Your Secret Brother

 
(Artwork of Lord Yama  by Suresh Pydikondala)


“ Do not fear emptiness, do not fear death.
Every night, in sleep, you die blissfully for eight hours,
Gratefully embracing oblivion to recharge your tired being.
Who, inside you, experiences the peace and rejuvenation of deep sleep?
Unfettered by the body, the spirit enters the great Void and fills itself with fresh vitality.
Death’s like that – only, it’s a slightly longer period of recharging.
Death is freedom and that sense of coming home.” from Lightsongs, the book.

“Our culture does not believe in endings and therefore chooses to deny death. As any farmer knows, life is rooted in, and dependent on, death.” Stephen Jenkinson, author of Die Wise

An invisible God perches upon your left shoulder and whispers sometimes in your ear.
He is your most faithful companion and greatest friend.
He is the background that gives your life context, the ending that gives it meaning, the gift that sets you free.
He is your secret brother and his name is Death.
If you would live a fuller, richer and deeper life, learn to embrace and accept him.

The wisest cultures in the world have accepted death as a natural and integral part of life.
At every moment, millions of cells in the body are dying and being replaced by new cells. Recognising the inevitability of suffering, old age and death, human beings seek for meaning, if any, in this human existence. This is how Prince Siddartha became the Buddha, how all the great spiritual practices began.

Death is a priceless treasure, a sacred mystery, a gateway to infinity.
To die consciously is to die wisely and well. This takes preparation and practice.
All the great mystic traditions have viewed death as a path to transformation and transcendence: to die before the body dies has always been the key to enlightenment.
What exactly does this mean?

The person that you think you are, the ego-self, is just a story made up of all your memories, your emotions, your conditioning- it is a result of your unconscious identification with the body-mind complex. This persona is an illusion that does not really exist; however, so powerful is its hold on you that it hides your true being from you. Caught in the hypnotic stranglehold of this false identification, all your interactions with reality are distorted by a clouded filter, a dense fog; so, you fail to experience the  precious, magical wonder of your own everyday life!

Burst the bubble of this ego-identification and awaken to the sacred experience of pure being-awareness in the present moment. This is how you will discover heaven on earth and, at last, be one with your own true nature: infinite, eternal, immortal. 

( Artwork of Lord Shiva by Vrindavan Das)

This is the gift that death can bring to you, if you are brave enough to accept it.

If you can die before your body dies, you can truly be free.