Dying? Or Finding Oneself?

Kathleen Taylor has been a hospice counselor for many years. People ask her how she can sit everyday at the bedside of dying patients without getting burned out or depressed. In the following video, she tells us why she loves her job and what she has learned from those who are dying. She says the number one regret she hears is "I wish I had the courage to live my life and not the life others expected me to live."

Listen also for another learning: when people are close to death they shed their falseness -- that is, they no longer tolerate or speak "bullshit."

So, the question I have for you is this: Do we simply die or do we, through dying, find ourselves?

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A Year to Live

Buddhist Steven Levine, in the last chapter of his book, "A Year to Live" (Three Rivers Press, 1997), writes the following about contemplating his own death:

"And on the day before the last, in the midst of the enormous lullaby, I thought to myself, 'We should only be so lucky as to die in this incredible spaciousness and peace.'  Then, turning toward the mystery, I let go into the floating world, and following my heart into the luminous unknown, the body light as a feather, a sense of ease pervading as I felt myself borne into the vastness of original being, knowing that love was the only rational act of a lifetime."

Certain words of this meditation jump out at me -- "turning toward the mystery," "the luminous unknown," "the vastness of orignal being," and love as the only rational act of our lives.  I savor these words, taste them, turn them over in my mind and burying them in my heart...

It is not only my wife, Sabine, that is dying every day, it is me -- and each one of us -- only the rate varies.

But are we ready?  Ready as the Native American warriors who said before a battle, "Today is a good day to die!"

Can we make the same declaration with a clear mind and conscience?  IS today a good day to die and if it is not, why not?

What must we do to declare today as a good day to die?  Then, let's go right now and DO it!