The Unknown
Everyone is afraid of something and it seems that “The Unknown” is at the top of the list.
Topping the list of unknown fears is the fear of death. There are lots of books and opinions about death but no one really knows what happens afterward because it’s truly unknown.
I’ve had my share of fearful feelings about death over the years and this I can say with certainty: Hypochondria is the main symptom of the person who fears death the most.
The hypochondriac is a person who believes they are their thoughts. They haven’t been able to yet notice that who they are, and their thoughts about who they are, are separate and distinct. The people who fear death the most are the ones who haven’t yet made that distinction.
Their thoughts make up their image of themselves – a false image. We are not who we think we are. When the image we have of ourselves begins to break apart, we begin to fall apart and believe we are dying. This is when the symptoms of hypochondria begin to show.
If you run to the doctor with every ache and pain or you lie awake wondering if your latest physical concern will be the death of you, you have not made the discovery that “you” don’t exist.
This “you” is a collection of thoughts about who you think you are. If your image is that of young and dashing but the photographs show you are aging out of your image, this causes the image that you hold to start cracking. This can cause physical creakings to become “bumps in the night” and disturb your night’s sleep. The awake hours are just as bad when we have some alone time – alone with our fearful thoughts.
I have no idea what happens after we die; I only know that living with thoughts of death can be curtailed greatly by recognizing that we aren’t our thoughts. Our thoughts take on a life of their own and pretend to be us. We have allowed who we are to be commandeered by a tape recorder that plays the same loops over and over again, year after year.
When we discover that who we really are is the observer of our thoughts, rather than the thoughts themselves, we get to distance ourselves from the drama that thoughts bring. We get to observe our thoughts attempting to scare us to death. It’s sort of like being on the set of a horror movie. When you get to see the scenes being set up and filmed, they just aren’t as scary when they get on the big screen.
We’re all going to die and that’s a scary thought. But even scarier is dying everyday you live. Living every day of your life starts by noticing that you aren’t your thoughts about yourself. This frees us up to live more life and fear death less.
All the best,
John
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