Facing the Mystery of Death

Shortly after my thirtieth birthday I saw something new in my face: age. I have had, in some respects, a difficult life, and at times I have felt a million years old with all the burdens and psychic wounds to match. But never before have I seen the touch of time in my features, which have always made me look younger than my years.

There it was staring back at me. Two faint lines across my forehead. The lightest dusting of shadows under my eyes that will one day crease my features like dry creek beds. Granted, it was late, after a long day at work. Granted, I had a touch of conjunctivitis, which could not have helped. Nevertheless, the proof of time was revealed in that moment.

These words are not an expression of panic, nor hand wringing. And I still look young for my age. And I am not at all addicted to the cult of youth-at-all-cost: beauty and youth are not identical, and neither is essential or even necessarily desirable.

The marks of time’s seductive kisses drew my awareness to a memory that lurks all too often in my body and mind (which are really the one thing, a continuum from matter to spirit): death is my fate. Before I was born, I was ordained to die. “Like acres of wheat we’re all grown to be mown” (Beastianity).

This is not a sad thought to recover. I am not afraid of death, which of course makes me unusual as a human being. I have had a bit to do with death. It has hurt me, stolen loved ones with untimely haste, and several times almost had me before my own fair allotment of breath. Even as a child I had shed my fear, had it shriven from my bones.

The memory of my inevitable demise points me to a horizon of infinite mystery – the mystery of being a conscious being in this vast universe. Confronted with the impenetrable veil, one’s life stands out all too starkly. The small mercies for which one feels gratitude, the endless barrage of wounds, the compromises and concessions into which one drifts and atomises.

Death sends out its call, strings the beads of momentary living onto a single thread. Where chaotic experience invisibly carries us through scattered moments, death draws all into alignment. It brings us to the forest clearing and, in the thought of absence of life, the very shape of life is exposed.

And we forget, and forget, and forget. If indeed we ever remember in the first place. I believe it a poor thing to get to later life without being touched vicariously by death through the loss of loved ones. Death shocks us from the cocoon of our self-evidence. If we have not embraced it then the very foundations of our whole life may prove wanting when the unavoidable time comes and we must cope with loss, with the outrages of fortune’s arrows and slings.

Death points us to a paradox: to set our living with deep roots, so that this transient existence might be as soundly made as it may be, we must confront that same transience, the skull and scythe hovering impatiently in the wings of every stage.

Not the confrontation of aggressive emergency surgery. Not the confrontation of dogmatic faith in the hereafter. Rather, we must court death, embrace this god so that our denial of its power does not make of it a devil. Not to literally paint ourselves in its livery, but to let it draw our attention clear of the infinite hall of mirrors from which life is composed.

Facing the mystery of death is facing the mystery of life. The two are one, and though we tend to only understand them implicitly, unconsciously, we nevertheless always must encounter them together.

The mystery of death is a mystery of memory and forgetfulness. We touch the mystery and recoil, and in the icy gasp of our vulnerability we find our reptile emotionality – fear, fury, the fire of lust.

The mystery of death is a mystery of vulnerability. We carry our death with us always. It spans out before us, probing for the shape of our unfolding life. We carry our death with us, our finite nature, our helplessness before the vast eye of the cosmos, which exceeds our deepest wisdom and our subtlest science.

The conclusion is inescapable: we face the mystery of death whether we wish to or not. We face the mystery of death whether we realise it or not. It curls its tendrils around our every breath. It haunts the choices we make as much as it does the choices we decline. Therefore I ask: how best to face this mystery? Death’s precociousness is legendary: how may we make ourselves equal to the doom that we carry in our very flesh?

The mystery of death is the mystery of life, and it trades in the currency of memory and forgetfulness. It trades in the currency of vulnerability. How might we enrich the wealth of our vulnerability? How might we strike a balance between memory and forgetfulness so that we might fully embrace our demise and the riches of the life that precedes it?

My answer is simple: through memento mori. By building reminders of the elusive memory of death into our life. Yet any reminder loses its gloss in time: the amnesia of our world-encircled nature guarantees it. Thus facing the mystery requires more than a one time effort. We have to renew our memories, continually wash the soporific of daily living from our eyes and ears.

Spiritual practice offers many means for this rememorialising: doing the gardening, meditating, creating art, reflecting on myth, and others. Conversations where we ask questions to which we genuinely do not know the answers; rituals in which we truly put aside our egos and embrace the irrepressible life that binds this universe together. When we go beyond ourselves, we also go deep within ourselves.

And what of Heathen spirituality? Odin is a god of death. It is this that earns him the right to be called All Father.

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4 thoughts on “Facing the Mystery of Death

  1. Living with a chronic illness that will eventually kill the patient is memento mori alright.

    There is a lot to say about people who dedicate themselves to saving and preserving lives.

  2. Thank you for these profound and stimulating thoughts. Again: Mirrors indeed, my friend! Because, you know, Death is considered by me the central Mystery. Everyone and everything we value, the value we give to experiences, and what makes our Life unique in general – all this is because of Death, because of the impermanence, the transcience of all things, that will sweep all of this away. The simplest thing, like taking a walk and smelling the scent of flowers and earth and wood, seeing the sun shine reflecting on the water, being hugged by a loved one, all this becomes immensely unique and beautiful, when Death is knocking on our doors. Memento mori indeed. In many cases, despite the suffering (that can be alleviated by medical drugs if they do not dull your awareness), I consider a lethal illness a mercy (when you’re old and lived your life honourably). You have time to say goodbye to your family and friends, you can prepare for entering the otherworld, you can use your last months wisely.

    The Mystery of Death is what exactly moved and moves me towards Buddhism (Vajrayana and Dzogchen). Death is embraced totally in this system of thought and practices like Chöd (and others) force you to familiarize yourself with Death and to develop that “Watcher” attitude where you can experience your own demise with disattachment, fearlessness and impartiality. This is of great importance. That’s why all mystical traditions stand out in the realm of spirituality. They help you to “die before you die,” as it were. The truth is, like you rightly say, that Death surrounds us all the time and is deeply engraved into our very flesh. The ability of man to ignore this and then to be shocked when Death approaches has always amazed me. But first I had to be shocked by Death as a child (Hagalaz?). The reactions of the adults perplexed me. Their hypocrisy, their disbelief in their own beliefs (Heaven, Eternal Life asf.), their fear and uncertainty.

    I must have adopted this from my reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead (and I really recommend Sogyal Rinpoche’s “Book of Living and Dying”), but there are two things that you need to be “successful” in the moment of Death: you should be conscious / aware when you die (that’s why practice “awareness meditation” in Life), and concentrate on your symbol / deity that will help you to open up into that experience (“letting go” = Nirvana), when you enter ultimate, unsolvable Mystery: Death. I will ask some Buddhist teachers about the latter some day.

    It seems to me that Christianity focuses too much on the Mystery of Death (mostly they emphasize the suffering of the Desolate Christ and ignore the Ecstatic Christ who has overcome Death), whilst contemporary Heathenry seems to focus too much on Life (that’s why they seem not to have anything important to say about dying, except that this is the cycle of Nature). Tantric Buddhism instead has a healthy attitude towards Life and Death. And as you say correctly, Life and Death are “the same”, are One. Óðinn somehow managed to maintain his Self-Consciousness, when He entered Death in the Rúnatals þáttr Óðinns (which reminds me for want of any better comparison of the Chöd Rite). This is how the Runes came into being. And our symbol, the Elhaz Ablaze, is the Rune of the Bifröst Bridge that leads through the Ironwood to the Abode of Ásgarðr! ;)

    And now I digress, but yestersay I had that realization whilst doing the Isa Galdor at work. I went out of the building, everywhere was Snow and the Sun was shining, and then I closed my eyes and started to chant intuitively “Iiiiiiii-Ssssssss-Aaaaaaaa”:
    With the “I” (like in eagle) the image of an icicle appeared (like in the Isa-Meditation in Sweyn’s book). With the “S” the Sun image manifested in my mind, the guiding force of the “Higher Self”. The icicle became transclucent whilst the light of the Sun filled its form. And with the “A” sound divine consciousness arose as the light was mirrored in the ice…

    …Then I opened my eyes. The sun was shining warmly on my face whilst the snow was a sea of shimmering lights. I smiled and went inside, doing some profane work. :-)

    “Symbols of The Sun
    Symbols of The Snow
    For Those Who Go Beyond
    For Those Who Go Below ” (Death In June)

  3. In maintaining pristine awareness in every moment of one’s waking life, attachment to either life or death can be overcome. Attachment to life is culturally manifest in hedonism and materialism; to death, in Gothic subculture and in musical genres like death metal. Attachment, in the sense of objectifying that which one is attached to, can result in a gradual loss of sensibility, hence awareness of the primordial reality of life and death. Unawakened, we are ensnared by the illusory play of time: when we are feeling good or immersed in pleasure, we like to see time as an enduring entity, when in fact it is pitilessly transient. This is why Heidegger views the ordinary as the concealment of aletheia; however, with the right understanding, the ordinary is also the pointer to the shining truth of primordial being.

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