The forced path of Life and Death can teach us something

What is really important to us?

All life long we have been running as racehorses or race dogs to achieve something we actually don’t care about, something that has been placed right ahead of us by those who, indoctrinating us, wanted us to think that we actually care.

Exactly as it happens with horses and dogs who don’t run because they want to but because they have been trained to.

At the end of the race, only breeders, owners, jockeys and gamblers will exult, but surely not those who have been running all the time. They don’t win anything, on the contrary they have even lost their freedom to live in nature and also their dignity.

As in Edgar Allan Poe’s novel, now the Red Death has arrived and stopped us all.

We cannot run anymore, nor overdo, and are consequently obliged to be honest and face ourselves.

We are using means of electronic connection and this is good to help and support each other, to keep us company, share info and know what is happening. But … we are also using them to do what we were used to do before: run, run and again run….

Experts’ advises, on-line classes, fitness taught on-line, love shared through teleconferences, video business meetings: everything works. Everything helps move on. However, our fragile side is emerging, we are starting being messed with our heads, our actions show we are scared and stressed.

Somebody could say it’s normal:  we see people around us getting sick, and many even die.

Sorrow is normal of course, but the point is that we are not exactly taking the opportunity to face the only certainty we can have, the one that sooner or later will come: our Death.

I write this word in capital letters because, ironically, it is one of the most ignored masters of our personal and collective history, even though it is the only one each of us will surely meet.  We might not be Christian or Buddhist nor practice any Eastern discipline or meditation, we might not be following somebody else’s recommendations, not even those coming from our loved ones.  We might have ignored education and the lessons taught by our teachers at school or University, we might not care about priests, lamas, sufis, imams and rabbis and even philosophers.

But we cannot ignore Death and the fact that we are all walking on a one-way road with one outcome only.

Again, we can act as nothing has happened and trust that the arts will perpetuate our messages and knowledge, or look at our sons and nephews with (sacrosanct!) satisfaction. They are in fact our own descendants, and in a certain way they represent our “immortality”.

We can leave behind signs in the world in the form of works, donations, memories, right and correct actions, love for those we were able to love. This is good, actually it is great, but it doesn’t solve the problem of problems. We are scared or, when we are not, we accept our deadly fate with serenity (sometimes hiding our resignation).

Either we touch wood or decide to paint our own private (comforting?) fresco representing what Death is. Do we go to heaven?  Or nowhere?  In the blue painted of blue? Do we pass through Purgatory? Is Hell empty or not?  Will Heaven embrace us? Maybe we reincarnate and start all over again in another place…. do we return to the Father? Will we rejoin stars, Earth, atoms among atoms?

Sometimes we don’t know, or pretend not to know, that for thousand years evolutionary schools of thought have been questioning and researching on the Mystery of Death. Their aim is to make it, if not exactly a friend (will it be ever possible?), at least a less painful, more familiar fact.And if they don’t manage to reassure our race, at least they try to make us stronger. 

Mystery comes from the Greek word myein, that means to close. Mystery is what is closed. Ok, but what lies beyond that locked door? Because there must be something.

Can it be a coincidence that Egyptians wrote their Book of the Dead to help soul when passing away? And that Tibetans did the same? In the Far East some groups devote their entire life to prepare themselves to pass away when the Time comes.  Because the way we live is the way we die. How you do Anything, is how you do Everything.

It’s not about repenting because the end of the world is close, or asking forgiveness to God. This is not the point. Life has to be lived, enjoyed, built, shared with others, put at the service of others, used to build loving relationships, nice things, families, business, nations, persisting works… but also to understand how to die. It’s not for everybody, and not all are forced to understand it, but it is possible.  

Hundreds of mystery schools did it and made consciousness of the mystery of mysteries more accessible. Thousands of people had near-death experiences that changed them deeply and have started to tell about what they saw:  those who met the Grim Reaper come back different, those who glimpsed the tunnel of light and with their spiritual eyes saw the memories of their life go, can no more turn a blind eye.  They often start changing their own life, tell the others about their experience, they understand they are not their physical body and that something on the other side is hidden.

We struggle and work hard to achieve what we are interested in, i.e. our loved ones, a house, money, work, goals, help … or to offer what we wish to. But we close ourselves in the silence when talking about death or when Death is approaching.

Again, I am writing the word in capital letters to provoke, because, as stated before, Death is the only master we cannot escape.

Let’s treasure the Eastern and Western mystery and philosophic schools that have developed theories and applied knowledge to help us know ourselves better in Life! Let’s listen to whom has something to tell about the experience that (almost) nobody would like to make and that, instead, we will all make….

Let’s express the greatest Thirst ever, i.e. to know what kind of experience awaits us once we have left our physical body. It’s a Thirst coming from our origins, it suggests it is hardly possible to have just one inhabited planet in an enormous universe and that human dimensions are more than the one we are used to see every day, which is linear and unvarying, predictable, based on birth, growth, evolution, decline and end. We are born in a dimension and at the same time we die in an opposite one, we decline on one side to grow elsewhere. And these dimensions are all connected!

Why do some wise men say that Life is a continuous exercise to learn how to die? Because we die the same way we live. Exactly like “as we think, so we speak”. Our death is the mirror of how our life has been.

That’s a paradox, but leaving a full and aware life is the best way to better face death. Learning in Life the meaning of being active, aware, productive, loving and generous means to arrive at the end and be aware and active when the moment of our passing away comes.

We will face it better, with less pain and not feeling guilty or leaving behind unfinished projects. We will leave stronger and more peaceful descendants, thus helping our entire race not to weaken one generation after the other but to acquire instead the Scale of Values that in the meantime, IN LIFE and then AT THE MOMENT OF DEATH, we will have created.

And this regardless of the spiritual dimension we will then access: a reincarnation, a celestial sky or a Nothing of Light. Whatever the spiritual dimension, we will have reached a higher level in our evolution and in the evolution of all the Spiritual Beings walking, like ourselves, on this path through Matter, something that, sooner or later, we will have to understand and transcend.

Zvetan Lilov
Blogger Rebis Group

Translation by Graziella Cella