Facing Death

Ancient wisdom from the Tibetan book of the dead. This was one of the first books I read when I started meditating. Within this track, I dive into what it takes to shed your fear of death and how to live without it. If you wish to know how to experience God's will, then this is where to start.
This track contains ambient sounds in the background

Transcript

And here we are again, Ready to dive into some deep, Meaningful, Intellectual talk. Last week we left off with the discussion of God's will. I'd like to dive into that just a little bit deeper. To start with, We have to learn to be submissive. We have to be receptive in a very, Almost like feminine manner. The feminine mind is very receptive. The female body is receiving male energy or receiving other energies. But it's a very open, Receptive frame of mind. And I say this because Godliness is oneness. It is whole. There are many divisions and many paths to go down and all these paths kind of lead in the wrong way if you keep following on in the path because all paths come from the mind. And this mind center that we're living from is the problem with almost 89, Maybe 95% of the population is functioning out of this mind center. And whenever the mind center is present, Then there's this I. And wherever this I is present, Then there's ego. The two are basically the same thing. You define yourself by saying, I am this, I am great, I am strong, I'm smart, I'm pretty, I'm ugly, Whatever adjectives you use. That I is always there. One day I learned to drop this I. I was very thankful for a moment that came in my life that allowed me to get to that point where I was able to drop the I and drop the ego in the same sense. This I acts as a shell, Like the shell of an egg. And this shell protects you for a certain period of your life. It guards you, It defends you against harmful entities or energies that might be harmful. And as long as this shell is present, As long as it's there, You cannot melt and dive into the divine. You can't experience God's will. Because that two-ness is there. And when there's two, Godliness does not exist. Because that's a division. So if you think of like the egg shell, And when you crack open the egg shell, And at the right time when the little chicken or a little chick evolves and is ready to be born, A certain time comes in the maturity of this bird that allows the shell to crack because it cannot contain the bird anymore. And the same goes with us. If we mature, If we develop our bodies, Our spiritual body, Our intellectual body, Our emotional bodies, And our physical essence, Then this shell just can't contain you anymore. And then it eventually breaks on its own. So I won't say that the ego is a good thing or a bad thing. Because for a while it protects you and helps you to grow. But then after a while, When you start becoming spiritual, It becomes a hindrance. It prohibits your growth. It hinders your growth. And that's the case of almost all of society right now is that everybody's stuck with this eye, And they don't know how to get rid of the eye. And this reminds me of a story that I'd like to share with you guys. It's Rumi's story. And Rumi was a great Sufi mystic. Anyway, It starts like this. The lover went and knocked at the door of the beloved. A voice asked, Who is it? He said, Open the door, It is I. And then there was no answer. All was silent within. The lover knocked again. He called out again and again, Open the door, It is I, Your lover. But there was no response. Finally a voice came from within. Two cannot be contained in this house. This is the house of love and it can only accommodate one, Not two. So then again, There was silence. The lover turned back and he wandered for years in the jungles. He undertook many tasks and fasts and practices and he performed many rites and holy works. He purified himself and thus cleansed his mind. He became more aware. And he began to understand the conditions. After many, Many years, He returned once again and knocked at the door. And the same question came from within. Who is it? But this time the answer came from outside was, You are alone, Or you alone are. And then the door was opened. So this is the case with our eyes, With our egos existing as the center. Like I said, For a while in your life you needed that to happen. For a period that was the only thing you knew. But this diving into, This melting and this merging with the lover, With godliness you could call it, With the divine, This diving is in a sense a death. But it's only a death of certain parts of you. So it's true, When Jesus was dying on the cross, He couldn't believe that God would let him go through this. Because he thought God would break down the doors and shake the earth and do all kinds of miraculous miracles to save Jesus. But Jesus was being assertive and this eye was still there. And finally, Towards the end, Jesus' last words were, Thy will be done. And then he subsided. And some say that that's the day that Christ was born. That Christ was born as Jesus died. And that's a very powerful story to share. Even if you're not a Christian, Even if you're a Buddhist, Or a Jain, Or a Hindu, Or even if you're Jewish, The essence of this Christ being born comes from the essence of God's will. And I shared before that God's will is everywhere. It surrounds you. There is nothing that's not God's will. But you've been hindered from experiencing this will because of this eye, This ego that it expounds around you and controls your mind and controls, In a way, Your spirit. So you have to experience this subtle death, This turning in and meditating and spending some time letting your consciousness grow. And this time that you're spending in meditation, Times where you practice Zen, Even when you're not meditating, When you're cleaning the house, Or going for a run, Or going for a motorcycle ride, Or whatever you like to do, You can experience the Zen and that helps your spirit to grow. And it makes you feel so good when you do these things. Because when the spirit grows, You become closer to godliness. And you'll keep pressing against that egg, Pressing against it harder and harder and harder, The more your consciousness grows and the more your spirit grows. I remember when I first went skydiving the very first time. I love to share this story with everybody. I was so scared and nervous to do this. It was something that I had no familiarity with. I'm a surfer, I'm a snowboarder, Skateboarder, All kinds of things like that. But I've never tried this new thing in life. But I had to do it. This is something that I came to a point in my maturity that I had to do it. So anyway, Like I said, I was super nervous, Super scared, But I was determined to just go ahead and do it. I mean, I'm not scared of death. I had a near death experience when I was younger and that freed me from the fear of death. It also freed me from greed too. But anyway, I just felt like I had to do this skydive. So we loaded onto the plane and I had my parachute on me. They trained me how to do all the emergency procedures and how to open the parachute and look around and get familiar with things. But as the plane kept getting higher, I got a little less nervous and a little less nervous until the plane reached its total altitude. And at 14, 000 feet, The plane levels off and it slows down. And the jumpers slowly get to the back of the door and they all jump out. And us students are kind of last. We go before the tandems, But we're kind of last in the hierarchy. So we also pulled a bit higher, So we need that anyway. So I climb outside the plane when it was my turn to jump. And if my nails could have dug into that metal any deeper, Then there would have been indentations on the door of that plane. I was so scared and I was so nervous. But I just got to the point where I said, Fuck it. Excuse my language, But I said, Screw it, I'm jumping. And I released myself from the plane, Not thinking about any of the procedures I was supposed to be doing to let the other jumpers know that I was getting ready to leave the plane. I don't know. This overcoming of this fear, It almost consumed me, But I got to a point where I wouldn't let it consume me anymore. I got to the point where I was like, I will not let fear control my life. And everything that you love in this world, Everything that's beautiful in this world is on the other side of that door, The other side of the airplane, This releasing. And then you start to jump and it turns out to be so beautiful. This is like incredible experience. It doesn't even feel like falling. It just feels like you're floating through the air and it's loud as a freight train and just this amazingly beautiful experience that was all on the other side of fear. And if you relate that to the way we live our lives, You don't have to jump out of a plane to experience that. You just have to sit down and tell yourself that you're not going to be controlled by fear anymore. You're going to face it. And that's what makes a man truly brave or a woman very truly brave is that you just say I'm going to face the fear and whatever the outcome, Whatever the situation, However it turns out, That's just going to be the way it is. So let go of your fear. Let go of greed. Let go of any desire for any future, Even heaven. Let go of your desire for heaven. Just live 100% in the present moment and feel that how relaxing that can be. And it is. It's a total relaxation from everything that you've known. And when you allow your body to do that, Anxiety disappears, Fear disappears, Greed disappears. And then you're not pulled from these directions. Then your energy shifts to a vertical plane from the horizontal to the vertical. And when that shift occurs, Energy goes higher and higher and higher. And it's such a beautiful thing to experience. And if you want to know what it truly means to know God's will, You have to be submissive, Just as Jesus was on the cross. You have to allow a certain part of you to die. But that's not the end. It's never the end. I know death seems like the scariest thing in the world. But if you face your fear of death, I mean, I don't know if anyone listening to this may be terminally ill, Or maybe have like stage four cancer and you're like searching out and trying to find the courage to face this. If you can face it and overcome the fear, Then death becomes this beautiful experience. It becomes this ultimate merging with the existence with godliness. Because they say that enlightenment basically is the ultimate death. In fact, They say that millions of times you've lived millions of lives and over and over again you experience this little death from leaving from one body and then being reincarnated into another body or however that works. But you keep experiencing life over and over and over. And I say that this existence, All we know is life in this world around us. We don't know death because no one has ever seen it. Nobody's ever experienced it. There are people like me who had near death experiences that come back and say, Hey, It was this beautiful thing. But I also met a guy that had a near death experience. He's kind of a dark fellow, Kind of rough around the edges. And I guess my friends were telling him a little bit about me after they read the book that I wrote called Ten Thousand Waves, Which I explained how this whole near death experience happened to me and how it changed my life. It wasn't the near death experience exactly, But what happened after it is what changed everything. But anyway, So I met this fellow and we were out at a bar. And he said to me, He told me about his near death experience. He says, I didn't see anything. In fact, It was complete blackness. And I said to him, I said, Well, What eyes did you have to see with? I mean, You can't see those eyes that you use in here. So what eyes did you have to see with? Have you ever worked on your upper bodies and raised your energy to open up the third eye and be able to actually see how those that maybe passed away see everything around them? And he said, No, I haven't done any of those things. And I don't know if I convinced him into trying some of these things, Like meditation and all these other things, But these near death experiences or these people who are facing death maybe sooner than they had hoped for, Maybe a lot sooner than they'd hoped for. My words of encouragement are here for you to not be afraid and to go into fear and face that fear and go past it. Then, Like I said, The experience of enlightenment they call the ultimate death. And then they say after that, You don't have to live another life. But I have problems with that too. I love this life so much. And I experienced so much beauty and joy in this life that I can't experience or say that I would want heaven to be any better than this. Even with all the suffering that I've endured, Even with all the hardships I've gone through, The rough childhood and rough adulthood, To me, Life is the pinnacle of beauty. It's the highest element where we actually become gods. And then as we pass over into our next lives or our last lives, We dive back into the ocean. And the drop disappears once again into the ocean. I think that a lot of people who are still going through hardships in life or not understanding why they're here or they may feel miserable in life, Then they haven't learned all the tricks to life. They haven't learned how to experience the beautiful things that come when you be submissive and allow God's will to take over and help you to live an adventurous, Meaningful life. But before any of these beautiful things can happen, You've got this door to cross. You've got this thing to face called fear. But it's an illusion. It's not real. It's just what you're scared of. But all this fear is based on the unknown. And we don't know the unknown. We don't know what happens after we die. We don't know if we live again or not. But I'll say this, That all the evidence is that life is all there is. Think about that. Life is all there is. It's all we know. And as far as you can look for billions and trillions and billions and billions of miles everywhere to infinity, Life is all there is. This universe is all we know. There may be other universes, Multiverses and things like that, But this is the one that we know. This is all we know. Anyway, I guess that's about it for today. I really appreciate all of you else's time. And I hope this insightful talk helps you to conquer your fear. Go past greed. Because those are the first things, Those are the first steps you've got to face to go past these things. And like I said, Just like jumping out of the plane, Everything that's beautiful exists beyond those illusions, Those dark illusions. The other side is light, But you have to cross these bridges first. Anyway, Thank you for your time. My name is Douglas Gromins. Thanks again for joining me. I look forward to the next talk real soon. And namaste to all my spiritual friends and aloha to all my beautiful surfing friends. Take care of yourselves. Goodbye.

Reviews

Loved the analogy about the ego being like an eggshell, and as we spiritually and emotionally mature, the shell must be cracked away to be free