may we all die in peace :-)
i was sitting in an office on the north side of the church, though you’d never know it was a church at all. no jesus in sight, just an amorphous clay figurine and a post-it that read, “won’t cha buy me a ford cobra?” pinned to a photo of a mustang. the kitchen felt dim and strange, stocked with sprite, pudding cups, gherkins, and maple syrup — survival food, if it came to that.
that’s when i noticed her: a lobster clinging to the ceiling, black, moss-dipped, eyes glowing green, the lavender walls pulsing faintly with her every movement. i sat for a while, half afraid she might drop on me, when suddenly a voice rang out — rough, thunderous, commanding: “change!!!” i wondered if laura had put psychedelics in my cookies after all.
if one identifies only as the ego — the worldly separationalist, the mind/body complex imagined as a self apart from all else — then communion with higher intelligence cannot be consciously consummated. its effects may still break through, but only as fleeting coincidence, dismissed as chance. yet coincidence itself is evidence of something larger: the continuity of reality, a geometry that contains the mind/body complex but exceeds it, a lattice threading through all things seen and unseen.
but to awaken fully requires more than noticing this geometry. it requires death. the ego must die — not once, but at every moment of true surrender. the experience is not always gentle. it can feel like being burned alive. like being torn apart from within. like a star collapsing and igniting at the same instant. because in truth that is what is happening: the death of the false self. one chooses to submit to a higher intelligence, to allow it to override the lower. the awakened mind pours into the vacancy like light flooding a cathedral of infinite height, taking the reins of body and mind, reshaping the architecture of identification entirely.
this is why mystics speak of dying before death. it is not metaphor alone. in fact, the experience of ecstasy itself is that of willful death — the retreat of life force beyond the confines of the mind/body complex, guided by conscious breath and heartbeat. the very word “ecstasy” comes from the greek ekstasis: “to stand outside of oneself.” for the awakened one, the whole experience of death is highly enjoyable.
the guru–disciple relationship rests on the principle of voluntary, mutual death. the devotee dies into the guru, treating the guru’s being as their own, until the awakened one lives in them both. a guru may appear as an individual person, or as a deity — surely god is a god of as many gurus as there are devotees. christians awaken by submitting to christ in themselves. muslims awaken by uniting with allah. jews awaken by bowing to the great i am that i am (awareness of awareness).
essentially, a spiritual partnership mirrors the guru-disciple relationship, scaled to the intimate dynamics of human companionship. a partnership of three is even possible, or more — that is, if one is willing to die for all involved. it is said that friendship is the most divine form of love apart from the love of god, for true friendship is a mutual, non-compulsive offering of oneself in times of joy and sorrow.
indeed, the principle extends far beyond human form. even a plant, a mushroom, a rock, a cloud, or an intergalactic alien federation could be your guru — any presence, any form that awakens the mind to its own deeper reflection. the underlying question remains the same: to whom or what am i serving? to truly submit to the inner master transcends any one tradition, any single expression. only when all dissolve into one another, when each sees oneself and the many for the sake of the whole, is the great work complete.
whatever path one takes, the goal is the same: to die into god directly, submitting to the inner master, to awaken and embody an ever-expansive unity. this is a surrendering that can only be sustained through devotion, practice, and the fearless acceptance of death — egoic death, daily death, the death that births new life. when we recognize the non-exclusivity of the divine, we may realize that we are students and teachers to all, everywhere, always. a fractal of self-service, reflecting the infinite back into itself.
if enough awaken in this way, the osmosis is inevitable. familial, communal, societal, even world harmony can form around those who have died into life. social media hints at this possibility, offering its chalk-drawn cube of connection. but the real cube — the direct, embodied presence of awakened being — is vast, multidimensional, radiant, luminous. every mode of expression can serve the great work of love by one who has died into truth.
resistance to such surrender is always fear. fear of violating the invisible social contract. fear of change, fear of judgment. fear of death itself. but death is already here. each breath carries impermanence. to embrace egoic death willingly is to discover that even death itself is impermanent, powerless against the eternal truth of being.
jesus spoke this truth when he called his disciples to walk on water: “take courage! it is i. don’t be afraid,” he said. krishna urged arjuna toward the same end: “for the soul there is never birth nor death. nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. he is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. he is not slain when the body is slain.” as the old apocryphal saying goes, “fortune favors the brave.”
and yet discernment is essential. how do we know what we surrender to is not another temporal hindrance? how do we know we aren’t allowing greedy spirits into our being, as john malkovich had to contend with in being john malkovich? if one should question the experience and find it lacking in depth, in compassionate allness, it may be gracefully discarded. this is self-destruction, detachment, liberation. this is the straight and narrow path — freeing oneself from burdens that divide and separate, until all that remains is eternal luminosity. ask yourself while reading: does this make me lighter or heavier? does it liberate me, or keep me stuck? if it does not liberate, release it.
to rely on the inner guru is to die, and to rise. in this way life unfolds with easeful synchronicity. circumstances arrange themselves as though the awakened one were playing itself through you — a still, listening witness accomplishing more than any striving and limited ego could ever achieve.
this is the secret: to die into unity, again and again. each moment asks us to let go, and each letting go reveals a life more whole, more radiant, more one. i do not say this as an idea, but as a vow: may we all die in peace and rise together in love.
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