I like how the author says, “To embrace life I must shake hands with death.” The author goes on to say he needs practice. From my experience death feels like nothingness, no purpose and it creates this crushing negative self-consciousness. Death is mean. It mocks life and it creates this alienation from life. In my human body death is felt as darkness and the chasm of inner darkness can be like a black hole draining life out of me. And when death is felt as depression or despair, where there is no choices, the only choice is to welcome death. It is a choice to merge with nothingness. This death can be a way of saying no to life and refusing to going on being tormented.
Because my cells do not produce sufficient energy for my muscles, creating lots of exhaustion and fatigue, death is a moment to moment experience for me. My daily death is felt as nothing in the world to identify with, nothing true or valuable in which I can believe in. The meaninglessness can bring about insecurity and powerlessness. There are even points of terrifying attraction to the darkness because how I felt repulsed with my daily death. However, lately I have begun to trust this darkness and death. I am beginning to learn to accept my powerlessness/nothingness and of all things there is a self here. There is a self in the void, in the darkness and in the death.
This self within death, for me, is the heart of faith. It is a realistic faith and is its own value without reference to anyone. It is a point I trust, even when I cannot deal with the lifelessness anymore. This faith ask no questions, consents to the meanness of death and learns to accept my having no choices. I am disappointed in this dying because it has weaned me from my feelings and weaned me from my beliefs. And yet faith being all there is left is like the sun. It does not matter if I believe or not because faith becomes this inner Essence and this supportive Presence where death becomes life.
On Oct 27, 2015 Syd wrote :
I like how the author says, “To embrace life I must shake hands with death.” The author goes on to say he needs practice. From my experience death feels like nothingness, no purpose and it creates this crushing negative self-consciousness. Death is mean. It mocks life and it creates this alienation from life. In my human body death is felt as darkness and the chasm of inner darkness can be like a black hole draining life out of me. And when death is felt as depression or despair, where there is no choices, the only choice is to welcome death. It is a choice to merge with nothingness. This death can be a way of saying no to life and refusing to going on being tormented.
Because my cells do not produce sufficient energy for my muscles, creating lots of exhaustion and fatigue, death is a moment to moment experience for me. My daily death is felt as nothing in the world to identify with, nothing true or valuable in which I can believe in. The meaninglessness can bring about insecurity and powerlessness. There are even points of terrifying attraction to the darkness because how I felt repulsed with my daily death. However, lately I have begun to trust this darkness and death. I am beginning to learn to accept my powerlessness/nothingness and of all things there is a self here. There is a self in the void, in the darkness and in the death.
This self within death, for me, is the heart of faith. It is a realistic faith and is its own value without reference to anyone. It is a point I trust, even when I cannot deal with the lifelessness anymore. This faith ask no questions, consents to the meanness of death and learns to accept my having no choices. I am disappointed in this dying because it has weaned me from my feelings and weaned me from my beliefs. And yet faith being all there is left is like the sun. It does not matter if I believe or not because faith becomes this inner Essence and this supportive Presence where death becomes life.