Life, as such, is a constant Near Death Experience…

Your very life, such as it is, is really an ever on-going Near Death Experience… you may not be aware of it… you may not have considered it, but it is so. It is so because Death is always very very close to you. It is as close to you as your very breath.

The first breath a child takes is inhalation…the in-breath. Birth is the beginning of Life, of entering into this world. The other half has yet to happen… the other extreme, is yet to come. The child, then, grows and becomes old. The very last breath a dying person will have will be exhalation … a final out-breath.

With birth, the beginning of Life, there is inhalation. With Death, the end of life, comes exhalation. In between the two polar opposites of birth and death, the incoming and outgoing breath is continuously happening. A small birth and a small death are continuously happening each and every moment of your life. Between these two extremes, as the child grows, he is born into childhood and dies to his infancy, born into youth and dies to his childhood… later he will die to his youth and be born in to adulthood… dies and is born into marriage… dies to one job and is born into another work situation…dies and is born into a life of being a parent… dies again and is born into old age… on and on and on… it will go…

Each moment you are dying to the past…exhaling out that which is old, dead and rotten, that which is not needed anymore… to that which is no longer a part of who you are. And with each inhalation, you are born again, fresh… with new life brought into the body, with fresh oxygen filling the lungs and new energy flowing within… another unique moment of life is born again and again with each incoming breath. So, birth and death are always there with you. With each and every moment they are there together. You may not be aware of it, but they are there… as close to you as your very breath.

Mind wants to avoid death. It would like it to never come because mind becomes tense with anything it cannot comprehend. It loses its strength… its ability to function & control the situation. It becomes confused and weakened with things it cannot understand. Death is one of the great mysteries that mind will never come to know… it is a dimension that remains off limits to the ego… to the mind.

To say that the ego can die is not really right. For the ego does not have a real existence… it is not existential. It is a false entity… a false center of the mind which has its walls built on borrowed knowledge, doctrines, the memory of past experiences… built upon what others have said and thought about you, all of which is already dead and gone… all of what is somewhere in the past which is dead.
So to say that the ego dies, really, is not right. It is more correct to say that the ego dissolves away or, rather, it ceases to exist when the walls of the fortress it has built for itself, is let go of… it ceases to function as the boss when the borrowed knowledge that the ego relies on is not there to support its pseudo existence. But for the ego, this dissolving away… this melting away of ego, is a kind of death for itself. It will no longer be there functioning as it always had been.

And because of this, the very thought of death, and mind begins to tremble with fear. It is in fear of its own death… its own demise. This causes the anxiety and tension to be created. It is the fear of what it cannot ever know. It is the fear of the unknown…of the ever unknowable. It is the root cause of all fears within you… this fear of the death of the ego.

Because of this fear, mind creates a trick to deceive you, to deceive the body. That trick is to put death some place far away, where it is not so close. In this way, death, the thoughts of death can be avoided. So, death is always pictured to happen somewhere in the future… far in the future that it seems that it may never come.

But it always comes, it comes when you least expect it. It always comes when you are in the middle of something… it comes when you still have so many things left to accomplish… and so much to do… so many plans that need to be made… so many projects that have not yet been started. That’s how it is for everyone. One is never quite prepared for death because it is always thought to come at sometime in the distant future… and future never comes today… the tomorrow never comes… tomorrow will always be tomorrow… it never comes today, never comes into this present moment of the here and now.

Because of this trick of the mind, one goes on taking life for granted. One goes on never realizing what life really is. One may have a life, may have an existence, but one may never comes to really understand what that life really is, what it really means to be alive. One goes on taking it for granted. One goes on thinking that life will never end because death is somewhere far away in the future. Even the word ‘death’ has become a taboo word, more of a taboo than the word ‘sex’, because people do not want to think about death. One would rather not like to think that it can happen to them. It helps mind to be at ease… to be less tense… to not be so threatened… and to remain in control.

In this way, Death is thought to be avoided, but the cost is at such a price that one misses life, too… one will avoid living an authentic life, also… And so, one goes on avoiding life and death, together… avoiding life… because of this fear of death… death of ego. One goes on clinging to the past... to that which is familiar… to that which is known. Never allowing life to really enter in, to allow it to happen. It is not a certainty that Life will really happen.

On the other hand, Death is the only thing that is certain will happen… it is most certain it will come, it has to come. But because of the fear of Death, Life remains only a possibility… it may not happen. Love also may not ever happen. Life and Love are only possibilities. Death is a certainty. But Life and Love, they also may be missed. One may drag himself from the cradle to the grave… but a Life without Love… can it really be called a Life?

Life and Death are like two wings of a bird… and the bird cannot fly with only one wing. Love is the bird that takes one high to the ultimate heights of existence… For the bird of Love to be able to fly, Death needs to be accepted as much as Life is accepted, they can not be taken separately. When Death is also accepted, only then, will the bird of Love be able to soar high. The two come together, Death needs to be accepted for a Life of Love to be possible.

Die to the past, and you will be more available for new life to enter in… And then Love will become more certain to be possible.