The Fear of What Cannot Be Known
El miedo a lo que no puede ser conocido
A student shares the grief and fear that arose during meditation around death, the limits of storytelling, and the vulnerability of being truly seen.
The Fear of What Cannot Be Known
A student shares the grief and fear that arose during meditation around death, the limits of storytelling, and the vulnerability of being truly seen.
While you were speaking with the other student, something moved in me very strongly. You described how what we're afraid of is, in a sense, something we already know. It could be the pain, it could be the sense of dying, but it could also be the grief that comes with it. In that moment, I felt all of this sadness. It truly felt like, not a sorrowful thing exactly, but the sadness of a loved one dying.
Then I realized I truly don't know what happens after the death of the body. From that perspective, the best I can do is tell stories. I've heard stories written about what is on the other side. I recently watched a movie where a man invents comforting things to say to his mother as she is dying. And I've heard these stories about how dying is like being born into the reality of what you are. But they're just stories, on one level, because I really don't know.
What I realized is that there is this grieving for the dying process. I don't want to qualify it. It's just a sadness.
At the same time, during the meditation, you said something about how the moment we see a tree, or see another, and we make them into "this other thing," we lose something. And the paradox is that what I long for most is to find what I lost there.
The terror of being seen
Then I connected with a fear I'd had recently. It came up around a situation where the suggestion was to bring something before a group, and I felt massive terror, because it really felt like I would literally die. Then I connected to it and realized the fear is the fear of being seen, because what gets seen dies in that way.
I don't know. It's all just very moving today. I don't mean moving in a way I would call bad or good. It just started moving so strongly, and I felt like I could share it.
Thank you for sharing. Just keep feeling. Feel more deeply, and let yourself feel more and more.
I really don't know what to tell my beloved about dying, about what's on the other side. I can tell stories. That's all I can tell, because I don't know.
What it is will show itself. The stories are fine. Just keep feeling, and feel more deeply, into the fear, into the pain.
Lately I have realized more and more how much I have loved the story and the sensation of this life, all of it. It's just the most beautiful thing.
Not imagining, just noticing
Try not to imagine what it is. Just notice there's fear. Try not to imagine how it is going to be, or what's on the other side of death. All of that is what you're rightly calling stories, and that's fine. When I say "try not to imagine," I'm saying: see it more and more as stories. Stories which you can appreciate and see the beauty of.
Thank you.
You're welcome.