Living & Dying: A Descent into the Darkness that Reveals Ultimate Truths
By: Jiro Taylor
Tags: Spirituality, Consciousness, Philosophy, Leadership, Dying

This is my first note in months.

Those of you tuned into my frequencies will sense I’ve been riding the wave inwards.

Yes, I’ve been on a pilgrimage to the sacred heartlands of the Andes, and deep into the ancestral song-lines of ancient Australia. But I’ve also been on a journey through the shadowlands of my psyche.The tears have flowed. The wounds inherited from ancestry and my own childhood trauma have been oozing.

The awareness of my delusions has never been sharper. I have contemplated and experienced dying of many kinds. Yet never have I felt more alive.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. For this is the way.

Death & Rebirth is the fundamental pattern of life

This quest we are all on to awaken to our true selves is NOT a straight line to enlightenment- it is a perpetually flowing spiral of:

BIRTH > DEATH > REBIRTH…. to infinity.

Also known as: EXPANSION > CONTRACTION > EXPANSION…. to infinity.

This spiral is the fundamental pattern of the universe, the rhythm with which stars, flowers, trees and all living creatures harmonise with.

With each breath, every falling down and every rising up we cohere with the sweet undulations of source.

As we learn to become sovereign beings that are simultaneously surrendered to life, we tap into the mother song-line of the universe.

The Expansion before the Contraction

My month in Peru was a time of great expansion. I was being re-born into new versions of myself over and over again. The edges of my awareness were stretched into domains of expansiveness I had no idea were even there until I was there. I discovered new dimensions of sovereignty and found surrender where before there was holding on.

I returned from Peru bright (third) eyed and bushy tailed. My work with ancestral medicines and shamanic lineages was sweet nectar to my spirit. For an imagination colonised by a culture that propagates separation and fear, it was profoundly healing medicine.I woke up again and again to a truer and truer awareness of my true self as awareness incarnate.

I felt gratitude, power and love I didn’t know was possible. Life became ceremony.

I became WHOLE.

The stories of my cosmic adventures in 5000-year-old temples designed for cosmic adventuring will come soon. This is not that article.

Suffice to say, I blew the dust off my higher chakras and came to a deeper knowing of my capacity to navigate through the holographic universe we live in, manifest and ARE… all the same time.

I journeyed to the stars, sat with ancestors and beings from other places. I became a channel for light-codes that continue to re-program my mind. I deepened my relationship with the earth, allowed myself to bathe in her outrageous abundance and in doing so, remembered how to live more lovingly. It was not your average holiday in the hills.

And then there was the return

Whether we are conscious of it or not, there is always an “integration” period when returning from a quest. All the experiences, lessons and growth must settle in and decompose into the soil of oneself.

If there has been expansion, there MUST be contraction, because this is the ultimate pattern of life.

When the leaves of the past have blown off the branches and lay on the forest floor, there they must rot.

Integration is a death process, in which the codes for re-birthing are set.

how energy flows…

in a torus… we can see expansion and contraction at the same time.

How do we integrate well? We can face death and integration with dignified grace, courage and surrender… or with panic, struggle and terror.If we so choose it the home-coming from an expansive quest, is a time of holding dignified space for lamenting.

We honour the dying of the old programs, ideas, beliefs, contracts, relationships, visions and versions of oneself.

We are allowing living matter to burn and rot into the soil of consciousness so that a new sense of home within emerges from which new life re-generates.

As green shoots emerge from scorched land, we continue our journey from more fertile ground.

Leaning into Death

Leaning into “death energy” may feel a step too far for you. Perhaps this feels morbid or scary. But this does not have to be the case. This practice, cultivated by every single wisdom tradition I know of, can be the most profound and liberating experience ever.

Leaning into dying feels to me akin to the powerful drawing back of a bow that creates the potential energy for the arrow of life to fly true and far.

Dying, in this context is not just about physical passing. It can be the contraction caused by rejection. It can be the saying “no” to a person or project.

It could be the leaving of a place or relationship that once felt like home.

Dying can be physical, emotional or spiritual exhaustion, business failure, marriage breakup or a loss of money. It could be the fear of death or the sensation of depletion.

The French have an expression, La petite mort, which refers to the sensation of post-orgasm as a little dying.

Indeed it is (at least for males who ejaculate): the loss of qi/ prana/ life force energy is a contraction into death energy…. that of course has the potential to bring forth new life.

From what I gather, in child-birth it is waves of painful womb contractions that usher in the expansion and expression of new life.

As a wise elder-woman, Anneloes Smitsman once taught me about “womb medicine”:

“Inherent in every contraction is the wisdom and power inherent in every expansion.”

The birth workers of earth-connected peoples of many tribes were also the death workers. Holding space for new life and death is the same dance, energetically speaking.

So if you want to know about living well, you better start learning about dying well. Because its the same thing.

So, what did I find out in my leaning into death?

Oh you know…. stuff…. ; )

That I can be a selfish tyrant. That my inner child craves validation and love. That I lie to myself. That my ego shape-shifts into forms disguised as virtue.

That when I look at into the mirror that only intimate relationships hold up, I often see NOT the highest version of myself. I have much work to do.

On all this I commit to continuing doing the work of learning how to hold the vibration of love in the face of fears.

When it came to my professional life, or my offerings as a creative human I also opened up to death.As a snake sheds it skin I sensed into the letting go of clients, projects, identities, collaborations and visions. There has been fear and discomfort as well as joy and liberation.Like a gardener prunes a tree, I hack away at the inessential to allow more life force energy to flow into what is truly essential.

Seeing The Rot of Spiritual Materialism

Chögyam Trungpa- rebel monk

In the space of death and re-birth I have reflected on the words of the late great Tibetan meditator and scholar, Chögyam Trungpa:

“The problem is that the ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.”

KAPOW! BOOM! MIC DROP. My ego fucking hated that line. Hit it right in the tender bits.

Because it knows its true.

“Spiritual materialism” is described by Trungpa as a delusional and neurotic self-improvement project aimed at adorning the ego.

Can you see this playing out in your life?

I see it in mine. As I’ve strived to teach, build a business, run projects and retreats, “build a brand”, speak to an audience and “help others evolve” I have gone through the delusion.

But I’m ready to stop adorning the ego because that’s the real work, and what is required in this new paradigm of leadership.

And so as I continue my quest I kill the idea that I do this work for others, in service to others.

I’m doing this for me. Yep, just for me (a me that is connected to the whole).

My work over the years has somehow sharpened to the point where I only work with 3–6 CEOs, founders/ entrepreneurs and companies at a time. We go deep and work together for years.

Why CEOs? It was never intentional.

They came to me. Maybe, like the Samurai of feudal Japan, it is them who have the courage to learn about how to live well and die well. 🙂

My ego wants me to tell people I do it because they are the type of “game-changers” that have the potential to catalyse great consciousness expansion on this planet…. blah blah blah.

My ego also tells me that I need to serve more, work with more people, have a greater impact and do more to catalyse an awakening on this planet…. blah blah blah.

In all honesty, that’s bullshit spewed by an ego that wants validation, and is hooked on the opium of “more”.

The simple truth is that I’m doing it for me, in utter self-less selfishness…. because my soul loves it and it feels right.

I love working with driven, philosophical, curious, growth-mindset and entrepreneurial humans who love manifesting abundance…. because I am this type of human.

Ego in Spiritual Robes

I now see the egoic delusion of the “purpose-driven conscious entrepreneur” ideal, that I once spruiked.

I laugh at the commercialisation of spiritual or moralistic memes wrapped in ego’s robes.

I sense the neurotic fear of the angry earth activist or self-righteous vegan who cares so much about the external that they neglect to heal the internal wounding… and by doing so they harm the external their ego tells them they need to focus on.

This path we are on is a becoming, an awakening. We are born alone and we will die alone.

Awaken for you. I’ll do it for me. In you doing it for you, you do it for me. As I do it for me, I do it for you.

Because we are one inter-connected source consciousness manifesting itself through (what appears to the mind to be) many forms.

So how do we live with death as our friend?

Be generous and loving with yourself and let die the victim/ martyr/ competitor stories that keep you limited, fearful and separate.

We’re dying as fast as we’re living, but we get this succulent sweet spot in between during which we get to play, expand, make love, dance and sing.

What do you think source/ consciousness wants us to do with this succulent sweet spot?

Be miserable, feel anxious that the world is ending and sad because you’re not good enough to be loved… and humans are horrible?

NO. That’s the voice of ego-mind.

Source, the universe, the earth… is giving us a master-class on how to live with magic, connection, love and abundance.

It is inviting us to join the dance of life and death…. and urging us on to lay down the burdens and separation borne of the ego-mind that keep us outside the cosmic spiral.

Don’t get me wrong: There’s a war going on, and I’m a warrior in the heat of battle.

But it’s not men versus women, left versus right or good versus bad.

It’s fear versus love.

The war is not out there. It is waged within us with each vibration we feel, transmute and emit from our bodies.

And because this war is within, it can only be fought within us.

And we can only win the war within when we have learned how to transcend the fear within.

We can only transcend the fear within when we learn we are not separate, but part of the whole.

We can only learn we are part of the whole by facing contraction and death with willingness and grace.

We do this by surrendering with trust into the infinite oneness of source… which is to be re-born.

So to live with death as your friend and trusted advisor is to be both sovereign and surrendered at the same time.

This is what I’ve been learning about in my descent into the darkness of the great mystery.