Death: the ultimate Illusion

What does it mean to die? One of the greatest honors of this life has been to be present at the moment of passing through death for many souls. The weapon of death is fear and this weapon wields over our lives and egos finality and finitude. We know not what lies beyond this final boundary of our experience of phenomena. However, fear must always have a frame, it is contingent upon attachment. Without attachment to a specified outcome, I cannot experience fear, fear may only exist by feeding on desire. So where is the attachment with this idea of death? If we could detach from our frame of death which feeds fear, once and for all, we should immediately enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 

There is the curious experience of self in which I feel myself inexorably tied into my body and this physical reality, but somehow also fundamentally outside of it. There shall never exist for me that which does not in some way present itself to this interface called my body. And yet, the data (raw or abstracted) gleaned from my arena is fashioned into the temples of my soul. They may be glorious havens of love, joy, wonder, friendship and kindness. They may be grim and gory hells of resentment, envy, condemnation and hatred. The input of data provides materials, some of uncut stone, such as the quiet beholding of a mountain stream, some complexly processed and beautified such as the paintings of Michelangelo. These materials form the resource stock from which the story of the life is built, and it’s building is within the soul. This soul is trans-jective, embedded in reality without the illusion of separation of objective and subjective dualism. It is the orientation of attention which specifies the direction in which the building progresses. If attention is oriented towards the highest good in a dynamic fashion with truthfulness and humility, agape, the building will be that of Heaven. The structures of life will fashion a temple fit for the Holy Spirit. The temple of family will be glorified with service, kindness, gentleness and acceptance. The temple of work will become the workshop of healing and fashioning creation into a higher level of beauty and imbuing it with meaning. 

There are an infinite number of spaces in which one’s attention orientation machinery, or relevance realization, may get caught. Once caught, the sense of self is attached to that particular aspect of “my reality,” or construct, and thus relevance realization applies a high priority to the preservation of this aspect. As a consequence, attention is inappropriately constrained as it moves through time, which is the space of attention. To get one’s attention caught in such a way is to “commit sin.” This may only happen however, as a result of an attachment of the identity of self with a particular space. With the statement “I am x” the relevance realization becomes tied to that x, and must now operate with the goal of preserving x, at all cost. Thus the relevance realization of the individual becomes trapped into the interface, the temple, the body and is no longer free to prioritize the highest. 

This is the death spoken of Genesis 3:3: “but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”  This is also the death spoken of by Christ in Matthew 10:28 “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” And finally, this is the death from which we are to be resurrected, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20.  (ESV)

This is the kind of death in which nearly all humanity has struggled for as long as we can remember. For the death of the body, the detachment of the soul from the interface, is only something to be feared if the self is identified, fundamentally, within the temples created by means of the interface. It is for this reason that Adam and Eve clothe themselves upon eating the fruit, they are suddenly caught within the temporal existence of their bodies and thus must protect and defend their new “I AM.” It may be significant to note that the fundamental reference to transcendent Being as given in the Bible is “I AM that I AM.” It may serve well to be careful about using the language “I am x.” The breaking of the third commandment may be more pervasive than anyone has imagined. 

Exodus 3:13-14: “Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”  God said to Moses, “I AM who I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (ESV)

So what do we have to say of death? In order to know what it means to die, I must first discover what it means to live. While many spiritual leaders and teachers have shined light on the path of discovering what it means to live, this path has continually been obstructed by those who would gate-keep grace. The religious structure rises organically from those who have a true, clear and free discovery and wish to pass along the guideposts to fellow would-be pilgrims. This is a wonderful and necessary thing. This is also the bedrock of culture, our religious “why” becomes the ground upon which we build our homes. However, through all of history this structure quickly becomes weaponized. What was developed as an inn or hospital for weary wanderers becomes a castle charging a toll. The practices of the saints to find purity and transcendence to the divine become shackles to those who are being mass produced as zombie-saints by the zealot who, in his claim of worshiping God, is worshiping only himself. The institution becomes hell the moment it claims itself the official gateway to heaven. This is necessarily the case, as the infinite is in no way constrained to the frame of the finite. Hence the continual refrain in the Biblical text to the effect of “who are you to think you know God? Did you create yourself?” This is not to claim religion is evil, civilization owes it’s existence to religion. It is rather a caution to those who would judge their brothers, an activity all to readily engaged in today.

We would do well to remember that in no manner what ever do we have a claim of ownership, even of our own body. You did not choose your body, your birth place, family, country, or privilege. If you did not choose it, nor seem to have any affective capability in the generation of that self, then why would you suppose yourself to have claim to anything which comes through it? Why place your identity within a frame which is limited to you know not what? What good is it doing you to place your identity into anything? The voice inside may scream of the terror awaiting you, if you truly allow yourself to imagine the unknown in the chasm at your very center. But it is the voice of the ultimate illusion. If the center of you is truly an unknown chasm, then to attempt to place identity into something far from your center is truly absurd, because what is doing the identifying? 

The wild leap into that chasm, the free fall of surrender, the sweet kiss of the death of self, these are the magic potions your heart has always longed for. To be truly free. Free from the threat of death, shame, guilt and pain. Alive, for once! If only for a moment, let me but taste it.

In order to find this center, you must first undertake the journey. This journey is different than most, as you do not take it, it takes you. You see, you are on this journey already, there is no helping that. One may choose to fight the journey, and you will fight your whole life, never moving too far from infancy. Or you may embrace it, surrender to it, join and participate in it; who knows what you may become? What wild adventure is to be found!