Lady Death

Death happens. It's a part of the natural cycle, what some Native Americans call "The Way." Things arise, exist, and then fall away again. I wrote about that in my last blog.

At the start of this journey, in my journal I wrote: "I hear a bird, a car, some dishes clanking in the kitchen...signs of life all around me. My presence here in this moment is inconsequential. I am a silent observer and yet a full participant. Yellow leaves flutter gently to the ground, surrendering to Fall and their own tiny death, as I will soon. In its day, each leaf is spectacular and "makes the tree;" today those leaves are inconsequential, silent observers yet fully participating... like me. Will it be that easy - that gentle - for me? Will I - when it is my time to surrender - be just as silent, just as graceful, just as willing as these leaves? They sprout, and blossom, and live fully, and wilt, and die fully...as I will."

What I've come to is that life - and me as a part of it - is fragile and temporary: fragile because we often don't know when it's time for us to fall away again until we are looking Lady Death in the eyes; and temporary because we all look Lady Death in the eyes... no one and nothing escapes her reach. Well, that's not exactly what I believe...

Remember in "The Dying," I quoted Levine writing about our essence, or essential nature: "Remember that the ever-present luminosity into which our ever-impermanent density dissolves is the light of awareness by which consciousness is seen, our essential nature which never dies." TRANSLATION: Remember that our physical-ness is temporary and at some point will dissolve into the permanent energy from which it was born. That permanent energy is infinite; it has no beginning and no end. It is not, however, empty; it is embedded with awareness.  Awareness is part of what gives rise to our  consciousness when we are born into this physical life. Get it?

So, Lady Death wields the sword that puts an end to our physical experience here, but she can't touch our essential nature, no matter how far she reaches.  Somehow, I find comfort in that. So with that in mind, how can I make the most of my life while I am existing here? How can I be "spectacular and make my tree" before I fall away again? Those are the real questions behind this "A Year To Live" experience, which brings me back to New Year's Eve: Can we really find more life by feeling more death?

283 days and counting...


©2010 Cecilia L. Zúñiga. A Year To Live. All Rights Reserved. Reprints, copies or reproductions of any kind must be accompanied by copyright credit line.