Are People So Afraid of Dying…

They’ve stopped living?

A few days ago I came across a post on social media that raised a really interesting question about death.

The post questioned whether death should be allowed. It went on to talk about some insights he heard from a podcast episode by the author of Die Wise, Stephen Jenkinson.

This is part of the post:

He shared some profound insights on death and dying and the issues around this subject that confront us as a society. He describes the predominant modern paradigm as being“Death Phobic”.

One symptom of death phobia is the belief that death has no validity. One who is dying is therefore obliged not to die or at least not appear to be allowing it to happen. This puts those who are dying in the woefully tragic position of having to undergo a process that everyone around them, including family and the healthcare system at large, are invalidating. You’re supposed to adopt the defiant, heroic gesture of a ship captain fighting as his ship goes down.

Death is not our friend and yet everything that benefits us is derived from the death of that which came before us.

You can find the full post here if you’d like to read it all. It’s quite long but very insightful, and it brought me to think about my own perceptions around death.

I shared his post and attached my own thoughts.

It went like this…

My thoughts on death

A few months ago I did a past life regression session. Basically you’re hypnotised and you get to experience your soul moving through timelines to different lifetimes you’ve lived through. After being taken to various moments in a particular lifetime, you eventually end up at the moment of your death. I literally felt myself die and my soul move through the cosmos to meet my angels.

It wasn’t scary, it was beautiful.

It helped me to understand that death is not something to be afraid of. For one, your soul never really dies, just your physical body which is your home in this particular lifetime. But your soul will continue on to a new life when it’s ready. And has potentially experienced many lives before.

When you start doing healing work you actually experience many ‘shamanic deaths’. The death of your old identity, death of old limiting belief systems that no longer serve you, death of ego, death of shame and guilt, death of labels. And you come to the realisation that death doesn’t have to be feared.

Another thing I’ve come to know, is many people get to the end of their lives regretting all the things they didn’t do. In our limited time in this particular life, I’d like to be able to say I lived fully. So that when my time comes, I won’t be upset, because I won’t have regrets about not living.

The top 5 Regrets of the Dying

Last year I was at an event and one of the attendees was Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse who worked in palliative care and wrote a book on the top 5 Regrets of the Dying.

The top regrets were:

• I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not what others expected of me.
• I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
• I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
• I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
• I wish that I had let myself be happier.

You can read an article about it here.

Other cultures on death

Many ancient civilisations and even many cultures today view death very differently. They understand it’s just a part of life. They turn it into a celebration. And when you release that fear and attachment and give death a new meaning, then you truly start living. Yes, it’s sad when it happens, but it’s also inevitable.

We all live, we all die. Yet in Western society we’re so afraid to even talk about it. We try to keep people who are in pain alive for as long as possible, for whose benefit? Is a bed-ridden life really worthwhile? Personally, I would hope not to have to end up living to the age where I can’t do anything.

I intend to live life as fully as possible, to create a legacy, and to die with grace. Not hooked up to machines in a hospital.

I was recently watching a Netflix series by David Farrier, called Dark Tourist. In the series he reports on a subset of tourism that involves visiting places that are historically associated with death and tragedy. In one episode he visited a death worshipping cult in Mexico. And when he met with them, he realised it was just that they celebrate it rather than live in fear of it.

This is a quote from one of the ladies he interviewed:

“The most beautiful way to live in this world is without any fear. Just live, just live happily, because when you die there is no time for living.”

The woman also has cancer and instead of being afraid, she’s happy because it taught her how to appreciate all the moments she does have. Isn’t that a beautiful perspective?

This is from Season 1, Episode 1, Latin America.

For more interesting rituals and celebrations of death around the world, read this article from Matador Network. And here’s another article referencing some other countries.

The key point from these cultures is that death is not something to be afraid of. In fact, in many of them, the dead are highly respected and revered, and form an important part of their rituals.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

7 November 2011, I was sitting in my living room watching TV on a normal night. But it wasn’t a normal night, I got a call from a friend to let me know one of our good friends from high school had committed suicide. He was suffering from schizophrenia and in the end he didn’t want to be a burden on his family anymore. I was shook, I burst into tears and couldn’t stop.

We were only 23 at the time.

I couldn’t understand how someone could feel so helpless that this was their only way out. But at the funeral, while the tears were flowing, I also remember feeling a great sense of calm. Like I could feel he was in peace and everything was going to be ok. It was a true celebration of his life. And afterwards at the wake we sat around a fire and sang while some of our friends played a guitar. It was really beautiful.

During his eulogy, I remember his brother talking about Chris reading this book, The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Something in that book had allowed him to come to terms with the idea of death. And he felt he had lived out all his dreams and was ready to leave this world. He had travelled and had so many adventures and truly felt like he had accomplished all he desired in this lifetime.

At the time I couldn’t really wrap my head around it. The description of the book says:

The Bardo Thodol is primarily concerned with helping those who have entered the intermediate state to elevate themselves into a new reality, thereby escaping the life, death, bardo, and rebirth cycle. This is accomplished through the reading of instructions to help the confused, disembodied soul find its way through the bardos, or levels of the dream state the dead enter into following separation from their physical forms. There are three bardos encapsulating various aspects of the afterlife realm, in which the living whisper instructions of comfort, peace, and guidance to the deceased.

I thought about buying the book but I was scared about what I would find inside. Like it was somehow going to make me want to leave as well. But it’s something I’ve always wondered about. And over the years, the more I travelled and experienced other cultures, the more I started to understand.

And the more I do spiritual and embodiment work, the more I realise how disconnected most of us truly are from our true selfs (soul/higher self) and it makes more sense that someone who felt so disconnected from their physical body, could be ready to move to the comfort of another realm.

Nothing lasts forever

Saturday was the 2 year anniversary of my Nonna’s death. Interestingly that was the same day I shared my post about my thoughts on death.

I don’t really believe in coincidences. I believe everything is divine timing and that message came to me on that day for a reason. It made me look back at the post I wrote on the day my Nonna passed on, and I was rather proud of how profound my message was. I understood time was fleeting and I was grateful she was able to move on in peace surrounded by her loved ones.

My Nonna used to always say “nothinga lasta forever” (we’re Italian so that’s written in her accent lol)

Another interesting non-coincidence. I came across this quote on Instagram today and this was the final nudge I needed to come and write this post.

“There is only one law in the universe that never changes — that all things change, and that all things are impermanent.”

It’s a quote from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. This is a book by Sogyal Rinpoche. It’s meant to be a commentary to the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) and is an introduction to the core Buddhist beliefs and how to incorporate them into your daily life (and, ultimately, death).

The quote above highlights that nothing in life lasts forever. But the beauty of it, is once you truly start to accept and embrace this, you can actually start living. By meditating on impermanence, enlightenment will be realised.

And this is why those who have experienced higher levels of consciousness are less concerned with death.

So, is fear of death stopping people from living?

When we look at what’s going on right now, we are being taught to live in fear. Every day the media is presenting us with statistics, warning us about a deadly virus. It’s literally instilling fear of death into anyone who still buys into their lies.

And those who do, seem to be quite happy to give up their freedoms in order to save themselves from a virus that has a 99% recovery rate. No questions even asked.

People have literally stopped living because they’re so afraid of dying. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Living in a state of constant fear looks and sounds like the bigger killer here.

What if we all started living?

Once we can accept that death is an inevitable part of life, would those who are afraid live differently?

What if we all spent our time here on earth actually living?

What if we all stopped worrying about trying to please everyone else and learnt to follow our hearts? What if we stopped being so consumed by materialism?

What if we recognised that all the answers we really ever need are right inside of us?

I’ll leave you with one final quote which totally changed the way I viewed life.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do differently? What if you started living like that every day? All we ever really have is NOW. There’s so much power in being present and finding magic everywhere.