This site shares Life-affirming meditations
that heal misconceptions about Death.
Living beautifully and dying beautifully,
Embrace Death as Birth
into limitless Life Awareness.
The vibrant aliveness Here-Now,
is the only place where we ever actually are.
Whether it is the personal death that awaits each of us,
or the inevitable planetary death in which the earth itself will be no more,
or even the end of the entire known universe,
death is the single reality that most clearly informs us
that the future is a fantasy
and that the person and the world
and everything that we have been so concerned about
are all fleeting bubbles in a stream.
We all know, intuitively,
that this bubble is not all we are,
nor are we some kind of lost soul trapped inside it.
The wholeness we long for is actually all there is
. The bubble has never been a solid, separate, independent thing.
Joan Tollifson
Death: The End of Self-Improvement
In my view, what happens after death is a flat earth question.
Worrying about what happens to us when we die
is like worrying about what happens to us if we fall off the edge of the earth.
People used to worry about that,
but their fear was based on a misunderstanding.
Just as there is no edge to the earth,
there is no actual boundary,
no edge where life begins or ends.
The things we are worrying about are all conceptual abstractions,
artificially pulled out of the whole.
Like the lines on a map dividing up the whole earth,
birth and death are artificial dividing lines on an indivisible reality.
Joan Tollifson
Death: The End of Self-Improvement
No one knows for sure what happens after death,
and I may be surprised;
but I assume that dying will be just like going to sleep or going under anesthesia. Conscious experiencing—
my movie of waking life and the experience of being present—
will vanish as it does every night in deep sleep or under anesthesia.
And, as in deep sleep,
I won’t be there to miss myself or my movie of waking life.
The fear of dying only exists during waking life,
and only as a fearful idea.
In deep sleep, the problem—
and the one who seems to have it—
no longer exist.
Joan Tollifson
Death: The End of Self-Improvement
What is death? A bogey mask.
Turn it around and you’ll see it for what it is.
Look! Now it can’t bite!
Now or later your body is bound to be separated from your spirit,
just as it was separated before.
If it’s now, what is there to complain about,
seeing that, if not now, it’ll be later?
Why is there such a thing as death?
For the cyclical perpetuation of the universe.
The universe needs not only the things that currently exist in it
but also those that are to come
and those that have already been and gone.
Epictetus
The Complete Works: Handbook, Discourses, & Fragments
It’s not death or pain that’s frightening,
but the fear of pain or death.
That’s why we approve of the line
‘It’s not dying that’s dreadful, but dying in disgrace.'
Death should therefore be the object of our confidence,
and the fear of death the object of our caution.
At the moment, we do the opposite:
we treat death as something to flee from,
while we’re careless, negligent, and unconcerned
in forming a judgment about it.
Socrates was right to call death and so on ‘bogeys.’
Epictetus
The Complete Works: Handbook, Discourses, & Fragments
What every man, whether he has patience or not,
has always expected is, of course, death.
But he knows this only when death comes …,
when it is too late to be able to enjoy it.
E.M.Cioran
The Trouble With Being Born
People are troubled not by things but by their judgments about things.
Death, for example, isn’t frightening,
or else Socrates would have thought it so.
No, what frightens people is their judgment about death,
that it’s something to fear.
So whenever we’re obstructed or troubled or distressed,
let’s blame no one but ourselves—that is, our judgments.
Epictetus
The Complete Works: Handbook, Discourses, & Fragments
It's dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly.
Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly –
it's the best advice ever given me...
So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly."
Aldous Huxley
Island
The subjective (more accurately termed the non-objective,
since it can have no definite characteristic,
which would make it an object) cannot die, since there is no 'thing' to dissolve,
and it cannot therefore be reborn,
nor, for the same reason, can it ever have been born at all.
Being non-objective
it is altogether outside the range of both birth and death,
which are phenomenal events subject to Time.
Nor can anything that is not an object be subject to time,
nor anything objective be intemporal.
The non-objective, therefore, suffers neither birth nor re-birth,
neither death nor re-death
(each repetitive event as ludicrous as the other).
Wei Wu-wei
The Tenth Man: The Great Joke (Which Made Lazarus Laugh)
Now, when a man with whom we have been united through various ties
leaves the physical world and passes through the gates of death,
at first there remains to us the memory of this man,
that is, a number of feelings and thoughts have arisen
as a result of our relation to him, and which we ourselves have experienced.
But since he passed away from us through the gates of death
these thoughts and feelings which united us with him,
now live on in a very different manner.
While he lived with us here on the physical plane, we knew that at any time,
in addition to the relation our souls had formed to him,
the outer physical presentment itself might also appear;
we knew that we could bring our inner experience to bear upon this outer reality of his. And if at any time by some means the man changed,
we had to expect that the feelings we formerly had towards him
would also change in one way or another.
We do not often think of the radical difference it makes
when suddenly, or even not suddenly, the moment comes,
when henceforward we can only carry in our soul the memory of our friend,
when we know, ‘Never more will our eyes see him, or our hands grasp his.’
The picture we formed of him remains fundamentally as already fixed.
But a radical change appears in the relation of the two people.
As has been said, it may sound trivial,
but it cuts deeply into the inner life in each individual case,
when a human soul which formerly impressed us from without
by means of its physical embodiments,
becomes nothing but a memory.
Rudolf Steiner
The Forming of Destiny and Life after Death
There have been more troubles caused by birth than by death.
We do not always like to think that, but it is true.
So never think for a moment
that it makes any difference to your daily experience,
whether you are living in this country or that country,
this side of the veil or that side of the veil,
for when the veil is torn aside,
we will understand the scripture,
“The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”
Never forget that.
Darkness and light are not two different things:
they are the same thing.
So, too, are life and death the same thing.
Joel S. Goldsmith
The Journey Back to the Father's House
Unrecognized thought is the daytime equivalent of falling asleep.
Each discursive thought is a mini-daydream.
Drifting off into mindless thinking
is how we end up sleepwalking through life—
and therefore death.
Saying “thinking” in our meditation
is therefore the same as saying “wake up!”
We wake up and come back to reality—
not to our dreamy visions (thoughts) about it.
If we can wake up during the day and be mindful,
we will be able to wake up in the bardo after we die.
This is what it means to become a buddha,
an “awakened one.”
Andrew Holecek
Preparing to Die
TO SAY GOODBYE
Music & Lyrics by Nan Schwartz
HOW TO SAY GOODBYE
HOW TO LET YOU GO
WOND’RING IF WE’LL MEET AGAIN
IF ONLY I COULD KNOW
DON’T WANT TO SAY GOODBYE
WE’VE BOTH HELD ON SO LONG
BUT NOW I KNOW YOUR TIME HAS COME
AND SO I’M TRYING TO BE STRONG FOR YOU
IF THIS IS GOODBYE
YOUR SPIRIT WILL HAVE WON
YOU’LL SOAR AMONG THE ANGELS
YOUR STRUGGLES WILL BE DONE
SO AS I LET YOU GO
I ASK WITH ONE LAST CRY
PLEASE PROMISE YOU WILL COME TO ME
IN DREAMS THAT I FOREVER SEE.
YOUR SMILING FACE WILL ALWAYS BE.
THEN I CAN SAY GOODBYE
LET THE PAST DIE AWAY
NOW AT LAST FLY AWAY
ONLY WHEN, ONLY THEN
YOU’LL BE FREE…...
SO AS I LET YOU GO
I ASK WITH ONE LAST CRY
PLEASE PROMISE YOU WILL COME TO ME
IN DREAMS THAT I FOREVER SEE.
YOUR SMILING FACE WILL ALWAYS BE.
THEN I’LL KNOW THAT I CAN SAY GOODBYE
GOODBYE
GOODBYE…
In Loving Remembrance
of
Amy Elizabeth Bruno-Linder
1961-2024
When you get ready to die,
do not worry about the usual things,
like following rituals or taking care of everyday business.
Be prepared so that you can die in the best way possible.
Use all the mighty influence of those powerful strong minutes of death,
when a person exists partially in the other world,
and his words and deeds
have special power over those who remain in this world.
Leo Tolstoy
A Calendar of Wisdom
Dying people answer research questionnaires
to determine their quality of life,
but neither they nor most people around them
are willing to ask for quality of death,
or advocate for one, or make one,
or imagine quality of death as the last privilege of a dying person.
Stephen Jenkinson
Die Wise
When you have overcome the fear of death
you will have overcome death itself.
Do not ever think that anyone overcomes death
until he has overcome the fear of death,
until he can agree within himself,
“Living or dead, I’m still alive.
Living or dead, I can never be separated from the love of God,
so it is not important to me whether I’m alive or dead
because dead or alive, I’m alive in God.”
In that kind of overcoming, death has no power;
there is then no sting in passing from human sight.
By that time you realize that everyone has to pass from human sight
at least to make room for someone else to come along.
But passing from human sight is no longer a tragedy;
passing from human sight is no longer a source of grieving.
Joel S.. Goldsmith
The Journey Back to the Father's House
Questioner:
Yesterday I couldn’t sleep. When I was lying on my bed
I kept hearing sounds and seeing lights.
I was scared, sweating.
I thought I was dying.
Maharaja:
Whatever is happening is happening as it should.
Even if whatever you felt was dying actually was dying,
you were not dead.
Keep that firmly in mind.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Seeds of Consciousness
The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have always found that the people who have quite genuinely died to themselves
make no claims of any kind to their own part in the process .
They think of themselves as lazy and lucky .
If they did anything at all , it was so simple that anyone else could do the same —
for all that they have done is to recognize a universal fact of life ,
something as true of the weak and foolish as of the wise and strong .
They would even say that in this respect
there is some advantage in being weak and foolish ,
for the possession of a strong will and a clever head
makes some things very difficult to see .
Alan W. Watts
Become What You Are
Shamanism is closely related to death and dying.
The career of many shamans begins with a spontaneous visionary state.
This initiatory crisis, or “shamanic illness,” as Western anthropologists call it,
usually takes the form of a profound experience
of psychospiritual death and rebirth
and represents extraordinary experiential training for actual death.
After the experience of death, dismemberment, and total annihilation,
the shaman experiences rebirth.
He or she acquires new flesh, new blood, and new eyes
and ascends to the supernal realms.
Stanislav Grof
The Ultimate Journey
And now here I am living in this unimaginable world.
It feels really strange, and I can’t tell if I’m fortunate or not.
Maybe it doesn’t matter.
For me—and for everybody else, probably—
this is my first experience growing old,
and the emotions I’m having, too, are all first-time feelings.
If it were something I’d experienced before,
then I’d be able to understand it more clearly,
but this is the first time, so I can’t.
For now all I can do is put off making any detailed judgments
and accept things as they are.
Just like I accept the sky, the clouds, and the river.
And there’s also something kind of comical about it all,
something you don’t want to discard completely.
Haruki Murakama
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
And that’s my very promising job,
to find a way to oblige people
to learn something they don’t want to learn
and to learn it well and to learn it soon.
I have to teach people
how to love someone who’s leaving,
not someone who’s staying.
Nobody wants to learn to love like that.
Stephen Jenkinson
Die Wise
That white light you hear of people seeing during near-death experiences?
It’s love. Seen by “tired” eyes.
You sense both that it emanates from intelligence
and that in some uncanny way it is that intelligence.
You get that it knows you far better than you know yourself;
it understands you; it adores you.
Like a doting parent, times infinity.
This recognition, being so understood, is “heaven.”
You are the face of God as It’s never before been seen.
Mike Dooley
The Top Ten Things Dead People Want to Tell YOU
From a Dearly Departed
I’ve never cried as much as I have here. Or laughed.
I thought I knew what to expect when I died—
you know, either “God, judgment, a few deceased relatives”
or “lights out, game over, absolute nothingness”—
but I had no idea.
Nothing could have prepared me for all I’ve found.
How the whole world had it so wrong is beyond me.
If I had had just an inkling of the truth about life
and what I now know while I was alive,
things would have been so different for me!
Imagine living amid the all-or-nothing romance of time and space
while learning how to change what you don’t like,
add more of what you do,
and never be afraid of anything!
Where everything is so precious, ephemeral, and fantastic!
Where there is so much love, love, love,
everywhere, always.
Why didn’t I see it then?
Mike Dooley
The Top Ten Things Dead People Want to Tell YOU
Two conditions must exist
in order to classify a death as a suicide.
1. You must be aware of what you are doing—
that is, you must be making a conscious choice to die.
2. You must be making the choice to die
for the purpose of escaping, rather than completing, your life.
Neale Donald Walsch
Home With God
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE
Well, first of all, you won’t.
Which is all you really have to know about death
and why it’s the first thing “dead” people want to tell you.
Many of them found this hard to believe themselves at first,
gazing upon their own funerals,
lingering around their old stomping grounds,
stunned and amazed as they gestured and shouted to the friends left behind.
There’s an abrupt disconnect, of course,
that comes from leaving behind all things time and space
and learning to maneuver in the unseen.
The nature of this transition depends entirely
on the beliefs of the dearly departed at the time of transition,
because their beliefs and thoughts carry over to their new environs.
Mike Dooley
The Top Ten Things Dead People Want to Tell YOU
IF I WOKE UP
IN THE MORNING
AND NOTHING HURT,
I WOULD THINK
I WAS DEAD
Tourist T-Shirt
Virginia Beach, Virginia
All our feelings have significance
only in relation to their relative opposites.
While the human individual abhors pain and discomfort,
he would never be able to understand, let alone appreciate,
pleasure and comfort by themselves.
And yet, in his abysmal ignorance, he forgets this basic fact of life
and strives with all his might for pleasure without pain
and life without death.
Ramesh S. Balsekar
Final Truth: A Guide to Ultimate Understanding
I live without inhabiting myself
In such a way that I am dying
So that I do not die.
St John of the Cross
Why are you afraid of death?
Is it perhaps because you do not know how to live?
If you knew how to live fully, would you be afraid of death?
Life for you is sorrow, and so you are much more interested in death.
You feel that perhaps there will be happiness after death.
But that is a tremendous problem,
and I do not know if you want to go into it.
After all, fear is at the bottom of all this—
fear of dying, fear of living, fear of suffering.
If you cannot understand what it is that causes fear and be free of it,
then it does not matter very much whether you are living or dead.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti
I’ve often said to people that the way to really live is to die. The passport to living is to imagine yourself in your grave. Imagine that you’re lying in your coffin.
Awareness
Anthony De Mello
There is sorrow in death;
there is sorrow when you are looking forward to something, and it does not happen; there is sorrow when a nation runs down, goes to seed;
and there is the sorrow of corruption,
not only in the collective, but also in the individual.
… Sorrow has an ending,
but it does not come about through any system or method.
There is no sorrow when there is perception of what is.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti
Have you ever tried dying to a pleasure voluntarily, not forcibly?
Ordinarily when you die you don’t want to;
death comes and takes you away;
it is not a voluntary act, except in suicide.
But have you ever tried dying voluntarily, easily,
felt that sense of the abandonment of pleasure?
If you experiment with dying to little things—t
hat is good enough. Just to die to little pleasures—
with ease, with comfort, with a smile—is enough,
for then you will see that your mind is capable of dying to many things,
dying to all memories.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti
Death does not exist.
When that moment comes for you
to leave behind your physical body
and emerge from the density that you now understand,
there is nothing that could prepare you
for the exquisiteness that will be yours
at that very moment in time.
It will be a surprising delight.
Karen Peebles
Beyond the Other Side of Suicide
I remembered don Juan telling me once
that death might be behind anything imaginable,
even behind a dot on my writing pad.
He gave me then the definitive metaphor of my death.
I had told him that once while walking on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles
I had heard the sound of a trumpet playing an old, idiotic popular tune.
The music was coming from a record shop across the street.
Never had I heard a more beautiful sound.
I became enraptured by it.
I had to sit down on the curb.
The limpid brass sound of that trumpet was going directly to my brain.
I felt it just above my right temple.
It soothed me until I was drunk with it.
When it concluded, I knew that there would be no way
of ever repeating that experience,
and I had enough detachment not to rush into the store
and buy the record and a stereo set to play it on.
Don Juan said that it had been a sign
given to me by the powers that rule the destiny of men.
When the time comes for me to leave the world,
in whatever form,
I will hear the same sound of that trumpet,
the same idiotic tune,
the same peerless trumpeter.
Carlos Castaneda
Eagle's Gift
You came into the world with a cry—
with the very first breath you drew you gave a cry—
and many people spend their whole lives crying and protesting,
right down to the grave.
When, however, you understand that this present life
is only one day in your long life,
and that at the change called death
you simply disappear onto the next plane,
to come back again later on,
then the events of this particular life
appear in their true proportion,
and then you begin to have dominion.
The events of this life will not appear less important
because of your new knowledge,
but they will no longer intimidate you,
because you will know that you can control them.
No seeming misfortune will any longer have power
to break your heart or weaken your courage.
You will understand life
as the wondrous opportunity and the glorious gift that it is.
Emmet Fox
The Emmet Fox Reader
The so-called dead are very sensitive to our thoughts
for a considerable time after they have passed over to the other side,
and for this reason excessive grief is to be deprecated.
It saddens them and prevents their focusing their attention
as they should upon the new life which they are starting.
Of course, it seems very hard to tell people not to grieve
when one whom they have dearly loved passes out of sight;
but the fact remains that excessive grief is bad for both parties.
Emmet Fox
The Emmet Fox Reader
Some of us are born restless,
like misfits who are never satisfied
by the offers of religion, science, and philosophy.
Some of us don’t want
the comfort of conformity and tradition,
so we accept the quest for truth
as an individual journey
that mirrors the process of our own death.
Nevit O. Ergin, Will Johnson
The Forbidden Rumi
You are no longer concerned with where you fall,
your manner of death, the pain.
You no longer care, don’t feel the need to.
This is only the end of a night,
the last of your nights,
the culmination of your entire life.
Ending in this perfect fall.
All of it, everything, has been a flash.
You don’t understand it, but it’s beautiful...
Nukila Amal
The Original Dream
Today people think:
when a human being has passed through the gate of death,
his activity ceases as far as the physical world is concerned.
But indeed it is not so!
There is a living and perpetual intercourse
between the so-called dead and the so-called living.
These who have passed through the gate of death
have not ceased to be present;
it is only that our eyes have ceased to see them.
They are there in very truth.
Rudolf Steiner
The Dead Are With Us
Shamanism is closely related to death and dying.
The career of many shamans begins with a spontaneous visionary state.
This initiatory crisis, or “shamanic illness,” as Western anthropologists call it,
usually takes the form of a profound experience
of psychospiritual death and rebirth
and represents extraordinary experiential training for actual death.
After the experience of death, dismemberment, and total annihilation,
the shaman experiences rebirth.
He or she acquires new flesh, new blood, and new eyes
and ascends to the supernal realms,
Stanislav Grof
The Ultimate Journey
Time was never meant to be our enemy.
We have turned it into one,
by saying things like “I’m running out of time” or “Time’s up,”
which implies that human beings are trapped in the prison of time
with no chance of escape,
at least not until death reveals if the hope of an afterlife is true.
Eternity is timeless,
and when any religious faith promises eternal life, two things are involved.
One is the absence of time’s afflictions,
such as growing old and dying.
The second promise is much more abstract.
After death we become timeless.
Literally without time
in the “zone of eternity” where souls abide.
But why wait for an afterlife?
If time is an illusion,
we should be able to step out of it whenever we want,
simply by living in the present moment—
then the value of going to Heaven will be achieved.
Deepak Chopra, Menas C. Kafatos
You Are the Universe
According to Western neuroscience,
consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter,
a product of the physiological processes in the brain,
and thus critically dependent on the body.
The death of the body, more specifically the brain,
is seen as the absolute end of any form of conscious activity.
Belief in life after death, posthumous journey of the soul,
abodes of the Beyond, and reincarnation
have been relegated to the realm of fairy tales and handbooks of psychiatry
and are seen as products of wishful thinking of primitive or simple-minded people
who are unable to accept the obvious biological imperative of death.
This approach has pathologized much of the spiritual and ritual history of humanity. Very few people, including most scientists,
realize that we have absolutely no proof
that consciousness is actually produced by the brain.
Moreover, we do not have even a remote notion how this could possibly happen;
no scientist has ever attempted to specifically address
how the formidable gap between matter and consciousness could be bridged.
Stanislav Grof
The Ultimate Journey
Modern psychology has discovered
how powerful the birth trauma is to the individual’s life.
What about the “death trauma”?
If one believes in the continuity of life,
should one not give it equal consideration?
Laura Huxley
This Timeless Moment
So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long
and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song
for the day when you go over the great divide.
When it comes your time to die,
be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death,
so that when their time comes they weep and pray
for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.
~ Chief Tecumseh
(Crouching Tiger) Shawnee Nation 1768-1813
When someone dies,
feel free to continue the conversation,
but know that you are not speaking
to the limited person that you knew.
You are speaking to the essence.
Pat Rodegast, Judith Stanton
Emmanuel's Book III: What Is an Angel Doing Here?
You cannot imagine how many times
the swinging door of death has opened to receive you
and opened again to allow you to take birth.
The moment you are born,
you are anticipating the exit sign.
Tell a dying loved one
that the celebration is already arranged.
All the beings ever loved will be there at the greeting.
That is not some simplistic description,
but a limited way of saying “All is well.”
Fear is left at the deathbed.
If one is willing, it can be left now
by breathing a soft “yes”
into the fact of death itself.
Pat Rodegast, Judith Stanton
Emmanuel's Book III: What Is an Angel Doing Here?
British neurologist and Nobel-Laureate John Eccles
considered Impersonal Consciousness to be intracerebral,
and specified an area in the brain
where fusion of consciousness with brain takes place.
This region is called Supplementary Motor Area, SMA–
located at the top of the physical brain.
He also held that by a complex code,
the extra-celebral mind plays 50 million neurons in the SMA region.
Eccles believes that the non-physical mind
survives after the death of the physical body and brain.
This concept fits in perfectly with the spiritual concept
that is the Source–the Impersonal Consciousness–
which identifies itself with each body/ mind organism
and creates the separate entity with the sense of personal doership.
When the body dies,
the Consciousness identified with a particular body/ mind organism,
gets freed from the bondage of the organism
and becomes intermingled with the Impersonal Consciousness.
Ramesh S. Balsekar
The Relationship Between 'I' And 'Me'
The body’s transience inspires the way I work.
Biodegradability is a primary facet of my designs.
Wrapping the body in natural fiber is harmonious with death and decomposition.
When you consider life as a composition of notes,
everyone’s essence is a song.
Decomposition is our notes’ return to the bio-system
to be reworked into new compositions.
I use fabrication that won't hinder that process
and is palatable to the soil.
I think of the body as a gift that you give back to the earth.
You present the gift of your body in a beautiful wrapping
that life delicately opens and receives.
Pia Interlandi
Quote from Art of Dying Magazine, Volume III
Dying is the event for the remaining family and friends.
For the dying person, their evolutionary path is the event —
crossing the bridge into another dimension.
I’ve found that as the physical body declines,
the spiritual activity increases.
Consciousness is still in the body,
but they're starting to have out-of-body experiences .
They talk with deceased loved ones.
I let them know they’re in a safe space.
They’ll smile and say, "I just saw was my husband."
I'll ask, "How did that make you feel?
Are you looking forward to seeing him again?"
I don’t challenge their experience.
Susan Buhlman
Quote from Art of Dying Magazine, Volume III
Now, you can always decide, you can ALWAYS decide
to not incarnate again.
You could allow the life you are living right now to be,
in a sense, linearly speaking, the last life you will have.
You do not necessarily have to be
what you might call “the most spiritually awakened being on Earth”
in order to allow yourself to realize
that you may wish to explore and grow and learn in other dimensions,
and in non-physicality as well.
But you do not ever “have to” incarnate.
Never.
Bashar
The water of life is slipping through your fingers,
any moment and death may strike –
and you are trying to solve metaphysical puzzles?
“Who created the world?
Whether anybody created it or not?
Who is God?
What is his form?”
People go on constantly discussing, debating.
It seems they are avoiding something through these discussions.
They are avoiding existence.
They are trying to remain occupied in something
so that the reality of life and death is not encountered.
Osho
Nirvana: The Last Nightmare: Learning to Trust in Life
"God is not mysterious.
Sometimes God is frightening and horrible, distorted and bizarre.. .
but in the end, God is God,
and the Angel of Death is very much God,
come to take you home.
"The uninitiated see the Angel of Death
as a horrible, grotesque, distorted, terrifying figure,
but to those who are initiated,
who have died before they died,
the angel of death comes as a lover...
beautiful, seductive and compelling...
awe-inspiring, breath-taking.
"Breathtaking beauty-to take the breath-and the breath speaks,
`Let me return into thee."'
E. J. Gold
THE GREAT ADVENTURE: Talks on Living, Dying, and the Bardos
Death is not traumatic to the dying.
One moment you are alive and then you are not,
and there is little difference except you are free.
Do not anguish over what seems to be
the circumstances of sudden and chaotic death.
In truth, there is no such thing as “chaotic” anything,
and death itself is always most pleasant
to those who have died.
Pat Rodegast, Judith Stanton
Emmanuel's Book III: What Is an Angel Doing Here?
The World is afraid of dying,
I find bliss in dying.
Kabir
Ram Dass has said that it is hard for us to be with a dying person
until we learn how to see what is eternal,
so we can be there together as souls.
It’s simple, but it’s not easy.
A dying person needs you to be fully there, just being,
listening for what is needed with love and kindness
but not trying to impose ideas of how to die.
Just being what he calls “a loving rock,”
appreciating that you’re here,
that you’re two human beings on the edge of the mystery,
and that you can share your truth together.
You are not your roles.
You are two souls.
This is it.
Ram Dass, Mirabai Bush
Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying
Dolphins, I learned from J. William Worden
of the Harvard Child Bereavement Study at Massachusetts General Hospital,
had been observed refusing to eat after the death of a mate.
Geese had been observed reacting to such a death
by flying and calling,
searching until they themselves
became disoriented and lost.
Joan Didion
The Year of Magical Thinking
Never the spirit was born;
the spirit shall cease to be never.
Never was time it was not;
End and Beginning are dreams.
Bhagavad Gita
Then I looked down and watched the progressive disappearance of my body.
Oh no! I must be dying. I need my body!
Panic mounted.
But then an intimate voice asked very quietly,
‘But who’s minding the store?’
I realized that although everything I knew myself to be was gone,
I was still fully aware.
This awareness was watching the whole drama.
The awareness was wise;
it spoke the truth.
I was one with it.
When I realized this,
I felt a profound calm I had never experienced before.
That which I am is beyond life and death.
All I could say was,
‘I’m home, I’m home, I’m home.’
Ram Dass, Mirabai Bush
Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying
The body, like a mother,
is pregnant with the spiritual child;
death is the pain and stress of birth.
All the souls that have passed over to the next life
already are anxiously waiting to see
in what state that proud spirit will be born.
Yahiya Emerick
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Rumi Meditations
We do not come from dust,
nor do we return to dust.
We come from life,
and we are the conduit into other life.
We come from and return
to incomparably amazing plants and animals.
Even while we are alive,
our wastes are recycled
directly into beetles, grass, and trees,
which are recycled further into bees and butterflies
and on to flycatchers, finches, and hawks,
and back into grass
and on into deer, cows, goats, and us.
Bernd Heinrich
Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death
William Blake said to his friend Crabbe Robinson:
There is nothing like death.
Death is the best thing that can happen in life;
but most people die so late
and take such an unmerciful time in dying.
God knows ,
their neighbors never see them rise from the dead.
Neville Goddard
Awakened Imagination
We should let dead people look like dead people.
After sitting with a dead person for a day or so,
you can see the changes.
You are genuinely convinced that that soul, that personality,
is not there anymore.
It makes it a lot easier to tuck that person into the earth
and say goodbye.
In think it’s harder to bury somebody
embalmed to look like they're alive.
Ellen Macdonald
Quote from Art of Dying Magazine, Volume III
Dying in peace really means
living our waning days as well and peacefully as we are able
with the assistance of compassionately offered and sensibly applied medical treatments—no less and no more.
Dying in peace pertains to the months, weeks, and days of our demise,
during which we likely will seek and need to manage medical treatments
so as to obtain their benefits
yet keep from getting dragged into dying situations
we know we wish to avoid.
Bart Windrum
The Promised Landing: A Gateway to Peaceful Dying
Living (existence) is a spatial illusion,
while dying (non-existence) is a temporal illusion.
When the light of consciousness gets shut off,
we no longer exist
because we are no longer elaborated in space
and extended in duration.
But as what we ARE
we have never lived
and we cannot die.
Ramesh S. Balsekar
A Net of Jewels
The death-warning had nothing dismal about it for her;
no, it was remission of exile,
it was leave to come home.
Mark Twain
Joan of Arc
Don Juan commanded me to relax
and abandon myself to my death.
He said that I had to remain in there until I died
and that I had a chance either to die peacefully,
if I would make a supreme effort and let my terror possess me,
or I could die in agony,
if I chose to fight it.
He said that the energy I needed
to accept my terror was in my middle point,
and that the only way to succeed
was to acquiesce,
to surrender without surrendering.
Carlos Castaneda
Eagle's Gift
During our lifetimes,
we generally pay a lot of attention to our bodies,
but rarely think about what goes with us when we die.
We cannot, of course,
take any physical or material aspect of our lives with us when we die.
It is only the consciousness that goes with us.
It is also only the consciousness that experiences suffering
or, more accurately, is able to perceive the experience of suffering.
Most importantly, it is the consciousness itself
that can be transformed into wisdom during the dying process.
The majority of the time we are focused
on maintaining our physical body and material environment.
Anyen
Dying With Confidence
When one leaves his body in awareness consciously,
he can easily set the future course for the life within.
One who can witness this moment of transition
gets to glimpse and perceive life in ways
that might not otherwise be available to him.
As this transition is like a twilight zone,
you get to view it being away from both life and death.
The various yogic practices are designed and structured
to bring about this profound glimpse.
It is for this purpose that in many cultures of the world
the last moment of life or the moment of death
is considered very important.
Cheryl Simone, Sadhguru
Midnights With the Mystic
Lessons Learned About Sudden Death
A sudden death requires a different grieving process
than one that has been anticipated.
The grieving process may take longer to go through
when the death was sudden and unexpected.
The trauma associated with grieving a sudden death
is akin to PTSD and should be treated as such.
It is useful for a family to get therapy together
and for the surviving spouse or parent to also get individual help.
A grieving person needs emotional support,
not just financial donations,
especially if their loved one died suddenly.
Pat Miles, Suzanne Watson
Before All Is Said and Done:
Practical Advice on Living and Dying Well
Tantra believes in burning your inner light.
And Tantra says that with that light,
the past simply becomes irrelevant.
It never belonged to you.
Of course, it happened,
but happened as if in a dream
and you were fast asleep.
It happened, you did many things,
good and bad,
but they all happened in unconsciousness
, you were not responsible.
And suddenly everything of the past is burnt down,
a fresh and virgin being comes up –
this is sudden enlightenment.
Osho
Tantra
The conditions of life after death
are almost infinite in their variety,
but they can be calculated without difficulty
by any one who will take the trouble to understand the astral world
and to consider the character of the person concerned.
That character is not in the slightest degree changed by death;
the man's thoughts, emotions and desires
are exactly the same as before.
He is in every way the same man,
minus his physical body;
and his happiness or misery depends upon the extent
to which this loss of the physical body affects him.
Charles Webster Leadbeater
Works of Charles Webster Leadbeater
Remember that if there is a link of love
you will certainly meet again,
and that nothing that is good, or beautiful, or true,
can ever be lost.
On this plane we often see our friends or our dearly loved ones
go away to live in a distant country
knowing that we shall not see them again for several years—
and death is really nothing more than this.
Emmet Fox
The Emmet Fox Reader
Where there is a strong sense of bereavement;
or where the survivors are left in tragic circumstances,
the dead person will of course suffer acutely.
As a matter of fact, the so-called dead
are very sensitive to our thoughts for a considerable time
after they have passed over to the other side,
and for this reason excessive grief is to be deprecated.
It saddens them and prevents their focusing their attention
as they should upon the new life which they are starting.
Of course, it seems very hard to tell people not to grieve
when one whom they have dearly loved passes out of sight;
but the fact remains
that excessive grief is bad for both parties.
Emmet Fox
The Emmet Fox Reader
You are not the victim of the world you see
because you invented it.
You can give it up as easily as you made it up.
You will see it or not see it, as you wish.
While you want it you will see it;
when you no longer want it,
it will not be there for you to see.
A Course In Miracles
The great earth burdens me with a body,
forces upon me the toil of life,
eases me in old age,
and calms me in death.
If life is good,
death is good also.
Zhuangzi
Simon Critchley:
The Book of Dead Philosophers
Birth is the entry to phenomenality.
Death is the exit from phenomenality.
All that requires insight is:
Who is born and who dies?
Or better stated:
What is born and what dies?
Wu Hsin
An Interlude in Eternity
Find out what it means to die -
not physically, that's inevitable -
but to die to everything that is known,
to die to your family, to your attachments,
to all the things that you have accumulated,
the known, the known pleasures, the known fears.
Die to that every minute
and you will see what it means to die
so that the mind is made fresh, young, and therefore innocent,
so that there is incarnation
not in a next life,
but the next day.
J Krishnamurti
Life and death should not be considered as opposites.
It is closer to the truth to speak of dying
as an entrance rather than an exit.
What the doorway of death offers
is a resurgence of tremendous vitality,
for you are entering from what could be described
as a watered down version of life
into the thing itself,
the vitality of the primary reality.
Pat Rodegast, Judith Stanton
Emmanuel's Book
It’s hard to be put in the position to play god
and make the decision to end a kitty’s life,
but our cats know we’ve always done the best we can for them,
and they harbor no ill will toward us when we make this difficult choice.
We do what we have to do,
and then life just continues on.
We have to remember the good times
and not get too pulled down into the sad.
Because neither the good nor the sad can be changed anyway.
They trust us and know we are doing what is best for them.
I imagine it's a relief to be a cat
and not comprehend death
nor think about not being on earth anymore.
It’s just another nap in the sunshine,
falling asleep
while the person they love pets them.
Take care, Nova.
Sam Rosenthal
shared upon the passing of his beloved cat, Nova
https://blacktapeforabluegirl.bandcamp.com/album/stellarpurr
Dying is the most important thing you do in your life.
It’s the great frontier for every one of us.
And loving is the art of living as a preparation for dying.
Allowing ourselves to dissolve into the ocean of love
is not just about leaving this body;
it is also the route to Oneness and unity with our own inner being,
the soul, while we are still here.
If you know how to live and to love,
you know how to die.
Ram Dass.
Walking Each Other Home:
Conversations on Loving and Dying
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