Our time here is short.
This human life we’re living is subjected to linear time and space, of a definitive length, specific to our soul. We have no control, knowledge or ability to foresee how long or short that time and space is. We cannot predict when it will end, just like we don’t predict when it starts.
We arrive and we depart. This is all we know and the only certainty we have.
The topic of death is not a topic freely discussed in our society. It is a source of fear for many, with contemplation often happening on the reflection of our death bed. If in fact we are graced with time when dying.
Death is often more difficult for those left behind, than those dying. It is those we leave who struggle with our absence, try to make sense of their loss, grieve our physical presence missing from their life and feel confusion how to move forward without us. The fear of loss is as active as the fear of our own dying. In modern society the fear is self-focused, not on the person dying’s life.
By the time we die death is upon us and there is nothing we can do to stop it. However, the reality is we die as we live. Not only in the sense that from the moment we are born we begin walking towards our death, but in the sense we die as we actively live. On a more regular basis than we consciously realise.
Each time we make change in our life. Each time we alter our life, our being, our relationships, our circumstances, our lifestyle, our career or education. Anytime we experience change – we are actively dying. We are farewelling a part of ourself, letting it go and beginning again. It is the birth of something new. Birth is only possible after death, and each time change occurs in our life we experience death.
Many of us fear death, which makes sense in the context of change and why so many of us fear it, resist it and fight against it in an attempt to prevent it. Yet change is as inevitable as the sun and moon always being present in our sky. Like death we have no control over change.
We can make choices that bring about change, but how that change unfolds we cannot control. If we interfere it may temporarily alter the change afoot, but ultimately change will unfold as intended, not as desired or forced. Like the sun and moon’s presence – we can alter how we see it, but we cannot control its existence and presence. It just is. Life too, just is.
We can spend a lot of time and energy fearing change as we do death. It can feel easier and more comfortable to avoid change and maintain our hold on life as ‘it is’. What occurs though is a fight to hold on, energy poured into maintaining the normal, rather than allowing the flow and freedom of surrender. So fixated with maintaining the ‘norm’ we pour enormous energy into being ‘normal’. We do things, choose things, focus on things that we believe and are told are the ‘normal’ things a human does.
We actively choose change, and thereby death while living, in order to belong. Often we do these things to be loved and accepted by the world around us. Yet all of this is external to us as the unique souls we each are.
None of us are the same. We may share similar traits, interests, passions and interests as others, but we are never exactly the same as anyone else. So why do we try to be? Why do we die time and time again in the goal of meeting external standards? Why do we invest so much of our time and energy in meeting the expectations and criteria of that external to our self?
It is an unattainable goal we will never achieve when we measure ourself by the external. Why do we waste our time trying? Why do we invest so much time in dying while we are living?
We can travel excessive distances to try and achieve the norm based on external expectations. When we ignore our internal desires, needs and values and replace them with those of others we get trapped in the hamster wheel of unattainable goals. If we use external influences as our guiding post we will never be:
Successful enough.
Skinny enough.
Fit enough.
Beautiful enough.
Wealthy enough.
Intelligent enough.
Available enough.
Healed enough.
We will never be good enough in the eyes of the external world, in ANY area of our life. We will always fall short.
So why do we try? Why do we invest so much time, energy and resources trying to meet the standards, dreams, goals and expectations outside of ourself?
On our death bed do we want to be remembered for when we were our youngest, fittest, smartest, healthiest, wealthiest, most beautiful and successful? Or do we want to leave our life knowing we lived free of the burdens of ‘normal’ and aligned fully with our heart, having lived the deepest desires of our soul with its fullest expression of its essence. Essence unique to us. Do we want to die with joy in our soul because we lived an aligned life of meaning to us? Or do we want to die with regret that we didn’t meet the expectations of the external?
Before we know it,
at a time unknown to us,
we will meet with our death and the end of this human lifetime.
When that time arrives will you fear death and be filled with regret at what you didn’t do? Will you be concerned with how you did or didn’t meet the external expectations of the world around you? Or will you have peace in your heart knowing you have listened deeply within you, unconcerned with the expectations or judgement of others, and pursued your time-limited human life from the place of your inner knowing. With the freedom it offers and unconditional love it gives you?
Do you want to be remembered by those you touched as living fully from your heart, or as having tried to please the external world?
Change and death are not to be feared. Fear is the illusion of our soul truth and strips us of our personal power. In flow, death and change are the greatest homecoming to ourself we can experience while we are living. Deeper connection to our inner life gives us freedom in living as well as in our final death.
How do YOU choose to die while living?
What legacies and gifts do you want to leave for those who will come after you?
What if the answer is to give our self compassion and non judgemental acceptance of our self exactly as we are. Is compassion not self-love, possibly the hardest, yet greatest, success we can achieve in our human lifetime?