Most of us go through life half asleep. We move like as if we were on autopilot, compelled by needs, driven by desires, blinded by emotions and amnesic of our mortality. The memory of death actually would do well to serve as the wake up call of the limited span and the need to live every moment fully. Even complete mindfulness to the sensual scenarios or knowing the self by peeling away the different parts of the personality and integrating the less known aspects like the sub conscious and the unconscious into one’s awareness, is not absolute.
Do you realise that you pretend all the time? Each time you interact with a different person, you don a different mask. Do you also recognise that cultural beliefs and the ethos of the prevailing times, shape your behaviour at the expense of some primordial urges that are universal and natural? When repressed, such instincts create a damaging toxicity. This toxicity simmers in your subconscious creating aberrant behaviour and inexplicable outbursts.
There is, within you, a world of autonomous forces, a history and its future possible trajectories awaiting discovery. Mindfulness cajoles the hidden mysteries to want to reveal themselves to you. Self-witnessing fosters energy and promotes holistic wellness. When an awareness of the sharp lividness of anger, the lurid impact of lust, the foolishness of getting trapped by the same bait again and again, the sprouting of nobler sentiments of compassion is encouraged and given precedence over blind action reaction, mere existence gets elevated to a dignified conscious living.
This prepares you to look death in the eye for what it truly is — another milestone which you have to witness. Death becomes the ultimate adventure of consciousness, which will escalate you to a realm higher than love, wisdom and even bliss. “I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as a plant and rose to animal, I died as an animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?” — Rumi.
To lull yourself in a state of semi anaesthesia to the dynamics of life, to discount your relationship to life and ignore the inexplicable and wondrous in every breathing moment, is worse than death. To the spiritual aspirant, death is a portal to some more exciting discoveries and interactions with the universe. “A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me” — Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet.
Death is just life on the other side of the twilight zone. Like every dusk, death is also followed by the dawning of a new life. Bhagavad Gita — “As a man leaves an old garment and puts on one that is new, the Spirit leaves his mortal body and wanders on to one that is new.”
Excerpt from The Eternal Guru Speaks
