What Can Augment our Passionate Disposition towards Life?

One of the important issues to be considered in terms of deeper understanding of life is its counterpart, namely death. Many consider death as a morbid topic and avoid any discussion of it or at least show no interest in it. One of the reasons for fear of death is the ending – an ending projected by thought. Because thought is accustomed to continuity, it is unable to sense what would happen if that continuity ends. It is this uncertainty that comes up as fear. Turning away from the uncertainty is a kind of resistance to it and such refusal to look at it pushes the fear into our subconscious layers. From there it keeps sending messages through dreams and through loneliness during waking hours. This leads to psychological attachments as these attachments support the continuity of oneself through the image that one has about oneself. As a consequence, it creates images of others, gaining some comfort through the continuity sustained by interaction with those images. Thus a false base is created to feel safe and the fear of death is pushed under the carpet. However, somewhere in the deeper region, one knows it is false and so it prevents one from living fully.

Thought breeds fear, as J.Krishnamurti would often say. It is the inner transformation that can free us from the tyranny of thought. The inwardly directed movement takes us Home! That is the Home from which we came.

As we can see here, not paying attention to death affects life also, in the sense that the quality of life goes down. Living and dying are inextricably woven together and in their separation is the emergence of fear. We hear from the Masters that Truth has no continuity and that it is new from moment to moment. That is, there is a constant dying and renewal. Paying attention to death, one can move towards discovering that Truth because we then see unity in the life-death pair. In other words, attention to the content of death helps us appreciate life better.

In his book “Stillness Speaks”, Eckhart Tolle has a chapter with the title “Death and the Eternal”. His fluent presentation dwells on many esoteric items related to Death. The following lines are taken from it:

“When death is denied, life loses its depth. The possibility of knowing who we are beyond name and form, the dimension of the transcendent disappears from our lives because death is the opening into that dimension.”

In order to move on an exploratory journey into the topic of death, as for any topic, one has to set aside all preconceived notions and beliefs and come to it afresh. Therefore, consider all things that call for deeper attention in your life as hypotheses to be verified in the light of your own awareness and curiosity to find out what lies in the dark. They are meant to kindle our eagerness for exploration rather than give fixity to ideas. After all, the phenomenon of death is around us during our lifetime and it is going to be at the end of our own. When we pay attention to the content of death, we begin to unravel its mystery, at least to some extent. There is a boldness that builds up with the understanding of its content and so the fear associated with death begins to dissolve. This brings in a strange feeling of compassion towards everyone and everything that we meet in life. This is vouchsafed by those who go through a near death experience.

The site http://spirituality.yolasite.com can be a wayside companion to those who wish to explore along the above lines.

The Two Avenues in Life that Deserve Careful Attention

Peaceful mind comes along gradually as a result of our dedicated application to two avenues in life: The Practical and the Spiritual. Usually, there are so many disturbing influences in life that people lose heart and do not pay sufficient attention to the two avenues. However, the interesting thing about it is that once we pay attention to them, matters straighten up and give us the encouragement to be in the driver-seat of our lives. What is needed is loving application to both those avenues. It is to be noted that while the rational mind is the prime instrument in our being intelligent about the practical issues, reliance on intuition is what makes us glide along the spiritual path.

There are mainly five streams along which we can apply ourselves to the practical aspects of life. Those are: health, household, career, attention to others and, the last item, the fun things. This last item would include hobbies, games and sports. Attention to others implies understanding the needs of others (near and dear ones, colleagues, even strangers) and alleviating their unhappiness to the extent possible. The more passionately we apply ourselves to the five items the richer our life would be. We would lead a cheerful life and help others do the same. The spiritual avenue is usually guided by religious beliefs. This can be helpful but there is the danger of becoming emotionally attached to a religious system or personality. That would be counter-productive. In the absence of such identification, one moves over to the philosophic side of religions and embarks on a path of enquiry. Soon he or she understands that the spiritual deepening is not due to any accumulation of satisfying conclusions, or verbal knowledge, and that it is due to non-verbal sensing of what lies beyond the apparent. They also discover what the esoteric path is and move along it, striking their own trail. They may be helped by many, including the gurus and scriptures, but they will never swear allegiance to any system or authority, because they understand that would push them into the trap of conditioned thinking. Thus, they will know the beauty of aloneness and the passivity associated with the inner development. If we pay attention to the matters as above, we will also let our children grow as human beings unspoiled by any conditioning. Their minds would be free of fanaticism and ruthlessness and their lives would be filled with humility, compassion and dignity. Related matters are covered in the website http://spirituality.yolasite.com