No matter how hard I try, I cannot recall what it was like being dead. I know that I
was, but I have no idea what it was like. I was actually dead for a pretty long time
too. Based on what I’ve been told, I was dead for between 13.7 and 13.8… billion
years. Regardless of whether we want to admit it,
we all fear death. The awareness of our impending mortality is one of, if not the most influencing
force on our experience of life. The things we do, the thoughts we have, the feelings
we experience. Everything is driven by both our unconscious nature to stay clear of death,
and our conscious awareness of the fact that at some point, we will have to face it.
Our bodies and minds are mere rentals, gifted to us by the universe for a vacation of conscious,
physical existence, and at some point, they must be returned. The place in which they
return to, however, is the same place in which we received them from.
Whatever that experience of no experience was before I was born. The 13.73 billion years
of time, energy, and matter that I can’t recall or describe. The thing that I manifested
out of and the thing that I will dissolve back into. I have already experienced it.
You have already experienced it. We have all already experienced it.
Even if you believe that your spirit, soul, energy or whatever else you might call it,
is infinite, than its infiniteness must go both forward and back. If you believe in an
after life, than in principle, there must be a before life, because if you end up somewhere
after physical, conscious form, than you must have come from somewhere before physical,
conscious form. And if you argue that you must be born physically to access an after
life, you are declaring that you must be a physical entity to access a nonphysical thing,
which completely folds in on itself. Arguably, no matter how hard we might try to paint a
picture of something different after this life, there appears to be no way around the
idea that in terms of personal experience, whatever came before our life is what will
essentially come after. This means that you have been dead before.
You know what it is like. To your conscious, subjective self, for lack of better terms,
it is like absolutely nothing. This nothing is not the sort of nothing that we typically
consider nothing to be. It is a nothing that we cannot describe, understand, or recall.
A subsistence far beyond our consciousness and sense of self. Something that doesn’t
require either, and thus to our consciousness and sense of self, it is nothing. This nothing,
however, is not scary. Before you were born, you were perfectly fine with this nothing.
Perhaps more fine than you can even fathom. Being dead is not scary. The conscious thought
of dying, without being at terms with it, is scary.
Naturally, coming to terms with our mortality is extremely difficult. We rarely ever discuss
or address it at a level of self-honesty and vulnerability. It is rare that death, in any
real sense, comes up in conversation and it is rare that we ever deeply meditate on the
fact that we will all die sometime in the relatively near future. However, it is essential
that we do confront the thought of death regularly and honestly. “By becoming deeply aware
of our mortality, we intensify our experience of every aspect of life,” writes author
Robert Greene. No matter what we do to veil or distract ourselves
away from the awareness of death, the awareness will continue to buzz inside of us. When we
do not address and embrace the buzzing, it only becomes louder and more intrusive. It
causes us to feel intensifying levels of anxiety, aversion, and disorientation. Instead, we
must learn how to live with this buzzing and transmute it into the sound of life itself.
We must accept death as an essential part of life.
Doing things the second time around is almost always less intimidating than the first. So
if we consider the idea that we have already experienced what it means to be dead, and
come to terms with the fact that we will experience it again and be totally and utterly ok, than
death becomes easier to face. Easier to reduce our fear and apprehension towards.
To reduce our fear of death is to crack open the door to life itself. We become more openly
mindful of it and, consequently, more inspired to do things that are interesting, exciting,
and fulfilling, rather than being stuck in a cycle of wasting time, feeling anxious,
and latching onto material distractions. At some point, we will lose our ability to
experience things as we know them. Like it or not, that is the condition of our human
experience. If we wish to make the most of our human experience, instead of living in
spite of its conditions, we must accept them. Like a vacation to our favorite destination,
we should not let our awareness of the trip’s end date, ruin our vacation. Fore if a vacation
went on forever, it would no longer be a vacation at all.
Against all odds, we were given the opportunity to go on this vacation. To experience nature
perceiving itself. Ironically, our fear of losing our ability to experience this is what
can ruin our ability to ever actually enjoy it, and we mustn’t let this happen and squander
such a gift. More than death itself, we should fear never
overcoming the idea of death while we are alive. We should fear not appreciating life
and death for what they are… while we can.