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The only way is to completely embrace it.
Once we can embrace death and face it openly, we can begin to live. Embrace death fully. Recognize that death is the natural, inevitable state. Do your mourning now. Recognize that your cat is already dead; your baby is already dead; your parents are already dead; you are already dead. Face this, truly, immersively. Live in it, absorb it, eat it, breathe it, drink it. Recognize that this is the destiny of one and all, and that it is completely, utterly inescapable.
Do not let this death stop with your friends and family. Embrace death in all and every aspect of existence. The clock, which you cherish, is smashed, destroyed, broken and dead. The business you have worked for so long is bankrupt, dead, destroyed. The house which you have spent so many years working for is a rubble, completely useless, gone.
The sum total of the universe has been swallowed into the mysterious unknown, and death is the only reality. Once you can do this, you can begin to live in, sorry for the Xtian terminology, resurrection. The cat is already dead. We have buried the cat. What would you do? What would you give if you could spend just one more day with your dead cat?
Your wife is already dead. You have just returned from burying her. What would you give for one more day to be able to tell her all of the things that you wanted to tell her, but never did? Your parents are already dead. You have just come back from the funeral parlor. What would it be like if you had one last opportunity to spend some time with them, to live with them? What would you say? What would you do? Where would you take them, what would you do with them?
That is the reality you tap into, once you embrace death. Once you recognize that everything is already dead, then every single day is a gift of infinite grace. Every breath is a death and rebirth. Every single day is that one last chance to do and be all the things you want to be--to spend the time and the relationships and the warmth with all of your dead relatives and mates. One last chance to have a giggle working in your dead, bankrupt, long-since forgotten business. One more chance, by some divine miracle, to live one last day in that house which is a crumbled, rotting, pile of dust. Then there is no mourning. There is no death. There is only resurrection. When the cat finally dies, you have already mourned the cat. When the children finally die, you have already mourned their passing. And you have lived a life of fulfillment, taking advantage of every opportunity of every moment of every day. When the miracle of resurrection has passed on, then you are at peace to recognize that things have simply returned to their natural state. You wake up one morning, and the resurrected cat is no longer there. There is no reason to grieve, because you have already buried the cat. The cat is not 'dead', because the cat was never 'born'.
Death is meant to be embraced. It is meant to be a gateway to a new birth. If we can embrace death, then our lives are transformed.
In the Case deck of the Tarot, the horse is stomping upon the crown. All of our achievements and all of our growth will not survive. All of matter and all of human creation will be swallowed up. Death affects all. Cyonara.
Who or what is afraid of this? Nothing has been created nor destroyed since the Beginning. It (which is not an It) simply is, endlessly transforming, endlessly combining and recombining, then dissipating and diverging. End. Less. Ly. (That's a long time).
The thinking structure has woven the illusion of solidity and permanence and then swallowed it hook line and sinker and now seeks refuge from the blatant and obvious facts it has worked so tirelessly to hide from its own impudent tenacity. You cannot celebrate life without also celebrating death. You cannot have pleasure without a moment of pain - your body cannot withstand pleasure any more than it can withstand pain - the signals are simply as they are, your thinking structure is the only thing judging and arbitrating on what is preferable, discriminating.
Death should be your constant advisor, the teacher to whom you defer first and foremost, the ground from which your intentions are sown, your actions grow and your experience can be harvested.
Death has chewed me up and spit me out more times than I can even remember in my own peculiar system, so I'm coming at this from a very experiential angle. It's harrowing and it's difficult and it's frightening and it's upsetting.
So called 'magic' tends to be like that, a lot, and if it ain't, you're probably not doing it right. |
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