If you were to ask a Buddhist what death is like, and they answered honestly, they would tell you that they don’t know, but that they believe they have been through it many times. If you ask them how they feel about it, and if it again they were honest, what you would probably get is a mixture of anticipation, anxiety and acceptance.
For most people, the fear of death is what keeps them alive, but barely.
Because as humans we tend to emotionally connect so many things to our fear of death. For many people, the fear of public speaking is almost worse than their fear of death, because an imagined failure speaking in public represents the death of their ego, and a wound to their sense of self that they believe they cannot survive.
Yet for some, the death of the ego is a step on the path to the realization of self.
For some, the fear of bankruptcy is tightly bound to a fear at the death of their self-respect, their own sense of their place in the world and how they are viewed by others. Yet for some, a bankruptcy would be viewed as merely an opportunity didn’t work out. It’s not personal, it’s just a product of the situation and the outcome of chance.
Whether or not we tie any outcome to our fear of death is actually a choice, but it is one that most make so subconsciously that they don’t realize there is an option.
Someone who I respect highly recently made the comment that unless it is fatal, all ‘failure’ is just a psychological benchmark. It took me a while to break that down, and understand that he is actually right. Unless something actually kills you, all it did was violate a set of beliefs or “rules” that you have in your head about how the world operates, and your place in the universe.
So much of our “reality” is just simply the set of rules or beliefs that we have accepted without question.
And many of these acceptances occur when we are so young that we really don’t have a language or an understanding to question them. We just go blindly through our lives following a philosophical map that was likely given to us by well-meaning people who hadn’t yet figured out that that map had been given to them by well-meaning people, who had received that map from well-meaning people.
I once read that Dogma (religious or philosophical) is merely the beliefs of dead people that you haven’t had the courage to question.
And if you know me, questions are everything.
In my work as a coach, I am often faced with the daunting task of helping somebody realize that the outcome they are “afraid of” is not in fact the death of anything, other than some psychological or philosophical map that they had in their head. I frequently ask people “What’s The Damage?”, and with the right questions, and a significant amount of kindness, we journey together through their beliefs, helping them understand that they are more than they thought they were.
And that the “little death” that they were afraid of, was really just something they were afraid to let go of.
As human beings we cling to just about everything. We cling to relationships that barely meet our needs. We cling to a job that sucks the soul out of us slowly, immeasurably, imperceptibly. We cling to the beliefs and attitudes that were passed down to us not because we have examined them, but because we are too afraid of the “death” of all that is familiar.
We are often too afraid of the death of all that is “right” that we spend most of our time being wrong.
Make no mistake, the real death we should be worried about is the death of the joy of life, the spark of passion and the moment of wonder. The death of connection with another human being, the death of the good opinion of ourselves.
Because in the end, death will come for all of us. The only thing that will matter is how much you let go of so that you could really enjoy who you are.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings