Tag: Death

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Reflections on the Integration of Life and Death

My grand life’s musing,
Is the integration of life and death,
Where life and death are not 2 separate events,
But where life and death become one.

What is born dies immediately with change.
Change is instaneous,
The very act of perception itself is to see change,
Change as the vibration/alternation between nothing and something,
Happening rapidly maybe 20times a second.
That seems to be the refresh rate of life and change.

All else is the same principle,
Only the scale/degree varies.
Inbreath is the receiving of life,
Outbreath is the exit of life.

Time is this mega-structure,
That rules all meetings and endings,
And rules all becomings and unbecomings.
In a deeper sense,
There is no becoming nor unbecoming,
The same substance just appears to become or unbecome.

In fact becoming and unbecoming are simultaneous in change.
Change instantly becomes the present and unbecomes what was past.
I imagine a large spectrum.
To the left of it are the things most unchanging, very large timescales.
To the right of it are the things that change every millisecond.
Everything lies somewhere in-between this scale.

Whether it is the scale of inbreath-outbreath happening every few seconds,
Or the scale of a relationship like to parents which lasts half a lifetime.
Memory seems to be the only reason for time’s existence,
Without memory time would not exist?
There would only be the instant/now/that.

The layers of time we experience,
Are they not just the layers of memory?
Time is something we know only by its effect.
We cannot perceive time itself.
Time is what forges the memories,
And time is what fades them out.

We only experience what time dishes out to us + our interpretation.
There is more nuance,
Our experience as a subject is because of the lens of our accumulated memories.
There is also the instantaneous perception of time’s immediate action on us – how it affects us.
But we interpret that through the lens of our memories and build even more memory or reshape old ones.

What would be ‘Experience’ without memory is something elusive and I’m not sure it is even possible.
Even something circling close to that would be – Undefinable, Inexpressable, Ineffable directness.
Like what would it be to see without memory, hear without memory, sense without memory.
Is such an impersonal sensing even possible?
Or does the implied “memory lens subject” and “experience” go together?

My highest idea of living in grace,
Is when we let what comes come, and let what goes go.

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Becoming and Unbecoming are simultaneous

All becoming and unbecoming are simultaneous.
Life and death are happening at the same time.
Gain and loss are also simultaneous.
When something is gained, its opposite is lost to that same extent.
When something arises, something else passes.

We see things and events in time because of the dullness of our awareness.
Only when the gains/losses cross a certain threshold do we even notice them as such and experience them like they suddenly happened at a particular time.
Time is like a dreamed up story.
Things are forever brewing slowly.
There are no nouns/things, rather there are only verbs/processes.
Everything is a continuous process unfolding.

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All ‘Change’ is ‘Death’

All ‘change’ is ‘death’. 
# Growth is additive change
# Decay is depreciative change
# Transformation is total change

All change is death.
All change is life too.
Change is both death and life,
When looked at backwards or forwards in perspective.
To die is to live.
To live is to die.

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Time gives and takes all

The cycle of birth and death,
Seems to have a very close analogy with the water cycle, in my understanding.

As the water vapor rises, the air gets colder,
Condensation happens, rain clouds begin to form,
It rains over the mountains,
Forming various river streams.

Various ice formations from the top of the mountains also mix into these streams.
The streams carry the ice along with them in their journey.
They slowly gather more and more material.

Some of these streams become mighty rivers,
Some of these streams remain fairly thin,
Some of these streams crash somewhere and stop.
Some streams go alone all the way.
Some streams confluence and form large rivers.

Finally, all of the water (from all the streams) evaporates,
And becomes vapor and rises.
In this manner, the cycle goes on and on.

Every incarnation seems like a unique path/stream.
It descends upon the point of birth(the mountains),
Gathering unique material along its path,
And in the end, the water leaves everything behind,
And rises out of all the matter gathered.

Whether the stream was abruptly brought to a stop,
Or whether it joined the ocean and then vaporized from there,
The evaporation eventually happens nevertheless.

Maybe the stream may end up in a hot place causing rapid evaporation,
Or the stream may end up in a cold place causing slow evaporation,
But that is only a difference in degree, not essence.
The essentially process whether shortened or lengthened is still going to happen.

Our spirit-energy I feel is like water in essence.
It can mix with the earth in all its 3 states – existing as ice, water, vapor.
It mixes with the earth and identifies with various kinds of solid, liquid, and gaseous material,
But all of the material can be distilled out to give back pure ice, water, or vapor.

Time gives all and takes all,
But nothing of true value is ever gained or lost.
Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists.
All loss is only loss of the illusion of taking the appearance to be real.
No thing exists, only ‘nothing’ exists.

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Insights on time-stream

The stream of time, the flow of time,
Ascends and Descends.
Descends into this density of creation as birth in this plane,
Ascends back into a higher dimension as death from this plane.

In between the ascent and descent, it stays more or less cyclic,
Thus performing creation, maintenance, and destruction,
By descent, maintenance, and ascent.

When the time-stream or flow,
Brings you what you want,
It is essentially growing what it itself created.
It grows its own accumulated creation.

If the time stream or flow,
Changes its channel, frequency, or pattern,
Against the accumulation it has previously forged,
Then it resists on its old accumulation/creation,
And transforms it with input from the new stream,
And this ends with the formation of a new self,
Which may or may not complete itself,
Because the next time shift could happen before the process completes.

So a strong personality in the world,
Is created when the time stream is constantly maintaining its focus,
And growing the accumulation in a steady direction.
A chaotic suffering personality is created,
When the time streams are changing/shifting and always at odds with each other,
And thereby having all the different accumulations resist against each other.

When time ascends,
It fades and thins out its own accumulation,
And finally moves into a higher dimension.

A good analogy would be:
Lowering a pencil onto the paper = Time flow descent.
Starting to draw a thin line = Birth into this density.
Pressing harder on the paper = Increasing the accumulation
Maintaining the pressure more or less = Time flow maintenance/plateauing.
Starting to lighten the pressure = Time flow ascent.
Taking the pen off the paper = Death from this density into a higher dimension.
The pen (let’s say) still keeps drawing continuously,
But now since it is in the air, it does not leave a mark on the paper (this plane).

So there are:
Good time streams to be enjoyed ——– Difficult time streams to be weathered.
I could also as well call it the winds of time vs. streams of time.
One is created, shaped, and dissolved, by the resultant of these forces and their streams.

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The death process

The withdrawal of the projection:
The world falls back onto the Indriyas (senses),
The Indriyas (senses) fall back onto Manas (mind),
The Manas falls back into the Pranas (life energies/breath),
The Pranas fall back into Tejas (fire/heat of the body),
Lastly, Tejas falls back into Sat (reality).

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The mechanics of fear, desire, love, and hate

The mechanics of fear and love,
Is such a massively deep topic to explore.

I often wonder:
Is it possible to really be indifferent?
Is it possible to be without relationship?
Is it possible to really stay separate?
Is it possible to be neutral?
Is it possible to neither love nor hate?

From my intuition, it seems like that is not possible.
Life being a dynamic verb, nothing it still.
So everything has to move towards expansion or contraction?

It feels like that force that maintains and forwards unconsciousness and ignorance,
Is in the hate (contraction) direction,
While the force that maintains and forwards consciousness and knowledge,
Is in the love (expansion) direction.
Since all things are in polarity,
Whatever we invest and expand into, will inevitably disinvest and shrink its opposite?

I see everything is a state of pulsation in nature,
Like the heart beat, expanding and contracting.
Birth is like the expansion influx (like the inbreath),
Death is like the contraction deflux (like the outbreath).
I see birth and death as the alternating pulse between sound and silence.
The sound of creation booms into the manifest as birth,
And at death there is the return to silence/uncreated?

I feel like the experience of life is like music.
With multiple overlayed pulses of all kinds of instrument and voice timbers.
A multidimensional flow of pulses.
So then, both fear and love are as natural as expansion and contraction?

I have noticed that,
I fear all that I have an antagonistic relationship towards.
So maybe the presence of fear itself…,
Is revealing the antagonistic relationship present?
I wonder,
Is fear the ‘anticipatory recreation’ of the experience,
Of the repercussions/reaction from the other,
To my own antagonistic attitude towards the other,
Being mirrored back to me?

So then are fear and love, direct experiences,
Of the mirrored attitudes/relationship we hold towards the other entities we encounter?

Another aspect is self-hatred.
That is a condition where there is a projection of value and worth on the other,
While the self is cast to the shadow of unconsciousness/hate/shame.
There is then a constant focus on the other or on transcending oneself.

So here there are some interesting relationships I see.
When there is self-hatred of one’s body and its strength,
There is fear of other bodies and their strength.
I think here, the fear comes from the war with the conscious and unconscious identifications.
Unconsciously there is identification with the body,
But that is not supported by the conscious identification which is caught up with the other,
So the unconscious identification generates fear as resistance,
When you pursue the other.

So somewhere I wonder,
If we take extreme cases,
Like fear of a ghost/monster,
Is that the dissociated unconscious fragment of us,
That we have disowned,
That is getting attracted to us,
Because of our deeper desire for integration and wholeness?
Isn’t our worst fear that we will become the ghost?
That total assimilation/transformation is the terror.
What will happen to us,
If we let everything in?

Also I used to wonder about the fear of falling.
I have that fear because somewhere I desire to fall like that.
So is my intensity of fear of falling proportional to the intensity of desire I have to fall?
Is the intensity of fear I feel for death proportional to my own desire for death?

Fear and Desire seem inseparable like 2 sides of the same coin.
It seems like each is a resistance to the other.
Desire is a resistance to Fear.
Fear is a resistance to Desire.

Another thing I am reminded of is the story of the beauty and the beast.
The beast gets converted into the prince out of love.
Would this be true for all that fear?
That all that is feared if consciously loved,
Will become flowers from filth?
The ground of filth when nurtured by nature,
Becomes flower and fruit right?

Are all that we love/hate/desire/fear,
Are they all nothing but our own Self?

Supposing we want total wholeness and totally open ourselves up,
To attracting all of the unconscious to us back into our consciousness,
Will it result in a total war and destruction of all of our identity?
Is that what happens in enlightenment?
Is that the ultimate transformation?

The self here is the subset of qualities owned vs. the superset of all qualities in existence.
That division is what created self-other and the concept of relationship itself.
Love-Hate are like Yin-Yang.
The black fish has a white eye,
And the white fish has a black eye.
So total love and total hate do not exist and cannot exist.
Just like no absolute quality can exist without its opposite.
Going into total-hate or total-love,
Will result in transcendence to a dimension beyond duality.

These are some of my contemplations.
I’ll stop here for now.

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Impermanence and Cyclicity

# Impermanence – removes the notion of ownership/possession.
# Cyclicity of the nature of time – removes the notion of progress/gain
So, it seems like both ownership and progress are temporary phenomena.

The greatest civilizations rose into order/glory and later fell into chaos/oblivion.
The pain and suffering in life I feel is caused by – Trying to maintain the permanency of our illusions while also trying to make them endlessly progress.

The forward moving tides initially greatly assist us in building whatever we want,
Then the same tides reverse their direction and oppose us until everything is brought to a halt.

Our so called free will seems to be at the mercy of these cyclic larger forces.
We can only have anything or dance according to the terms dictated by these forces.
Generally we try to oppose these forces tooth and nail,
But nature eventually wins and swallows us back into itself at death.
We can prolong our life by various clever strategies,
But eventually, some day, we are forced to yield to death.
And death acts in the same way to all.

Our life as an individual with freedom,
Seems to be a kind of gift or privilege,
Bestowed to us as a possibility by these larger forces.
But whatever is given is also taken away.

The only way out of this I see,
Is to voluntarily merge with the deeper reality,
And gradually transform our individual self in alignment to that.

Every gain is a loss, and every loss is a gain, depending on how you look at it.
‘Psychological meaning making’ is sort of an art.
We are then like artists,
Shaping our experience through every moment,
From wherever we are.

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Every lifetime is like a skydive

Birth is like the start of a skydive,
The jumping off the plane.
Imagine there are some clouds that you first pass through.
Then just after that, one is overwhelmed, mesmerized, and stunned,
As the stunning vista becomes visible.

There is the feeling of falling at warp speed,
But the visuals look like everything is almost still,
With the earth inching towards you ever so slowly.
This is the time of great splendor of vision,
Where you see a bird’s eye view of all the possibilities.

While growing up we go through 3-4 stages of faster biological development.
-0.9-0 = Development in the womb (passing through the clouds)
0-7 = Physical development (grand vista first sight – 20s)
7-14 = Emotional/Sexual development (next 20s freefall)
14-21 = Intellectual development (next 20s freefall)
21-25 = Higher intellectual development (extra 10s of freefall)
So till the age of 25, we are on a magical ride of sort,
Hitting all the numerous developmental milestones.
The part from 0-25years of age I feel is like the free fall part of the skydive.

Then once we reach a lower altitude of around 5000ft,
The parachute is opened.
There is then a drastic reduction in speed,
Things slow down quite a bit,
And now we stabilize mentally and emotionally.
This parachute descent I feel is like the next phase of adulthood from 25-90.
Here the number of possibilities for our life has been narrowed down to a great extent.
We are fairly stable with a stable identity that moves us along through the rest of our life.

When the parachute comes fairly close to the ground,
We still don’t realize the reality of the ground.
It still looks like something unreal happening with toy buildings and toy cars put in place.
The reality of the ground suddenly hits when you are around 50ft above.
It is only then you realize, ‘Oh, this is for real!’.
On touchdown there is last run you do before coming to a full halt.

I feel this mimics the stage when we are close to death.
Death here is the ground.
The final 50ft descent and the touchdown run is the final drama of death.
Things once again get a bit dramatic in the last bit.

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My musings on death

Death fills me with a sense of deep awe, respect, wonder, and a sacred silence.
I bow down to its power.
Death fills me with a kind of gratitude.
That I have had the privilege of having this stream of experience, 
And to be a witness of this body’s inner life process.

Every death is liberation from the form.
Seen from a higher perspective, death isn’t a separate unconnected event.
Birth and Death are part of a singular continuum.
They are different parts of the same process, the same thread,
That continues on inexorably.

We have all done this countless times before,
Living from different points of view.
When moving from form to form, it is the point of attention that shifts.
All forms are temporal in nature.
Every form that is born also dies.
We descend into form and ascend back into the formless.
Birth and death are the grandest events that can happen to anyone.

Birth and Death happen to us as ‘consciousness’.
We are not born and we do not die.
We are the eternal substance (consciousness),
Witnessing the plays of both birth and death,
And all that happens in the middle we call our lives.