To Know Death is to Truly Live
On the antidote to blindness and suffering:
The good, bad, ugly, heinous,
The blissful, joy, loving, profound,
All of it ends.
THIS is why it is a gift. When we understand all things end, we can truly live.
We are liberated from numbness, the veil is lifted from our blindness, the orchestra of life replaces our deafness.
Understanding impermanence is the antidote to attachment - the root of suffering - especially when we are attached to our suffering. And if we suffer, we are always attached to it, because suffering is not pain.
Pain delivers. Pain transforms. It’s a river taking you to where you need to go.
Suffering freezes you in time, smothers and decays - the antithesis of life.
It’s a useless game. An addiction to self-centeredness, manifesting in a myriad of ways.
You falsely think that your fears protect you, your beliefs have made you what you are and your attachments make your life exciting and secure. You fail to see that they are actually a screen between you and life’s symphony.
-Anthony de Mello
This brings me to Impermanence, and a message / stream of consciousness that came through earlier today that I’m now transcribing to you from my notebook:
Watch everything change when you try this:
Take the analogy of pizza, or whatever your favorite food is. I love pizza so I pick this.
Imagine you have what you think is a good, but ordinary pizza. How do you normally eat pizza? You probably eat it quickly, you may notice it tastes good, but surely at some point during the meal, the mind wanders away from the meal: what’s next, worries here, wonders there, thoughts take us from the moment and suddenly we may be mechanically eating pizza, but we’re not truly alive in the moment — and then, it’s gone.
And we don’t notice it’s gone, nor care, because there’s always more pizza, right?
Wrong.
We’ve never truly touched the reality of what we had in that moment, we never understood what we had, so it’s easy to depart on to the next before the present was ever truly experienced.
Now, imagine this:
You have the exact same pizza in front of you. But it is now declared through various emergency alerts from the government via all channels of communication that all pizza on earth is now GONE. Never again will pizza be on earth.
You realize now, this is the last time in your life you will ever eat pizza.
Suddenly, that same pizza is no longer a “good but ordinary” pizza. It’s a magical treasure. It’s the last of its kind, and you have the honor of being the last person on earth to experience it.
The pizza didn’t change though. Your understanding of impermanence drew your attention to the moment, and you began to see things for what they were. Because you know “this is it”, your attention does not go anywhere else, and you can see.
That ordinary meal just turned into the last supper - the holy grail - an experience of epic and Biblical proportions.
You will remember every fraction of a second of that meal. Each fractional second will sear itself into your memory as if it were years of life. You will experience so much joy and gratitude and love for that pizza, and the experience that eating your favorite meal has provided you with. Endless songs and poems will be written about this.
Because you have truly seen and touched the moment via the understanding of impermanence, the reverberations of that experience will echo out into the rest of your life, and it will change you forever as a person. It has now become Deathless.
Because of Death itself — through the transformative experience of truly seeing, Death becomes Eternal Life, because we truly touched life, and it’s True Nature — impermanence.
Because of this, it echoes and shapes everything moving forward, leaving its singular mundane form and merging into pieces of everything - The All.
Now, replace the pizza analogy with the name of someone you love.
Replace the experience of eating your favorite meal with the moments you are afforded in this life with the people who enter it.
Do so with both scenarios, the day-to-day one, where all things are taken for granted and never fully SEEN or experienced or heard, and then do it with the scenario where you know, this is the last experience of its kind.
Notice the difference.
What would your life look like if you applied the understanding, beauty, and sacred reverence of impermanence to every moment, every experience, every person, everything?
See that life in your minds eye.
Now, examine yours as it is today.
How different are they?
The reality and truth of impermanence never goes away. It is only our attachments, that ironically create chronic disconnect within us, that make it so in one scenario we are alive, and the other, we are a Rootless Ghost.
Do not wait for The Reaper or the Keeper of Time to teach you that.
Do not wait to fully see them as they are when they are only a memory.
Do not wait to say “I love you” or “I’m sorry” at their gravesite.
Do not wait to finally see the beauty in what you have, no matter the circumstance, until it is gone. Do not wait to see the beauty of it all, regardless of circumstance, until it finally dawns on you, years or even decades later. Because it one day will.
Do not destroy what you have because you are too blind to see it, blinded by the absorption of your self and your attachments, that you neglect and mistreat the Rose in front of you - and it withers and dies.
Slow the fuck down.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You are wasting time.
No matter what you have, you have everything.
Does the sun shine for you? Does the plant kingdom breathe for you? Does the moon regulate the tides and waters and nightshades for you?
Yes.
Do you have a roof over your head? Do you have children? Do you have a partner? Do you have a Cosmic Force you don’t even need to understand surrounding you that is still in constant conversation with you, even when you aren’t listening?
You may not have children or a partner, but even with all I just mentioned, we still have everything. And if you do have a family, you have more than most, if you have the eyes to see. Or have you married your thoughts instead?
Even those we have loved and lost, we still GOT TO LOVE. That is the badge of honor that grief is. We still got to love.
Those who know loves pain, know how to withstand it.
- Guru Nanak
If one is so attached to their dramas and suffering, every relationship they enter, they will be unfaithful, because they are never truly there.
They are never protecting the delicate nature of Love and Connection, allowing outside influences, interferences and distractions to disgrace the literal GRACE inherent in these gifts.
One has no reverence because they are numb, blind and deaf. Then they wonder why it all burns to the ground and suddenly they live as a rootless ghost.
We can decide in any moment to CHOOSE to be truly Alive in Life. But it is a conscious choice.
Fuck your past. Any problem you have now can be fixed if you stop obsessing over spilled milk and start taking corrective action. One moment at a time.
We have so many chances to truly KNOW LIFE — but they are not infinite.
Whether or not you choose to truly Live, or be a self-inflicted series of shitfire tragedies and wasted time, is 100% entirely up to you, and you alone.
External circumstances will never dance to accommodate you. You shift first, and the circumstances, life, universe, will respond in turn. We are always in this dance, this concert, this conversation with Life.
Whether we choose to see it and become conscious creators, or victims of our own ignorance, is entirely up to us - no ONE and no THING else.
The freedom you seek is nowhere but RIGHT NOW.
Be mindful and examine what it is you seek, because that which you seek, is also seeking you:
Your hopes, dreams and desires say one thing in your mind, but do your actions align with them? If our actions clearly show that we are seeking something other than what we like to tell ourselves we’re all about.. well, are we so surprised when trouble, pain and darkness just “happen to find us”?
We are driven by our subconscious until it is examined and becomes conscious - then we see.
Then we are conscious alchemists and drivers, we are no longer slaves to our minds, both masochist and sadist combined - no more of that.
The crossroads is Now. You Are Here.
If you’ve been in a cycle of suffering with a repetitive theme, same nightmare different face, same nightmare different place, or same nightmare PERIOD — the common denominator is you.
This is no reason to be down on yourself. This is the best news. Because the only thing we have the power to change is ourselves. So thank God this is the case. The truth liberates.
Other people, places and things don’t have to change for us to get free. The only thing we should ask ourselves before choosing whether to LIVE or whether to be a rootless ghost and fountain of fuckshit misery is:
How Free do you want to be?
To be continued. But remember. Remember to see them. Remember to slow down and see your life, and all that it is. Don’t wait for The Reaper. Remember to see you, too.
If you ever allow yourself to see, it will be the death of you. And that is why love is so terrifying, for to love is to see, and to see is to die. But it is the most delightful exhilarating experience in the whole world. For in the death of the ego is freedom, peace, serenity, joy.
-Anthony de Mello
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Enjoy every bite... right here, right now, is all we really have.
Yesterday is depression, tomorrow is anxiety, today is a gift, that's why it's called the present.
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This is so much in alignment with other stuff I've been reading and listening to in the past few days. Definitely what I'm needing right now. Thank you, my friend! 💕