To Not Fear Death

One day, you, and everyone you have ever known and loved, will die.

Does that realization scare you? Humans are hardwired to be afraid of the unknown, and regardless of what many will claim, what happens to our consciousness after we die is a mystery. All we have ever known is the reality created in our brains based upon this experience, and to think that one day it could all stop can be truly frightening. This impermanence does not have to fill you with fear. It is very possible to embrace the unknown using the same methods I have spoken at lengths about eliminating fear’s control over your mind. The trick is learning how to let uncertainty fill you with curiosity and wonder instead of apprehension. If there is no stopping death, why destroy any moment of your life in fear of its coming? If there is no knowing what happens, what is the purpose of fretting over the details? Learn to let go of the need to clearly define and prepare for every uncertainty and you will lose the fear of death.

I attribute a lot of the fear of death to the story of heaven and hell. Believing that this life is a mere speck of existence, in which your actions will determine a lifetime of divine ecstasy or  horrific torture, puts a lot of stress on the mind of what awaits past that dark veil. If you choose to believe that an all-loving, omnipotent God would choose to torture sentient beings for eternity without the possibility of repentance past this short trial period of life, then you should put greater emphasis on the part of your belief structure that guarantees forgiveness for any and all crimes. Live a life of positive deeds and try your best to do good upon others to make up for any of your shortcomings or ways in which you have harmed others. Don’t do good only out of fear of reprisal, for if there is a God who is omnipotent they would know if you are being disingenuous. Do good because it is the right thing to do and any higher power that is worth following would see that and grant you an afterlife that you do not need to fear.

Not believing in an afterlife can be just as, if not more, frightening than believing.  Those who adhere to the scientific view of life and death will see consciousness not as a product of our soul inhabiting a body, but as an electrochemical byproduct of our brain structure. When the oxygen and glucose that feed that structure stops coming and the tissue starts to die off, our consciousness stops right along with it. In this view of death, everything shuts off and there is only blackness. No more consciousness, no more us. While the fear of being tortured for all of time is erased, it is replaced with the existential fear of our impermanence. If one day we just shut off, then what is the point of ever having existed? To overcome this fear, you have to focus on what fear even is. It is a response in our brains to an awareness of the possibility of coming harm. We fear what could possibly hurt or kill us. So what is the point of being afraid of pain or death at a point where we lose the ability to feel pain or die? Why would you destroy the only thing that is real, the present moment, by fearing a time that we will feel no pain and have no threat of death? Preparing for it will not prevent or lessen its totality. There is no point in that fear, and the realization of that is truly liberating.

I believe in a theory that, like many of my beliefs, rests somewhere between science and eastern religion. I do believe that our consciousness is tied to our brain structure, and that when we die, our consciousness as it has formed ceases to exist. I don’t believe that consciousness is directly supplanted into another being based upon our accumulated karma, but I do believe that we return to something greater than ourselves and what once made us will be used to create others. I believe life is fine points of energy; concentrations of vibrations in which the universe becomes something that can replicate itself and alter its surroundings. I believe sentient life is a further concentration of that, in which the universe develops the ability to look at itself, contemplate, and alter its own existence through its perception. I believe that when we die, that energy releases back into the universe in which we are all part of and thus can be used again. We don’t go away, we go everywhere.

Regardless of your beliefs in what happens after you die, there is no reason to be afraid. The same way that we can liberate ourselves from the fear that can grip us throughout life is the same way we can free ourselves from the fear of death. We need to remember that fear is our minds creating an imaginary negative world that does not exist. This imaginary world, and our fixation upon it, destroys the present moment, which is the only thing that is real.  We need to focus our perception on the here and now. Anything we can do to prevent negative outcomes is done in the here and now, and not by fixating on all of the what-ifs we can conjure up. Everything we can do to prolong life, such as eating healthy and exercising, is done in the present moment. If there is something you can do to avoid a negative future, do it. If there isn’t something you can do, then stop worrying. Death is the ultimate example of something you can’t avoid the negative reality of, so eliminate the fear by eliminating the worry. Have your beliefs but don’t become too preoccupied by them, don’t fret over them and cause yourself undue stress. None of us know the truth, so accept your ignorance and return to this moment and enjoy the time you have left.