I was a little girl with many fears. I wouldn’t go on escalators, or boats, and retreated to the basement every time the wind blew. As I grew up I went about the business of letting go of these fears one by one, but at the root of each issue I knew I was afraid of dying. That fear too can be shed, just like a childhood fear of natural disasters.
Let Yourself Learn’s first guest author, Greg Spero, offers a shifted perspective on death and existence:
Why I Don’t Fear Dying
By Greg Spero
Let’s call that timeframe an eon.
Well, of course it did. After all, what was that piece of energy doing before it was the molecule of the ant?
A billion rays of light from a billion stars from a billion destroyed planets from a billion ants went into each molecule that made up the ant I killed. And the energy from that ant will, and has already, become that which will spread infinitely throughout the universe for the rest of time, which will go on for eons times eons times eons, further than we can comprehend.
Many people have a fear of dying. But I don’t. Because I will never die, and neither will you. That ant was not living. Nor was he dying. He was simply existing. He was not himself, nor was he something else. He was simply the universe, incarnate in a form that we think we recognize as an individual piece, when in reality, our recognition spans a limited moment in an infinite cycle of energy.
The ant I killed is a human, in another time.
The ant I killed is me, in another time.
The ant I killed is everything, in another time.
And so is everything else.
So are you.
So am I.
We are lucky to be conscious in this moment, observing the reality around us, and existing, enjoying, emoting, loving, hating, feeling, lusting, living in the brief time between what we recognize as the existence and nonexistence of our consciousness. Yet, birth and death have nothing to do with existence and nonexistence.
Birth and death are a brief passing place that we recognize because outside of those boundaries we can’t interact with our immediate surroundings in the way to which we are accustomed in this life.
What happened with the ant’s body could very well happen with something deeper than the body; an energy that exists that we can’t pinpoint, from which some draw the idea of God, and some draw the idea of Buddha nature. Another energy, other than what we see physically, that will also be recycled infinitely throughout existence.
Or maybe that energy is the same as the energy that makes up the molecules of the ant I killed.
Maybe it’s all the same.
Maybe the infinite expansion of time before and after this moment allows for every piece of energy in the universe to exist as every incarnation of every possible thing and being in all the universe, including what we see, our family, friends, the bed on which I sit, the other ants scattered about the outside of my house, the solar system, and the universe. Maybe my consciousness is actually just a small piece of the universe as it infinitely reincarnates in every possible formation and has infinitely reincarnated in every possible formation for all of time.
The ant I killed is not a self. It is the universe.
And so am I.
And so are you.
I don’t worry about dying. Because I am not alive. I simply am, and will be for the rest of time.
Let Yourself Learn 