For many of us, the Covid19 is an opportunity to confront our mortality and it is a very real possibility of death confronting us, a fairly horrible death akin to drowning.
I have been wrestling with this myself. Most of you will see this fear as overblown or abstract, but I and several of my friends do not.
Let me tell you why so you understand what I have to say about the spiritual importance of confronting the fear of death. I also I want you to really understand what others are going through with this fear because compassion in this country of ‘I got mine fuck you’ attitude is sadly lacking and compassion is key to all spirituality. It is also the mark of the beasts, as I will mention.
Here is a bit of personal history to give context to my words.
Due to a congenital problem with my lungs (ironically, my mother likely smoked during pregnancy) as well as having a lung disease, my lungs are smaller than normal, very scarred and operating at 60-70% of what they should be. I know what it is like to die of suffocation because it happened to me at 12 and I was revived. Ive always known that is likely that my FU lungs will do me in eventually, and that is my doctors talking, not me being maudlin or high drama. My point- it is very possible that Covid19 will kill me and many others with health issues, including my son, in if / when I get it, especially if there are no ventilators, as seems likely. This is the way it is.
So I have been confronting my mortality and it has been a hard slog- Im not ready to die, I don’t want to die alone (likely at this point) I have so many more things to do, books to write, lovers to meet, countries to visit…but that is not up to me. Death come for us all and, in Tantrika, one of the 5 kleshas or obstructions we have to work through is ‘fear of death’ and this is my point- fear of death is paralyzing, leads to deep depression and offers no real help or gain. For people like me, having this confrontation and process is unavoidable now and is a hard but positive spiritual thing in the end.
For all you younger, luckier, healthier folks, this is still a potent time to have this confrontation with fear of death and do this work and since we’re all in lockdown, you have plenty of time to contemplate your death in a meditative, positive way, something I recommend. In Buddhism, Tantrika and other spiritual traditions, preparing your mental, physical and spiritual self for death is crucial for transitioning in a positive and conscious manner to the next state of being, whether it is reincarnation or any of several other possibilities. Most meet death without that spiritual, meditative, conscious focus and awareness because who wants to meditate on THAT when your’s living your life and having fun and working, right? Yet, momento mori, my friends.
This work we have to do in dealing with our innate fear of death that is so visceral and imbedded in our fight or flight response is aided by entering into the feral state of your Animalself, and so attuning to what the beasts and animals accept so stoically while we fret and cry about the sorrow and suffering of it all before it has even happened.
Animals simply accept all life brings. They do not cognate as we do, even those with arguably higher intelligence than us such as whales and dolphins. We know from on-going communication with animals like gorillas, like Koko ( https://www.koko.org/tags/koko-and-penny/ ) that they quite understand about death and grieve intensely at death, as do most animals like elephants, wolves and deer who mark death with ritualistic sorrow and grieving. And then move on.
But, and this is important, they rarely exhibit fear of death in the potential or the abstract, in other words, they fear death when it is PRESENT. No animal known thinks about death in the unknown future as they go about their lives. They simply live when they live as they live, giving full attention to that and when they are injured or close to death, then they focus on escaping death or dying . When watching a member of the pack or pod or heard die, then they grieve and move on with living. In essence, they do what Buddhism and Tantrika and Taoism strive to instill in their adherents; to be her now at this moment and die consciously.
The problem for humans? We think in past/present/future all the time. Thanks upper cortex! We carry the knowledge of our future death around with us all the time. We often live subjunctively, on what may or may not or could or might happen, often based on illusions, fantasies or prior fears, and this is often the source of our fear and misery. What we want but don’t have, what we had but lost, the fears of what may or might or could happen; This is what makes us often unhappy and confused, it is what meditation seeks to still, the endless chatter of the ego over illusionary possibilities that will likely never happen, and that is especially true of our biggest fear, Death.
In this, as in many thing, the beasts have much to teach us. The goal of meditation is to live this moment, here, now, fully conscious.
Animals have this spiritual viewpoint down. Animals, when they are not working on surviving, are often playing, not worrying. Think about that. We tend to worry more than play, does that seem healthy?
I strongly believe, after a very rough few days meditating on death, that the Covid19 virus has presented us with a great opportunity to face our inevitable death and do the conscious spiritual work of removing the fear of it and preparing ourselves for it with the grace, acceptance, and open mind of a beast. It also reminds us of the worthlessness of worry over things that are not real but are only in our minds and to focus more on what is real NOW and to play more. Any wolf or elephant or gorilla could teach us this simple wisdom.
In the end, this killer virus is a wake up call to work on our liberation, our focus on NOW and our own spiritual growth. To prepare with spiritual awareness for the inevitable. Fear is, as they say, the great mind killer and leaves little room for compassion.
Fo those of us who will live through this, well, we will have done great conscious-focusing work and are assured that it will come in handy eventually:)
May all beings achieve Health, Wealth, Prosperity & Liberation- and Play more! Live like an animal.
Much Love & Will to all in this trying time- Be well.
Dear Denny,
Your contact page does not work so I am leaving you a message here. Hello! This is Jan from the old Mandala Books. I would love to stay in contact with you. Perhaps you can go to my website and contact me back if you wish. My website is 2pathfindercounseling.com I do hope we can stay in touch and I enjoyed your recent article listed here. Thanks