Death….the thing that hangs out there stressing so many out. Funny, because we each have done it thousands of times and seem to forget every time we incarnate…aaahhh that spiritual amnesia.

Death is personal. It is until you are gone. And then it is about the ones left behind. More of the death thing is about what comes up for the loved ones when you leave your physical vehicle.  So, the best way to address it here is to just bullet point a bunch of relevant thoughts about it, mixing up the lot so it all gets put on the table. Maybe then we can reach a useful conclusion….

The whole shebang is based on a fear of the unknown. What will happen when I leave my body? Will I take my body with me? Will I look the same? Is it like the nothing? Where will I go? Did I do well enough in this life to earn a seat next to God? Will I meet my loved ones passed? Will I become nothing/ Will I get caught in hell? What if I take my own life? Will I be punished? By whom? Why do we have to die? What if I die before I do everything I want to do? Why do children die? On and on it goes…basically unanswerable in a block to the masses…something each must come to terms with.

It is said that what happens at death is what you expect will happen. Free will and choice are that important. At least, for awhile…for soon we end up back in the universal flow where the separation does not matter.

We have been programmed to fear death because of the judgment that many religions say is coming. And from that moment your eternity is decided…heaven or hell, 40 virgins, or a sack of spuds, forgetting or remembering it all, annihilation or eternal life, the end or the beginning, move on to another dimension or head back for another round at Earth incarnation…

A life in fear brings certain forms to our lives as Universal Law gives us what we attend to, focus on, fear. The power of attraction is mighty and we manifest the very forms we rebel against. Fearing that we will contract some disease creates the magnetic pull for the disease, compromising tissue to become the host. Fearing that because our dad died of a heart attack at 47 that we will do the same.

Many changes can happen as one approaches death consciously. Knowing they are running out of time there are awakenings, death bed confessions, family revelations, exposes, secrets told, openings, heart felt sharing, declarations of love. Curiously, it can be these very revelations that create the inner framework for significant change that can dissipate an energy form that is taking one’s life…a miracle.

So, too, that many simply disappear and fade away as death approaches. The potential openings come and go as the willingness to get clear is simply not there. The person feels done. They may choose to manifest symptomologies that contribute to their decreasing availability like Alzheimers. The family and friends are left with the emptiness of the fade away to process.

Death can be very isolating because of the unknowns. Often family is estranged and life issues come to the surface as the end approaches, making communication and resolution difficult if not impossible. Hospice has been a powerful vehicle to soften some of the loneliness and terror in the individual. Yet, too often, Hospice is called when things are quickly reaching the climax. The presence of the Hospice volunteer can even be a fear inducer.

Death is really about those left behind. This is where the business of death gets nasty. At a time when emotion is high with all the stages of grief, families are called upon to make arrangements and decisions about funerals, burials, services. Of course, most want the best for their departed one and will pay way too much for the whole thing. There is a lot of the selling of the Cadillac coffin when the Subaru would have done nicely. Even cremations require a casket to be performed. Really? Expenses, money to be made at the hands of those who are suffering through the loss.

In Western cultures death is a somber event, and treated as such with the processions and the black and the wakes and the gnashing of teeth. Other cultures treat it as the natural process that it is. I personally witnessed the burials and cremations in the open by the River Ganges in Varynassi, India. It was powerful and organic and beautiful. Native American cultures used to set the body of the one who died on the raised platform on the mountain top exposed to the elements. Often, she became the food for the animals, decaying in the elements from whence she had come.

New Thought traditions embrace the continuity of the being as a unique expressing of the I Am That I Am Expressing as Me. The Earthly incarnations a re a choice to be in the plane of duality to experience the range of emotions as felt in the physical vehicle. Bodies are taken on each time and circumstances that reflect personal decisions and learnings are set up to experience. The underlying purpose of consciously remembering one’s source and who she is is an potent current that gives meaning to the moments. Death is viewed as a transition of forms, a release into the eternal Oneness that unites all life. In these shifting and opening times there is further information arriving that touts the multi-dimensionality of life and the capacity for multiple and simultaneous lives, each with a unique frequency of being and experience. In this framework is not viewed in fear but rather like taking off ones clothes. Believing as such removes the pressure to achieve, the need to force life, the unknown, and frees one to flow through moments to create exactly what one wants to experience.

It is in these new perspectives that humans will be able to soften in this earthly life, choosing loving and expansive experience over the mundane process of making a living at all costs. Inevitably, this kind of inner and outer life will impact the state of health,  reducing the need for ongoing medical care and the addiction to a pill centered life.

The cost of fear based living is high to the physical and mental bodies. In many cases it contributes directly to the body and mind illnesses, diseases and death. Learning to live free of the specter of annihilation would certainly change the quality and focus of human life to establish an ongoing atmosphere of well being and health.