Fear of Death/Fear of Life

My beloved sister Nancy called a couple of days ago and shared with me that she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a very challenging, debilitating disease. I am writing this letter as a reminder to all of us that what is happening to her is a doorway into what really matters in life.

Within the past few weeks, I also heard that a man who attended one of my retreats and a friend of a friend of mine were both killed suddenly by reckless drivers. What this brings up inside of most of us is fear. We are so afraid of illness and dying that we spend our lives denying that we, our loved ones, and every single person in the world will die. This fear can run us from underneath our everyday awareness, molding and shaping all of the choices we make.

What would it be like to fully acknowledge that you will die and you have no idea when that will be. If you can unhook from the fear that this brings up inside of you, something amazing can happen. You finally recognize that you want to LIVE, fully LIVE before you die.

In order to fully live we need to change our relationship to fear. Only about one percent of fear is necessary to our survival – we step off the curb and the body jerks back when it hears the roar of the approaching truck. Most of the fear we experience, however, is only a game in our minds, stories of fear that go all the way from what will happen if I am late to the appointment, to what if he/she doesn’t like me, to what if I get some debilitating disease. They are often very subtle, but they can become huge when life throws us a curve ball.

All the while we are cultivating our garden of fear, life is unfolding, birds are signing, planets are spinning and life, moment by moment, is appearing out of mystery. All the while we are caught in our minds, we are cut off from this amazing adventure of life. In order to not be run by fear, we need to understand that our fear of dying is actually secondary to our fear of living. We are afraid to open to life. This fuels fear even more than our fear of death!

What would happen if you recognized that life, rather than being something that has to be controlled is something to be opened to – and that the safest thing you will ever do is show up for the life that you have been given rather than always trying to make it be the way you think it should be?

This is where the fear of death can be our great ally. For fear always says we have time. It says life will finally be okay when I stop doing this or when I find my soulmate or my partner/parent/boss changes or I have enough money. What would happen if you accepted that you don’t know how much time you have, that death or illness could come at any moment. That thought may bring up fear at first, but the truth is that when we fully accept this, it allows us to come back to being in this moment where life is really happening. And when we are fully present in this moment, the stories of fear fade into the background as we become focused on what is right here, right now.

Note:  I have just published a new edition of my first book  Belonging to Life, in print and as an e-book, and it is a wonderful guide to working with fear and opening to life.  It is available through my website Offerings in print and PDF, through Amazon in print and Kindle format, and through Barnes and Noble in Nook format.