The Fear of Death

"Today you are alive and no one is beside you, but if tomorrow you were to die, many would come to see you.  Today you are alive and no one will give you a hug, but if tomorrow you were to die, no one would want to let you go.  Today you are alive and no one will give you a rose, but if tomorrow you were to die, they would send you bouquets and wreaths of flowers.  Today no one pays attention to you but when you die you will be popular for a full day.  They will post pictures of you on social media saying how much they love you, how special you are to them, and how they can't live without you.  Today you are alive and they make you cry, but if you were to die tomorrow everyone would cry for you..."

This is one of my favorite short poems.  There have been no truer words said.  Yesterday night I was talking to a dear friend of mine who can see the energy of spirits forming their image.  I had sent her a picture and she said that there was one hiding behind my door.  I was not surprised since in my years of spiritual practice I have come to sense many of them.  She said that this particular one almost looked like Death.  I said to her: ohh great!!! they are finally taking me!!! I am done with whatever my purpose of being stuck in a human body is.  It will finally be over and I am finally going home!  Happy Dance!!!

I decided to post that experience on Facebook, there was obviously a reason for it because to tell you the truth I already know how humans react to the idea of death.  It was not quite clear to me why that inspiration had come, until this morning.  I woke up to the song Over the Rainbow playing on my phone, I usually fall asleep to healing music every night and the loop of it continues until I wake up.  It has never been so that this song plays on the loop I have set up, but it did...  This song used to give me goosebumps because the person who wrote it, wrote thinking about heaven.  They were describing how home (heaven) feels, even though they didn't really say that out loud.  Most people know though, it is a popular song played when someone passes.  Anyhow, I went to check Facebook and sure enough, humans were commenting...

One of them had posted the emoji that is rolling their eyes, they know I am not afraid of death and that I am happy that this physical body I am in is not eternal.  But I know they don't like the idea of it and I know that they don't like to be reminded.  Then there was a friend of mine who is like a little sister to me, I told her to make sure to call me because I was leaving soon, she said I was being crazy...  Someone else was wondering what was going on... And then there was one that was probably the most irrational one, it was someone who only interacts with me on Facebook.  I don't speak to this person outside of my Facebook posts but for some reason they said they did not want to say goodbye to me yet.  That one started to irritate me a little because the physical absence of my body would really have absolutely no impact in their life, they don't even know who I really am, even though they think they know because they know one of my biological parents, but neither of my biological parents know who I am.

I stepped back from all that, grounded myself because feeling negative emotions means I am allowing my human self to take over too much, and then I smiled and laughed.  Humans are so afraid of something they don't really know about.  I was immediately reminded of a meeting I had last Friday where we all mentioned that with technology we have created this idea that our human bodies have to live forever, and if they don't then we feel this extreme pain.  It used to be that people died a lot more than they do now; I say a lot more because there were no treatments for a lot of diseases that would have extremely shorten a person's life but know there are.  Now, we are used to going to the doctor and getting a pill, a treatment, something to make that illness not progress as quickly.  We want people to live, we want to save them.  It can be seen as a noble idea but more often than not, it is a selfish one.

I have gotten into arguments for saying that, but I know I am not the only one who thinks that way.  I have been lucky enough to meet people in the past few months who see it for what it is.  A friend of mine and I were chatting the other day and she was explaining that her grandmother keeps going through surgeries she does not want only because she wants to make her children happy.  Of course, none of her children see that she is suffering and she is ready to go, they just keep pushing her to keep living.  I told her that I could not find one person who could give me a logical explanation why someone should keep living when they are in pain, the only reasons they could give me was their own selfish ones.  The person should live because there are many people who would miss them.  What about the people who still need them?  What about how their family will feel?  They are not thinking about anyone but themselves when they are thinking they want to die.  It was all emotional responses, I said to her.  Her answer was that someone should live because there are things they still want to do while in physical form.  I said yes! Someone should live because they want to continue to live, not because of what anyone else wants.

It is true, in the end the dead person is no longer suffering.  The dead person is free and the only ones who suffer are the ones who remain alive.  I wondered why this phenomenon happens because to tell you the truth most of the people who cry and suffer for the dead person did not even spend enough time with that person to feel that way.  Their physical presence was more than likely not something they experienced on a daily basis and therefore the idea that you would miss them to me seems irrational.  I now bring you back to the beginning of this post... the best reason I can come up with and the one that fits perfectly is REGRET.

Regret is one of the things that humans carry with them on a daily basis.  We are all always thinking that we have tomorrow to make decisions, that we have tomorrow to change something, we have tomorrow to talk to someone, we have tomorrow to spend time... And then when that tomorrow takes that someone or something away, we feel sad because we are hit with the reality that we don't really have that much time.  It is funny because every time someone dies, that is the mood of the funeral or memorial but then the very moment the funeral or memorial is over we go back to the same way of thinking.  It is why I don't like them.  I was taken to one last year and every one of the persons who knew the diseased would say something great about her and then would add how life is short and it should be enjoyed.  How we should cherish those who are still here with us and be grateful... I know that the majority of them went on after that to live just the same, until someone else dies at which point they will all say the same things.

Isn't it amazing though? Humans fear death because they fear loss, but they live their lives as if they will never lose anything or anyone.  They keep away from the people they love and who love them because they think they will all have tomorrow to enjoy it with them.  They stick around toxic people because they think they will have enough time to change their lives and enjoy it later without them.  They put themselves in situations that will require an extreme amount of effort only because they think that they will have time to enjoy themselves later.  They overwork themselves because they think they have time to enjoy the fruits of their labor later.  They get careers in fields they don't want because of the same thing... And then eventually it catches on to them that they didn't really have enough time.  Illness kicks in, death comes to visit, and suddenly it feels like all of it was time wasted.  Regret sets in and pain usually follows.  But God forbids we actually acknowledge every day that our physical lives are short and we actually take the time to let those we love that we love them.  Take the time to spend it with them, to enjoy them... We won't, we won't because even though we know we have short lives and that they could end at any point, we still deceive ourselves into thinking that we do have time.  That those we love will wake up tomorrow and we will have another opportunity, so it is ok to sit and think about doing that today without actually doing it...

We can get rid of the people who don't fill our lives another day, today is ok to answer them out of respect and out of courtesy.  It is ok to do the things we don't like today because tomorrow is another day and we will definitely have an opportunity to change things.  The truth is that we are not even promised the next second of life, so we should take the opportunity now.

Why am I not afraid of death?  Because I have taken the time to let those I love that I love them.  I have ensure that I did everything I could to spend the time with the ones I love.  I know I have done everything in my power to be there and to do the things that bring me joy.  Even though some of them have not wanted to be there or spent time, I made myself available because that is all I could do.  I have enjoyed every moment I have lived, even the bad ones because I have learned from them.  I have fallen many times but I learned, got up and kept going.  I left the bad taste of it behind and took with me the lesson which in turn helped me grow and do things better as I continued.  So, when the time comes I will go happily... I will go happily because I lived the way I wanted.

Why should we be at peace with our mortality?

There are two ways to look at life.  The first one is as if every day you are given one more day to live, thinking that if you knew for sure this was your last day, how would you want your last day to go? Would you want to be happy or would you want to let things bother you?
The second one is seeing this day as one less day to live.  One day closer to the blissfulness that awaits us all when we pass. In this case, if you are one day closer to that blissfulness why not be happy about it?  Why not enjoy that you are almost done? Why not celebrate?
In either case none of the things that happen today will matter, so why let them bother you?
To me it does not matter which one you choose, each of them should be respected by others.  Unfortunately, that is not always the case.

In the process of ascension, one of the things we learn is to be at peace with our mortality.  To accept our mortality and that of others fully.  Spirit once said to me that only those who stay alive are the ones who suffer, everyone else is free.  I wondered what exactly Spirit meant by that and then I had a few people around me who lost someone they loved, each of them were devastated.  Everyone was crying, everyone was remembering all the things that they didn't do with them.  Everyone would point out how we all have very limited time and we should be happy that we are alive.  The misery that came from every death was astounding.  I couldn't understand because to tell you the truth, whether you believe in Spirit or not, when it comes to death... It is just an ending... It is the end of every bit of suffering, every bit of pain and so that person was not suffering anymore so why be so miserable that they were gone? Why not be happy that they are now free?

In my belief, the only thing that dies is our physical body and nothing else.  The physical body though is just a vessel to carry the energy that we are.  That energy is released and freed when we "die".  That energy goes back to the source of all life, to a place where there are no bounds.  And that place is the most amazing place ever.  It is a place full of peace and love; a love that no human could ever understand because it is a love that no matter what you do, you are worthy of.  And with this belief I started to realize how bad I just wanted to be there, how ready I was to go back to this place I call home.  The first time I felt this it felt bad that I wanted to go, it felt like I was resisting and everyone around me, those who are not as awaken just made the feeling be even worse.

Eventually I stopped saying anything, I just kept waking up saying to myself: "You have one less day here, you are almost home, you are almost done" and those words made me keep this joyous feeling alive, it made me smile.  Everyone else was oblivious to it, they didn't know why I was so happy but I felt like I couldn't tell them because as soon as I did I would fall from my happy place.  They would all start to pull me down with their words and their lack of understanding.  Some of them would even stop talking to me, not realizing that more than likely when I actually do go home they would end up talking about how much they wish I was still here.  They would all start saying how much they missed me, but none of them would ever acknowledge that when they had me here, they pulled away out of fear of losing me.  It will all then be very hypocritical because the time to be around, the time to talk, the time to enjoy is now.  It is not tomorrow, it was not yesterday, it is today.

Two days ago I let people pull me down from that, as soon as I said I was ready to go home they all started to give me reasons why I was supposedly still here, why I needed to stay here.  Oddly enough all the reasons that they gave me were based on the same reason they were saying I should not want to die--selfishness.  There was not one of them that said to me: "You are almost there, so don't fret" each and everyone of them said something like: "I am happy that you are still here" or "I don't like it when you say that because I want you to still be here" or my favorite "There are people who still need you to be here".   It is pure selfishness, the same selfishness that they throw in someone's face when someone says they don't want to be here.  All those statements are about them, they are not about me, they are about how they feel and what they would feel when I am no longer in physical form.  It is not about caring about me, it is caring about them.  It was not respecting the things I wanted, but only making sure that the things they wanted happened.

It used to bother me that they didn't understand, that they didn't get it.  It was frustrating that they didn't see how selfish they were too by putting themselves before someone they say they care about.  I asked Spirit why it was that I was so bothered by this, why is it that I wanted them to understand so much.  And then I realized that I was putting too much weight on the things that people who are unable to understand my path (they really don't have to) are feeling.  You see, I am not here to make anyone feel better.  I am not here to control anyone else's feelings.  I am here to guide some of those who are open to learning, those who are open to understanding of a different way of seeing things.  I am not here to push anyone to believe any different, I wish people could respect what I believe more but I also know that I can't make them.  And so my other job is to not let them affect me, what they want and what they feel is not my concern.  Giving guidance does not mean the others will do as what they are being guided to do, no matter how much you would want them to.

So what next? Since I realized that most humans are not capable of being at peace with their mortality, I have also realized that the more I point it out, the more of those people who are not in alignment with me will go.  The more of those people who don't really care will walk away, because they can't handle it and that is ok.  The relationships will evolve to something different and that will be amazing to watch and create.  It won't mean I love each of them any less either.  It will just mean that their actions, no matter how much I care about them, won't bother me.  It also means that I will not be afraid of telling them that whatever they feel about whether or not I am here in physical form or not, does not matter to me because they don't get to choose what will get me to my happy place.  They are not in charge of my happiness, I am.  And because I am in charge of my happiness, I get to choose how I get to that happiness, they just need to worry about how they are going to get to theirs.

So why should we be at peace with our mortality?  Because we are all going to die.  The sooner we come to accept and be at peace with that, the sooner we will start living life differently.  The sooner we will not worry about the things we can't control.  The better life will flow because then you realize that no matter how you look at life, whether it is one less day to live or one more day to live, what happens today will not matter when we are no longer here, whether we die today or in 30 years is irrelevant.  All we gotta do today is celebrate either that you are closer to your destination or that you were given an opportunity to do something different.  Either way, the goal is the same--to get happy.  Whichever way you choose to look at it is up to you, all the rest of us have to do is respect it.

On Death and Dying

Today I found myself saying: "It will be fine, in the end I will end up alive and well or dead and finally resting... Either outcome is not a bad one."  And then as the day kept going and I kept running around town getting things done, I started to think how there might be some people that would think of me crazy for saying such a thing, others that would think of me as someone that is extremely negative or just insanely depressed.
The thing is that those words came through to me with a smile on my face and with a weird calmness to it.  I really did not say that (or typed that) in a negative manner, I said it with a sense of feeling that at this moment in time I have no regrets.
I kept thinking how a lot of my friends will say to me that I am young and I should be praying to live another day and to have a long life and blah blah blah... But for me, I only keep asking the universe, God, life, whatever you want to call it, that if I am being continuously granted another day of life, to not allow me to regret anything that happens to me each and every day.  The good, the bad, the ugly... All of it has taught me something, I have learned and grown from each experience and because I have done so I can say at this moment in time with absolute certainty that I have no regrets.
In the past I have done my best with every situation I have been put through, I have given my best to those who I loved and I have said to each of them how much I love them and how grateful I am for them.
There are those with whom I was not able to spend as much time as I wanted to but I learned and accepted that those were things that needed to happen in that way in order for me to grow and learn.  I thought about my grandmother and how she is getting older and sicker, there was a time when I regretted that I am unable to go visit her because there are certain people who are selfish and irrational that have hindered my going to see her.  I used to get really angry at them, but now, there isn't anger, there is acceptance.  The same acceptance I have come to have about the one thing I will never be able to prevent, and that is my death.  We are all going to die, one day, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe we will be granted more days than we ever could possibly imagine to have, but we will all die.
We are mortals, our physical bodies are finite, and while I go through life adding more things to take care of and more weight over my shoulders that one person could possibly ever bear; I enjoy every single moment of bearing that weight.  I've enjoyed the pain and sorrow, I have enjoyed the anger, the happiness, the moments with the closest of friends, the moments I have cried and was unable to stop. It might sound crazy to say that I've enjoyed the pain, but the truth is that I have, not because of the actual pain but because of what I learned from it.
I've enjoyed each moment of silence, each person that has come and hurt me, and each person that has come and made me smile, each person that has come and left, those who don't seem to be physically around because either they passed away or are far away but that with just one thought I can bring them closer to me even when they don't think I am thinking of them.
I think I have given my best to this life, I have given each person, each situation the savoring that was needed.  And I have faith, I have true faith that things go exactly the way they are supposed to so that the big picture, the end result is true happiness and contentment, with that faith I realize every day that if I was to have to leave this plane of existence today it would be for the best of everyone.
I am ok with thinking this, with knowing this and accepting this, I have found myself ok with living on the right now for 90% of my time, which is a lot given that most humans like to live in the tomorrow rather than in the right now. I am ok with all of this because this has allowed me to not miss out on anything that life has to offer. I have enjoyed the lessons and the happy moments, so how could I possibly ever sit here and ask for more days to live so that I can accomplish more? Instead I ask that if tomorrow I get to get up, I don't forget to live in the now, and I don't forget to enjoy the now at least 90% of the now, to enjoy the pains and the lessons, because the day that I decide to constantly live in the tomorrow and stop living in the today I will become dead while still alive, my soul will then die and that would be worse than physical death.

Only one guarantee in life...

I guess I love pondering about life... I was making my daughter her dinner and suddenly I was thinking about something that most people really think of as a negative thing, death. Most people look at death as something bad, we tend to mourn, we miss, we want to not deal with it sometimes and yet death is the only guaranteed thing that you are given. We go through life thinking that we are guaranteed all these different things, in fact we even tell our selves that if we do certain things we will guarantee that we will get other things we want like if you go to school you will get a good job, if you do well and work hard you will earn enough money, if you save money you will be able to buy a house easy.
And yet none of that is really guaranteed isn't it? You can walk in and get a great job but then it does not matter how hard you work you just don't end up getting that promotion. You can save all you want but that does not guarantee that you will get to buy that house, things can happen that can change all of that. You can work really hard and the money might not end up being enough. Life is unpredictable, and I have learned that I am unable to guarantee anything that I once thought I could guarantee that would happen, but there is one thing I can guarantee to everyone I meet, I can guarantee that they will die. I can't say when, where or how, but one day we will all die.
I think everyone knows that, but we tend to not really be aware of it which is truly a pity because when you think about it, how would we live our lives if we knew exactly when we and our loved ones would die? Would we live them differently? Would we spend more time with them? Would our priorities change just a little bit?
See, the reason we think of death as a negative thing is because when someone we love dies we are filled with regret, even though we don't say it, we don't acknowledge it, we regret the time we did not spend with them. We regret that phone call we did not make, we regret not picking up the phone when they called.
I remember when my great-grandmother passed away, it was one of the saddest days of my life. She helped raised me and I had moved away to a different country, she would send letters sometimes with people that would come and visit, she loved when I would call her and talk to her, that used to make her day, but those calls were very few, one because they were expensive and the other reason was because I was busy trying to get ahead in life, trying to be someone important, someone that would make enough money so that I could get to do all the things I wanted. Then the day came and I was not even around to pick up the phone to hear that she had passed, I ended up receiving a text message from a third person who was telling me "sorry for your loss." It was probably one of the most horrifying experiences of my life and yet even after that, I just figured it was the pain of losing someone who had gotten me so confused and once I sort of got used to the idea (because you never really get used to it, it will always come up if you think of them) and stop thinking about it, I went back to doing the exact same thing, trying to get ahead, make money, be important.
I never realized that I was already important to one person, I was not only important to them but I meant the world to them and I was so busy working and trying to be someone that I completely dismissed it. It's funny how it was not until a few years ago that I realized how much of our life we waste on things that really don't matter in the end, we worry so much and put so much effort on acquiring things rather than acquiring moments. We dismiss the people that are around us that love us so much and to whom we mean so much because we get so caught up in things, that's it, just things.
And some of the things we get caught up in are not even things we enjoy, we go to a job we hate because we believe that eventually we will be able to move up the ladder and get a better job, with better pay. We go to study something we don't like because we think eventually that one piece of paper will guarantee us a good job, with good benefits, with good pay. We forget the dreams we had as children because someone told us that it was too hard to make them come true. We end up living to work and we forget that we are here to work on living. We set aside the ones we love and we replace them with things. Then when their time comes we regret not having spent enough time with them and we dismiss that by saying death is bad, it's negative, it's sad. The truth is that death is guaranteed, death is something every single person will go through, whether it is by their own doing, by someone else's doing or just by nature taking its course, everyone will die.
I feel that the day I accepted that, I started living in a different way, one where most times it feels like I don't really belong in this world because most people don't like talking about this, they say it's too negative and too depressing and maybe that is true for them but for me, it is more depressing to see how much people miss out on because they think they have one more day to live. I see it every day, the moments they are given, they take each of them for granted, some people spend their lives trying to get revenge, others spend it trying to acquire things, others spend it trying to "become someone", they work so hard for things... And then there are those who are older and who have been where you are at right now, living to work, who now don't have to "work" anymore, and all they really want is a phone call, they will tell you how much they work in their life and now they are having health issues, they are too tired to go out, they wish they would have had more time with their loved ones and most of all they wish we could see that all that we work so hard for, all that we worry so much for in the end it all becomes irrelevant. They wish we could see that we are already important because we are important to them, because we mean the world to them and they wish we would just stop for one moment and think how today could be their last day and if it was then what would we say tomorrow if we got to see it?
And let's not forget those who are around our age, the ones who are working so hard to get ahead, what happens when a friend loses their life? They get shocked that their friend die so young, what about a close friend? Usually the same thing, but it is not that they died so young that we are shocked at because we all know that death is guaranteed at any age, we are shocked because we are reminded of it. But do we ever change our habits, or even attempt to change them in order to not have that regret when a loved one dies? Usually it ends up being that we mourn and we sort of learn to live without that person, and then the next one dies and we do the same thing, never acknowledging where the pain is truly coming from. Could it be a little less painful if we had spent more time with them while they were alive? I always wonder, when I say to myself I have so much to do that I don't have time to pick up the phone and call my grandmother, someone I mean the world to, what would happen if today was the day death took her? How would I feel tomorrow about not making that call today, it forces me to slow down, and while yes there is a lot that is going on and a lot that I have to do, I still stop and wonder about whether my time, the little time I have is being well spent or if it is being spent too much on trivial things, because if this was to be the last day I lived what would I want to do differently? If I say nothing, then I know I am on the right path, but if the answer to that question is something different than what I currently am doing then I know a change is needed.
With that in mind, with knowing that you are guaranteed your death, what would you do if today was your last day? What about the people that you love, if you knew today was their last day, what would you do, would you do something different than what you are doing right now? Think about it! Maybe there are changes that need to be made. :)