It is said that every death awakens us to all the other deaths we have experienced, and in doing so encourages us to assess ever more deeply our commitment to our self. Not just who will we be or die trying, but also how’s it going? I find that to be the case, and in fact have experienced it very recently by the death of our horse of 10 years, Cierra, a mighty force in her late 20’s whose arthritic joints would have made the coming winter cruel to endure.
From out of the ether I’m visited by everyone I can recall who is no longer in body. Mostly this occurs because I deliberately try to remember them as part of my process of assimilating this most recent death. Among the rewards is discovering new reasons to be grateful that I knew them in the flesh, even people from whom I kept a wide birth, or punched in the mouth, like Eddie Ogden my freshman year in the seminary 60 years ago.
I feel such gratitude that I’ve reached a point in this incarnation where there’s not a single person I can recall, living or dead, who has not enriched my life. I’m not a saint, but I am Self-focused, as saints tend to be. I want to be happy. I want a peaceful heart. I want to respond with love to whatever life presents. I want to experience the ultimate nature of things. And I’m willing to do whatever I must to pursue these aspirations––give up anything, make room for anything.
And somewhere on the road to decade eight in which I now reside, enjoyably contemplating my own death, I realized three things––not intellectually, but from experience:
- My state of mind is entirely the result of how I define reality. No one has ever made me happy or miserable.
- When we are able to hear the collective sound expressed by every particle of existence, we will hear a polyphony of voices rejoicing.
- Awakening my conscious appreciation of these two realities––and sharing what I’m learning with others––is the purpose of my life.
My history with my dead ones is ornamented by choices that have given me the creeps, and still do at times. I’m grateful that somehow, despite my resistance, those choices have become sacred teachers. And among the things I’ve learned from them is that creepiness is just something else to love.
Deaths are so precious.
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Sharing my discoveries and welcoming yours is the purpose of this little playground. I hope you’ll add your voice when it feels right.
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