 Dear Friends,
I am sitting down to write this Christmas letter on All Saints’ Day – more anciently known as Samhain. This is the time when the veil separating this world and the next is said to be at its thinnest, so it seems appropriate to call down a Christmas gift for you that involves a reflection on what happens when we die.
Perhaps you are familiar with the old Sufi saying which goes something like this: ‘He who dies before he dies will not die when he dies’. Clearly, these words have endless layers of meaning, and in a letter of this size we can barely hope to scrape the surface, but anyway, let’s make a start. What does it mean ‘to die before you die’? What happens when we die, anyway?
No one can be certain, of course, but the general consensus seems to be that, when we die, we can be confident of being met by as much light and love as we are capable of perceiving.
And in that light and love, a process will unfold whose aim is the gentle and gradual dissolution – as far as we ourselves will permit – of everything in us that is not love and truth. A process of learning, flowering and, at the same time, of letting go. This, it seems to us, is what it means to ‘die when we die’. So how can we ‘die before we die’?
Well, the key is in the calendar we’ve just made for you. Be Here Now, we've called it and, as you may have suspected, we did not create it merely as a thing to help you remember what day it is. No, our hope is that it will serve you as a powerful spiritual tool, to help you ‘die before you die’ so that you will not need to ‘die when you die’.
‘Bit of an exalted aim for a mere calendar’, I hear you thinking, so let me explain....
Obviously, if ‘dying when we die’ means allowing the dissolution of everything in us that is not love and truth, then ‘dying before we die’ must mean doing that very same thing, only while living. ‘Oh I doubt very much whether I would be able to do that,’ you may be saying to yourself. ‘I'm not evolved enough, I don’t understand enough, I’m not good enough. I’m too full of illusions and mistakes. To think I could do that would be mere presumption.’
Please believe us when we say that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, nothing could be simpler, because all we are actually required to do – while living – is to make a start, to form a connection with the deepest truth of our being. And that, we will find, is enough, in just the same way as removing the blockage from a deep underground spring is enough to ensure an ever-flowing supply of life-giving water.
So let’s return to the calendar. Each month, a photograph and a simple quotation have been chosen to fan the flame of awareness within you of Who and Where you truly are. For instance, the words selected for you to reflect on during August are:
‘How easy it is to remember the truth and thus return home:
I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences.
I am not the content of my life. I am Life.
I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.’
(Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks)
When – right through all the challenges that are the inevitable adjunct of life on earth – we persevere in thinking thoughts like these and in making corresponding choices until it becomes a habit, our former illusions and identifications simply fall away. Or, even if they don't – or haven't yet – they no longer have anything like the power over us that they had before. However small a seedling it may yet be, we are developing a new identification – a new sense of identity, a new I. And because it is rooted in truth and love, which are eternal, rather than in illusion, which is not, nothing can prevent its eventual flourishing as a magnificent tree of Life. In essence we are already free. And by freeing ourselves we will find we have also helped open the way to freedom for many others. That, in a nutshell, is how you ‘die before you die’.
Now perhaps you are one of those people who read those beautiful words of Eckhart Tolle, or other sayings like them, and think, ‘Well, this sounds so wonderful, but I'm a very long way from feeling like that myself. Those words do not apply to me yet, although I wish they did.’ Or ‘I can appreciate the truth of those words intellectually, but I cannot seem to ‘own’ them. Perhaps I am not ready. The path to freedom must surely involve a lot more work and preparation’. Well, lots of people think like that, so you're in good company!
However, the truth is that words describing our deepest essence – which is all life, all love, all goodness – need nothing from us except our trust. There is no right or wrong way to think them, experience them or know them. These words are vessels for a profound reality, and as such have a life and power of their own. That is why any level of acceptance you can muster for them, however distant, meagre or inadequate it may seem to you, is enough. Just plant the seed, water it by calling it to mind as often as you can, and it will grow. See for yourself!
There is just one more thing that could possibly prevent you from walking through the doorway to your true Nature. Perhaps you are one of those multitudes of people who have done something in the past of which they are deeply ashamed and for which they cannot forgive themselves. They do not allow themselves to ‘enter the truth and thus return home’ for they believe they do not deserve it. Perhaps, deep in their psyche, is buried the belief – inculcated in millions by an ignorant and power-hungry priesthood – in hell and damnation. To those people we would like to say: ‘You are judging yourself in a way your Creator never would. Your Creator, your Source, is Goodness itself, and only wills your absolute happiness. Therefore do not obstruct the unfoldment of His-Her plan for you with your misdirected guilt. Let it go. Now. Nothing – no sin, however vile – can separate you from the Love which is your deepest, truest Self. Return home, like the prodigal son, and see what a welcome awaits you!’
Then, of course, there is the other side to this coin: that you may feel unable to enter freedom because of some terrible thing that someone else has done to you. In that case, the same recognition applies: no sin, and no wound, can separate us from the Love which is our deepest, truest Self. Recognising and allowing this, with respect to yourself and the other person, is the meaning of forgiveness. It sets both you and the other person free.
So, dear friends, Be Here Now. Be born into your truest Self, which can never die, for it is part of the Eternal.
With our heartfelt good wishes for Christmas and the New Year,
Ann, Geoff and all at Cygnus
Text & photographs © Cygnus Books 20-Jun-2006
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