The Fear of Death and What Cannot End
El miedo a la muerte y lo que no puede terminar
A question about the parallel between improv performance and spiritual freedom, leading into a deeper inquiry about whether awareness requires experience in order to exist, and what this means for the fear of death.
The Fear of Death and What Cannot End
A question about the parallel between improv performance and spiritual freedom, leading into a deeper inquiry about whether awareness requires experience in order to exist, and what this means for the fear of death.
I keep thinking about improv, because so much of this conversation connects to it. The first thing I felt was the willingness to fail, which is one of the improv rules: you cheer and applaud when someone fails. And the surfing analogy is very close to improv too. But improv is even closer to daily life, because we're talking and interacting all the time. I always think it's funny when people say, "Oh my God, I can't believe you do improv. It's so scary. How would I know what to say?" And I think, how do you know what to say right now? Is this scripted? The difference between a normal conversation and being in a scene is just that you feel this is "real," because you're talking from this body and this mind, and there's a box around what seems to make sense. Whereas if I make up a story where I'm a different character, that feels like fantasy and imagination, but it's actually more free.
It's the other way around. It's more real.
Yes, because it's just whatever's here. It's whatever wants to be expressed, not limited through some narrative or character that I'm taking myself to be. That's why I love improv. And yet, I don't know anyone I do improv with who is spiritually awake in their daily life. There's still a separation: in this container we'll be totally free, but then we go back to our "normal, real" lives.
That's because it's a temporary suspension of identification, a temporary relaxation. This body-mind is very suited for that. You see it in every form of mastery and performance art: musicians, actors. Getting in the zone is the dropping of identification, going into full flow, entering presence. But the moment the performance is over, identification kicks back in. That's the normal functioning.
That's what it seems like. I try not to have that separation for myself, but I can see when it comes in. When something feels important, like, "This is my life, this is fear of dying, this is my health," the things so closely connected to survival, then it's not play anymore. It's not light and easy.
The belief at the root of the fear
The key there is to look at the belief, because death is a belief. We know for a fact the body dies. But you cannot prove or find any evidence that you are the body; therefore, you cannot find any proof or evidence that you will die. That is what needs to be investigated.
The whole death thing feels like a holy grail: "When I can finally meet my fear of death."
The best way to meet the fear of death is to see what it really is.
I feel like I see it on micro levels all the time, like almost every moment where I have to die to some painful fear that arises.
I'm referring to the actual, big fear: the body dying. Unless you address the root of it, you're just playing whack-a-mole. So let's look. We know the body will die. That is about as certain as anything gets, next to the fact that there is something rather than nothing. So then you say, "I will die." What is that? What is the problem with it? If you look, it is the imagination of me ending, along with some association of pain in the process. But set the pain aside, because if you truly end, there could be no pain. It's not possible for you to end and for pain to still remain. Pain is only up until the end.
Now, what is this ending? What is it that can end? How would it look for you to end?
It doesn't make any sense intellectually, because I see that I'm the awareness of this body. And yet there's still a very visceral reaction to my impending death, still that belief that this will be the end of me.
Do you need conditions in order to know that you are?
And how do you know that you are?
That's just the knowing.
Is there anything needed, any condition, anything required for you to know that?
No, it just is.
Do you need to be experiencing sounds, sensations? Can there be knowing without sounds, without sensations, without thoughts?
I'm hearing "yes." And I see how it's such a good question.
You hear "yes," and maybe that's intuition. But it's a good question because it needs to be experiential.
I can sense there's still this feeling of, "No, I need these senses as a frame, a reference point: okay, I'm here, I'm still here."
Exactly. That's the question. Do you? And don't stop looking until you know the answer from experience, without a doubt. Not intellectually, but from experience. That will free you. You cannot fight the experience of the fear of death. You will fight it and lose the battle every single time, until you answer that question from experience, from knowing without a doubt. This might sound very abstract and hypothetical, but it is not, and it can be known.
When you ask me, there's a simultaneous response: the knowing, and then the mind that says, "But how do I know?" Like it wants a technique.
Intuition is a thread, not the destination
That's what I sense. I think you intuitively have a sense, but it needs to be more than intuition. It needs to be the experience of that. The intuition is a good thread. When it's there, it can be there because at some level of depth we already know this. But it needs to be bridged. We need to connect our day-to-day awareness to that deeper knowing. It needs to be clear and obvious at all times.
Keep looking. Do you need to reference experience? Do you need to reference thoughts, sensations, perceptions, images, sounds in order to know that you are? Can there be awareness without any experience, without any sensation, any thought, any perception, no sound, no sight, nothing? You cannot answer this intellectually or hypothetically. You can only answer it from experience, when you know for a fact because you have had that experience.
So the experience I'm having now that's saying "yes," that's not enough?
I think it's not enough because I sense you're responding from intuition, which is valuable, but not sufficient. I don't feel the certainty and the clarity. That certainty is an absolute yes, and the answer sounds like, "I know that because I have that experience. I have had it. I have seen it." It's like having seen your father in the Santa Claus outfit, and having seen the gifts hiding in the closet for all of December. Then he comes down the chimney with a sack of presents? No. I have seen it. I have seen Santa is not there.
I think I get confused because of how much time I spend resting as awareness and presence, not doing or thinking.
Resting in presence is not the same as knowing awareness without form
That's something else. In that practice, you are learning to be in presence while there are appearances, while there is body, mind, sensation, perception. That is valuable too. But I'm asking a different question: the awareness that you're resting into, can it be without any experience? By that I mean without any form, without any sensation, perception, sound, or sight.
It feels like such a good question. I can feel it so deeply, like it's touching this fear.
That's the root of the fear of death. And that question is the antidote, or rather, the direction toward the antidote. The seeing of it is the antidote.
You give me such good questions. Every time you give me a pointer, I take it and it gives me some opening. I had one after our last conversation. I don't remember the exact instruction, but I practiced with it, and then I had this shift where I started laughing and crying at how ridiculous it was that I had been looking for myself when I am the looking. It was so clear. My brain was rewiring all day. I was walking outside, and things I would normally do, people I would normally avoid, it was all so silly. There's nowhere else to go. Everything was so clear. Thoughts were so clearly just arising, and I didn't have to touch any of them, and nothing was a problem. And then something returns, and here we are.
That's great. And that's how it is. Just keep looking deeper and deeper.
I'll take this question with me. Thank you.
You're welcome. It might take a bit more time, but you never know.