Reflection on this statement
This is the contemplation: In Western culture, death is scary. Death is sad. Death is an uncontrollable event which puts an end to all events. According to existentialists, we mostly avoid thinking about it, and many cultures and religions have the concept of an afterlife. Imagine your body sitting lifeless in a coffin while your friends and family sit around it. No matter your religious or philosophical beliefs, it is something hard to contemplate.
When I contemplate death, I don’t experience it as something I can know or control. From my perspective as a student of the Diamond Approach, death like life is ultimately a perception, a passing appearance in the larger mystery of being. I can notice my patterns: fear, sadness, instinctive reactions, even hatred. I recognise these as part of the whole and an illusion formed through the structure of the ego.
In the Diamond Approach we spend what feels like a lifetime gently untangling the structures that obscure the immediacy of the present moment. What I can know directly is aliveness: this moment, this awareness, this body, this experience. Life and death feel inseparable, flowing into one another. The more I rest in presence, the more I see that what I call life or death are labels placed on an unfolding mystery.
And yet I still relate through my well established ego structure. If I were to die, I would hope my children could live on and flourish without me, and not suffer unnecessarily. They could throw out my photos, sell my belongings I wouldn’t mind. What matters is that life continues through them.
1. What will people say?
I don’t find what people say about me interesting. Unless it’s feedback that supports me to be a better mum, friend, or counsellor student. What matters is that I act from awareness and compassion in my life. I’d like to be known by my actions, my professionalism and my ability to support people as a counsellor. To know my kids and friends can love me, hate me and forgive me matters.
2. What will they remember?
I hope they remember how much I loved to change and grow. That I was completely myself. That I listened and supported them: my kids, friends and clients. I hope they felt loved. And I don’t really mind of I’m not remembered. I’m not attached to that.
3. What do you want your life to say about the person you were?
I want my life to say that I lived my way completely and contentedly, that I was ordinary, that life it’s self was ordinary and an extraordinary adventure. That I was a student of life and the mystery, that I faced up to my demands, that I wasn’t afraid to hate, to say sorry, that I made mistakes butI loved deeply and honestly, awkwardly.
Leave a Reply