It doesn’t matter if you are black or white, red or blue, able to pay the bills, squeaking by or living in a tent, life on planet earth will eventually break you. The only difference is how long it takes before you truly grok the fact that no one gets out of here alive and actually let it all the way in. Most live their lives under threat of death without fully acknowledging it, without seeing the high cost of such foolishness.   

Everyone has their own way of dealing with the silent killer. Many radical Christians are betting on the rapture, something that was invented in the 1800s and isn’t even in the Bible other than by slanted interpretation, by hopeful escapists. For them, it’s a better bet than having to die to get to heaven.

The spiritual (mostly left) have a different version, ascension, the shift to 5D, another escape, a way not to die, and avoidance tactic to skip past the boogie man called death.

Others think their money will save them (there’s a reason there is never enough), or that leaving a legacy, a name on a building, or names on many buildings, currency, passports, history books will take the sting away. Hey, it is a type of immortality.

Death is coming for each and every ‘body’, physical or heavenly, for the moon and stars, the earth and the other planets in the cosmos. That which begins, must end. It’s part of the gig here in 3D.

There is a mystical saying that few understand and that even fewer actually grok. (Grok, not merely learned in a detached instrumental way, but assimilated into your very being.) It’s quite simple but impossible for the separate person, for the one who believes they are a someone, to enter into relationship with. Four little words: Die before you die.

The saying was originally attributed to Sufi mysticism but it has been hijacked by many mystics without khirqahs or hijabs. If you were to die while breathing, while still in form, you would realize that death as we think of it doesn’t exist. It would be more real to you than the body you experience as you. You would see that nothing is real, and yet everything magically seems real. Yes, the body drops but that which is infinitely alive, that which experiences through the body, could never die, for it was never born. It is that which is without beginning and quite naturally, without end.

But, the mind, the mind that still believes in its body, its identity, that still clings to life like an octopus tentacle on a glass pane, will never know what beckons, that death truly is nothing to fear, that life and death are part of the wonderful simulation. Because of that suction, that unwillingness to release the pane, death will always be something to fear, that is, until you actually die.

Most say, I don’t fear death, but that’s a lie, a sweet self-protective lie, but a lie, nonetheless. It seems to make it easier to be here, to live with a death sentence hanging over your head. Until you actually know, actually experience what this is, fear remains even when it is hidden beneath scripture, when it is transformed into heaven, when it is delayed with access to the latest tech. Eventually death’s hard cold reality will butt heads with whatever story you’ve bought into.

My mom was a strong Christian woman. She was one who actually walked her talk, but when it came down to dying, fear was still there right beside her. She was ready to go, was angry when she woke up and was still in form. Ever since her last stroke, she had access to the tunnel of light. It was just over her right shoulder.

I asked her why she didn’t just dive in and go home, and at first, she wouldn’t tell me but I’m persistent. There were snakes outside of the tunnel and they scared her. She didn’t know how to enter the tunnel, to get around them. The snakes were what she saw as her unatoned sins. They were the embodiment of fear.

No fear of death? Wait until you are struggling to breathe, when you are down to the last little bit of oxygen in the tank and the power goes out, or when the cupboard’s been bare for way too long and you’re out of options, or when that truck is barreling towards you and you have nowhere to go, or like me, are sitting on the couch with shocks rolling through your body, shocks attuned to the lightning outside, crashing through your body each time the sky lights up, and you have no idea if you will be alive in the morning. And then, tell me you don’t fear death.

It’s primal. Even when we have come to grips with it mentally, we haven’t yet come face-to-face with the primal instinct for survival. It lives within everyone. No one is immune. It is the root of fear, the reason we unconsciously do things we would never consciously choose to do. It silently drives us, pushing us closer to the edge, making us snap and pop like a bowl of Rice Crispies.

Because of this, I am in awe of humanity. We are born into bodies and are mostly functional. I always wonder why we aren’t curled in a ball screaming in the corner. Maybe it’s because we are really good at fooling ourselves. Denial wears the mantle of friendship. It appears to be our buddy, but it is a grand trickster.

Sure. it makes it possible to go about daily life without feeling and looking like a crazy person. It helps us fit in, making us appear to be somewhat normal, mostly acceptable humans, but it also steals the peace that is uniquely ours when we slip past our wards, our protective charms, when we tear down the concrete walls between us and death.

This isn’t speculation. I know the fear I write about. I know its levels and depths, its stickiness, its sly tenacity. I also know how it feels to be free of the shackles, to neither desire to live, or want to die, to be here in the middle of whatever is appearing.

I thought I had met death, had died before I died, when my beloved Kenny went through his five years of cancer and I sat in the darkness of unconsolable grief. I hadn’t, not until the death I faced was mine, until I no longer genuinely absolutely without a doubt cared if I died, until I left this body and saw the unreality of reality.

Living with a death sentence, ignored, denied, or rewritten, is a harsh price to pay. It steals more than our peace. It steals aliveness itself. It’s like we live in the shadow of death, and the joy and happiness we experience is but a shadow of what’s possible. We miss the lived sense of calm that exists within every storm. Instead of a very ordinary bliss, this simple presence, we are pulled into the winds of change, fighting for our lives. With death unmet, we are not truly alive.

It doesn’t have to be that way.