Let each thing you would do, say, or intend be like that of a dying person
Marcus Aurelius
I feel like I have to defend my mental health now lol. Thank God very few people, if any, that I know read this because they would be rushing me down to Mental Health. I think it is hard to understand what I mean by my acceptance and sometimes preferring this idea of death until one truly realizes how we are not the body or the personality, and death is not the end. How many people "know" what Marcus Aurelius seemed to realize, what took me six decades to realize, at least to some degree? Not many...yet.
Brief is a man's life, and small is the nook of Earth where he lives. Marcus Aurelius
Anyway, I need to stress that Life is an amazing thing. Brief and what we are given to experience is just a small nook...but it is an amazing thing. It is to be cherished and honored, loved and nurtured like a precious infant. It is also very, very difficult at times. Those are two truths about Life that cannot be denied by any of us. The most important truth, though, is that we... as these separate, individual concepts we identify with and call "me" ...do not own life. There is no such thing as "my life". There is just Life doing what Life does, "good or bad", "easy or difficult" blowing through these bodies and minds. We are that Life. Because we do not own it, we do not get to tell Life what it should do or how it should be. Our mission is to let it blow through and to go with it.Though we can decide "how" we go with it...if we go easy (by allowing) or go hard (by resisting), we are not to decide how it should be, how long it should last, how it should end. That is really none of our business.
What are you afraid of losing when nothing in the world actually belongs to you? Marcus Aurelius
Humans, however, have this terrible habit of "preferring" don't we, what the Buddha called Desiring or craving? When the experience of Life gets difficult for the human, mostly because we are preferring something else and resisting what is. We have a hard time allowing Life to be Life and relaxing into it, don't we? We adamantly say, "I don't want this!!! I want that instead!!"
This yet to be evolved human I call "me" is facing some very challenging Life situations and she is having a hard time dealing with them. They are not what "me" wants. I find myself in a physical and psychological state of "resisting". (The other night I had a challenging time relaxing into a Charlie Horse cramp...something I thought I had mastered as part of my "relaxing into what is" practice. Lasted a good five minutes. ..indicating how tensed up my body and mind are, how I am struggling to relax into what is.)
So, I am in a present state of tensed up resistance to what is. I found myself looking around at possibilities that I would or could prefer more. Man, I would prefer to have a home to call my own. I would prefer to have an income I can live on. I would prefer to have a life that is a little easier. So, I set out on a mission to see how I could get these things. One obstacle arose after another. After an exhausted search, it didn't seem likely or feasible that things would change for this human in a preferable way. There seemed to be no way to escape this present set of circumstances, and I questioned my ability to cope if this went on too much longer. There was no light, no joy, just "stress and difficulty" in the visual field of future.
No one can lose the past or the future, for if they don't belong to you, how can they be taken from you? Marcus Aurelius
Still, my reverence for Life and my understanding that it wasn't mine kicked in. I am like "Okay, I am not sure if I can handle this, but I will try to do it if I have to. Thy Will not my will be done. I really, really don't want to and I am not sure how I will cope or if I will pass this one...not at all...but of course, I will try. I will keep going at least."
It is not death that a man should fear, he should fear never beginning to live- Marcus Aurelius
Then, my mind's attention suddenly went to body complaints: the rib pain and the lung infection. And instantly I found myself wondering ...is this going to be the way out of this? Is my body finishing up this mission for me? And I was totally okay with that possibility. That made me question if dying would be easier than facing the challenges up ahead...and I realized it might be. That made me realize how I do not fear death and how I am not attached to either life or death. How...I don't care if I live or die (This to a mental health professional would be a big red flag but to a spiritual master, it is a sign of detachment). Thy Will, not my will be done.
But death and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure -all these things equally happen to good men and to bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore, they are neither good nor evil...Marcus Aurelius
I had no intention of actively doing anything to end this Life that isn't mine to end. I had no intention of passively allowing this physical condition get so bad that it would take me, either. I have a plan that if sats go below 90 I will go in. I am taking care of it...lung expansion and coughing etc. I am a fairly fit person for my age...this may not progress in any significant way. The rib will eventually heal from whatever is wrong with it. Awareness of this physical ailment just happened to make me realize how okay I will be if the powers that be decide I can skip the difficult lesson up ahead and graduate early. :) That's all.
About death, whether it is a dispersion or a resolution into atoms, or annihilation, it is either extinction or change....Marcus Aurelius
I am no Marcus Aurelius at this point. I am not that stoic but I do honor and appreciate this throught and feeling experience that has taken place within me, that made me view, once again, my perspective on life and death now, that shows me both the fraility of the personal human mind and the strength of the Universal mind.
This experience of living or dying isn't easy but we need to embrace the reality of both...so we live fully, growing into the best humans we can be and we die willingly when our times come, knowing we have done what we have come to do.
All is well
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