The big enchilada we need to deal with—really get our arms around—is death. Even if our lives were no longer filled with our many little mini-dramas, in the end, physical death remains. And it’s a mystery. An unknown. No matter how much you think you know, it’s all conjecture. It’s our fear of death that creates the world of duality, this reality we live in. The one that says No to our longing for total fulfillment. Yep, death is a problem for us. So we need to deal with it directly to break its grip on us.
What we sometimes do is take the calming words of a spiritual teacher—one who has gone before us and seems to know the way—and try to apply their ready-made answers to our lives. Why doesn’t this work? Because if these answers aren’t yet true for us—personally—they’re going to fail. We each have to arrive at them using the strength and courage that can come only by fearlessly facing our own issues.
Trying to go the avoidant route happens due to our fears and weakness. People who are religious will sometimes cling to their faith because of this type of fear. We won’t even let ourselves imagine what it could be like to experience pleasure supreme on all levels of our being. In fact, we may even think of “divine bliss” as something that would be dull, sterile and uninteresting. Believe it or not, all of this is wrapped up in our confusions and fundamental fear of death.
We may think that what we really long for is the state of serenity we were in, back in our mother’s womb. That things have really gone downhill ever since. But it actually goes back further than that. We each have imbedded in us a vague memory of life in another state of consciousness, when we knew nothing but bliss without anything opposing it.
We can recapture that, by degrees, while we are here. But as we work through our issues that block us from our inner happy place, we are sure to encounter the world of duality. To go through this level, we come face to face with our fears, with everything “bad” that opposes the “good.” And that’s how we come right up against that big mother of them all: death.
Listen and learn more.
Learn more in Holy Moly, Chapter 6: Facing Death & Finding Life
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