Starting from as young as I can remember - I used to have this extremely bi-polarised feeling about death; On the one hand I had this intense sense of it being so imminent and inevitable, that ‘what’s the point in doing much at all with life’ – on the other hand was the extreme and fully pressurised fear that it could happen any time, so therefore I must do and achieve as much as humanly possible (and more) to make sure I wasn’t ‘wasting my life’. These two opposing extremes of ‘avoidance of life’ and ‘attachment to life’ meant there was very little capacity in my head, heart or body for actually living in the present, at all. What made this anti-mindfulness so intense was that the prime motivator was a strikingly deep Fear of Death. This of course, is a fundamental human experience – so universal in fact, that the original yogis of ancient times had a term for this condition; Abhinivesa. Of course, this fear has its function – self-preservation; to keep us alert to danger in order to maintain life and continue evolving as a species – but when left unsupervised, this function can fracture us.
Here’s a little backstory;
My parents lost two children as babies. Two younger brothers to me when I was 3 and 4. The immense pain in our house hold haunted my parents in very different ways (which naturally gave rise to the conflict within myself around how to process it). My Mum’s newly found religious belief gave her the hope and idea that we would see them again at the ‘coming of the end of the world’. I perceived my Dad to be more resigned and reluctant to re-engage with living fully.
Following this, my family had a number of consecutive and significant losses within a relatively short period of a decade.
Eventually, my own demons developed into depression, anxiety and self-loathing and these terrors had me face to face with intimately contemplating the choice to continue living or not. The ‘wake-up’ was found in the Abhinivesa instinct when at 21 I was having arrhythmic heart symptoms from the extremes of starving myself and bulimia. I woke up one night with the absolute feeling that my heart had just stopped. I was jerked awake and into an intense feeling of resolve to live - not just to live, but to live without fear.
Without realising it at the time, I had stumbled onto the practice of living mindfully with detachment. True detachment in the Buddhist-Yogic sense, is absolutely not avoidance or ‘numbing out’ - both of which I had been expert at – but instead the wilful approach to ‘feel uncomfortable and lost, but stay present anyway’ – to detach from any perceived outcomes in the future in order to develop a sense of being ‘ok’ in the now, whether that felt pleasant or unpleasant – it could still be ‘ok’. This kind of detachment essentially ‘uncouples’ the meaning of life or death from the fear of future ‘unknowns’ and re-assigns to it a sense of competence to remain in the present moment and be ok.
More on Detachment and Death.
So, what happens then, when we die? There are endless theories and stories to try explain this mystery. What do you think? I began to believe in a reductionist model – reducing my body to its tissues and composite materials – I will decompose and grow back as grass. Good. I’m happy with that. Part of Simba’s Circle of Life. Great. Let the antelopes come and eat me. And then poop me out again. It’s quite awesome to think about it like that don’t you think? Except minus the antelopes and insert some kind of kiwi critter. For me, this train of thought gave me some relief and sense of purpose. Doing my bit for life by being recycled.
Over time, I began to learning about quantum physics, consciousness and the fascinating accounts of NDE’s (near death experiences).
Whatever differences we might have in our religious, spiritual or other beliefs about death, we could probably universally agree that it is a transition or closure of sorts. Throughout our lives we are faced with innumerable transitions and closures! We have so many opportunities to practice getting familiar with ‘little deaths’ along the way. For example, when a long-held idea is challenged and proved to be wrong, that is a ‘little death’ of an idea. When we are working through changing our behaviours or way of living, we often have to let old ways ‘die’, old friendships come to a close, job endings, decade endings… over and over we go through experiences of ‘endings’ in a variety of ways. We know that this is a part of life, but often there is immense discomfort around these events. What creates this discomfort is the resistance we have towards it. The pain or suffering that we experience around these transitions or closures is directly equal to how much we DON’T want it to happen. This is known as attachment – the clear opposite of detachment. This ‘attachment’ is the strongest thing that keeps us in a state of fear; attachment to how something is or an idea of how it ‘should be’ and absolute rejection and fear of being without it.
Developing an attachment to anything naturally gives rise to a sense of needing what ever that is we are attached to, to be ‘ok’. The opposing root feeling of not being ‘ok’ is fear, so naturally we feel a rising sense of fear that corresponds to the level of things we are attached to – the more we have, the more we have to lose! Detachment is the solvent.
Here we see that detachment does not mean living in a state of numbness at all, but more so with the grace, wisdom, compassion and poise to allow change, closure, transition and letting go.
‘Detach and re-match’ – death is a huge part of life, in many ways. When we can re-match the negative and fear-based feelings associated with death with more compassionate, present moment competence, we stand a much greater chance of living with fullness and freedom.
Thank you, Death, for helping me heal and teaching me to Live in Present Moment, Loving Detachment.
Love Ange x
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