Path to Happiness
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PERMISSIONOn asking a Sufi master if he is able to play the Saz or the Oud, he might answer, ‘It plays me Inshallah!’, or if you ask, ‘Are you a healer’, he will perhaps respond ‘I have permission to do this work’. His response is well chosen in that he places himself as the passive participant in something much bigger. He affirms that it is not his will driving the event but that of some imperative that he allows, something greater that flows through him.
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Survival InstinctWe are hard-wired to resist death – that fact is called the survival instinct, and so any initial reluctance to acknowledge that we are approaching death is entirely legitimate. And yet one of life’s few certainties is that we will die, so there always comes a moment of truth that this life is closing off soon and nothing can be done.
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Is It Impolite to Discuss Death?Huge social pressure is at play because we are discussing one of life’s terrible taboos – DEATH! TV often shows the event for our entertainment, and in movies inevitably the comforter of the dying fibs unconvincingly ‘You’ll be fine, it’s only a scratch!’ or something similar. Rarely if ever will we hear ‘Yes, my friend, it is now time to prepare enthusiastically for your greatest adventure!’. Society generally disapproves of death and dying; it is not thought polite to die but if you must then ‘at least have the decency not to talk about it’.
If a friend announces their intention to go on a special trip to somewhere exciting then usually we will congratulate them – ‘you lucky devil!’, even if it is so far away that we will never see them again. Try saying that to a person who announces that they are dying! We are forced by convention to offer sympathy and so reinforce the message that dying is at all costs to be avoided and yet you, poor soul, you have failed in this task. The powerful implication is that because no-one wants it, death is to be feared, that we are victims, and that each one of us is extremely reluctant to go into this mysterious tunnel. |
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God WillingKing Cnut was such a revered leader that his Viking followers had very unrealistic expectations of his powers. He sat on a beach and commanded the tide not to wet his royal feet. He did this ironically to demonstrate to his simple minded subjects that there are forces beyond even a king’s remit – that the ocean’s tidal authority is irresistible. Same as death. It will come and we have no power to change that; the best we can ever do is postpone the final event for a short while. Yet the Sufi is trying to teach us that even the power of music and the power to heal are not ours – it is all, God willing, just flowing through us for a period of time. Inshallah – God willing – is the acknowledgement that we are constantly subject to greater powers than we can conceive, and any claims we may make to go against them are futile.
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Permanent Loss of PowerHaving no power – that is real food for thought! What we used to do we can no longer do, and that is non-negotiable. Actually for most of our lives we have been facing up to the loss of abilities and the ending of what we enjoy, whereas from now on those things will not be superseded by new skills, interests or people, and there’s the rub. The future seems to be running out and we cannot replace it at the supermarket.
If permission is clearly a reluctant Yes, then acceptance is softer in its reluctance. Knowing that we have no power to change things, then we must come to a place where we can accept them. |
ACCEPTANCE
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Death is a Good ThingFirstly, let us consider what alternative there is to dying. Apart from a few advanced fakirs and yogis, for everyone ever born it would mean never-ending physical decrepitude and therefore severe painful limitation; eternal torture. Death is release and relief, the most precious of all gifts, even including incarnated life. If we knew birth was a one-way ticket to perpetual physical torture, we would abstain. It simply makes no sense to shun death and fear it because it is the one thing that makes the risk of incarnation bearable.
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What We Resist PersistsWhat we resist is always inclined to push harder and this is no exception. Yet whatever we wholeheartedly own finds its way somehow into our harmonious beingness. In order to own it fully, it will be very helpful to understand why we are dying now and like this.
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Why Do We Die?This question ‘why’ can be answered from the past or from the future – what gave rise to this? and what purpose does it serve? These questions are unlikely to be understood from the perspective of the ego because the fearful ego is that which is about to be annihilated, and its primary concern is now, and always has been, to avoid annihilation. We need to identify ourselves not as a body that has soul but as the soul, which has an important transition at hand during which it will lose its current ailing body. The soul is not completely happy to be encased in clay and can feel exaltation in the promise of the discarnate freedom and joy that it remembers and will soon experience again.
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The Timing and Manner of Death is Our Own ResponsibilityFrom the past perspective then...why am I dying? We must surely trust that death is fair; if we cannot trust in this, then we cannot move forward in consciousness. If we believe in the possibility that death is arbitrary then faith eludes us. We need to remember that faith is a choice; it requires both will and surrender, we must choose it if we are to be free of the fear of death. And, if death is not arbitrary then our earlier choices are surely the cause of its timing and manner. These choices arose from the super-conscious and the unconscious parts of us no doubt, but they were supervised by the conscious part. Some of the things we have thought, said or done were at odds with our physical body’s need for a healthy life.
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Emotional DenialEating badly, working stressfully, living in a poor environment and a thousand other imperfections in lifestyle together cause the circumstances of death. Reaching insight into this is a real life achievement. Yet there is also an underlying psychological explanation for why we ate harmful substances and worked in an industrial zone. Most would say they had no choice, but that is not an acceptable analysis for a self-empowered seeker of truth. We need to discover the mysterious processes whereby our imperfect psyche would rather let the body die off early than deal with its neurotic emotions. Dealing fully with this question is the evolution of consciousness; this is what life is.
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Opening the Door to a Better SituationIf we try to answer the question from the future, we will want to shift perception to examine how exactly it will be to our advantage, as a soul, to move forward now. There is only one rational explanation, and that is that in some important way, the future is better for us with a new scenario. This body and life are no longer optimal for our purposes so we need to move on now. Strong in faith, we trust that each occurrence in life is in service to our best long term interests and our death is no exception to this rule. We affirm that, by releasing our grip on this life, we are willingly opening up to a better one.
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AGREEMENT
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Free Will Implies Divine Non-InterventionThe whole business of Free Will has to be fully understood in its reach and ramifications. Either there is or there is not Free Will, and the idea that there is not would imply the existence of a Controlling Force. Such a force is usually identified as God and described, often angrily, as rather harsh and uncaring, One who permits injustice and catastrophes, and allows the innocent to suffer. The absurdity of this description of a loving God beggars belief, so we know it to be false. The idea that there in fact is Free Will says nothing about the existence itself of the Divine, but implies the non-existence of Divine Intervention. If it is God that bestows Free Will then why and how could there ever be Intervention? It’s just not Free Will if an all-powerful Supervisor can change our decisions.
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The Responsibility of FreedomFreedom implies responsibility not the opposite. It has to be claimed, celebrated and often defended. One gift of Free Will is that we are free to adopt it and equally free not to. It is strange that most people choose not to and find something external to hold accountable for their frustrations and disappointments. But in fact we are in the mess we’re in because we have handled things badly, not because God intervened just as we were about to get it right – nor indeed would intervene to prevent our species’ self-destruction. Other conscious beings might, but God cannot, having already created a world in which Free Will is one of the laws. Laws are immutable.
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Free Will and DeathFree Will is either absolute, or it is a lie. Freedom is not a relative concept, so anything which denies our ability to decide things for ourselves puts an end to it. On the face of it, death does exactly that. However, what we need to see is that the gift of Free Will belongs to the soul not the body, and even death itself arises out of the choices the soul has freely made. Soul has a different agenda to ego; ego is usually very reluctant indeed to die, whereas soul is the author of the dying. The very existence of Free Will implies that, as souls, we are choosing to experience death. Dying is the current expression of our free will – we want this. The part of us that finds agreement with dying is the soul, so as we adopt the state of Agreement, we align ourselves with soul consciousness and slip away from ego imprisonment.
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How to Die ProperlyAs we approach our irrevocable incapacity, we are somewhat hurried along by its ruthless implacability. That which we have not completed needs to be finished, words of appreciation and other gestures of kindness need to be brought up to date, documents may need to be signed, assets disposed of, friends and family prioritised and comforted, wisdom legacies imparted, embarrassing compliments endured and so on. In fact the ego has quite a lot to attend to, since this is its most self-defining project. How to live is the lesser test of creativity and maturity; how we die is the greater examination.
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Gracefully Relinquishing our Personal PowerAfter spending a lifetime thrusting to achieve and grasping the rewards, anxious not to lose face or lose our grip, now the lesson becomes how to relinquish that power gracefully. We must find an inner place where it is truly joyful to let everything simply drift away and out of our controlling ego’s reach of influence.
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Two Important Rules for DyingIt is better now to anticipate what comes afterwards and prepare for that. It is true that most of what follows death is unknown – but in what way does that differ from life? Most of the future is unknown anyway. However quite a bit is not. There are some things that we are safe to assume will continue after death because it is better to assume them and risk their being disproved than not make the assumption. We decide to make two assumptions – that we continue to exist as who we are, and that Free Will operates. Done well, these two affirmations will carry us through peacefully because they show that the ego’s fears are surrendered to the soul’s faith.
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SURRENDER
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Surrendering to Death as if to our LoverAccording to Sufi teachings it matters because we create the circumstances of our next reality out of what is held in the emotional-mental body as we release our very last exhalation. In this passage-moment it is important to be thinking positive thoughts and feeling a peaceful sense of anticipation. The mood best suited to this ultimate adventure is naked trust coupled with delightful fascination, as if with your best and only lover. Nakedness implies vulnerability and the absence of defences, and is also suggestive of the willingness to embrace. If we want to have heart-joy in the moment of passing, then we can learn to embrace death as a lover, and dying as cosmic foreplay.
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Instant Karma on the AstralOn leaving this world, we return at first to the Astral Plane – a film with Robin Williams, ‘What Dreams May Come’, shows a version of this realm. On this plane, the reality that we inhabit is clearly, immediately and dramatically created in each instant as a reflection of what we have in the mind. Indeed this is the same process as that on Earth, but here it is so much slower that the causal relationship is not at all obvious and appears not to be so. The mind can be very disturbed and restless, and is as easily able to imagine monsters as rose gardens. On Earth the slowness protects us from foolish dreams and ideas suddenly taking form, yet on the Astral no such safety device exists; it is time to face all of our dreams – nightmares too!
On the Astral Plane nothing is brought forward except for the mind, with its ability to shape our surroundings and responses to what occurs. This ability is exactly what is promoted and developed through meditation and prayer. These are mental exercises; they train the mind so that it learns not to wander too far off topic or indulge in frightful fantasies – useful talents in any realm. |
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Flirtation With DeathA strangely apt metaphor for how the mind can be readied for the Astral Plane experience is found in flirting. The thing about flirting is that its fascination lies in the very uncertainty of what it might lead to; it could be nothing, yet it could be everything. The mind orients so as to read the subtle signs in an ever-changing highly charged atmosphere. It is backed up by feelings that have to held around the midpoint between promise fulfilled and possibility denied, hinting at the potential for passion whilst maintaining poise. This is the best mind-set for dying since every breath theoretically could be our last, and one day one of them will be. The irony is delicious – using sex games for dying not birthing. Also of course, flirting is light-hearted fun, and death, having been heavily burdened with so much inappropriate seriousness and pessimism, could use a bit of that.
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To Die Before You DieLong before death itself threatens immediacy, the Sufi will study the practice called ‘die before you die’. This means living each moment as if death is nearby. To live in this way requires, and so develops, an attitude of surrender, and yet this is coupled with the sense of celebration. This is because each breath is proof that the previous one was not the end, so the preciousness of existence is remembered; and it is remembered in every moment as a constant of life. This is in no way significantly different from the Hindu practice of Sannyasin. All attachments are surrendered one by one – position, security, purpose and all things familiar until at last life itself is released. The practice robs Death of its tyrannical power and turns it into a collaborator with no other duty than to receive the final exhalation – it has no claim over the dying itself.
Dying thus becomes an aspect of life and not an aspect of death. In this last breath, the culmination of our lives is best expressed as calm assurance that all is well and just about to get a lot better because we have faith that it will. |
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Revelation of Life's MeaningAll of our relationships change as family and friends modify their involvements with us. Death is mysterious and powerful and they simply cannot know what we are feeling as we move towards meeting it. Their own feelings can be triggered deeply in the anticipation of loss, of radical change and of an unpredictable future without us. As with most things, the intensity of an experience becomes richer and more honest as it approaches the end. Loved ones identify the deepest truth of our meaning in their lives through which we gain valuable insights into how well we have lived. Their love and respect will carry forward to the next chapter as defining qualities within us. When we compare the worth of their love to the worth of our life achievements, we come to measure ourselves as between whether ego or soul has been more influential in structuring the features of our lives.
It is not only relationships that feature differently; all the little things reveal their life-preciousness – the crackle of an open fire, the colours of sunset and the scent of honeysuckle become as soul-ticklingly delightful as the smile of a granddaughter with jam of her face. It is easy to see that it is not the fire, flower or sunset that have all become special; this is an inner quality that we have realised within ourselves, arising out of surrender. In this blessed state of being, we learn that beauty, love and joy like all things come out of us; we have but to choose them and they are revealed. How sad that we had no such realisations earlier, yet how glorious that we should be rewarded now with this embodied insight! We can be completely relaxed knowing that, unless we stress against it, then life itself, even now, is more glorious, more beautiful and loving than anything we could ever imagine. Poet and teacher, Leonard Cohen captures this idea advising us to ‘slip into the Masterpiece’ where to discover the mystery of life. The Mystery is like a ball of uncommitted energy with a centre and edge, swirling and shifting restlessly, shaped by determined enthusiasts, loved by the loving and feared by the fearful. In this context we see that Life and Death are not substantively different things, except perhaps that death punctuates the changes more dramatically and except for birth is the most intense expression of life. Its main purpose is to re-energise and inspire a tired soul and to move things along. A person whose life was circumscribed with doubts and obedience will be less likely to enjoy an easy passage than a person strong in faith and bubbling with enthusiasm. And so perhaps these are the qualities to live by so that we can die by them too – calm faith and passionate enthusiasm. |
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DYINGDying well depends upon four aspects:
permission, acceptance, agreement and surrender and is developed as we learn to master the word Yes |
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