In one of my earlier episodes I mentioned Anne Lamott. She wrote, “I have just always found it extremely hard to be here, on this side of eternity, because of, well, other people; and death.” 

That last one…death. That always gets us, doesn’t it? Yet note that Marcus Aurelius wrote that it is not death we need to fear, but we should fear never having lived. 

“I’m living every day!” you say. Well, our hearts may still be beating and we did wake up this morning. But did we wake to a “new day,” seeing all as through the eyes of a newborn baby? Or are we dragging yesterday’s sorrows, fears, disappointments, disillusionment and anger into today’s mindscape? 

It’s so hard to let go, isn’t it? What difference would it make if we did let go of the things we hang on to? I’m not talking about cleaning your closet, but the internal machinations of our monkey-mind. What would we lose? Our anguish? Sounds like a good trade off to me.

So the question is, are we living our lives fully? Does living fully imply all we need is to have enough resources to buy and go wherever we want, when we want? Or is the life that Aurelius speaks of our “lived life”? You know…how you are everyday in life. How you feel, what you do, how you see the world, how you see your place in the world.

Whose life you are living? We follow the desires that our parents had for us, or society’s definition of success, and wonder why we feel discontentment. Are we behaving in ways that make us feel that we have value to others? Did it mean that we had to dummy down some of our natural curiosity or exuberance because it made mom or dad uneasy?

Whose version of you are you living in any given interaction you have? The good son/daughter? The smart one? The helpful one? The manly one? The demure female? The independent one? The list goes on. We add a bit here, carve out a chunk there, and live out archetypal expressions of ourselves because we want to fit in and be accepted. 

Doing that comes at a price, however, because we have to overplay certain natural characteristics or underplay others, all that consequently interferes with the emergence of the true, authentic You—the Self in Carl Jung’s terms. Capital S. Not little “s” self, which is the ego’s version of who/how we think we are. The big “s” Self is the result of achieving a full flowering of our true nature unencumbered by familial, gendered, cultural, or societal expectations. An examined life.

How does this evolution of our Self relate to facing death? Discussions about death and dying are inherently difficult. Our death denying society makes it difficult to have meaningful conversations about death because most people don’t want to go there. It brings up too much anxiety, fear and sorrow. And so we go about our days denying this inevitable event will happen to us soon. Or ever.

What would happen if we began to bring death into its rightful place in our lives? It is seen as the end of our life, but does it inform us in any way as to how we shall live while we are still in our bodies?

Can we embrace the idea that to live fully we are each called to discover, uncover, and recover aspects of our Self and with that unveiling learn how to live more fully? And with that fulfillment we find inner peace because our choices change when we get off the treadmill of conformity. Our friends change. Our choices change. 

Ram Dass, spiritual guru and former Harvard professor of psychology wrote:

“In a way, I’m finding it much more interesting to remain spiritually conscious…like we’re much closer to facing in the daily news the issue of our potential death. And that is a major cultural vehicle for awakening. The confrontation with death….is the vehicle that helps you awaken the most. And that’s what we’re confronted with much more now. So it seems like the optimum time for spiritual growth to me.” ~ Ram Dass

Spiritual growth. I suppose one has to first believe that we are more than the sum of our human body parts and that we have an inner essence that can grow or evolve. Presuming this is the innermost spirit within each person, what does that spirit call us to do in this life we are given? Or rather than to “do” this lifetime, is it more who we are “to be?” To discover…to actualize this lifetime? I don’t think this refers to externally sanctioned societally approved achievements or characterizations, but the willingness to dive deep inside to see what we are made of. Truly.

This leads me back to Lamott’s dilemma. Death is inevitable, and it needs my full awareness if I am to live authentically. Death brings to awareness that “this is not a rehearsal” (A quote from my dear friend Caroline. May she rest in peace.). If I am to discover who I am, I have to quiet down all the voices that tell me “I should; I ought to; I better not”… and on and on,” so that I can hear my own voice. Maybe for the first time. 

How will our confrontation with death help us to grow? And how is spiritual growth connected to what we are faced with today? Many of us simply say, “I’m living it up now cause you never know when you’re going to die!” So we pursue the accumulation of material things and try our best to live it up feeling that these “things” and experiences will make us feel more alive. But do they really? 

Without inner peace, the things we accumulate and the material possessions we gather around us inevitably lose their interest for us. We thought those things would make us happy, and they did for a moment or so, but without inner peace we are simply grasping straws. And our search goes on for our next “fix.”

What is inner peace and how shall we achieve it? What does inner peace have to do with our facing death? Isn’t it more peaceful to NOT think of death, especially our own? Or our loved ones? 

Have you heard the saying, “Die before you die”? This saying refers to the death of the ego, and not your physical being. It means that we let the ego go, to put it in its place in our consciousness so that we can begin to really live. We don’t kill the ego, but one by one we unveil the egos demands and we become aware of how we may be just playing a role rather than being who we are authentically or daring to say how we really feel. 

The Awakened Self realizes that the ego serves a useful place in life, as we find ourselves in various social situations. But we are aware that we are truncating ourselves in those situations, because this seems necessary to keep our jobs, careers and social relationships. Awareness is key; not acting out. But the psyche works in such a way that if you shove down your irritation at another person, resentment builds and can prime you for a “blow up,” with anyone or any situation that triggers the irritation again. Better to keep conscious of your feelings, but exercise civility in those situations. 

Tapping into our own depths allows what has been ignored or shoved down into the unconscious, to emerge again, be educated, then put it it’s rightful current perspective. We see it again with fresh eyes that are different because of education, experience, and wisdom. 

Do we need to go to years of therapy to uncover what lurks beneath the surface? Or is there a path to the heart that resides within? Can we find the strength to awaken? Within our inner being we know what we need, believe, and hope for. But do we listen? Do we keep at the forefront of our minds what we hope to create in our lives? Or do we carry too much baggage from the past and fears of the future, weighing us down to move forward in our evolution?

Anne Lamott has another bit of wisdom on this idea:

As you grew, you collected possessions, the psychic kind you needed to survive: the armor to ward off emotional battery; the snippets of good advice (“Never let them see you cry”) you picked up as a girl. You needed to guard these possessions, and what better safe-deposit box than your body? Plenty of room next to the family secrets and all the scary feelings you swallowed. ~

She truly knows how to paint soul pictures, doesn’t she? I know what she means…how we locked away into our very own bodies, the energy of the things we dared not reveal to others. 

We locked it away in our private “safe-deposit box” that eventually manifested in bodily symptoms, such as muscular tension, headaches, back aches, stomach aches, jaw aches, disease, bad moods. Our body remembers what our minds have forgotten. So let’s stop feeding the cycle…

When we live in such a way that we miss the moments of our lives as they happen, we lose. We lose the joy that could have arisen had we not been consumed with worry and anxiety. It’s like walking down the road but not noticing what is around you or where you are, the birds playing in the trees, the beauty of the formation of the clouds, the aromas of life all around us. To be aware, is to be mindful.

Mindfulness is to be aware of all that is in the present moment…the soft sound of the music playing, the rustling of leaves outside my open door, the sound of acorns dropping as fall approaches. It also includes an awareness of how the air feels against my skin, the absence of the earlier abdominal uncomfortableness that I was experiencing, the lightness of my soul at this moment. It is an inner and outer awareness, as a witness. 

All that and more instead of getting carried away with thinking and planning, going over in our minds the disturbing conversations we’ve had, wondering why? Why? Why? Worrying about what will happen tomorrow, next week, or next year. We are everywhere except here. We are caught in the past or fretting about the future. And they don’t exist anyway. We bring the past into the present by our attachment to it, not letting it go. Why not learn from it and move on? Let it go.

Death can serve as an event for which we prepare for, through evolving our consciousness that brings more serenity into our lives. You’ve heard it before—BE HERE NOW. If I am here, fully present to what is happening within and without, I can appreciate the moment, because it is Now. Not then, not later, not what if. I can begin anew and catch myself when I start to apply stories to what is currently happening. This awareness prevents my missing the story that is actually unfolding in front of me.

More to come…

Namaste 🙏🏼

Dr. Sharon Joy Ng

Music Credit Acknowledgment:

- Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/rahul-popawala/north-indian-alleys

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