There Has To Be More Than Just Living And Dying
By: Timothy O'Neill
Tags: Life Lessons, Spirituality, Death, Self, Non Fiction

There Has To Be More Than Just Living And Dying

What are we really in this for?

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

There is an orderly, unquestioned pattern to our journey here on Earth. We are born, we are raised, we mature, we build our own lives, lead those lives, then we gradually decay and die. Is this all there is? The universe is infinitely complex, and the particles we are comprised of will persist long after we pass, so where do we find ourselves? Where do we find the context for our consciousness? We move through it and it moves through us. If this is true, that we are not moving through time, as many suppose, but consciousness, then the trajectory of our lives shouldn’t be so linear and so rigid. It’s like we stepped on a ride at an amusement park and we can’t get off until we have gone through all the twists, twirls, climbs and steep drops, all the while catching glimpses of a much larger world out beyond our gasps and screams.

There is more to this enterprise than we can process using our five senses. There is more to this enterprise than living and dying. There has to be, or else the universe fashioned an aspect of itself that is incapable of truly understanding its own nature. We are the children of the stars. We are the instruments the universe uses to explore its own consciousness. It’s like a doctor taking his own x-rays. It’s like a football coach watching the tape of last week’s game and seeing what everyone did right, what everyone did wrong and what can be improved upon for the upcoming game. It’s like me writing this piece in order to filter my consciousness in a way that is coherent and that can talk back to me as it speaks to others.

They say the Earth game can be a catalyst for rapid spiritual evolution exactly because of its short duration and high intensity, but that statement in and of itself is proof that there is more to life than what we see when we look out the window. There is a veil of forgetting that separates us from our past life experiences, from our interim existence in the spiritual realm and from our connection to the other souls who have been on this cosmic voyage with us. The veil separates us, period. We forget that we were once part of an eternal Source of All Being, and that no matter what we do or say, all roads will eventually lead us back to our divinity.

Living and dying. I’m being purposefully reductive, because life is so full of wonder and love and rich experience and opportunities for learning, but doesn’t living and dying sound, I don’t know, cheap? We’re not beasts. We’re people. I’m not saying we should be investing in ways to cheat death and live forever, I’m saying that we should be more mindful and appreciative of the fact that living and dying is not the whole story. It doesn’t define us. We don’t have to exist within these self-imposed parameters. And they are largely self-imposed, because they tell us the self is bound to the rigors and routines of Earth.

Our true selves exist outside of time and space. They exist beyond the barriers erected by clumsy craftsmen who were trying to ensure that we never woke up and claimed our power. They didn’t want us to see past the distractions, diversions, detours and endless heartache to a world more alive than we can fully understand. We’re stumbling about in the dark, clutching at the walls of our prison. Life and death. That’s all there ever was, you say to yourself. I should have made the most of it when I had the chance. But there is still time. Every moment you are alive is the moment in which you can come back to yourself and embrace the reality of your transcendence.

My aim is not to trivialize things, or to minimize the terrible suffering and the ineffable joy of the human experience. Our lives matter. If only we knew exactly how much they matter. I’ve been at the brink of death, several times. Not to sound cavalier, but death no longer holds the same mystique for me as it once did. I don’t venerate it or worship at its altar. I know that it is an inescapable part of the bargain we made when we incarnated here, and I don’t expect to make it out alive. But I want more than death. For me, death is like sleep. I just want to get it over with so we can start fresh as the first rays of dawn come peeking through the blinds.

I used to be the person who wanted to live only at the extreme edge of life. I thought I would play around with death. Then I came very close to dying. Then I realized that there is a universe beyond death and death lost some of its sanctified solemnity. It was boring, almost. Everyone is dying to be special, but you can’t be special because everyone dies. I thought I could go harder, faster, longer and fight so ferociously that, to paraphrase Charles Bukowski, ‘Death would tremble to take me’. I know I can handle dying. I’ve done it already. I know I can handle death. I’ve walked in the shadow realms. But this doesn’t make the pain of the transition any less potent. We made a cameo appearance in a documentary about God, said our piece, and now we are backstage in the editing room, checking the sound and lighting.

From a relatively young age we are curious about death. Seldom do we think it is going to happen to us. When I tried to envision it, when I tried telling myself because you are alive, you must die, I hit a wall inside my brain and had a mini panic attack. How could I be created just so that I could be destroyed? The inevitability of death stole the light from my life. I couldn’t comprehend all its implications. To know that I would eventually be decommissioned and absorbed back into the universe but was a reality too staggering to countenance. What happens to Timothy? Where does Timothy go? Why are you doing this to him? Why are you snuffing out his flame? Hasn’t he done enough to earn a reprieve?

But you can’t bargain your way out. You have to face it and endure it. Just know that no one truly dies alone. You are being witnessed. Entities of great wisdom and compassion are with you to guide you on your journey. And it’s not all light and love and cheerful reunions. That’s what we will come to understand when we can expand our consciousness beyond the prison of our gray matter and take in the full scope of the situation we find ourselves in. Death is just a speed bump. What comes next isn’t always pretty. It may be the hardest work we ever do, as we review our lives on Earth with our spiritual mentors and plan out the details of our next adventure.

And there are a lot of people who are not happy to be dead, and you will meet them. You will see angels and demons and wayward spirits. You will see aliens that have raised their consciousness to levels beyond what we can normally perceive. You will see loved ones who aren’t the loved ones you once knew now that they have shed their temporal ego personality. You are not your flesh. You are the breath of God, an immortal spirit playing this corporeal game.

So what are we doing? Are we just trying to make the best with what is in front of us? Surely there is no harm in that. There is no harm in adhering to the laws, rules, norms and traditions of your culture. If this way of life provides you with joy, meaning and satisfaction then invest in it with your whole being. But if you sense something is amiss, something is lacking, something is going unfulfilled, then perhaps it is time to examine your core beliefs and discover what doesn’t serve you. What is limiting you. We don’t have to play by these rules. We don’t have to follow the predetermined track. We can jump off the roller coaster. This doesn’t mean we break with society completely and go live in the woods. It means we subtly shift our attitude towards life. We try to see through the veil. We take pains to see patterns, negative and positive, and to better understand how they came to be. We take nothing for granted. We open ourselves up to the possibility that there may be more to us than the long day’s journey into night.

Long ago our consciousness was placed in solitary confinement in a prison made of ideas. Generation after generation we failed to question these ideas, to challenge them and deconstruct them. They told us that we live and we die, and that one is merely a prelude to the other. Every time we succumb to the temptations of cynicism and materialism we are placing another brick in our prison walls. Because we had a hand in building these prisons. Was there another force acting upon us, helping to create the atmosphere of fear and doubt and anger that narrowed our consciousness down to a tiny speck of light in a universe of infinite suns? Yes, there actually was. But now it is time to take accountability for our complacency and tell our side of the story.

There is so much more to the world than living and dying. There is so much more to the world than the world we are living in. Take a chance. Look around you. Really look. You may see that the universe is winking at you, trying to get your intention. It is trying to connect to you, trying to engage so you can interact with each other and so you can truly know what it is like to be a citizen of the cosmos. Don’t worry, you are already home.