InnerBliss: A Near Death Experience

A silly Zoe picture for a not-so-silly topic.

Listening to: Dude's wearing rabbit ears during this song. Perfect.

Today's Bliss Formula: Ocean blue bands on my braces (and no pain -- yet). More of the Kitten's cherry pie from yesterday. A breeze that is a relief in this humidity. A coming week filled with exciting posts (I hope you agree) and activities.

For we are only the rind and the leaf.

The great death, that each of us carries inside,
is the fruit.

Everything enfolds it.

--Rilke, Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

Death is our wedding with eternity.

--Rumi, Sufi Mystic

The night kissed the fading day
With a whisper.
"I am death, your mother,
From me you will get new birth."

--Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet

A fear of death has followed me like a menacing shadow since my youth. Looming over everything I did, making me fearful of life itself.

There are as many reasons for fear of death as there are people on this planet, but there are two that seem to be at the base of these fears.

First, and most obviously, there is the fear of the unknown.

Second, and not as obvious, is the fact that so many people are not fully living, are not really living the life they desire, and so they fear the end because they have not begun.

Once you are fully living, the fear of death is almost obliterated because you can say, yes, if I were to die today, it would be okay -- because I'm loving and laughing and experiencing and using my gifts and sharing myself...if you can say all of that at the end of the day, you are getting somewhere.

Think about it: if you had six months to live, what would you do?

This is a popular question right now with films like The Bucket List out there.

But I think we tend to approach the answer incorrectly, writing lists filled with adventure -- lots of show but no real substance.

The real point of this question is to be able to say, "Well, I would do what I am doing right now."

I have gotten to the point -- after many years of hard work -- where I can say that. And it is truly liberating.

But not completely. Yes, I am living fully but there's still that fear of the unknown.

And yet...

It has taken me even more years to come to terms with and completely understand a memory from when I was seven years old.

I was swimming at an adult public pool with no adult supervision. My mother preferred to stay with my little sister at the kiddie pool. I was small -- you couldn't see me above the edge of this giant, olympic sized pool -- but I was a good swimmer.

Being a good swimmer doesn't matter if someone dives on top of your head.

The next thing in my memory is me ... watching myself from a distance.

Me thinking how pretty my body looked turning like that under the water.

Me thinking how beautiful my body looked surrounded by all those bubbles.

Me feeling so at peace.

Someone pulled me out (obviously) and got me breathing again (obviously) but I was only concerned that no one tell my mother. I loved swimming that much.

I still do.

It took me until I was in college -- carrying that memory around so clearly for those years -- to realize that I had experienced a classic near death.

It took me until recently to fully integrate the knowledge of that into my spiritual and emotional life.

I have nothing to fear.

I have NOTHING to fear.

If fear of death is the greatest fear and I have personal experience that something beautiful is waiting for us, then I have nothing to fear.

Think about what that feels like -- to know there is nothing in this world besides our own minds to fear. To know that loved ones may leave their skin suits but they are not gone.

To know that we are eternal. (And this knowledge is not associated with or dependent on any particular religious doctrine.)

We may change; our consciousness may alter; we may become part of something else; but we are never gone.

I had a difficult life. I think most readers understand that. And I believe with all my heart that I was given this experience so that I might know there was more.

When I was eight -- only a year later -- I had a moment when I realized that the people around me were crazy but that I was not and that I might be sad for a long time but that I would be okay.

I always have wondered where that mature thinking came from. How was I able, at such a young age, to separate myself from the darkness around me?

After figuring out the meaning of my near death, I had that piece of my puzzle too. I knew, from experience, that this life, this moment was not it. That more and bigger and better and mysterious and mystical lay somewhere, waiting for me. That we come from beauty and love and return to it.

And so nothing can really harm us. Not really. Bad things happen, yes, but at our core we are capable of handling anything -- if only we focus on the love and the light. If only we focus on our true identity.