Fear of Death

Here it is, the last day of the calendar year. If humans are going to mark the progress of time, it seems to me that we should use planetary events as our guide. Therefore, I prefer to think of the winter solstice as being the dividing day between old and new year and not midnight between December 31 and January 01.

I am presently reading through Joel S. Goldsmith's book, Beyond Words and Thoughts. It is available for exorbitent amounts of money from Amazon.ca sellers. I found my copy in a wonderful Victoria bookshop called Russell Books and it was extremely affordable being less than $5. Russell Books is on Fort Street and is one of the places I visit whenever I am downtown in Victoria. They sell used and new books and carry a huge selection of metaphysical, spiritual, and new age books. Anyway, it turns out that Beyond Words and Thoughts is the perfect read for me at the moment as it addresses some of the spiritual issues I am wrestling with: a good bit of the book is about surrendering to the universe which is something I am not always good at and need to improve upon.

Today's reading is about the fear of death and overcoming it; how even those of us who think we are not afraid of death or say we are not afraid of death, actually are. Many years ago, I had a dream of another past life. What was so interesting about this dream, despite the fear I experienced during the dream, was that it took place in the final hours before I was killed and continued for a short time as I experienced the first few moments of death from that life. In this dream, I was a young man living in England, and based on my dress, it took place about five centuries ago. I knew I was to be executed the following day for something I never did. I spent my final night experiencing a gamut of emotions and thoughts ranging from terror to disbelief, to hope, and back to terror. At one point, I became curious and logical about death, realizing that it happens to everybody eventually and this caused me to wonder what it would be like. Just before I died, I was filled with choking grief because I suddenly realized that there were all sorts of experiences I was looking forward to having and now I would not be able to have them: an important lesson that I have tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to apply to this life; finding time amongst my duties for activities I am passionate about.

Right after I died, I found myself floating in the air in a state of such peace that there are no words to describe it. Imagine being totally free of all emotion and thought. At one point, I had the idea to look at my dead body, but I had no care for it. I couldn't even remember the name that people called me by when I was attached to my earth body. It was many years post-dream before I finally understood just how necessary and influential the human body is when it comes to experiencing emotions: according to the experience in this dream, once I was no longer connected to a physical body, I was unable to feel fear or love and I certainly didn't care about anything. I am certain that the emotional vacuum that attended this experience and the lack of a physical body were the reasons why I felt so at peace. I think I now understand why people become addicted: it is an attempt to recreate what it feels like to be free of the physical body.

Even though I have had this dream and believe that it revealed a truth to me, and have had several OBEs that were accompanied with the same experience of freedom and lack of any emotional feeling, I occasionally fear death. I suppose that the fear is more about dying before I feel ready to go as I am convinced that if I were truly suffering, I would be thrilled to get out of here. However, I cannot imagine using suicide as a solution to a problem as I don't think it solves anything and could even set one back a bit in one's evolution towards enlightenment. This is probably a lesson I learned in a past life and I believe that if somebody really wants to commit suicide, they are entitled to so that they can learn that it is counterproductive. As I work with ideas of non-duality, meditate, and figure out which aspect of me is the eternal part, I am beginning to sense a division between something about me and my ego or fictitious self and I am sure that as this evolves, I will overcome any fear I have of death and attachment to the body and life on Earth.

I guess that this reading from Beyond Words and Thoughts is appropriate for today as some people would say that this is the death of an old year. How phoenix-like and cyclical.

Namaste