IT IS NOT DEATH ITSELF, BUT THE FEAR OF IT THAT CAUSES SUFFERING
My friend called to tell me about the toughest lock down restrictions being enforced in South Australia in reaction to 35 COVID cases (despite some 7000+ tests). She was down the shops and explained the frantic energy of people instantly smothering their faces in masks and hurrying to the nearest supermarket to stock the pantry.
I am intrigued by human behaviour and blown away by the immediacy of people’s reaction to a virus that has killed 1000 people in Australia in 12 months (way less than those that have indignantly died of suicide or other chronic diseases like cancer). This has truly been a wild, eye opening and fascinating year for people watching. I am baffled by people’s receptivity to the hype. The fear has been so powerfully instilled that not only does our government now have full control to exercise an abomination of human rights with the flick of a switch (residents of SA not even allowed to exercise outdoors, apparently, and they had 8 hours to get home from wherever-the-heck-in-the-world-they-were to adhere to a midnight curfew), and we abide without question. But the fear has been so powerfully instilled that people are so quick to adopt the suggested methodology of self-preservation by wearing a mask (of which there is plenty of evidence to indicate it doesn’t do what the ‘experts’ say they do) and filling their shopping trolleys in fear that they won’t be able to access enough food to survive for the next few days.
We contemplated what the driving force is beneath the panic and came to this conclusion. Underneath the hype, the hysteria and fear is this:
People are afraid of death.
The hysteria is a symptom of the attachment we have to the human body, the denial of our immortality, and the inability to process, live with and accept that we are all going to die. Because the pain and suffering of the loss of the things we’re attached too is riddled through our bones and we don’t know any other way. We are born into this world and bathe in the attachment to this flesh and bone and the egotistical belief that we’re immune to death. Yet none of us are getting out of this alive.
We go through 13 years of school and we don’t learn how to honour death.
We don’t learn about the process of dying.
We don’t learn about what happens when we die.
We don’t learn how to grieve.
We don’t learn how to support people who have lost loved ones.
We don’t learn how to prepare for death.
So we’re terrified of something that we’re all going to experience. Every single one of us is going to die.
So why, then, are we so scared of death? Why do we cling to life like we’re immortal and fear the very thing that is the ONLY thing that is certain in life?
The thing I am intrigued by most is that most people aren’t even IN their bodies. Most people operate from psychological constructs, attached to self-identification (ego) abusing the shit out of these magnificent bodies that gift us the life we so painfully cling to and then fear the very thing that we will all inevitably experience. As a race, a society, a species, a world, we are so disconnected from our body, the energy, its operations and needs, and the divinity that resides within.
We fear the end of something we’re not fully embodied in.
Most of us don’t love and value our bodies. We don’t honour it with incredible nutrition, movement and sleep. We don’t understand or value emotions. We don’t feel safe in them or truly allow ourselves to feel them.
“We don’t love and care for our bodies in a way that justifies the level of attachment we have to its survival”
The issue is not that we’re going to die. We all know that 100% of us will leave this body and this life experience through death. The issue is that we don’t accept death. We are so attached to pleasure that we go through all lengths to avoid pain and suffering, to ignore what is real, identify with a body we’re not fully aligned with and never gift ourselves in this human experience to bestow the divinity of grace because we’re too afraid to die.
In yoga the kleshas are mental afflictions that keep us away from connecting to our divine nature and living a life free of the obstructions of the mind. COVID has been such a gift to witness how people are deeply affected by the kleshas and how they impact on our behaviours and interplay on the conditions and beliefs instilled in us from a system that values self-preservation.
What a waste of energy.
Rather than fear death, how do we find a way to normalise the experience? How do we educate on the birth/life/death cycle in a way that honours the end of the life, rather than fear it?
I don’t know what these answers are, but I do know that these are discussions we need to have with our children, our peers, our families, and friends. Lean into the teachings of yoga to better understand how the mind holds us back from living a life that is uninhibited and free. If we lived right now in the blessing of life in full acceptance that it could be our final moment, perhaps we’d live in celebration rather than in fear.
Over the next few blogs I’m going to share my interpretation of the kleshas (mental afflictions) according to the philosophy of yoga and try to create some awareness of how you can lean into suffering, without the attachment, and have courage to feel the pain, rather than avoid it. That’s where freedom can be found.
The 5 kleshas are:
Avidya - Ignorance
Asmita - Ego (self identification)
Raga - Attachment
Dvesha - Avoidance
Abhinevesa - Fear of death