In The Course of Any Life
It seems that in the course of any life there are at least a few small deaths.
The risk is that these can so easily be mistaken for the big death.
The even greater risk is that we make these BECOME the big death.
There comes a point in life when being separate, in a separate pain body and a separate consciousness, becomes almost unbearable. The old way of being, and of achieving, is no longer sustainable.
The I Ching says, “When the way comes to an end, Then change— Having changed, You pass through.”
But when we hit mid-life, the way comes to an end and we try to be heroic and conquer but that doesn’t work anymore either.
NO, no… not this time.
To pass through this time, we have to let the change work on us. Not push against it.
We have to learn great mercy and tenderness for ourselves in that awkward in-between.
The hero, the first-half-of-life self, is dying.
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I had a vivid dream this summer in the midst of my waiting.
In the dream I was walking up through these brilliant green hills in Ireland with a basket, scattering something. A stranger approached and reached down to lift up a small piece of bone. “Please leave that” I said. “I am scattering my own ashes. I figured it was better to do it now, while I’m still living!”
All the way back down through the hills I was saying to myself very quietly like a mantra, “there is no story left to tell. there is no story left to tell.”
***
Terrifying. Wonderful!
What happens afterward? I don’t know yet. I would like to spend the next forty years listening.
The world is still here. There is light in the trees and a friendly moon swinging over the city. There is rice in the pot and a cushion where I sit each night and lean into this moment. Into this suchness of mid-life, of the being born and dying all at once. Some nights the grief amazes me.
Stephen Levine says, “Whatever limits the entrance of awareness limits healing. Allow awareness to go where it may never have been before.”
Wherever you are tonight, and wherever you are in your own process of dying and being born, go easy if you can. It takes great mercy and tenderness to stay. But there is wind in the curtains. There is light in the trees.