Dying

What do you reckon about dying?

What will it be like?

Have you been in the presence of someone who dies? Was it an effort to die? Or easy?

Personally, do you dread it? Do you fear it? Do you distract yourself with busyness so you don’t have to face those feelings?

So many questions? And another, do your beliefs about life and death make a difference to how you feel about it inside. If you are really honest, do your beliefs make a difference? Of so, how?

Or coming at this topic from a different angle………….can you totally accept each moment of life as it is? So that when death is happening there is total acceptance of just that moment. That moment of going into the unknown? And it is unknown because your mind can’t know, and you are going to leave your thinking mind behind

When I held my nearly 4 week old baby in my arms as she died, it felt so natural as she just drained away to leave her body.

When I sat beside my mother as she died, it felt simple and natural.

Some months ago I had an experience of dying. No, not a physical near death experience as some people have had. I was in a situation of increasing emotions of worthlessness, over a few days. Fortunately, I was attending a retreat where there were people to support me. Someone sat beside me. The worthlessness got stronger and stronger, and then turned into the emotion of self-hatred. This also got stronger and stronger until it was totally engulfing. Then total blackness. Even though it was total blackness, even blacker spears arrived, many of them, aimed at me, penetrating me. As they did their job, I felt myself draining away. Who was this “I” that felt myself draining away? As I drained away, I found myself in a place……well, it wasn’t a place actually. But what was it? I don’t know. It was nothing. But really it was even less than nothing…..it was complete emptiness. Words can’t describe it but it felt beautiful. It felt true. It felt like everything all together.

So has this prepared me for dying? I don’t know. There is no way to know.

But nevertheless, the emptiness is with me always. Which sounds like nothing and yet it is everything at the same time. Everything in life and of life. A state of love, and stillness and eternity.