Just In Case…

“We can use Death as the Ultimate Personal Growth Experience”, I said to a student of mine the other day.

“Are you serious?” she responded.

“Yes, I am totally serious – death is likely the ultimate awakening any human being could experience.” I spoke.

Some questions to ponder though;

Are we conscious as we are actively dying?

Are we present in our final exhale?

Are we paying attention to who we really are as we leave the body?

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying speaks directly to my belief that death does awake us;

“In this way the yogin is imitating what happens at death: when the knots in the channel are released, the winds flow into the central channel and enlightenment is momentarily experienced.” Sogyal Rinpoche

Now, lets be honest these three questions could be reframed another way, a way that would have us be much better prepared for our ultimate death as we apply them to our daily living;

Are we conscious as we are actively living?

Are we present in our first inhale of the day and our last exhale of the evening?

Are we paying attention to who we really are as we live in the body?

Either way, life or death, we are being called to be more present and more authentic in our living and our dying. However, by using our ultimate death as a tool, as a source of inspiration, as a final reckoning, we may be able to propel ourselves into the fortunate space of being awake in our lives and live a life we would be proud of. We might, with good effort and good fortune, be able to experience both our humanness and our spirit simultaneously – a goal spiritual practioners have. Live awake, die awake!

My personal practice, my attempt to live awake in order to die awake, is to live each day as if it were my last just in case it is. I don’t succeed as often as I would like, I sometimes still slip in to autopilot mode and drift through the habit of my day. Yet more and more I am able to appreciate life as it actually is and drop the good/bad, right/wrong of it all.