My mother was an intelligent woman. She was a math teacher for over 40 years. Besides Serbian, she spoke German and French. She read a lot mostly classic literature. Just couple months before she died she spend significant time solving math problems. And yet, she was so afraid of death.
In May 2014 she was diagnosed with liver cancer. Doctor told her sad news in a blunt and unprofessional way. She was not ready to accept her illness and soon after she fell in a deep depression and she could not go through her day without Benzedine better known as Valium.
She was terrified by knowledge that her time has come to the end. She was afraid of her death, she could not think about anything else.
I went to Serbia in August that year. It was painful for me to watch her suffering. I tried to explain her things about life and death but she did not listen me. She asked me did I joined some cult or do I belong to some weird sect?
Just before I went back to Toronto I asked her, when she worked as a math teacher did she noticed who of students is most afraid of the exam. She told me the ones who are not prepared for the exam, who do not know the subject well. Then I told her: "You see mom, you do not know subject well, you have no clue Who you are, you are not prepared well, that's why you are afraid."
She died in January 2015 in the age of 72.
Why am I telling you all this?
I think you are or you will be in the same position as my mom once was. You don't know the subject of life (and death) very well. It is only by self knowledge that conquers fear of death. Self knowledge is the understanding of who-you-are!
The main feature of your life is a forgetfulness. Because you have forgot who-you-are you have a wrong notion that you are a body with the thoughts and feelings, that you are a name with an ID card, that you live a life and that one day all that will come to the end.
I did not blame my mother for her ignorance and I don't condemn you for your failure to understand things as they are. Truth is wonderful but terrifying. All forces of this prison planet are working against your awakening.
What greater brutality can be inflicted on anyone than to erase or deny the spiritual awareness, identity, ability, and memory that is the essence of oneself? ~ Lawrence R. Spencer
Your life directly depends from your belief, the idea of who-you-are. You don't pay any attention to that and that is mistake. You are setting up hopes, expectations and dreams measuring events as a success or failure. By getting older you becoming, more and more, covetous, greedy and coward. Unfortunately, on top of that you nourished yourself with fear of death. The crux of the matter on which the whole ploy of your life rests is your suggestibility, complacency and tendency to wishful thinking.
The fear of death is not a moralistic punishment for your fall as a human being, it is a natural consequence of a state of being.
Why don't you see this? It is so simple, it is enough to look. You're living life with mistaken identity, taking yourself to be a person full of likes and dislikes.
The life's game is simple... find out who-you-are! You have sense of presence, how do you know it? You see your thoughts and feelings, emotions.. who sees it? The sad reality is that you aren't doing anything to find out that. You’re just living out the fantasies with your eyes wide closed.
And so you end up dying a slow death on the inside.And you know, it's not just that it's a terrible way to live: it's not really life at all. It's not something you choose, it's what you get when you don't choose. We just marched ourselves into these damned idiotic, impossible lives without ever stopping to think about what we were doing.High school, college, post-grad and then straight into the workforce. Get married. have a kid, borrow money, buy a house. fill it with junk. have another kid, borrow more money. bigger house, more junk.It's completely insane, but that's how everyone I know lived.~ Jed McKenna
Remove the person and nothing remains. After death there is no 'you', no 'I', no mind and no thought. That is your natural state. A clear cut understanding of a these things is awakening. You are the self without personality. Being without 'I' is the highest understanding.
If you want to realize your self, you must devote your life to It. Otherwise, what is the use of life? Be fearless. 'I' has no real existence, the world has no existence. See that and be what-you-are.
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