When we think of dying, we often focus on grief, mortality and loss. Death, however, represents a very powerful, symbolic process that we experience and encounter throughout our lives. The ways we experience dying are not only inevitable, they can also be positive, enlightening, and ultimately — beautiful.
1. Let Go — When we truly let go, what we let go of dies. If we completely let go of a bad habit, the bad habit is gone, and we are no longer attached to the habit or the energies that compelled it.
We may let go of an unhealthy relationship, and if we have committed to letting go, the relationship in the present is dead to us, and the experiences we had in the relationship become memories.
We can let go of a loved one who died, and by disengaging our attachment to their previous human forms, we move on with our own lives, knowing that the physical manifestation of our loved one has gone and transformed into spirit.
Our spirits can let go of our bodies when our bodies are ready to transform, and when our bodies let go to die, we release our spirit into Spirit.
2. Kill a Part of Yourself — Kill the part of yourself that is filled with self-doubt, that never seems good enough. Kill the part of yourself that blames others for your short-comings. Kill the part of you that is addicted, that is dishonest, unfaithful, angrily aggressive, judgmental – any part of yourself that you want to change.
Killing the unhealthy, destructive parts of our psyche creates room for us to embrace and grow into other, more positive, constructive parts of self.
3. Have an Orgasm — The little death is still a form of death. It represents a space in our awareness and experience that is utterly without ego and attachment, without thought and blame, without circumstance or time.
When we truly succumb to the transformative, other-worldly experience of an orgasm, for a few brief moments, we are enlightened, alone yet connected to the whole, beyond death and within the cycle of death at the same time.
4. Meditate — What is death if not an experience of spirit without body? The essence of meditation is releasing the spirit from the body to engage in higher realms free of form, ego and attachment.
The goal of meditation is enlightenment, a state impossible for any serious period of time without physical death. Like an orgasm, meditation is a little death, and when fully experienced, it is beautiful and transcendent.
5. Change — The symbolic meaning of death is change and transformation. The cycles of the moon are forms of this type of death, and we all experience it in this reality every time the moon transforms her shape and energetic pull on the earth.
We are called to make change, to self-grow. We die as children to become adolescents; we transform from adolescents into adults. When we stop changing, our physical bodies atrophy and die. It is ironically beautiful that the one thing that truly prevents death is the symbol of death itself.
