 "You haven't changed a bit," she says. "You look great." "Thanks," I reply, "I feel good." But I wonder to myself if she knows the truth. The truth is, I am dying. "No, no!" I imagine her uneasy shift when I tell her. "You look great. Really!" "Maybe so," I say, "but the proof is overwhelming." In fact, I've been dying since the day I was born. "Are you sure?" "I'm sure," I tell her. "There's no getting around it. I've tried denial. It doesn't work. The body knows it is giving ground, that death has been a part of it all along. The mind, too, knows that what passes through it, passes on." "But you're healthy and strong," she protests. "Today, yes. Tomorrow, a little less. This mortal shell isn't mine to keep. It's a loaner, and the lease is aging. When I have to give it back, I want to be ready." "You're making me nervous," she says with a flinch. "Let's change the subject." Did you flinch a little too? Why do you suppose that is? Honestly, people are funny, Americans in particular. I think we were born with an extra gene: the make-believe-is-real gene. It even comes with a mantra: Don't rain on my façade. None of us is oblivious to death, of course. But as long as we're alive, death is that which happens only to others. We regard it more as a sudden event than a process. Consequently, we tend to ignore its presence until, in failing health, we end up cramming for peace of mind just as we crammed for exams in our school days. What are we afraid of, a sudden plunge into the vast unknown? No doubt about it. Death, as pictured from here, is the ultimate foreign soil, driving us to xenophobic extremes. Having no snapshots of its terrain to attract us, we incline to presume that its features are stark and severe. As a place to refresh, it's a tough sell. Death is entered in nakedness, alone. We are swept into its realm unsupported by the countless props that reinforce who we think we are: our families and friends, our collected things, our résumés, our names. Death reminds us abruptly that we are not, and never were, the portraits of ourselves that we project. This game we play is strange, to say the least. Although imagination is one of our celebrated strengths, we use it mainly to practice self-entrapment, inventing ways to snag ourselves on hooks of worldly obsession. Catering to our anxieties, we press for material comforts, financial cushions, career titles, and countless other ego-driven rewards. What could be less prudent? Comfort and ease invite the very attachments that extend our delusions. They prevent us from dealing with why we are here and in what condition of spirit we will depart. By trying to escape or numb the tribulations of our lives, we do nothing to reduce the number of karmic encounters that yet await us, encounters that must be met and resolved before any meaningful comfort can occur. Looking back on my 56 years, I am struck by the huge preponderance of time I've devoted to devotion-less living. With corporate ladders to climb and territories to claim, I was quick to postpone the care and feeding I needed more than these. Even now, the neon lure of egocentric pursuits is often stronger than my fickle, fledgling power to resist. The truth is, as Kriyananda has noted, spiritual sincerity is not a door that one can readily open when, in this house of mirrors, one remains engaged in the bounce of its reflections. Ascended masters have counseled us that patience is the shortest route to God. In hearing this advice, however, we seem to interpret "patience" as "procrastination." Not that we are inactive. Quite the opposite. But instead of using these precious years to probe and embrace the inner, eternal wonders of our being, we mostly spend them chasing visions of permanence that ever and again dissolve. Putting off the work of connecting to grace, we race for mortal gains. Until, that is, we perceive that our days are few. Until, despairing, we die unprepared.
I hold in my hand the everywhere neverlasting. I see in my head the dance of changing forms. Now is what I know. And then it is gone. Ever now. Neverlasting now. Now is what I know. And then I am gone.
In our defense, most of us are doing the best we can, and if we understood a little more, we'd succumb to fewer snares. But many of us, like it or not, are a bit like the great comedian W. C. Fields. A lifelong atheist, Fields was confined to a hospital room shortly before he died. When a friend came to visit one afternoon, he discovered Fields engrossed in reading the Bible. "Bill, what are you doing?" the friend asked in surprise. Fields answered in his drawn-out manner of speech, "Looking for loopholes!" Isn't that what most of us do in one way or another? We look for a means of escape from cause and effect. When it comes to accountability, America's national pastime is passing the buck. But the buck stops at mortality's last hurrah, and, instinctively, we know it. The trouble is, it is death instead of desire that people dread. We fail to see the connection: that dying is mostly a function of dying for more. To want is soon to need. And as the need demands, one devolves from free spirit to slave. Sadly amusing, don't you think? Everyone longs to be happy, yet nearly all of our feelings, beliefs, and behaviors lead us astray of the goal. Despite our vaunted intelligence, we appear to be compulsively engaged in an endless romance with regret. Sogyal Rinpoche, in his modern classic The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, condenses our plight into a single sentence: "We need to make a very clear distinction between what is our ego's self-interest and what is our ultimate interest; it is from mistaking one for the other that all our suffering comes." He explains that suffering has no objective existence. It is only our aversion to it that causes it to arise. It is we who give it power. It is we, by our fears and contractive logic, who attract to ourselves the hardships that consume us. Always, though, there is hope. After lifetimes of clinging fast to misery's wheel, flung outward from ourselves by its huge centrifugal force, we begin to see the futility and dare to loosen our grip. This process is one and the same, regardless of religious persuasion: it highlights and guides our gradual return to God. Along this inward path, death is redeemed of its dark perception, and accepting it becomes the key to discovering how to live. The peace we long for comes from letting go. That is the lesson of death. And the beauty of it is, we don't have to wait to die to gain its worth. Jesus, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, said, "He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." In other words, those who persist in worldly preoccupation — in their ego's self-interest, that is — are destined to remain in delusion, losing the chance to move beyond its material limitations. Delusion dissipates only as one overcomes the pull of desires — in the transforming silence of meditation, especially — and breaks away from one's tether to selfish pursuits. Only then does one reap the ultimate freedom of divine reunion. In the ending lines of his beautiful prayer-poem, St. Francis of Assisi takes us back to the truths we tend to forget. He beseeches his Lord to "make me an instrument of Thy peace," concluding:
For it is in the giving that we receive, It is in the pardoning that we Are pardoned, and it is in the dying That we are born to eternal life.
What are we afraid of, a sudden plunge into the vast unknown? Not if we get to know it while we are here. James Conti is a freelance writer who lives at Ananda in Lynnwood. He was recently a member of a pilgrimage to Ananda Assisi, spending time in the company of Kriyananda and visiting many of the places made holy by the life of St. Francis. |