Reality as kin -- in the eternal now forever as-it-is -- as it always was, and as it will always be.
Jai MA!
To be sure, right from the beginning, we must be clear that Reality never dies. That from the very beginning before gestation, throughout the prenatal period, post natal life, infancy, youth, maturity, old age, and physical death there exists, in truth, a living continuity. Rather than viewing God as the alpha (the beginning) and the omega (the end), God is best viewed as the ever present great integrity and continuity of the everlasting now -- as the everpresent. His mate/spouse is the the ever-newness. No elaborate theology is needed. In fact a personification of God, most often gets in the way and limits the possibilities. Let us just say that there exists here an energetic and wholistic inter-dimensional parallel analogue or holographic resonance in all beings/things whether or not it is revealed to all "sentient' and/or partially conscious beings consciously or not.
"Problems" of attachment, fear, grasping, and false identification arise from misconceptions about the true nature of Self, from corruptive thought, from fragmented separations and alienation from this Great Integrity, from manmade alienation from this implicate underlying Self Existing Love which becomes obscured through wearing the adornments of the veil. All neurosis in fact is due to this primal rend/split which is becomes our chronic spiritual state of self estrangement, an ersatz reality, a habitual disconnect from that underlying continuity -- the living unity of spirit and nature, creator with creation, consciousness and existence (chit and sat in Sanskrit), mind and body, father sky and mother earth. This apparent disconnection in fact only exists as an illusion-- as an artificial mental construct. In Reality the veil no longer obscures -- the filter no longer creates obscuration, limitation, or distortion.
Who or what we identify with-- how we define "Self" and "other", is a very causal and crucial process. That non-dual process beyond relationship shapes both our reality and sense of "self" simultaneously and wholistically If we identify with just the body or a limited/separate self (ego) then there exists fear and/or attachment to something that is impermanent. Rather it is our natural identification with or as this eternal and continuous process which gives us the power to accept the responsibility to make the most of each and every moment, to accept and embrace temporal existence, and to embody the endless possibilities of love, both with no contradiction.
Without such an integrative context and universal perspective -- without finding our True Self within a living and intimate creation story which can be traced back to beginningless time, then we remain disempowered and lost -- separated from life, evolution, and our native creativity, for we have missed the purpose of life; that is, to creatively embody Spirit as eternal love in our own unique potential expression -- as the wave of the ocean of eternal love. Without knowing "Self" problems of "self esteem", pride, ego, jealousy, greed, desire, insecurity , confusion, and ignorance arise.
In early life we are explorers and adventurers.It is love loving love in All our Relations. We are new to the world of objects, forms, and things and to the senses that sense them. But we are fresh from eternity. Here we can maintain Continuity of Self in Life -- the integrity of spirit in nature -- creator in creation, the unity of sky and earth, sahasrara with muladhara chakra if we are fortunate.
A Prayer
May parents help the young to hold that sacred space that brings it altogether in continuity so that confusion and fear do not become imbedded, so that the puzzle of where the sacred body of life has come from and where it is heading to eventually is not lost sight of-- the puzzle of creation and the mystery of life and healing in embodying love and eternal spirit/creativity HERE in the Sacred Present. Here in infancy one is drunk by the budding inner juices/hormones of youth-- of evolutionary power (shakti) and hence can not help but identify with the process of growth and Eternal Springtime as it permeates the bones coaxing one onward willingly or not. The pre-adolescent youth are very present, open, and vulnerable, but they lack attention, consciousness, perspective, experience, wisdom, and patience gleaned from experience. In that state they are still vulnerable to severe negative programming so that their rend from Source is firmly conditioned. Then without a stable base of wisdom, love, and light, then their neurotic/subliminal tendencies will be more severe and entrenched.
Youth can be broken up into three subdivisions based on physical and neuro-hormonal development; pre-adolescence, adolescence, and younger adult.
A: Pre-adolescence: Playing: The Divine Child and Divine Lila: Spring
From birth to adolescence, is a time of play, learning the ropes of the immediate environment, satisfying those whom we love and fear, developing tactile and sensory skills, while establishing some sense of security. Here the Divine Child and the Divine Mother is at play. If the Divine child gets replaced/repressed with a not so Divine substitute through the ignorant projections of others, the repression of the intimacy of the Divine Continuum where the Divine Mother is replaced by a poor surrogate for a living sacred presence, then the child will go into forgetfulness of its true nature and lose their innate sense of continuity, flow, and resilience.
"Things" as a static and linear "reality" can rapidly go out of kilter as the play degenerates into fear based role playing, jockeying for position and neurotic desire for security within a scary or paranoid world. If this rend from the eternal source of creation -- from the beginningless eternal now is thus reinforced at this age, then a compensatory neurotic attachment and desire toward substitute objects will also be reinforced and fixated upon, especially so in a dualistic and externally oriented (materialistic) society. A young child may be innately and naturally capable of being open and present, but also they may be programmed negatively to be very neurotic and disturbed due to negative conditioning such as fearing death, and hence the unknown and life itself. The creative/evolutionary change and expansion of consciousness (as the embrace of the unknown) further is restricted. Thus the wonder for life, natural curiosity, and openness becomes occluded and shut down as the more common tragedy brought about through the agency of institutionalized ignorance. Here we forget that we are the vessels for spirit, inspiration creativity, love, and eternal life. Then the child ceases to see angels, learns to close their eyes and numbs their heartfelt feelings directly proportional to the indoctrination of ignorance, denial, and repression dawns.
B: Adolescence: Obtaining Skills and Rebellion: Late Spring
In adolescence one starts to come into their heightened power via the neuro-endocrine system. The adolescent knows that they are sharper, smarter, and higher functioning than their adult parents (which is true), but they lack experience and skills in order to have societal and economic power and success. Here this self confidence from the body is often not honored (through the demonization of sexuality and natural feelings), and thus the adolescent most often starts to have a negative image of the body and pro-creation as fostered by parents, teachers, priests, adults, the society, and even other peers who are so influenced. Self hate and negative self esteem easily follows. One is confronted with going with their feelings on one hand, and going against them (control and will power). This is a time of that war. It is reflected in the war with the adult world who is seen in general as a force that quashes sensuality, pleasure, creativity, and free expression. An adolescent is faced with an inner war of fight them or join them -- be true to oneself and experience or conform to what others want you to do. Question the "conventional wisdom" or accept it as authoritative and invest in it as "right". It is a time of great confusion in a materialistic and ignorant society, but if adolescents were not so confused by the adults and conventional society, then it should be a an empowering time of awakening. BEing empowered not to fear the unknown or change, they would be free and empowered to "right" the transgenerational "wrongs" of the past, and herald in the creative vision of their birthright -- their true evolutionary heritage. Because most adults fear adolescents in their prime because they remind the adults of their own unresolved adolescent pain and trauma, the youth then are most often kept confused and troubled and forced to conform to status quo standards while being indoctrinated into conventional belief systems. Hence the living light is covered over, repressed, and obfuscated even further through newly acquired layers of pain, guilt, and confusion. further. Such young adults become the adults and parents of the future, unless they can break through this negative programming, through questioning, analysis, critical thought, and eventually achieving freedom and insight.
Types of Positive and Negative Conditioning: Education
What often passes for education is merely negative programming, robotization, disempowerment, abuse, exploitation, and tragedy. Before the armoring, pain, and negative tendencies such as vasana. false identifications, fixated beliefs, and the kleshas become reinforced adolescence grants the youth their greatest opportunity to question authority in what is often called an identity crisis in the west, but rather it is the Great Turning into manhood -- a true vision quest and causal stage in life for those who would undergo it fully into adulthood/manhood, rather than to chase such the rest of their life symbolically and neurotically. Indeed in all the preceding stages of life the successful integration of critical and creative thought or its lack will be the significant factor governing the functional or dysfunction (creative or reactive) response of the adult human.
The ability for critical thought, self analysis, and hence self knowledge/realization is natural, innate and uncontrived. It is not dependent upon artifact, but rather all it it needs to bloom/develop is for other humans and manmade institutions to get out of its way as a natural unfolding like growing up. Throughout life, the human animal has the ability to recollect one’s previous experiences and analyze past events and views. Old views are replaced with more expansive and better informed views on “reality” through experience. Then through more subjective experiential data then in turn even more expansive ideas about the world are formulated (ideologies and world views are thus formed). This is a NATURAL process of integration where left brain receptivity informs right brain intellectual/conceptual processes in a mutually synergistic synchrony. As long as these processes of right brain/left brain natural synergistic balances remain self regulated, the process continues organically and naturally into old age. As long as the world-view is not dogmatic, armored, fixated, or rigid, but allows for future expansion, then this process of new subjective experiences and data being collected and analyzed into ever new objective views continues throughout a healthy life. Problems only arise when these views become rigid and fixed – when a closed mindedness is adhered to.
This ability for critical judgment, self analysis, and critical thought, and hence creative change becomes highly potenized at in adolescence where the adolescent is capable of critically questioning adult life, past authoritarian assumptions, his parents, and world views in general. In fact one’s entire self confidence and self empowerment is dependent upon the successful accomplishment of this task of throwing off all the past nonsense and dysfunctional traditional dualistic systems of thought based on fear and separation and come into clarity, wisdom, wholism, and “Reality”.
If this process of critical self analysis is aborted or repressed, then the individual will remain neurotic and insecure the rest of his/her life. he/she will forever become dependent upon external authority for approval and become obedient, conform to, and support external systems of control in lieu of self knowledge, and other innate mechanisms of healthy self regulation. Adolescence is a critical stage for most and a stage where modern Western society is not of much help. In short society helps the individual fail his/her identity crisis because they fear a self empowered individual. Self empowered people, because self empowered people are not easy to control or manipulate.
Here the adolescent is blessed with the ability for critical self analysis where one can analyze his own identity and in turn “the world/reality”. What the individual makes of “that” defines his entire future.
The human species stands on the edge of a possible major revolution in the evolutionary process because of this ability to shake off negative programming through self awareness, but most frequently falls short (except with the few who go against the odds and reach self empowerment). Freud and psychoanalysis called this mechanism reinstinctivization, but really it is just the vision quest – paradise regained all over again. When the processes of consciousness is known – when Self is known, there is self knowledge/realization which brings about freedom – and with it freedom from the unknown. With that inhibition and repression are eradicated. Here one is not in need of a superego censor, nor any other adopted mechanism of behavior, rather here spontaneous and natural wisdom reign.
Through critical thought, our own mental processes are now an object for our conscious reflection and no longer something compulsive or buried deep within the gulf of the unconscious mind. Having become an object for conscious reflection, it is finally possible to contemplate that the psychic process itself can be greatly altered, opening up completely new possibilities for human freedom. By altered I mean that dysfunctional, negative and illusion based conceptional programs. habits, karma, and tendencies can be defused and then natural creative healthy and positive imprints and potentials allowed to evolve spontaneously.
In yoga, Evil is ignorance in motion. That is to say, that it is confusion that causes suffering. Hence the removal of that ignorance or confusion brings bout a natural happiness. The lion's share of the evil which forms the narrative of human history stems directly from the repressed unconscious and uncritical allegiance to the symbolic meaning systems which the various cultures and societies have institutionalized, acculturated, and spoonfed to children. Human beings gain their sense of safety and worth by blindly following the internalized modes of power and authority which were presented by parents, family, social groups, religion, and nations during the socialization processes before puberty.
In those where the rebellion stage of critical thought and self analysis is aborted – where the identity crisis is postponed or replaced by the imposition of external dictates, then a pathology of neuroses and habitual insecurity is generated. Rather than becoming a center of rational free choice and creativity, the individual blindly fights to protect those internalized models of power on which his life has come to depend, exactly because the true self esteem process has become replaced/substituted for an external, ersatz, representational, and symbolic one.
Helping individuals to gain understanding of what they have uncritically accepted during the socialization process, and therefore allowing at least for the possibility of renewal and change, which is essentially an educational job is exactly where modern education fails the species and all species in tha the present educational system rewards conformity, obedience, getting the right answers, and jumping through hoops, not critical thought, questioning basic premises or authority. The task of education thus is to not step on our innate desire to know, to question, to wonder, to learn – in short our innate curiosity and will for truth, clarity, and self knowledge, but rather feed it. Of course modern education does the opposite. Without this true self esteem is impossible, hence humans are exiled to finding self worth in terms of external systems, approval, status, privilege, power, exploitation, authority over others, and other such vices.
The task then is one of repair in general, and falls to yoga more than to modern psychoanalysis which is too costly, time consuming, and too easily derailed to be the basis for a positive social movement or for species evolution. In fact, the basis and potential of social an species evolution remains innate, albeit mostly repressed. It is our creative/evolutionary potential lying dormant within us all. It can just as easily flower when it is watered and nourished, as well as wilt, flounder or be repressed.
Since the educational system refuses to nourish our inner evolutionary potential (on the contrary it is bent on stepping on it), then the task goes to the individual themselves – spiritual practice such as yoga. meditation, self study, contemplation, etc. Again the key here is being able to think for oneself and trusting oneself enough that one can accomplish such. Here personal evolution, social evolution, species evolution, environmental evolution, and creative impulse all are mutually synergistic.
So what about the famous discrepancy between experiential data (empirical subjective experience) and that of interpretive bias; i.e., does universal truth exist? The answer yoga gives is yes, when the interpreter (the ego) gets out of the way all bias/spin and prejudice is cancelled out. This is knowledge gleaned by going beyond reductionist, analytical, or mere intellectual dualistic mentation processes, but rather through the integrative non-dual process called meditative absorption (dhyana). When we become able (through effective meditation) to know what is as it is – when the inner eye is opened, then our natural power will return to us with consciousness; i.e., we will be conscious of our innate subjective creative power.
In the future mankind will become more aware of the energy grid that surrounds all things and beings as his inner eye opens up. Then he will be able to evolve a technology based on spiritual health and harmony – a technology of love, health, and human happiness. Thus he will no longer suffer from materialistic oppression – wars and violence wrought upon him by the technically superior armaments of tyrants, aliens, paranoids, and criminals.
C: Younger Adults: Summer
Younger adults 19 and over already know on an experiential level that they have peaked physiologically and are beginning to age (shrink). Their physical and sensual prowess is diminishing as compared to adolescents unless they have become clear in life's lessons -- unless they live a life in harmony with the living spirit and life's natural laws found in honoring the living spirit -- found in honoring the eternal life in every moment -- found in the recognition of the continuity of who they really are -- a life as a living yoga.
Normally however the confused younger adult sees the handwriting on the wall through the eyes of external authority; i.e., they are becoming old like their parents and have to find their security in the adult world. Generally this is a time of selling out (or buying in) to the existing economic power structure, pecking order, They start to try to find themselves (identity)in those manmade material structures of "reality". Such is a premature autumn. For those who are still learning to cultivate Eternal Life in the Great Continuum, they enter into their full summer of creativity acting in accordance with the vision culled from eternal love and divine immanence -- in harmony with the empowerment from a resolved adolescence and period of self analysis, they gain experience, skills, wisdom in which their deepest vision, dreams, and compassion are expressed/embodied as expressions of sacred love.
In mid-life, we apply what we have learned and hopefully still learn more. The tragedy is that mid life people think of the world in static terms. Boredom. desire, greed, and lust in reality are results of being cut off from the juices of the sacred world -- such people do not have enough, want more, or haven't a clue what will turn them on.
As the body ages, and wears out illness and death comes on. Most young people and middle age people unrealistically hope that they will escape such a fate. This is due because they are only capable of identifying with their body, and their body tells them that they are still young and alive. Such people have become fragmented and disconnected from the Great Integrity -- the Living Spirit -- the Eternal Now -- their relationship with the continuity of their life on the planet as part of the greater process of creator/creation. The typical midlife person is often very future oriented, worrying, hoping, lusting, planning a perfect and secure future. Midlife people really don't have much time to be present, they are in a hurry not being present.
For those who have been cultivating their creative powers through communion, through integrity, through yoga connecting up with the wellsprings off eternal life, they enter now into the creative bloom of late summer implementing and refining their creative vision through wisdom gleaned from a mature harmonious transpersonal experience/reality. Just as past generations of elders have cared for us, mature Elders through their love, care, spiritual intent, and actions have carved out unselfishly a heart-found place for the salvation of the children -- for spirit's continued reincarnation/embodiment -- for continual reincarnation and celebration.
In Old age then most people wake up to their finite time of the body. If they learn that the body of form is undergoing a timeless natural process where embodiment of eternal love is constantly dancing, transforming, on fire then they can more graceful participate in this sacred process. If however they hold onto the body as the self, then they will think that they are dying -- going into a darkness of none-existence into disintegration, rather than into the Great Flame from whence they came -- that Sacred Flame which is ever Here/Now. Of course this misconception of dying is not encountered by those who have established continuity with the sacred world while alive.
At this stage of life, if we have the grace of awareness and time we can learn more about the formless world, from whence this body came from, to where it may be headed, and where we are right now as partnership in a very large symphony which has just been played out in front of our very eyes. Thus we reestablish this link with who we really are.
Some one who has cultivated this eternal love throughout their life is like a perfectly mature fruit or a perfectly aged wine, reflecting in their very natural presence, the eternal story seen through a harmonious, loving, and wise life.
For the ordinary man, in old age one has the opportunity (if one is lucky) to slow down from being future oriented and reconnect with the eternal now. This is a gift for many to know that only NOW exists HERE at each and every moment -- always did except when we ignored IT. From the Eternal NOW we have remembered -- we connect up to sacred presence and immanence breathing pure spirit in each and every breath.
Thus, it is not common that youth or middle-agers appreciate and savor this profound truth, nor do the middle-agers appreciate the infant and their own youths as much as the elderly. For both infants and the very old can relate to the Eternal Now best. the infant is fresh from it, while the elder is being reabsorbed and purified. Both are in the present (albeit the elderly may tend toward living in the past, while the youth can tend toward living in the future). The youth are bursting forth in life, flowering, and growing, while the elderly are shrinking, drying up, seeded, and contracting. The former are coming forth, while the latter is returning. In fact though neither have really left except in their forsakened HeartMind.
But the word, shrink, here may be misleading. The body is shrinking while Reality is expanding -- the cosmos is opening up infinitely. Space is being created or more to the point, the space that was always HERE is being recognized and embraced more fully.
Those who are in the middle of their lives are generally most fixated and engrossed on some "far off" future which may or may not ever happen, barely taking "time out" to condescendingly relate to animals, nature, children, or the very elderly who are living in the indigenous space of the ETERNAL NOW. For the elderly who are not clinging onto life, NOW is all they have. For those with this realization, they know that hope is a lie and a burden -- it always was. Hope does not exist and deeper still there is no desire and attachment. In the Greater Sense behind "time", one realizes that all we have is this Great Love which is found through the portal of transpersonal Unbound Sacred presence.
From this deep space free from hope, desire, expectation, and preferential thinking, all recognized within the greater scope of naked awareness, as-it-is, free from deception, spin, bias, attachment, pretension, or even anthropomorphic words. From this eternal universal ground/base one is able to look over all of existence as well as one's own life, and that of others without bias. and sees everyone's attachments, desires, and fears plainly. This wisdom gift is directly proportional to the extent that one's own past neurotic attachments have ceased. Eyes are opened wide HERE. Such is a great blessing of non-attachment for mature elders which is far more easily accessible at death than at other times, because earthly attachments to the body are weakened.
Thus for the lucky these last moments. living in between the breaths, are a spiritual gift and blessing allowing them to come to final peace and realization bringing to a loving culmination with all things and beings -- in all one's relations on the planet, and all created universes establishing a satisfying closure, complexness, and contentment. But for others who have lived their life in a mindset of denial, falsity, pretension, aversion, attachment, ego, and ignorance -- a life style alienated from the eternal now and divine presence, then they experience insecurity and fear of physical death as an annihilation of "self". Some others are in so much pain and discomfort that they wish for "a physical end" quickly as life offers nothing else. For them death is a temporary reprise, a rest, an empty space -- and then they are awakened.
Here in the context of ageless primordial wisdom, this life is likened to a short dream, while when we lay our head down at night, that dream state approximates closer to universal eternal reality more so which is reflected by the stars, the sea, the wind, and forests tall primordially.
In physical Death we lose the fixation with the physical body and with it earthly existence. There form loses its power over the clean slate of Boundless Mind -- pure boundless consciousness and awareness. We are at once all and everything -- unlimited divine intelligence capable of taking on or fixating upon any form. If we know who we are HERE, then infinite freedom, wisdom, and bliss is realized as our true essential nature (swarupa). What we lose is more than outweighed by what is realized and experienced.
In transition we see that the earth was really only a small planet in the Greater scheme of things and our participation through the human body was only one out of a myriad of possibilities and for a very brief period in earthly time -- an opportunity to embody and share that eternal love, light, and recognition -- as its bridge. At physical death we reconnect with eternal life, melt into it again if we have ignored it in physical life. We become inspired by it once again, renewed, come into our true Self.
In transition we meet all our past friends, All Our Relations, and all our combined hopes, vision, aspirations, dreams, in the Buddhaverse matrix of boundless love, primordial wisdom, and complete acceptance without limitation or negation. We have come home again to where we have always been (temporarily obscured by ignorance) -- back to source/creator/creativity and inseparable from its evolutionary momentum.
This is a very familiar place because in physical life, except for those who have not remained true to THAT, who still cling and have become fixated grasping onto the material veil of a separate self and limited existence in blind attachment toward fixations upon objects and form - self and other.
Here all we need to do is to let go completely! Breathe in and out completely completing the sacred hoop joining the whole. In truth we never left our eternal home, except in errant thought. In physical death we meet again eternal life in wonder and in speechless gratitude. Bathed and renewed in eternal Life and Light All is-as- it-is-- as it always is (was and will be), the Isness free from ideation or reification -- free from comparison -- free with no further adieu -- a welcome home to all travelers -- gypsies, nomads, kindred players, and prayers of the soul.
In deep holographic re"memberance", semblance, and parallel corresponding gratitude -- in breathless celebration be filled with joy and wonder everlasting!
“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
~ Elie Wiesel
Death as Opportunity for Enlightenment and Liberation
"...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings."
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
Nature as a Teacher of Life
"Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life."
~ John Muir
Removing Fear Allows us to Live Life far More Deeply and Fully
“People living deeply have no fear of death.”
~ Anais Nin