Words of Art - Lesson 15

Estimated reading time: 4 min.

Dear reader,

Welcome back to Guiding Words.

In the previous lesson, we learned the importance of acquiring financial literacy early in life, not only to avoid becoming a servant to money, but also to use it as leverage on our path to fulfillment.

According to recent data from the World Health Organization, global life expectancy increased by more than 6 years between 2000 and 2019, rising from 66.8 years in 2000 to 73.4 years in 2019. Despite these advancements, science has yet to answer the ultimate question of death. In this lesson, we will therefore reflect on the nature of death.

Let’s begin with some Words of Art:

We see death as an absolute state, while death is not a state but a transition, a bridge from one state of Existence to another.

Even if in death the ego should disappear, that too should not be feared, for the ego is merely the story born from the body gaining aware of itself within its environment. That blank page of a body could have contained so many other stories. Serenity is about realizing that the ego is transient and death nothing but a transition.

It is of great importance to understand, from a physiological perspective, what science says about What happens as we die? I, therefore, really recommend watching this fascinating TEDx Talk by Kathryn Mannix, a medical doctor who spent her career working with people who have advanced incurable diseases.

To watch the video, please follow the link: What happens as we die?

I also invite you, as an exercise, to do a search for the word *death* in Google image and notice the way Western society paint death.

Moreover, isn’t it interesting how, on the one hand, death is omnipresent and even trivialized in movies, while in our daily lives, it is a subject most people prefer not to talk about?

What does this say about our relationship with the inevitable?

As we live, we fail to recognize the movement of death everywhere around us and within us. According to the National Library of Medicine, every day in an adult body, as many as 100 billion cells die. As long as we are alive, most of these cells are constantly being replaced and the mass of cells we lose each year through this normal process of cell replacement is close to our entire body weight!

In the words of Lewis Thomas: By the time I was born, more of me had died than survived.

Death has been made into a moment of its own, while there is no fixed moment of death but rather a movement from Existence through death to Existence. And, as we go about our days, at every moment something in and around us is dying and being born.

Therefore, as we rush through the daily demands of life, buried in our tasks, we should always remember that we are only one breath away from our last, and when that moment arrives, my wish for us is to meet death with serenity, free from any further desire for life.

This concludes our lesson on the nature of death. In the next lesson, we will reflect on the ego’s desire for immortality.

See you in three days and until then, may Serenity be upon you.

Didi

Question: Did you watch the video linked to the lesson: What happens as we die? Did you learn something from it?

Reply with a yes or no and feel free to go beyond two or three characters.

P.S.: I am trying to find the right words to convey my thoughts in a language that is not mine, so please pardon my mistakes and feel free to reply with any suggestions and/or corrections that can make this reading experience more enjoyable.

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