What if death is no more to be feared than the falling of withered leaves in the autumn, or the last light fading from the sky after a sunset in the evening?

How have we become a culture so afraid of death?

 In the middle of your busy day, or while you’re sorting through your emails, I invite you to pause for a few minutes and join me in an experiment, if you will.

I’d like you to contemplate your own inevitable death. Close your eyes and see what images, thoughts and feelings come. Perhaps you see a blank screen, or darkness, or a tunnel with a beguiling light, a doorway into Mystery? Maybe you recoil and feel resistant, or perhaps you’re curious? Or you feel an overwhelming sense of loss and sadness from which you want to turn away?

Now, let all of that go, close your eyes again and see nothing-ness.

Again, notice your thoughts and feelings. Do you immediately want to fill this nothing-ness with something? Do you feel bored and restless and wander away looking for comfort or distraction? Or, is nothing-ness and not knowing a place where you can rest and relax?  

What I’m inviting you to do here is to be with the unknown, just for a few moments. This runs counter to our current culture with all its many disturbances. To sit with death and to contemplate death is potentially a liberating act. Facing into what we tend to avoid, being curious about what we don’t know, coming to meet a mystery bigger than our own mind – these mental actions can expand our possibilities.

Death comes in many forms. Many of us first encounter death when a loved one dies – a family member, a friend, a beloved pet. These deaths may be sudden and shocking or drawn out and full of suffering. You may have been touched by the sudden felling of a favourite noble tree or the slow disappearance of the bird population around your home. Or perhaps you have a long-term or terminal illness and you have had to delve deep into what dying means to you. There are also many emotional, psychological and spiritual deaths – a relationship ends, you find yourself suddenly changing and wanting to retreat from the world, you don’t know who you are any more when you see so many things you have loved in the world disappearing.

To sit with death means to be willing to contemplate all of this – the endings, the losses, the grief and the mystery. And it means to notice who you are in relation to it all  – notice how you turn away or how you rush to fill the space, how challenging it is to sit in the unknown without reaching after finite answers.

What I’m suggesting is very similar to the practice of meditation. It’s an invitation to cultivate a willingness to make space for all of your experiences, to face into everything and avoid nothing, to embrace your grief and walk towards the shadows.

And why am I advocating this?  Well, there are many answers to that question but perhaps the most important is the certainty that unless we are willing to embrace death we cannot fully welcome life. Unless we are willing to allow our human vulnerability we will never know our spiritual strength and we will never grow in compassion and committed action. To sit with death is to witness all of our experiences and to come home to our humanity. And surely, in these very troubled times that is what is needed of us?

And what about choosing life? Why do we need to choose life – isn’t life something we’re given, something that simply exists? For me, choosing life means allowing the intelligent, creative force that is life to flow through me and to express through me. It means actively inviting this creative flow, not blocking it, not saying well, I’ll take the light but I’ll avoid the dark. Welcoming it, embracing it, witnessing it all and honing my skills in how to co-operate with the intelligence of life, committing to becoming an empowered creator.

At this time, when life is under threat in our world and on our planet in so many ways, those of us on a conscious healing and creative path are being called to align with the life force, to choose life and embody life consciously. This is not an easy calling and that’s why it is easier to stay true to our intentions and to sit with death and choose life together – to let go of the old and to bring in the new. We are evolving from a culture focused on “me” and what I want, to a focus on “we” and what  we need collectively. The practie of sitting with death and choosing life supports us to heal and open our hearts and to love even when the world around us appears to be drowning or burning or collapsing or becoming a cruel battlefield. We are called to become more conscious, more whole, more loving, more creative.

I invite you to come and join us in co-creating an engaged conscious community.  Go here to find out how.