Death has this funny way of waking us up to life.
Is that not the point?
We are the ones who give life and death its meaning, for if we didn’t, the ever changing colors of this existence would cease to exist. We would live in gray.
The colorful high highs and low lows of life is what shakes us up, wakes us up, and breaks us up. When we live in the realm of gray, we find ourselves in a meaninglessness, numb, non-feeling void.
Nothing excites us.
Nothing causes us to feel.
We can all relate to the fact that at one point in time feeling became too painful, so we shut it down entirely. Our bodies had no choice but to sign a contract with this state of shutdown to avoid an uncontrolled state of despair.
How do we find our way back to our vibrancy, color, and meaning once again?
There is no other way but through the realm of sensation.
We must not only develop a capacity to feel again, but a healthy willingness to do so.
Entering into a mature relationship with life reminds us that when we open ourselves to the depths of life, we are saying, “I am also willing to feel the depths of death.”
Death represents the painful repressed memories and feelings that haunt us. Death is as literal as it is symbolic. The death of your childhood. The death of a loved one. The death of a relationship. The death of your sense of self.
Our pain takes us through untouched and unexamined hallways and corridors to the skeletons in the closet that we would rather keep dusty and locked down.
When we choose to mindfully examine pain, like a slow excavation of an ancient artifact, we discover the top layer first and ever so carefully work our way down to expose the whole piece.
You would not jackhammer something so sacred and fragile, would you? Nor would you let it lay as a mystery, for it would drive you mad leaving you with no choice but to unearth it.
You would take the most delicate brush and remove layer after layer of dirt and dust with such finesse that the process of getting to the artifact would actually be the most potent part.
If you were to see your past pain as an ancient artifact, essential to remembering and understanding who you are, just as an artifact is to a culture, I imagine you would treat it differently.
You would treat it with reverence and respect.
You would activate your own ancient knowing about living and dying.
You would see how pain is one of your essential teachers of how to truly live.
We choose what we resurrect after the acknowledgement of what has died.
In the death of my childhood needs, I resurrect the responsibility of taking care of myself. In the death of my beloved friend, I resurrect their legacy that now lives through me. In the death of my marriage, I resurrect my boundaries and sense of self worth.
Without death, there is no life. Without life there is no death.
Without the contrast there would be no meaning.
My biggest wish for you is to allow in the contrast of life. Feel it all. See every emotion as a sacred communicator. Choose to slow it all down and allow this existence to move you rather than you moving it.
Each breath is an opportunity for something different to happen.
What if loosening your grip was all you had to do?
Comments