Find death before death finds you.
Eckhart Tolle
Though I usually never plan before hand what I will write as I sit myself down here in front of the computer, I found myself in the middle of the night deciding what my next entry would be. I had a bit of an overwhelming encounter with my physical form.
A Long Winded Explanation About My Body's Inspiration to Wtite About Survival
I woke up for the second night in a row with intense but familiar lower abdominal/pelvic pain (been having the same type of pain off and on since 2016...thought it was endometriosis) and sickness that led me running back and forth to the Bathroom all night.
Besides that my ticker was acting up from a mini hike we did that day. I had the usual exertional pressure in chest, dizziness, and palpitations that I get from overexerting myself.
If that wan't enough the pain in my underarm seemed to intensify. It led me to put my hand to the spot for the first time in months and I could feel something there. Though I felt discomfort in the area for over 9 months, I refused to palpate it during the six month wait for another MRI I was given. Deciding that I wouldn't sit with fear and negativity as I waited for a system (individuals within the sytem) that seemed to be resisting my every move towards wellness for their own egoic reasons to smarten the heck up, I made the conscious and not so conscious decision to repress, supress and deny my way through what turned out to be 7 months of waiting for a test I have yet to hear about and one I know I will not hear about unless I begin that fight and struggle all over again. I have no choice now...I feel something there! Sigh!
And on top of that my joints which were getting increasingly stiff over the last few weeks were noticeably stiff, hot and sore everytime I got up last night.(It isn't COVID) My mind began to spin...I had pulled a tiny black legged tick out of me in July. I put it in a pill bottle with the intention of sending it off for testing, not so much for my sake, but as a public health measure to determine if Lyme carrying ticks have finally made it this far north. I doubted if they did...I wasn't going to go on a prophylactic antibiotic because I was just on one for a nasty UTI. I truly thought it was next to impossible for me to get Lyme Disease. So I put that out of my mind too. Never thought much of it until I developed a large bulls eye rash in that area two weeks later. Then it hit me...I forgot to send the tick for testing. I went to get the pill bottle and noticed that it had turned to dust. There would be no way of validating, then, if it was carrying Borrelia. I stuffed the "oh no" down and said I would wait to see if I got other symptoms. Though I have been noticing increasing joint stiffness and muscle pain especially in the hips, knees and elbows..I kept chalking it up to doing something wrong in my yoga practice. Last night my hips, wrists, knees and hands were hot.. That's not yoga.
I thought,"Oh my goodness...I couldn't have Lyme Disease, could I? Like really...would I have that added to everything else I can't get diagnosed? I know that Life is here to test us but this is like giving a Grade Two student the MCATS...telling them they won't get to Grade Three unless they pass them...don't you think? A little too much? "
Or is it?
It seemed that every physical ailment I was dealing with, denying or ignoring decided to make itself known to me in the middle of the night. I was reminded that my physical form is undergoing some challenges. Making me aware of these things was like it whispering to me, "I want to survive...pay attention to me...do something!" Then it dawned on me ...all beings on this planet have this inherent biological drive to survive. That is what unifies us. We are all being challenged in one way or another. We feel pain as a sign that survival is in jeopardy. Our forms undergo change in order to adapt to a changing environment so we can survive. We feel pain but we also want the pain to end.
A Writing Topic
My mind was made up: I was going to come here today to write about the thing I thought unifies all of us, "The Unifying drive to live" and the "the unifying drive to end suffering". Hmmm! Pretty straight forward.Great topic.
Then, as I was sitting, somehwat sloppily and negatively at the table with my tea...all I could put in me as replacement fluid...a video showed up on my desk top for me to view. I was suddenly challenged by another idea.What we really want is not so much Life but death?
Huh?
In Transcending Limitation to Awaken, Eckhart Tolle reminds us that the evolutionary impulse that unites us is not a desire to live, but a desire to die.
Say what crazy lady?
Sounds pretty morbid but think about it! What happens in death state or its minature form of deep sleep is we slip awat from mind and body as pure consciousness, and are reconnected to what is real and important...to all there really is. We are reunited with the One Source, with our timeless ( eternal) essence.
Deep Sleep-The Mini Death Experience
Deep sleep is a death of the ego but not of us. We are not aware of body or "little me" in that state but neither are we 'unconscious'. We still exist as something... otherwise we wouldn't wake up. Who we really are beyond body and mind needs these 'little deaths' to remind itself of its essence. It is driven to die for certain amounts of time every night..
When we are tired and lay down at night, we are pulled toward sleep because of this impulse to slip out of our form, our ego, our mind and our body to rediscover just how formless we are. When our bodies are a certain tired after a certain life span we are pulled toward death for the same reason. Even though we do not have the capacity to know this in conceptual sense.
Seeking the Formless
It is reconnection with our formless, egoless essence that we seek through death.
The thing that unites us then is not this desire and drive to stay in physical form but to be reunited with the formless nature of who we are.
The good news is we can die before we die. We can reach a state of Self-realization, a state of awareness that who we are is formless, and egoless without ever having to take our last breath. We are called constantly to that state.
Death is not the end of Self
We have this notion that death is the end of not just form but everything. It isn't. Death is not necessarily an end of body. It can be just an end to our attachment to this world we created with our minds.
It is not an end to us. There is "eternal Life". Only form dissolves , not the essence. And our forms do not have to die before we can discover this essence of who we are. We can in a sense die before we die and from there learn to truly live.
So I don't know what my body is doing. I don't know how long it will last....maybe another 40 years ...maybe another 40 weeks. I don't know. Maybe its urgent communications with me are not there to ensure I do what I can so that it can survive. Maybe they are there to remind me of its adapting and perishable nature so I find what it is truly important before I leave it. Maybe it is there to remind me that I will not be united with what we all truly want through attachment to its 'existence' but through death, which only involves my mental detachment from this world .
Hmmm!
All is well.
Eckhart Tolle ( July 3, 2020) Transcending Limitations to Awaken. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEk7SDBkiHg
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