Refusing to acknowledge death

does not make you or anyone else immortal.

The more you wish to avoid suffering,

the harder it will be.

And the more you crave or want

for the people you love to never have to leave you,

the more difficult it will be when they do.

You may think, “I will deal with that when the time comes.”

That is your right.

However, this is like choosing to run a marathon with no training.

Even though you rarely even jog around the block,

you just go out there and attempt to run

all twenty-six miles and three hundred and eighty-five yards.

You might make it.

But it is going to hurt.

Help take death out of the darkness.

Don’t let Grim sit in the corner all by himself.

Let him walk next to you,

let him join your carpool.

And let others learn how to sit next to him in peace.

Margaret Meloni

Carpooling with Death:

How Living with Death Will Make You Stronger, Wiser and Fearless

Take a step back with me

and look at what it is like to live

with the certainty that death is approaching.

Together, we can grapple with your fear of death.

You will see that fear is about uncertainty.

Death is a certainty,

which means there is no need for concern.

Now you are free

to make the most of the time that remains

and to help your loved one have a good death.

Margaret Meloni

Carpooling with Death:

How Living with Death Will Make You Stronger, Wiser and Fearless

When individuals transition,

their strongest beliefs about life

often shape their initial experience of non-physicality.

Because they become a thought-form

in a realm of thought-forms,

what they think

instantly appears to be their reality.

This is why some individuals

may not even realize they have passed—

they remain immersed

in the reality their strongest beliefs created.

Bashar

101 Life-Changing Answers: Answers To All Of Life’s Big Questions

Your “past lives” are simply other channels

that your broader, non-physical self has chosen to experience.

Your “future lives” also exist now,

ready to be explored if and when

your non-physical self chooses to focus on them.

This simultaneity allows for a profound exchange

of energy and information between these lives.

For example, the wisdom and experiences you gain in your current life

can affect all your “other” lives.

This simultaneous nature of existence means that at death,

you do not “end” or “move forward” in the traditional sense.

Instead, your consciousness shifts focus to another aspect of your being,

aligned with the frequency of your soul’s journey.

The process is seamless,

and from our perspective,

it is not an ending

but a continuation of your eternal essence.

Bashar

101 Life-Changing Answers: Answers To All Of Life’s Big Questions

Death is the epitome of the truth

that in each moment we are thrust into the unknown.

Here all clinging to security is compelled to cease,

and wherever the past is dropped away and safety abandoned,

life is renewed.

Death is the unknown

in which all of us lived before birth.

Alan Watts

The Wisdom of Insecurity

How do we face forward, lean into dying, meet it, befriend it,

elevate it with everything good and true?

Not just to accept it, but to embrace it.

What does that look like to you?

And what heart-work needs to be done,

to come to a place of completion and contentment

with the truth of your imminent, or approaching death?

It’s in the deal we signed up for.

We need to die.

A healthy life includes its death.

Death, too, is part of the miracle.

Reverend Bodhi Be

Alan Clements Facing Death: A Conversation with Reverend Bodhi Be

In the Sioux tradition,

after the power of puberty ceremonies,

the youth go into the forest and sit in meditation

until they hear their personal death chant.

They then use this chant every time they get frightened

or approach a death experience during life,

so that when death happens,

they know their way through.

Ram Dass

Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying

In the middle period of our earthly existence

we are most deeply entangled in earthly conditions,

whereas in the middle stage between death and rebirth

we are most deeply involved in cosmic conditions.

The nearer we draw to the end of our existence on earth,

the more we withdraw from earthly conditions in a physical sense.

The farther we have gone beyond

the mid-point between death and a new birth,

the more we withdraw from the cosmos

and turn again to the life on earth.

Suppose we referred to the first period after death

as that of childhood,

and the second period

as that of old age.

We would make a mistake.

Spiritual life flows in the reverse order.

To begin with, we carry the errors and shortcomings

of earthly life into the spiritual world.

Then gradually during cosmic existence they are removed.

On earth during our physical existence

we speak of getting old.

In the spiritual world between death and rebirth

we must say quite literally that we grow young.

Rudolf Steiner

Life between Death and Rebirth

The soul that has crossed the threshold of death

looks upon what we as earthly human beings

have experienced between birth and death—

but not as if what one experienced then were simply there

but much of the state of being of the dead person

also exerts an influence in a particular way.

The state of being of a dead person

is not like that of someone living between birth and death.

The state of being of someone living between birth and death

is such that he feels himself enclosed within his skin

and looks out at the world through his senses.

As soon as one enters the spiritual world as a dead person,

one flows out into the whole of the spiritual world.

One gradually feels oneself filling the whole spiritual world.

And what one has experienced during physical Earth-existence

one senses to be something that continues to belong to one—

not, of course, as a physical body

but as what constitutes the form, the forces of the physical body.

This one retains after death,

but in such a way as the human eye inhabits the physical body.

Just as one has the eye for seeing,

so does one have oneself,

the earthly life that one has lived through,

as a cosmic sense-organ in order to perceive the world.

What our eye is now for our body,

our earthly life is for our spiritual life after death.

Rudolf Steiner

The Mystery of Death

The moment of waking is especially favourable

for the dead to approach us.

At the moment of waking,

very much comes from the dead

to every human being.

A great deal of what we undertake in life

is really inspired in us by the dead

or by beings of the higher hierarchies,

although we attribute it to ourselves,

imagining that it comes from our own soul.

Rudolf Steiner

In the beginning it wasn’t easy.

It did not come naturally or instinctively.

Working so closely with death often scared me;

I was afraid I might get what the dying person had.

When I recognized, however,

that I already have what dying people have

—mortality—

I stopped being afraid of catching it.

Recognizing this very interconnectedness

is the ground of giving no fear,

and the beginning of compassion.

Patient and caregiver are one and the same,

connected by life and death

as by suffering and joy.

When we manage to step through fear

by reconnecting with each other,

real compassion arises.

Joan Halifax

Being with Dying:

Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death

After four decades of sitting

with dying people and their caregivers,

I believe that studying the process of how to die well

benefits even those of us

who may have many years of life ahead.

Of course, people who are sick or suffering,

dying of old age or catastrophic illnesses,

may be more receptive to exploring the great matter of dying

than those who are young and healthy,

or who still believe in their own indestructibility.

Yet the sooner we can embrace death,

the more time we have to live completely,

and to live in reality.

Our acceptance of our death

influences not only the experience of dying

but also the experience of living;

life and death lie along the same continuum.

One cannot—as so many of us try to do—

lead life fully

and struggle to keep the inevitable at bay.

Joan Halifax

Being with Dying:

Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Therefore I will trust you always

though I may seem to be lost

and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear

for you are ever with me,

and you will never leave me

to face my perils alone.

Thomas Merton

A Book of Hours

Before the cloud appeared in the sky, it existed in another form—

as mist, ocean, rain, or river.

If we look deeply into the nature of a cloud,

we see that a cloud can’t die;

it can’t pass from a state of being into a state of nonbeing.

A cloud can become rain or snow or ice,

but it can’t become nothing.

So if the sky is clear,

it doesn’t mean that your cloud has died.

It continues on in other forms.

How can our loved one die?

Everything arises in dependence on everything else.

There’s no beginning or ending;

there’s no creation and no destruction of anything at all.

This is true of the entire universe.

Billions and billions of conditions have come together

for us to manifest in this form.

When different conditions arise,

we will manifest in a different form.

Do not get caught in the form.

Do not get caught in signs.

Learn to look with “the eyes of signlessness”

and see your cloud in its new forms—

in the rain, in the river, in your tea.

If you have lost someone

and if you have cried so very much,

please look deeply and recognize

that the true nature of your beloved

is the nature of no birth and no death,

no coming and no going.

Thich Nhat Hanh

How to Live When a Loved One Dies: Healing Meditations for Grief and Loss

dedicated to Dave and Bonita

There is no such thing as security in this life.

The moment you start seeking security,

naturally you become death-oriented.

Unknowingly, you will seek death.

Moments of danger are moments

when you experience both life and death together at the same time.

These are the moments you realize

that life and death are here at the same time.

They are not two separate things.

They are one inside the other.

Life is all packed like this.

The Creation and the Creator, life and death—

are all packed one inside the other.

It takes attention—a lot of attention—to see it.

Otherwise, one just lives on the surface, half alive.

If you don’t know life and death at the same time,

you will know only one half of life.

Being half alive is a torture always.

If you want to live a full life,

you should look at your mortal nature every day,

not only when you are beyond a certain age.

Every day of your life,

you need to be aware that you are mortal.

It is not that I want to die today,

but if I do, it is all right with me.

I will do everything to protect myself,

to nurture myself, to take care of myself,

but if I have to die today,

it is okay with me.

Only then can I step out and live.

Otherwise, I cannot live.

Sadhguru

Death: Only for Those Who Shall Die--

a Yogi’s Guide to Living, Dying, and Beyond

Life needs a certain amount of tension to keep it going,

but in death there is relaxation.

In fact, death is the highest relaxation.

However, if you also know the relaxation of death when you are alive,

then life becomes an utterly effortless process.

The greatest calamity of the human mind is that it is against death.

The moment you reject death, you also reject life.

You think life is right and death is wrong.

It is not so.

Life is what it is only because death is.

One who does not embrace death

will not know life at all.

If you sit here saying, “I don’t want to die,

I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die,”

all that will happen is you will not live.

You will anyway die,

but by denying death,

you will not live well until then either.

If you are afraid of death,

you will only avoid life;

you cannot avoid death.

Sadhguru

Death: Only for Those Who Shall Die--

a Yogi’s Guide to Living, Dying, and Beyond

Everyone must make preparations for their death—

not just externally, internally too.

You must be able to sit quietly and die.

When death is imminent,

most wild animals will withdraw to a place

where they just sit.

They don’t eat anything and they die.

When even animals, creatures that crawl,

have that much dignity about their death,

why do human beings want drama around them?

In life, they want drama,

but at least death should be conducted in a dignified way.

I would like to teach the whole population

a way to live beautifully, blissfully,

every moment of their life.

Then, naturally,

one will leave in the best possible manner.

Sadhguru

Death: Only for Those Who Shall Die--

a Yogi’s Guide to Living, Dying, and Beyond

This is my attitude about death.

Laugh!

Let laughter be your attitude about death.

It is a cosmic lie created by man himself,

created by the ego,

by selfconsciousness.

That’s why in nature no other animal,

bird, tree is afraid of death.

Only man,

and he makes so much fuss out of it...

his whole life trembling.

Death is coming closer,

and because of death

he cannot allow himself to live totally.

How can you live if you are so afraid?

Life is possible only without fear.

Life is possible only with love, not with fear.

And death creates fear.

And who is the culprit?

God has not created death,

it is man’s own invention.

Create the ego,

and you have created the other side of it --

death

Osho

Osho: A Ripple in the Ocean

Death is not there, it is a lie --

but it appears very real.

It only appears very real, it is not.

It appears so because

you believe too much in your separate existence.

It is in believing that you are separate from existence

that you give reality to death.

Drop this idea of being separate from existence,

and death disappears.

If I am one with existence,

how can I die?

Existence was there before me

and will be there after me.

I am just a ripple in the ocean,

and the ripple comes and goes,

the ocean remains, abides.

Osho

Andrew Holecek: Letting Go of Letting Go

Death is about letting go.

That includes letting go of any expectations.

The danger in learning too much about death

is that we end up prepackaging the experience,

forcing reality into the straitjacket of our concepts.

Andrew Holecek

Preparing to Die