“Preparing to die is living in the present with clarity.”From El refugio del corazón
There are times when my wife finds me in silence and asks me what I am doing. My answer is “preparing to die.”
It may sound strange, but I don’t say it out of any morbid or ungrateful inclination. I say it sincerely, because this is how we should live every day: preparing ourselves for death by cultivating this relationship with God, without waiting for the end of the day or for some tragic event to ask Him to remember us.
What dies and what does not
I need to make this clear: what dies is this body, which is nothing more than energy. You will always be alive. The fear of dying arises from ignorance, because you are not certain that you will remain alive when your body is no longer here.
That ignorance was of our own making. The Divinity gave us free will to play with all our power and our capacity to create, until we became trapped in the game we ourselves innocently invented. But God knows about the ignorance we have fallen into, and in His love He frees us from it.
The Presence that you are has to do only with the now. In your present is the Divine Consciousness, which is immutable: it cannot be altered by any of your senses or by any experience. Everything can change except your Presence, which is Divine just as it Is. There is nothing you need to add to it for it to be perfect.
Stop for a moment now and feel within you what you have just read. Feel how the now reaches into the fibers of your heart. Quiet yourself with your breathing, perceive only this present moment, and feel how nothing alters the Divinity in you.
Where would your mind be trapped?
There is nothing gloomy, then, about preparing to die. It means living with clarity, here and now. Ask yourself this question honestly: If you were to die right now, where would your mind be trapped? In what thoughts? If you died without being clear, you would still be trapped in whatever mistaken ideas you have about what Spirit and Divinity are.
We have always asked ourselves the great questions: Who are we? Where are we? Why do we exist? But how can we answer them, if they are questions limited by mental parameters? The mind does not have the answers. That is why we have to turn toward the observer, the witness, which is none other than our own consciousness. That is where everything begins.
It is in the nature of Consciousness to transcend time and space, and nothing that arises in time and space could be reality. If we take time and space out of the equation, the immortal questions are answered in the Eternal Present. Consciousness would shine on its own, and every dilemma would disappear.
It is the ego, that false feeling of being someone separate, that projects a past and a possible future. Only when we subdue our mechanical, egoic tendencies can we relax enough to see clearly what is so simple and obvious about who we really are.
Without rejecting the body
Exercise your clarity in every instant, but not as an effort. Quite the opposite: as a full surrender into your presence. The mind constantly pulls you away from your present, from your now, from your life. And don’t forget that this human being is also you.
Throughout the ages, some yogis have regarded this body as a limitation. But how could you reject this body, when it too has arisen from Consciousness as something finite and mortal? It is still part of your spirit.
When you are in the mind, you are in exile, because the mind is inert; your body, on the other hand, truly has life. Your spirit has taken physical form, but it is your mind that has confined you to mortality and finitude. Look at your existence from the top down and not the other way around: it is Consciousness that has manifested in this experience, and your body is its vehicle. That is why you must always favor life, living in the present, in unity and communion with everything.
Your clarity lies in living the truth that you are one with everything, and that your body, although finite and mortal, is part of what you yourself, as Being, have chosen to live. When the body dies, it actually dissolves into you, into Consciousness, because you manifested it in order to live this human experience.
Where would you go?
Every time you look out your window, you are seeing your mind. It is not trapped in your brain: it is in everything you perceive and in every sense that gives you information. It is a world that has been superimposed on our consciousness and that, out of ignorance, we believe is real; and as if that were not enough, we also feel separate from it. That is mind, and that is where you are trapped. But how do you free yourself from this prison?
Every object and every form is an apparent modification of Consciousness; all of it is Spirit in form. When you observe everything as a modification of yourself, of your Being, you see consciousness in everything, in the I Am. Heaven exists within you, and that heaven is the clarity that sets you free.
The mind, in creating matter, also makes you believe that you are separate from spirit, but that is only a mistaken idea: don’t feed it. Don’t let something inert confine your reality and your existence. When you awaken, you will realize that you are not this collective programming.
At death, then, where would you go? How could there be a place to go, if you exist in everything? Don’t let yourself get trapped on this linear path of time and space. Make the best possible use of your time and your life, because it is precisely in this life that you are being given the opportunity.
Don’t put it off: nothing and no one guarantees that you will be here tomorrow. Cultivate this relationship with God today, always favor life, and live every instant and every moment in the now.
From Dr. Zuluan Orion's books: El refugio del corazón · Deshojando el Corazón de la Eternidad