October - November 2001
...then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
-- John
Keats (1795-1821)
The Crest of the Paradox
So the real issue behind so much of the turmoil we experience
in life, it would seem, is death. Death is our silent partner.
For some it is "my only friend / the end" (Jim Morrison
of The Doors), or at least a source of comfort that the pain
and struggle we experience in this life is, fortunately, temporary.
For others, death is a game of defiance, or a continuous dare
that keeps life interesting, because nothing else can do it.
Some are so enamored of its power that they either kill or threaten
to kill as a way of gaining personal power in an otherwise futile
experience of living. Nazis, warmongers, many sport hunters and
serial killers number among them.
Others are enraged that the one thing they seem to possess
will be stolen from them, and mount campaigns of greed and hoarding
against this inevitability.
For many, the thought of the pain approaching death is far
worse than the notion of actually letting go of life. For others,
like Keats, the fear surrounds the idea that death will take
him "Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain." It
did.
For some, death represents the continuation of life, a journey
back to the place where we started. It may be that we go to heaven,
hell, bardo, the white light, the blue light, summerland or whatever
your personal mythology holds. I have heard enough recountings
of near-death experiences to be reasonably certain death is a
transition, and that there are worlds beyond our own; I have
sufficient awareness of my own previous incarnations, and of
people I have known in those times, to sense the continuous nature
of life. This is not always reassuring.
There are people who seem to understand that death is simply
part of a process of nature. Not all of them are happy, or free
from fear.
Many suppress all thoughts of death because its rituals (particularly
American style) are morose, ugly and lonely. As John Prine sings,
"Please don't bury me / down in that cold, cold ground."
(He also suggests that they "Give my stomach to Milwaukee
/ if they run out of beer" and while we're at it, "Give
my heart to the junk man / and give my love to Rose.")
It is said that for even the highest Yogis, fear of death
is one of the five clacias, or almost insurmountable attachments
of incarnation.
For many people, death presents an inescapable sense of dread,
which comes with the fear of consciousness being blotted out
and, as a result, the idea that life is meaningless. It is possible
to be quite dead and still exist in one's body, walking in the
world in utter loneliness, afraid to live because living means
confronting dying. Or, because living means surrendering to love,
which is tantamount to death.
Clearly, we live in some relationship, however conscious,
to our ideas about death. Our ideas about death form the basis
of our ideas about life, thus entering our relationships with
people. If we are holding a grudge, or live in secret terror,
this will easily taint our experiences of people and theirs of
us. Our attitudes around death are what I would call master values,
an underlying foundation of thought that supports much else that
we think, believe, expect, desire, need and seem to know.
I would propose that a similar conception of reality around
death is one of the most important values that people can have
in common in a relationship. What we call "spirituality"
is often a representation of our beliefs about death, and relationships
in which spiritual values are out of alignment are likely to
be off-kilter on the meaning of many things, including that of
our ultimate fate: Do we possess a soul, does that soul live
after the body dies, and does that soul remember anything?
For one who lives in a conscious relationship to his or her
soul, how fulfilling can life be with one who steadfastly denies
theirs? But moreover, A Course in Miracles suggests that
it's only when two people share a common understanding of God
that their relationship will be free from the ravages of death's
terror.
Death tends to do three things in life, the first of which
is present us with a mystery, intriguing or terrifying as it
may be. But we must accept the fact, on some level, that we don't
know for sure, while wondering what happened to people we knew
who were so alive when they were here. Another is that it shows
up symbolically, as loss, transition, change and "ego death."
The third is that it masquerades. One of its favorite symbols
is the death of love; one of its favorite masquerades is jealousy,
though both remind us of the inherent transience of our current
experience and relationships.
But somehow, we cannot live fully unless we are in a conscious
relationship to death. We cannot love fully taking another person
for granted, or merely taking advantage of them; embracing love
means that each person we share life with is a rare, precious
and temporary gift, perhaps pointing to the eternal. Death is
an awareness that puts our choices and experiences into perspective,
and reminds us to live and to love while we have the chance.
In doing so, we ride the crest of a daring paradox. Such existence
is a kind of continuous orgasm: beyond control, yet also beyond
fear.