Embracing the truth of life, means we need to accept the concept of death

Thank God for hot showers, they don’t only clean my body but they are great for my writer’s block. As the water from the shower rose was cascading down upon me, I sensed the emergence of a tiny inspiration. In order not to lose the train of thoughts, I quickly “wrote” them down on the shower screen with my finger before I could get hold of a pen and paper. I wrote my proses in the 80s in this manner and if my nephew Adrian (our webmaster) is generous enough, he will post some of them one day. With these kinds of this “water birth” situations, I always smell nice but my it’s no wonder my water bills are huge.

By the time I “heard” the subject that I had no intention of sharing yet (unless I want to lose all of you blog readers), I knew my muse wouldn’t budge. My inner mentor insisted that if we can get passed this greatest fear we humans have out of the way first, then all the baby ducks would line up in a neat row in the future. I doubt that but never argue with your muse, beggars can’t be choosers, you understand. She proposed that we should take a look at this underlying fear and what she means by that is our “demise”. I told her that our ego/personality self would not be able to deal with this tragic word as the ego is high with survival instinct. My muse continued, suggesting that life and death are merely the two faces to the same coin and by accepting death, we can live a much deeper and purposeful life. Our life would also be less stressed if we can somehow overcome this biggest denial.

Once I got over the initial reaction with this “D” word, it was quite fun to write about it. During the last few years I have had many opportunities to become friends with the infamous “Grim Reaper”. He is not scary at all, it is just difficult to take a good photo of him as he is camera shy. There have been many nights I laid in bed terrified of the prospect of treatments and of the final “lift-off”, but I eventually made the first contact by eyeballing him and doing some little chit chats. I won him over and he showed me his friendly face. I started to live life more fearlessly and to engage with anything (e.g. creating this website with my webmaster aka my beloved nephew) that would allow my heart to sing and my Soul to soar - and to love myself and others as if there are no divides.

I taught myself to live in the present, trying not to obsess over the past and the future. Consequently I was able to save the much needed energy that would have otherwise been used to finance the memories of my “dead” past and anticipations of my “not yet to be born” future. This diminished my fear of death and my level of stress, my health then improved and my sense of inner peace returned.

I do not want to be discharged yet but I must admit I nurse some curiosity over my future adventure into this mysterious “life after Life” realm when my boarding card number would be called, but not over a loudspeaker like the airport’s departure lounge. This will be done more intimately, or classy, I promise. I have always been intrigued by all the NDE (near-death experiences) accounts since the mid-seventies, the term coined by Dr Raymond Moody, fascinating to say the least about this Celestial Real Estate, hoping I can afford to put down a deposit. Personally I don’t think there is death in the way we envisage it as our consciousness extends beyond our physical body.  As a rather intuitive person I have experienced some sort of communications from beyond… (nope... I did not purchase an iPhone enabling me to dial “cross dimensional”), nonetheless, they happened...to me.

My “Grim Reaper” turned out to be my “Angel of Mercy” with such a kind and pretty face that you would die for (pardon the pun). I think it is more positive and fun to use the prospect of death as our motivation to live life purposefully, without experiencing constant fears of loss, shame, guilt and blame. Then on a perfect sunny day when our names would be called, we too would utter the same beautiful words as our amazing fellow travellers shared:

“Don’t cry for me, for I go where the music is born” - Johannes S. Bach’s last words.

“Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” - Steve Jobs’ last words.