On dying, on living.

"It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead." -Kurt Vonnegut

Here's what's been happening, everything is dying and ending and it feels like it is happening all at once. Maybe it's simply the season for it. That may sound callous but trust me, it is not like that. But assorted happenings, words people have said or written to me and I, back to them, papers I have been writing, books I have been reading, all have me considering the unusual (though more common than we think) practice of living after partially dying, or after being so close to actual death. 

I trust that you are all familiar with the term "ego death". A concept that has fascinated me, that I have spent the last 2 or 3 years of my life trying to attain. I have come close on a few occasions, but as I begin to dissolve, and as dividing lines between all I see go fuzzy my mind seems to go into a defensive mode and my 'self' reasserts itself. I know what I need to experience, I believe in it. But it is different from actually experiencing it. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find time to meditate for long stretches of time which is something I need to fix because meditation is my favorite thing, probably.

Ever since I passed out from being stung by a mostly-dead Portugese Man-O-War I feel my brain has never worked the way it is supposed to. Maybe that is an arbitrary turning point and it's more than likely the case that that just isn't true. Maybe my mind never worked right.

Once, a different time than being stung and much later, I was closer to death than I had ever been, or have been since. Looking in the mirror I did not recognize myself. I had over time become someone who I could not recognize or bear too look at. This stranger had an empty, pale, sagging face, around her eyes were dark purple circles, her eyes themselves were listless, yellow and bloodshot, her skin lacked any vibrancy or mark of the living. Until the day I die I will never forget seeing myself as an 'other', seeing myself, seeing that other die before my eyes. 

I slept forever, on the other side there was a warm and soft nothingness.

But even when one sleeps forever, there is a time to wake up.

The bruises all over my body that I had gained eventually faded.

And since then I am always gaining new marks, new scrapes and bruises

Since then my body has never been free of wounds,

the fragility of the body, the strength the soul requires to make up for it.

When you die, then go on to live to tell the tale it is not something you will ever fully forget. Your death is always in one corner of you mind. One might say looming, but that gives off the wrong connotation.

"You have to die a few times before you can really live." -Charles Bukowski

When you yourself have been close to death, when your ego fades, or when a substantial part of you dies and you are there to watch, you know that there is nothing to fear. You can overcome death; you cannot live forever but you can live. To actually live is more powerful than to live forever. 

Whenever we die, we should pick up the pieces, we put them back together different. Try to put them back together better.

Whenever anything dies their pieces, their matter, their energy is still a part of the universe as everything else takes the pieces of the dead thing. Everything else puts themselves back together. What use are the dead if they cannot fix the living?

But also

What use are we if we cannot fix ourselves?

I am different now, maybe even better in some ways. My temper and judgement take longer to come, I look at everything anew. More importantly, I look at everything. I am happy now, but I know that happiness is hard work. I recognize the world is complicated but I cannot help but oversimplify things most of the time.

The most complicated aspect of the universe: It is simple sometimes.

Once you see that everything means something while meaning nothing it is easier to just accept, to love boundlessly. You are as free as you want to be, but you may not even want to be very free at all because what is freedom without love, which kills freedom in every sense of the word.

I am bound to all of you because I love you.

I am bound to myself because I love myself.

I am bound to my moral standards because I love them.

I am bound to the universe because I love it.

And I accept death too. I know, in my heart that it is never the end. Because I am bound to the people I know, many of whom will live on after me (if only for a short while). Because I am bound to the universe, which will endure for longer than I can fathom. When you die and then live you recognize that death is nothing to be afraid of, you accept it and you do not fight it anymore. You do not push it out of your mind when it appears because it is a part of you and a part of the universe, both of which you should love.

I am bound to death because I love it.

I am bound to die because I love it.

I know this may be hard to read for many of you, hard to understand for others. I know those two sentences up there may upset every reflex you have, your mind might cringe, your heart might worry.

Death is painful for those left behind I know this and I know you all know this. But leaving someone is all in the mind, it is a product of how we see time, how we see space and how we see matter. We can see past these instinctive boundaries. We can hold onto everyone and everything and we are never left behind.

What is the dirt that is sitting between your toes? What is the wind that is whistling through your ears? What is the Ocean? What is love?

Here's what they all are: Reminders that the universe is, reminders that everything is, and has been, and will be, reminders that morbidity only exists sofar as we let it.

Leaves are falling, the grass will grow from them in the spring.

We will all die, most of use more than once. But to exist, and to love, is to be a part of something bigger and neverending. So we need not worry.

I love you all so much.