We are all afraid of death. Yet when we meet this fear and clearly face the reality of our personal end, we have a supreme opportunity to discover what our lives are being lived for. When we don't flinch from the reality of death, then the inevitability of our end serves to focus our attention on what is truly important to us. Death becomes the ally rather than the enemy that haunts us.
Take a few moments to imagine you are in the last hours of your lifetime, and look back over your life. What has it honestly, essentially been about so far?
From the perspective of the end, why in fact has it been important to you to survive? If you made or didn't make a name for yourself, when the last hours are here, what was your life really about? When all possibilities for success and fame, failure and disgrace are finished, what is your life really about?
These questions are relevant for you now, before you are in the last hours of your lifetime. If we wait until the end of our lives to ask the most important questions of our lives, we waste our precious gift of time. A gift that is over too soon anyway.
When we are willing to meet our own death, we gain strength and resolve to live our lives in ways that support what is truly, finally important to us. We decide how our lives will be used, and what they will contribute to. We stop obeying others' notions of what should be important to us and find out for ourselves what is important.
The responsibility that results from discovering what you want your life to stand for is not burdensome. It is light with the spaciousness of freedom. A free life is free no matter what the apparent constraints may be, and these questions can be asked whatever your particular circumstances are in this very moment.
If you want your life to be a beacon of love, where do you find that love?
If you want your life to be an avocation of peace, how do you live?
If you want to know the Truth, what can stop you?
What do you want your life to be about from this moment on?
What supports that?
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Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,
if this is the time.
Do it gently with the touch of a hand, or a look.
Every morning I wait at
dawn. That's when it's happened before.
Or do it suddenly like an execution. How else can I
get ready for death!
.
In the face of your own death, you are achingly alone, piercingly alone. And in 'unflinchingly' meeting this silent gaping void a rare opportunity arises, as you say, '...to focus our attention on what is truly important,' and deeply inquire into, "When all possibilities for success and fame, failure and disgrace are finished, what is your life really about?"
Perhaps in this fleeting moment of inquiry, you can see, really see, beyond all notions of meaning, that your life is the flowing perfection of something so pristine, so indescribable, so vast, it renders it immaterial whether you are aware or not of this silent perfection. And in seeing beyond all concepts of 'success and fame, failure and disgrace,' you can discover for yourself a deep an abiding fulfillment.
No oceans can rush your tides, when you know, transcending all knowledge, that your treasure can never be lost and that regardless of what you did or didn't do in life your treasure is always Here.
In That you can piercingly see, achingly see, that you are never alone! Wow!
Love to you...
Jill
Let go of that thought and experience that we are never alone, never separate.
So beautifully said! Thank you. :o)
Love to you...
Jill
These words are so valuable. As social animals we tend to reference our behavior according to what we think is appropriate and acceptable. That is valid in many situations but when it comes to what Really matters there is absolutely no reference possible. In my experience there is the invitation to even and maybe especially give up what we ourselves Imagine to be important. We all have ideas, subtle and gross, of what will bring us fulfillment. In giving up All ideas, all notions, generated inside or outside of us, the possibility is to open to what is Already Here. Good News, very Good News.
It is the unexpected, unearned absolutely unlimited silent Love and Intelligence of my own Being that Matters to me, now and at the hour of my death. Come what may.....
We can not open, if we are afraid. We can not be free, if we are not open.
How are we able to Love, if we are not free? We can't.
I do want my life to be a beacon of freedom and love.
I do want to live peacefully and for that to be what is transmitted through my everyday actions and choices.
I know this is possible because it is true in my life. I consciously choose to love, to live for loving, and to receive the blessings that are offered every day - and they are bountifully offered in the very fiber of life itself!
Look as if you will find it - Because it is here, it is! It is actually who we are. And there is support for this life of love - all around.
Look for it, it is here, truly, really, right now!
To accept, that we don't know anything, we only think that we do. ;))
Just because we think or believe something to be so, doesn't mean it is the truth.
To stop inventing our own Reality, our own Dream!
No matter how good the bullshit may sound, it is still the bullshit. Bullshit still stinks and draws flies.
To be free - to let go of all attachments, including all opinions, thoughts, concepts, and believes. To let go of the past and all struggle, resistance, fears, wants, and desires. We can never possess anything anyway - nothing can belong to us. Nothing!
Simply stop trying to be and you are free! ;))