Just In Case…

Can we use Death as the Ultimate Personal Growth Experience?

“Are you Serious?”

Yes, I am totally serious – death is likely the ultimate awakening experience any human being could experience. Some questions are 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?

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. We might with good effort and good fortune be able to experience both our humanness and our spirit simultaneously – a goal most spiritual people 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. Now I don’t succeed as often as I would like, I sometimes still slip in to auto-pilot mode and drift through the habit of my day. Yet more and more I am able to appreciate the little things in life as they actually are and drop the good / bad, right / wrong of it all.