I recently just finished Jed McKenna's third book "Spiritual Warfare". I have been consuming his triology non-stop for the last couple of months. He has helped me in ways I could've never fathomed. I feel eternally grateful to him and the person who showed me his books. Seriously. They're amazing.
Anyways his whole deal is basically about waking up. He talks about how 99.9999% of people are asleep in the dream-state. That the world is basically a poorly scripted mellow drama and everyone is playing their role without realizing that it's all fake. It's really hard to sum up in a paragraph, but his basic assertion is that all beliefs and concepts are false and that the only thing that is true is the underlying is-ness, that which cannot be divided further. Therefore, our roles such as student, daughter, mother, beautiful, angry, intelligent, etc are all false scripts, roles that we play because we do not realize that they are so.
We are prisoners of the constructs handed down to us by society and our families and the only way out is to basically chew our own legs off. To say fuck all of this and go set out to burn every belief from our minds until we are no longer deluded into thinking anything false is true.
In short, I agree with him. This way of looking at the world has helped me profoundly, though I find myself not yet ready to completely cut myself from my matrix. I realize that I am filled with untruths and that maya (the force of delusion) animates all that I am. In my most conscious moments I am completely connected and in tune with all that is. But those pass, and yes, I am not yet enlightened. I still have roles I desire, and dreams I wish to manifest and I am trying to convince myself that that is not wrong. The funny thing is though that the more you convince yourself that all is in alignment and nothing is wrong, the more you are outside of the dream, because the dream is propelled by fear of wrongness. Fear of the unmanifested space of no self. Without this constant, fire of fear burning underneath us, the constant projection of falseness- wrongness, there is no self. Oh, oh, oh the irony. It burns!
Now, back to the title of this post. Death Awareness. After reading hundreds of pages of this man's work and him basically asserting the same thing from as many directions as he can (because it is not about WHAT he is saying, but how he can point you TO the truth- that which cannot be divided further), he introduces something which seems completely new to me. Death Awareness.
What does this mean? Well, basically that death is your best friend and ally in awakening. That the dream-state rests on the belief that death is this abstract thing in the future which does not concern the present. Or perhaps that death isn't real, and that there is something MORE real waiting after we "die". I totally relate to this. I think in order to cope with the vapidity of life, people are placing their bets in death, as though on the other side everything is more complete and here were just learning little lessons and biding our time.
I have no idea what happens after we die, how could I? That said, I think it would seriously enrich my life to keep the reality of death always within reach. I mean I act like I know I will live a long life, but I really don't. My mortality is the only thing I really can be sure of, and in that there is so much freedom. If death walks beside me and is the only thing that is true, it could help me open myself up to life.
One can only exist while the other survives, and in this there is an urgency that could help propel the human race out of its lethargy. We spend our lives in our heads remembering how we got off on our baser senses and waiting for the times when we'll do it again. Drinking, fucking, reading, talking. All the things we appreciate are indeed beautiful, but how much more could there be if we aligned ourselves with the universe, realizing that nothing is wrong and everything flows in infinity? I can only begin to fathom what that would mean, but I have a feeling it means a lot more than wondering if Jimmy is gonna take me out to dinner and spread my legs later this weekend.
Sorry to be crass, but really? What are we working for here? Birth, grow, enjoy, label, worry, work, die? There's a lot of greatness in the funhouse of Maya, but Jesus, there's potential for so much more. And how do we find the impetus for seeking out a limitless life? Well by realizing that each moment is fucking amazing and could be our last, right? It's not morbid, it's common fucking sense.
And here comes the real fucking nugget of this whole rant. To me, death seems like a bad hair day compared to a life un-lived. I do not fear death, not in the slightest. But I do fear waking up in a hospital bed one day old and sick and cloudy, wondering how the fuck I got there and why I let the heaviness of life lead me into stasis just like I saw my fore bearers do.
I see the people who came before me that are supposed to be my role models. I see them growing old and lethargic. I see their decrepit cells, and their metastatic resentment. I see their addictions temporarily relieving them from their un-dealt-with pain. It is a sad fact that most people in this world look forward to one thing and one thing only: their drug of choice. They despise their life in an aware and pure state, because there is so much pain not yet purged, so they drug themselves into a stupor after working at a job they couldn't give a fuck about. And let me remind you that I'm not just talking substances, but anything we use as a distraction: tv, sex, drama, meditation, over-eating, video games, cell phones etc. Some are better than others, yes, but if you're using something to ignore the pain and hatred of your situation you are biding time until your death by way of your own little distracted drugged world.
Woo life, it's great! For zombies...
This, my friends, is no fucking way to live.
So maybe give death a minute or two of your time. You are going to die, that much you know. You actually truly know this. Wisdom and truth right there. Pure and golden truth. Use it, or go look at your future in the stasis of pretty much everyone who came before you.
And of course I write this and then stumble across this article.
http://jezebel.com/5913942/how-to-feel-when-an-impossibly-promising-22+year+old-passes-away
A 22 year old yale grad (my same age/same school year/same passion (writing)) just died in a car accident and her future is now non-existent. Does this sadden me? No. It reminds me. Of what? Well of everything I wrote above and that as I continually align with the universe it gives me clues that shows me I'm on the right path (like me running into this article right after writing this).
"But I think the best lesson to learn from her untimely death is that 99.9% of the shit we worry about every day is meaningless, because everything we have — all that we have — can be taken away from us at any second. Being jealous is a waste of time. Appreciate everything you've got"
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