Fear of death is one of the biggest motivations people have to get involved in spirituality. Our brains are really smart; this is a problem because we are able to understand that each of us is going to die, and because the stories we’ve been given about that don’t quite make sense, it creates a lot of fear in us.
We need better stories around dying, and this is what spiritual teachings are about. This is why the Sufi teaching “die before you die” is so valuable. If you can move beyond the fear of death, then you can live your life in a totally different way. You’re not running away from something; you’re not constantly facing this mysterious thing that you can’t explain.
Now, I want to be specific about something. There are two things that get mixed up when we talk about fear of death. If we can separate those two things, the discussion becomes easier.
There’s the fear of death itself—what happens after you die. And there’s the fear of dying—exactly how are you going to die? Is it going to hurt? Is it going to be awful? Is it going to be horrible? These are two totally different things, best dealt with separately.
The fear of what happens after you die can be easily overcome by understanding what “Die before you die,” means. When you dissolve yourself into this “die before you die,” then that fear just goes away. We’ll talk about later.
There’s also just the fear of how horrible the actual process is going to be. Like I said, we’re really smart. We can see things, and we can watch people die. Heck, turn on the TV. All you see is dying, dying, dying, right? Horrible, awful stories. So, of course, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was facing a pretty dire possible future.
Actually, I was facing a pretty dire future, period. It was either die, go through horrible chemo, or try to heal myself. All the choices were not going to be pleasant. I went from being healthy to sick just like that. And the weird thing about it is, from day one I didn’t really feel that different except for that I had this swelling that obviously wasn’t good.
For right now, let’s only talk about fear of the actual situation. And it doesn’t have to be cancer; there are so many situations that are awful—divorce, losing a job, getting a job, getting married. All these things make huge changes to our lives.
Stress can come from all the little things throughout the day, even the things we say. You say something wrong and get into a whole lot of trouble. We’ve all learned that by saying things wrong in the past, right?
We all have a basic fear about how to live our lives. If you don’t know who you are, that fear is bigger than the fear experienced by someone who does know who they are. Because, when you do know who you are, all your experiences build upon each other to create wisdom in you. When you don’t know who you are, everything seems mysterious and even disconnected.
We are always asking, “Why did that happen to me?” You know… “Why me?” Often the spiritual answer is all the manifesting teachings that say, “It happened to you because you manifested it.”
“Why did this happen to me?” is a question that can only come if you don’t know who you are. If you know who you are the same question can arise, “Why did this happen to me?” But it’s just a question based in reality. Sometimes there isn’t an answer. Why did I get cancer? There is literally no answer to it.
Sometimes, apparently, there’s a cause that can be pinned down. There is a particular cancer that comes from working with asbestos. There is a cancer that’s related to being exposed to too much radiation and things like that. Cancers that come from the general toxic-ness of our society can’t be pinned down. So many times you can’t determine why it happened.
Living openly with a mystery is the best choice.
That’s why we need to be grounded in our being: die before you die. When the nafs die, when the ego dies, you come awake.
Actually, you’re always awake. A better description of what happens is that the fantasy goes away, and now you’re awake. If you don’t have to deal with your illusions about life, then you can deal with problems directly. There’s enough problems in life without having to deal with our fantasies and our illusions about it.
The beauty of this Sufi teaching is knowing that there is awakened state available. “Die before you die.” There is something that can die so that you emerge awake.
This is what the illuminated souls are. The way you get there through Sufi teachings is through usually breath practices. Through concentration—Sufism is a practice of concentration. Concentration is what conscious breathing is. In a breath practice you concentrate on the breath coming in, and concentrate on the breath going out. Eventually, you discover who it is that’s concentrating.
It’s beneficial to the full life. The more you concentrate on life, the more you engage fully. This is one of the beauties of Sufi teachings. The more you concentrate on life the stronger. you become. The more you concentrate on the positive aspects about yourself that deal with life, the stronger this ‘being’ of you which is able to concentrate becomes.
With practices we bring forth our inner concentration more and more. This strength makes it so you’re walking through life awake. Especially if you focus on your ability to live in harmony, to live awake with people. If we focus on how to live truthfully we get stronger, and awareness grows. Reality blooms forth. Then fear of death can be examined consciously.
The more we are able to separate these two fears—the fear of dying and the fear of death, the easier they are to see. Separate them through your ability to concentrate. Now you can deal with them as two different things. Awareness always works by illuminating things.
The fear of the dying process is relieved by dealing with life directly. It really has nothing to do with death itself. It has to do with our inner core of reality and how we live.
The fear of being dead simply means that you haven’t encountered the unity of everything in existence. There is no way that anything can actually “die” and completely disappear because everything is so intimately blended together.
But… you wonder. What happens to “me” after I die?
Turn the story the other way around and we can start to see it. Imagine for just a second that all you are is biology. What happens to your body when you die? Well, it dissolves back into the matter of the Earth, right? In fact, it was never separate form the earth in the first place. Basically, when you die, nothing happens. On a molecular level nothing changes.
Extend that vision to what you think of as your ‘spirit.’ Certainly your spirit is also as intricately interconnected as your body. In this realm of visioning, details don’t matter. As we move forward, just know that everything is already taken care of. You really don’t have to worry about it.
Knowing details about exactly what it’s going to be like to be dead is useless, because this part of you that wants to know is the part that will happily be gone.
This is why Sufi teachers say we need to understand what it’s like to be alive.
There was one great Sufi Sheikh, Sheikh Farrad, and he was asked one time, “I’m afraid of death. Tell me about death.” The Sheikh just looked at the questioner and said, “I don’t know anything about death. I’m alive. I know everything about being alive. Let’s talk about that.”
Fear of death. If you look at it directly, you’ll experience that it dissipates, because it’s not real. It’s a fear about something that’s not real.
“Well,” you argue, “I am going to die.”
Yes, I know that, but it’s already taken care of. Look at it for what it is and the worry relaxes.
To be clear… I’m not talking about fate. I’m not saying that the moment of death is predetermined, and all the stories that go around that. I’m talking about the fact that it’s already taken care of. This is how existence exists.
Here’s one little medical tidbit that might be interesting to know. Scientists have discovered that at the moment of death the body releases all your good hormones, so that you are bathed in a bliss soup. The body itself is designed so that actual death not horrible. I mean, don’t go kill yourself just so that you can feel it; you’ll get there soon enough. But there’s no need to worry about exactly what’s going to happen.
Fear is an okay emotion, we need it. A basic worry about dying is useful because we don’t want to do stupid things. Don’t go driving fast and getting into a car wreck. Don’t eat horrible food and smoke cigarettes. Don’t do stupid things that are going to make you die because you will probably then die in some painful, horrible way. So, don’t do that.
Have some care, have a lot of care for yourself.
Part of the secret of “Die before you die” is to look directly at the fear of dying. In the light of your awareness you’ll see that it melts away. Replace the fear with kind care, caring for yourself.
And this is going to be part of the story, of course, of me getting cancer and what happened after that because it turned into a very good example of care for myself. So again, I want to emphasize that I did not cure myself of cancer; I just cared for myself. And it’s not like I wasn’t caring for myself before, but it turned into a higher level of care and concentration.
So, fear of death. Look directly at it, and you’ll experience how it starts to dissipate.