The Transformational Power of Living by Accepting Death
This is our call to adventure. Will you accept?
We are being called to wake up. It is nothing less than the greatest collective invitation to the Hero’s Journey. And it will take all of us to answer this. It will take all of us to face the fear of dying, witness ourselves being torn apart piece by piece to remember who we truly are. An unborn, undying, eternal essence that is waiting to be birthed into nirvana.
We know with almost certainty now that what we have will be lost. And by that, I mean not only parts of the natural world that are going up in flames or being flooded. By that, I mean the certainty of food security, shelter and safety that our society has given us. The foundational blocks of our interdependent Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are on the brink of collapse. Our world is dying, and it is painfully being drawn out like having stage 4 cancer—that sinking feeling of waking up every morning and remembering that we are terminal.
But what if we were to see this as part of the ever-changing nature of existence? What if we were to lean in and embrace this for what it really is? A call to honour our grief. A call to transform, to alchemise and the next step in our evolution?
Every death brings about a birth. Every birth requires a death.
Like every other living being on this planet, our survival instinct is strong. And it is not a bad thing. It is a humble observation of nature doing her work. One that she has been doing for billions of years, fighting for life to exist on this strong and fragile planet. In the past, our ancestors have honoured her for this, bowed down to her invincible strength. And every time in history we have forgotten this, we have been punished.
We’re fighting to survive right now.
From the plight of Musk wanting to colonise Mars to the massive accruement of profit and bunkers being built in New Zealand — there is no escape. Nature will catch you no matter how large a fort you build around yourself. Nature will catch you no matter how much you pretend she doesn’t exist. Because you are the very thing you are running away from, and there is nowhere to hide.
In psychology, we approach healing by asking patients to look at themselves and to objectively and compassionately embrace the depth of their darkness. Child abuse survivors heal by remembering their abuse, buried deep in their unconscious psyche. In allowing old traumas to finally be seen, a person can kindly and humbly accept who they are, releasing the hold from the pain that had them trapped—liberating them.
In the same way, we need to do this as a global community. We need to look at the darkest parts of ourselves, the greed, the fear, the denial. And we need to look at the fragility of who we are — human beings, social psychophysical mammals roaming the planet in an out of control way. There are almost 8 billion of us consuming resources that are built on the foundations of a fuel source that is killing us. When we deny this, we deny our reality. This isn’t a problem that is going to be fixed with more growth. This is a problem in our denial of death at every level and a statement of the facts: there are many of us, we’re scared to die, and we need to consume to live.
Death happens in every single moment of our lives, and we have evolved to resist this.
Buddhist teachings tell us that our inability to accept the impermanence of life, the arising and passing of every moment, leads to our suffering. This isn’t an abstract concept and can be felt right now in our bodies. When we have a disagreement, our bodies clench and tighten, it isn’t ready to let go of what feels “right” (death to the ego!). When we witness the physical death of a loved one or mental death of an identity (e.g. a career, label or relationship status), our bodies sob and cry.
Even in the moments when we experience something pleasurable like the long kiss of a lover or standing over our children in their crib, we feel both ecstatically happy and immediately sad. How can we allow our hearts to open fully when this moment too will pass? Or worse, the object of our love will die? For better or worse, we are containers for these feelings — these spiritual texts are not telling us anything abstract, but rather generalised statements for the life we are living right now.
And we are in love with this world and the eternal births that it has given us.
Like an addict reaching for another shot, we are not willing to let go. We want to hold on and love the certainty we have of our lives, the predictability, the patterns. We want to know that we can travel to see our favourite beach again, go to our favourite restaurant, go to sleep each night with our favourite person. And when these things change, we suffer. But this suffering is a gift. It is the philosophers stone.
To alchemise it, we need to let go of everything we know. And it starts with the very thing that is on our minds right now—that certainty of our relationships, jobs, communities and friends. To allow the darkest parts of our trauma and shadows to emerge, we need to simply see them. Name them. Witness them objectively and allow the grief to pass through us. Life is a grief tending process. When we resist grief it can manifest into long term trauma, mental and/or physical health issues, such as chronic stress, anxiety or depression.
Here’s the twist in the Hero’s Journey plot — you see, with every death, there is a rebirth. Once you pass the threshold, there is a pot of gold below the rainbow. Only by allowing things to die are we be able to save what we love.
Only when we can truly embrace our moment to moment death can we embrace our moment to moment life.
What if the next song you hear will be the last before you die — your relationship to that song will change. It suddenly becomes the most delicious angelic sound that has ever reached your ears. What if the next time you see your parents will be your last? What would you say to them before they close their eyes for the last time? What if you stood on a cliff edge, the threshold of your ethics and morality — what choice would you make if this was your last?
Looking death in the face brings up not only a mirror of everything we are but a window into the potential of who we can be, a portal into our deepest authentic self. We can then allow ourselves to fully experience the depths of human courage, humility, vulnerability and love. We can allow ourselves to be a chalice of the greatest gift humanity is bringing into the world and let it flow through us, shape us, and ultimately shape our world into one that can be saved.
“Uncertainty is a sacred gift” — Charles Eisenstein
Life will never play out the way we expect it to, and that’s the sacred treasure that we have been gifted. We do not deny life when we embrace death. No, for what we love the most is life itself and all the ways it has manifested. From the forests to the mountains, the sunsets to the moonrise, our family, lovers and friends. But to save life itself, we must allow ourselves to die. We must bear witness in said courage, humility, vulnerability and love all the parts of us that need to die: our greed, our fear and our denial.
And in that dying, again and again, we will be forced to remember that we can never die — the essence of who we are, the essence of what has created nature herself, is eternal. And then a new kind of birth can then emerge.
Nothing less is being asked of us than this call to adventure.
Are you ready?
