The Fear of Death. New MJ Awakening Blog

“The fear of death is the beginning of understanding. Seeking is simply clinging to various concepts, goals, things, methods, and paths that seem to promise relief from death, from the knowledge of death, and from all suffering, which is separation and death.

THE MAN WHO KNOWS THERE IS NO RELIEF FROM DEATH UNDERSTANDS. HE KNOWS THAT THAT WHICH SEEKS RELIEF FROM DEATH MUST DIE. THUS, HIS SEEKING COMES TO AN END.

His fear, which is resistance to death, ends. He ceases to operate as the one who must die and who seeks release from death. He abides in understanding, which is prior to the one who must die.”

-Adi Da Samraj

MICHAEL: Sometimes we have to go on a “journey,” only to end up back where we started, but with new eyes. I was familiar with Adi Da, but the essence of his teaching escaped me the first time around (which is understandable, as he put out many books on many topics over his lifetime).

However, I now realize what his profound and almost unheard of core teaching was: that all our gestures, every activity the mind/body concocts is for the single purpose of distracting oneself from the elephant in the room: DEATH.

Death hangs like a sword over our neck every second, yet because that thought is so terrifying, the mind does everything it can to divert our attention to “creating a life for ourselves” so as to avoid dealing directly with it. Thus, it seeks distraction via entertainment, food, sex, money, relationships, a spiritual journey, etc. virtually non-stop.

However, this does not resolve the core fear, but rather just attempts to cover it up. Much like a child who covers their own eyes in hopes that this futile gesture prevents the “boogeyman” from seeing them. We are only fooling ourselves.

It turns out that our starting assumption, that we are the body who was born and will die, MUST be challenged one way or another. Meaning, either you are the body and you will die, or you are not. Which is it? Are you sure? And if you are not sure, why assume you are the body?

I capitalized the 2nd paragraph in the Adi Da quote above, because it’s the realization that there is nothing to be done about death of the body that, paradoxically, brings unfounded peace, joy and liberation. In other words, you finally, for the first time in your life, stop running from death.

This is an energetic experience, not just mental. Something in you physically relaxes. It’s a total surrendering. It’s a giving to death what belongs to death because it is seen that death has nothing to do with you… and never did.

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