I have been thinking a lot about death recently. As some of you know, I just finished a study of the topic for an End of Life forum and it seemed appropriate, therefore, to share my thoughts here.
The idea that has grabbed me most of all from this study is the notion that we have what you could call a religious dedication to death. The Course talks about religion, churches, rituals, worship, chanting, and ceremony—all in association with our devotion to death. It says this profound devotion is at the heart of the separation, and is therefore what produced this body and this world. And it says we have a “repetition compulsion” regarding it, a sick, unconscious compulsion to repeat it, however destructive it is.
My thoughts about this have been mainly two. First, I find myself looking around a lot and thinking, “Everything I see is really a manifestation of this single idea of death—the hills, the landscape, the buildings, the bodies, all of it.” As uninspiring as this is, I find it makes a huge amount of sense. If life is not biological functioning, but the aliveness of unlimited awareness and being, then everything in this world is a massive lessening of life, extinguishment of life. Compared to the infinite awareness of Heaven, our current consciousness must look like a thimble-full, like 99% death. And then it goes down from there, to the animals, the plants, and finally to matter, which in my opinion has awareness associated with it, but only the most dim and asleep awareness. Everything here, then, is a lessening of infinite awareness, a lessening of life. Given all that, it makes sense to think of death as the summary idea behind this world.
My second thought is less philosophical. It is that I, as a creature in this world, must personally carry that religious devotion to death, a devotion so strong that it has produced my body, my personality, and my world. Again, that explains a lot. I have often wondered why the Course’s way has proven itself to me in practical experience a million times, while I still remain so attached to my ego. It just doesn’t make sense. It is counterproductive. You’d think sheer motivation in my personal benefit and happiness would compel me to embrace the way of egolessness more completely, based on the fact that it has proven itself in my experience.
But what if my motivation is not really for my personal benefit and happiness? What if I have a deep-seated love affair with death, a love affair that actually swept me into this world of death? This would explain a lot. It would explain why positive change seems so slow and hard-won. It would explain why I resist that which is clearly in my best interests. It would explain why I repeat things that I know lead to guilt, anxiety, and unhappiness. It would explain why certain ruts seem so seductively comfortable.
So I’ve just been pondering all this in the last few days. Could it be that I really have this unconscious religious devotion to death? And could it be that that unconscious devotion, carried in all our minds, is the single impulse that manifested this world? It seems worth pondering, especially if getting objective to this devotion could contribute to freeing myself from it, even if by degrees.
