FACING DEATH AND FINDING LIFE
Moving from duality to Oneness

 

The main issue we must face is death. This is what we must truly get our arms around.

Even if our lives are no longer filled with drama and difficulty, physical death remains.

 

And it’s a mystery.

An unknown.

 

No matter how much we think we know, much of it is still conjecture.

 

It’s our fear of death that creates the world of duality. This is the reality we live in.

 

There is no way around it: death is a problem for us.

If we want to break its grip on us, we need to deal with it directly.

What we sometimes do is take the calming words of a spiritual teacher—one who has gone before us and seems to know the way—and try to apply their ready-made answers to our lives.

 

Why doesn’t this work?

 

Because if these answers are not yet true for us personally, they will fail.

We each must arrive at them through our own strength and courage. These can come only by fearlessly facing our own issues.

 

Alternatively, trying to go the avoidant route happens due to our fears and weakness. For example, people who are religious will sometimes cling to their faith because of this type of fear.

We won’t even let ourselves imagine what it could be like to experience pleasure supreme on all levels of our being. We may even think of “divine bliss” as something that would be dull, sterile and uninteresting.

 

Believe it or not, all of this is wrapped up in our confusions and fundamental fear of death.

Two ways we cope with life

We may think that what we really long for is the state of serenity we were in, back in our mother’s womb. That life has really gone downhill ever since.

 

But it actually goes back further than that.

 

We each have embedded in us a vague memory of life in another state of consciousness, when we knew nothing but bliss without anything opposing it.

We can recapture that, by degrees, while we are here.

 

As we work through the issues that block our inner happiness, we are bound to encounter the world of duality. To go through this level, we come face to face with our fears.

With everything “bad” that seems to oppose the “good.”

 

That’s how we come up against that seemingly insurmountable fear—fear of death.

 

We cope with death in one of two ways:

we run from it or run directly into it.

 

Either way, we miss the truth.

 

Hence, our struggles will rage on.

 

But we’ll have a very different outcome if can come to accept death in a healthy way, from a place of strength.

To do this, we’ll need to open our arms wide and bring every kind of death into the circle. This includes everything that opposes our drive for pleasure.

 

Loss, change, the unknown—it can all be terrifying.

These are what give us so many opportunities to die many little deaths, every day.

 

This willingness to die to life’s little disasters—to any unpleasantness that is an inherent part of life on this planet—determines our capacity to fully live and experience pleasure.

The healthier we are about death, the more open we become to life. The more life force can flow through us, the healthier we’ll be.

Then the more we’ll be able to enjoy our pleasure drive.

 

Our first step is to look at how much we struggle against death.

 

This may be hidden from view—even from ourselves.

Remember, we’ve each picked a preferred way to cope—run away or rush into it. We must also look at our constant longing for pleasure supreme.

 

Sometimes we play mind games with ourselves that sound like this: Death or loss is unavoidable, so I might as well just get it over with. At times this thinking becomes deadly serious—suicide being the extreme example.

 

In any case, we end up torn between two unsatisfactory ways of dealing with death. Both options bring us closer to what we want to avoid.

 

The real answer lies not in resignation but in a healthy acceptance.

 

When it’s mixed with fear and negativity, it takes us down a road to self-destruction. When it’s strong and has a healthy respect for the inevitable, it helps us come to terms with it.

Our work is to face our struggles squarely and stop cringing away from death.

 

And therefore, also from life.

Transcending duality

We are kidding ourselves if we believe we can simply rise above the duality of pleasure and pain. While this may be true in the ultimate sense, it’s not true that we can flee unpleasantness this way.

The only way to transcend this reality is to enter it fully—with both life and death.

 

Meaning, we must accept both in their undisguised nakedness. Then we can find out that there is no death and no duality.

But only then.

 

For instance, when we don’t get our way, we must die to that.

 

Jesus said, “Become ye as little children.” This has meaning on many levels. One is about becoming willing to experience everything very acutely, rather than deadening our feelings.

 

Simply put, we are better served to go through life feeling all its hills and valleys.

 

To aim for detachment before we have felt the burdens of life creates a false serenity. For we can’t cut off any aspect of living, including the hard parts, and come alive.

If we do, we’ll have to circle back around and face them again later.

 

There are simply no shortcuts to reaching our ultimate destiny.

 

Our work is to grapple with both the ups and downs of life. To come face-to-face with the illusion of opposites.

We must learn to live fully in this land of duality. By doing so, we’re in it, and not trying to rise above it.

 

This, in the end, is honest and therefore growth producing.

Our fear of happiness

We need to muster all the courage and honesty we can for this most important journey. If we do this, and thereby face both our suffering and our joy, we are sure to grow.

To do otherwise reveals what is actually underneath—a fear of happiness and fulfillment.

 

When happiness seems far away, it feels safe to long for it. But when it starts to appear more near, we start to cringe.

In fact, we cringe exactly the same way we might cringe away from suffering.

 

Here it is again, then, the idea that all is one.

That these fears really are connected.

 

So, if we’re afraid of pain and suffering, we are also, in some strange way, also afraid of pleasure and happiness. But if we accept one, we also accept the other.

 

By rising up and going through one, we naturally get the other.

 

What once caused suffering can stop hurting the moment we recognize the lesson it offers.

There is a lot to be said for the attitude we bring to all of this.

 

Our goal is to meet suffering in a spirit of wholeheartedness. We want to become willing to learn from it and keep our reasoning faculties intact.

Then we will learn and grow.

 

Emotionally, we may have to blunder our way through darkness, rebellion, cowardice and self-pity.

Alternatively, if we allow our suffering to deaden us—by suppressing our feelings and distracting ourselves—the whole healing process will take much longer to navigate.

 

We should try not to waste our time this way, if we can help it.

 

Also, watch for the confusion, which some religions embrace, that says we should deliberately choose suffering and reject happiness. This stems from the misguided notion that God does not want us to have pleasure and joy.

In truth, God’s will for us is good.

 

God will lead us through the dark areas of our psyche to help us reach this.

 

These dark areas of Lower Self belong to us.

So it is our responsibility to transform them.

The right idea, the wrong way

Here is something to watch for along the way. We may start to sense that we really do have certain imperfections. Then, when suffering comes along, we become impatient to uncover the hidden cause.

Until we do, we may feel paranoid that more suffering is coming our way. As a result, we sabotage our own attempts to uncover the root cause.

 

In our haste, we actually slow the process of healing and growth. In such a case, it would have been better to just believe that God causes our suffering, and to accept this without understanding why.

 

We would fare better because we wouldn’t get in our own way.

 

The pity of such a perspective is that the real cause is not ferreted out. Eventually, this work must be done.

But such a person will tend to be more relaxed and open.

 

On the other hand, this way of thinking easily leads to the wrong conclusion that God is cruel and sadistic.

It’s important then, that we search with the right balance of activity and passivity, starting with our seemingly insignificant daily reactions. For our work lies in even the slightest little disharmony.

Whenever we are disturbed, it is time to investigate.

 

What is really going on beneath the surface?

 

In the end, all our little issues lead to the question of being loved—or not being loved. And therefore to life versus death.

Often, we run from what we really want into deliberately choosing what we don’t. When we do this, we create a deadening in our souls that is quite unhealthy.

It’s also dishonest.

 

Because then we’re not acknowledging to ourselves that we really want love and life. And that we’re seriously afraid we’re not going to get it.

 

In this way, we deny ourselves what we could have, although it may not be to the degree we wish it.

Meaning, we may not get exclusive, unlimited love that’s guaranteed to last forever. But it’s also not true that nonfulfillment of this wish is unbearable.

Yet we often forfeit what we could have by rejecting it altogether.

 

In this either/or approach, we make things worse for ourselves.

 

If we want to wake up and really live, we must become aware of our very real fear of death, in all its many varieties. From physical death to minor negative occurrences.

Coming back to life

How do we go about this business of dying?

Jesus Christ showed us the way when he was dying on the cross, crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

We have to be with whatever is true for us in each moment.

 

Then die to that.

 

All the great sages and truth seekers of all times also have known about this. It’s represented in many philosophies, myths and religions.

 

Jesus’ followers could not have known what an important lesson they were witnessing.

Consciously, they could not understand how it was possible that the Master experienced such doubt in his hour of death. Yet inwardly, they felt more strengthened than ever.

 

Truth goes directly to the soul—even when it bypasses the brain.

 

When we allow our intuition to function, and don’t let intellectual explanations obscure what we perceive, that’s when we “become as little children.” For there is a purity and innocence in us, when we are willing to experience life so intensely.

This kind of purity is not the kind of insipid “purity” that rejects the body.

 

The body and spirit form one whole.

 

That’s part of the reason why God appeared in the form of a human being, as Jesus. To show that the body is not to be rejected or denied.

So this resurrection in the body—in life, really—allows the life force to flow on all levels of our being, including the physical.

 

The deeper message is that if we meet both life and death, we cannot die. This is what occurred when Jesus appeared to his disciples after his death.

The phenomenon that occurred was a materialization—a condensation of spirit into visible form. Which is essentially what physical life is:

spirit condensed into matter.

 

The real story was not that Jesus simply came back to life.

 

The deeper message is that all of us have the capacity to transcend the duality of life and death—and in doing so, truly live.

 

We can all come back to life.

 

But to understand why this struggle exists in the first place, we must look at the deeper spiritual story behind it.

 

Next Chapter

Return to Holy Moly Contents

 

Read Original Pathwork^® Lectures:
81 Conflicts in the World of Duality
82 The Conquest of Duality Symbolized in the Life and Death of Jesus