What Is It Like To Experience Death?

CollectiveEvolution

“It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up – that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We seek to live in a safe secure and controlled world of relative comfort. When something happens that interferes with this world we experience anxiety and frustration which manifests itself as fear. Our dreams, hopes and lifestyle may feel threatened so we experience stress or fear. Most of our fears stem from three things. These are the lack of control, uncertainty, and the unknown. What is more uncertain and unknown than death? We don’t know when we are going to depart this world unless we take the matter into our own hands. We have no previous experience with death so it remains the great unknown. Our experience of death is limited to what the church tells us, some psychics and people who have had a near death experience.

Studies have shown that the fear of death often motivates religious commitment. The church in some ways acts like an insurance policy for death. If you have insurance then you don’t have to worry about your house burning down. If you have religious commitment then you don’t have to worry about death as much. Research shows that fanatical or fundamentalist religious groups actually have a high fear of death. So it can go either way! It really depends on which religious establishment you belong to, and the amount of control and fear the management of the organization exerts upon its followers.

Celebrating Death

“Dying is wonderful, it’s only horrible to people who have never understood life. It’s only when you are afraid of life that you fear death.” Anthony De Mello

Eastern religions embrace death and celebrate this wonderful transition. In the West we are scared and shun death. We scurry around in the hope that we may avoid, delay or hide from death. It is something we try not to think about, something we avoid and something we think won’t happen to us, not in the near future anyway. We are reluctant to think about our own death, reluctant to look in the mirror and see that we are getting older and one day we will depart. We try to turn back the clock through beauty treatments, plastic surgery, buying luxury sports cars and a vast array of medical procedures that only give us a false sense of security.  Many Eastern cultures practice the transition of death. When they do depart this world, death is elegant, peaceful and graceful. For many in the West death is often sudden, unexpected and filled with fear. Preoccupation with worldly concerns of life leaves little room for genuine spiritual practice. When death arrives we discover by having ignored death, we are left vulnerable, unprepared and unwilling to let go.

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