Why do you suppose most people are afraid to die? Yeah, I know. Not you. You’ve got it dialed in. You’re not afraid, you’d just rather it wasn’t today, or it wasn’t painful, or it wasn’t a burden to those you love, or you didn’t have to suffer. Most have their own conditions on death.

It’s common. It’s also fear.

Regardless of what we say, any time we add conditions to life, ways to make it seem more embraceable, our versions of what’s constitutes acceptable and unacceptable, we’re already in the weeds.

Why is it that most of us want to tell the world, or just ourselves, that we aren’t afraid?

Well, it’s easy to understand if you look back at our primary training grounds. Being afraid was more than frowned upon. If you smelled the least bit like fear, those around you pounced. Coward! Mommy’s boy! Sniveling rat! Do rats snivel? I don’t think so. Kids can be so mean. Meanness is common when we are afraid. Arrogance is too. They are shields we use to keep ourselves from leaking fear.

You can see it in our politicians if you look closely — not just the left or the right, but almost all of them.

When we are finally willing to admit we are afraid, the fear has a chance to move on, but as long as we hold it tight, suppressing it for all we’re worth, it is stuck like a fly on an unfurled roll of sticky tape.

As a world, we are in the stuck fly stage, but what’s interesting about that, is the mass of stuck flies are visible. They aren’t going anywhere. We can feel the stuckness if we are the least bit honest. We know something’s off. We can see our fly parts sticking to the bright yellow tape and if we’re ever going to break free, we’d better get to it.

Death is one of the big sticklers, perhaps the BIG one. It comes in all shapes and sizes, but the ultimate one, the one that hides primal levels of fear, is the closing curtain on this marvelous incarnation, marvelous whether it is overflowing with pain and suffering or just scattered with it. Either way, death awaits each and every one of us.

I think that’s why the rapture is such a big draw (you get out without dying), along with reincarnation (you get to come back), heaven (there’s something good beyond all this) and hell (those who I don’t like won’t be there with me) … all the standard escape routes. Surviving death is the undeniable (unless you’re so inclined) tug of religions. Religion is salve for the fear of dying.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work very well. I been around too many devout people as they met their deaths, to not see that belief alone won’t douse the fires of fear. All the beliefs in the world won’t undo the primal desire to live, won’t touch the touch of death when it comes, and yet, the churches of the world’s religions keep getting fat on the prayers and tithings of those who hope it will.

Hope gets in the way of seeing the fear. Slather fear with hope, and until it’s back in your face, it might just behave and hide in the shadows. To most, that feels better than standing face to face with it in the clear light of day. It’s still here. You still catch glimpses of it out of the corner of your eye. It doesn’t ever really leave, but it’s been sanitized, sterilized … maybe.

Funny, eh? No? Guess I’ve got an odd sense of humor.

Even atheism has its own get out of jail free card. I don’t believe in anything, therefore I won’t be disappointed. I won’t be let down. I won’t be left outside the pearly gates because there are no gates. Denial of a thing is still being at the effect of that thing.

As long as we side with the material world view, the world of separation, we will be afraid. There is no way around it. In that view, there is life and death, me and other, and all the stories we tell ourselves about it. We’ll call it all sorts of things to camouflage the fear, to prevent even ourselves from engaging it.

We may even start walking down the spiritual path, the non-religious religion. One is as good as another. There really is no bad. They are all life having its way with us. They are all life-lifeing in its crazy messy perfection. They are all choice-less choices. We are drawn to the honey that’s taste just right for us.

Where we get stuck is thinking ours is the answer, the way out, the path to salvation. It’s not. There is no escape, not even in death. I love the way we say, rest in peace, or rest in power, or simply ‘rest’ when someone dies.

In my experiences with death, and I’ve intentionally and unintentionally had quite a few, in my conversations with people who have died, who no longer show up here on planet Earth, rest is a totally inadequate word. I can’t tell you what word might be better because we don’t have words that express it.

I look forward to the next adventure whenever it comes, however it comes. Tears and grief may appear, but they are not for the one who has graduated from this planetary kindergarten, the Earth illusion, but for the ones left behind, for what you have lost, for what you will miss, for what you can no longer see.

If you can see the fear within that is wonderful. It is a precious step along the path to being truly alive. If you can’t, if you think I’m crazy and you aren’t plagued with fear, that’s wonderful too. Everything happens in its own perfect timing and it’s just not time yet.

Image: vectezzy.com

Amaya Gayle is the author of 6 books, the latest Actuality; infinity at play, published by New Saram Press. https://amzn.to/3Rd4CTY