About 25 years ago, I woke from a good night’s sleep filled with words. The words went something like this:
—If evolution is now the evolution of consciousness (and I believe it is), ergo, whatever species is evolving in consciousness must become aware of increasingly more aspects of the totality of being, must become aware of that part of being which is death—
When awareness of death began dawning in the evolving consciousness of homo
sapiens (although animals have some sense of death, they don’t wake in the morning thinking, ‘I’m going to die some day’), the human species reacted largely with fear, denial, and avoidance. This ‘significant’ awareness of death in the evolving human consciousness seems to have coincided with the transition from a matriarchal to a patriarchal orientation in society.
I state these only as interesting possibilities, to be examined, thought about, researched, felt with the heart, contemplated…
Early literatures, like the Gilgamesh Epic, have themes of searching for the fountain of eternal life. From fear and attempted denial, the effort to escape, the effort to transcend death, became a driving force of western civilization, and led to much of our cultural and technological progress.
Through various religious constructs, humans sought to continue existence in an afterlife where we join our loved ones who have gone before, to continue where we left off, so to speak.
Other means of ‘escaping’ death were such devices as fame, power, control of nature, wealth. So, if you are as rich as Walt Disney (of the Happy, Magic Kingdom) you can, at that moment of imminent death, have your body frozen in cryonics until science comes up with a cure for whatever it was from which you were about to expire.
But I apologize for being on the brink of slipping into sarcasm and humor in what is a very serious subject. Yet I love to laugh!
There are many means by which we have attempted to avoid and deny. Find your own examples.
But, as the psychologists say…
“Whatever we deny is bound to come back to haunt us, writ large, barring the
way forward! Saying, “This denied content is what is blocking the way
forward.” Saying, “Deal with this. Integrate this. This psychic content
is what is barring your way forward, is barring your further growth, is
barring your evolution…”
Our very attempts to avoid death, our attempts to dominate nature, to control natural processes in a non-integrated manner–have brought us to this point where we have created…
DEATH WRIT LARGE ACROSS THE PLANET
…saying, basically, deal with this, integrate this, awareness and acceptance of death is the way forward.
And so the very threat to our survival is the gateway and the impetus to our evolution forward.
—With the splitting of the atom, everything has changed save man’s way of thinking, and thus we drift toward unimaginable peril—
With our technological advances we have taken into our own hands the power which was once attributed only to Gods. This mandates that we evolve man’s way of thinking to become at least somewhat more equivalent to the thinking of the Gods. Evolve or die! Thus it has always been.
Be excellent to each other…we’re in this together…this is all we have…
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I have had similar thoughts…or along parallel lines, anyway.
Here’s a link for what I scribbled…hope you enjoy it.
http://www.dailykos….
That very few planets in this universe that reach this stage of conscious evolution, survive it, physically.
Part of the physical life force is to use itself up, to extinguish itself in that form. Macrocosm to microcosm:
The human body is a terrible waste of a human mind, in any event. It has always struck me as obscene to put a “mind” inside a piece of rotting flesh.
death. I was nearly killed in a car accident. As soon as I was pulled from the weckage I began to deny anything happened to me at all. Apparently this is quite common in people who have near death experiences.
I am on the other side of that now – having fully accepted I nearly died. Since that acceptance has occured I feel that I am not the same person in ways I cannot explain. There is something in what you have written that I can really relate to though. I think that almost dying has evolved me in some small way. For better, I think so.
For something that is very hard to say well.
I am right there with you, it IS time for the next evolution….or a lot of deaths of all kind.
I think as part of this evolution we need to get past our egos – or whatever it is that feeds the survival instinct. Now that humans have left the forests and savannas our egos are more like vestigial defense mechanisms feeding our fear of death.
Along these lines, I have to add that one of the most promising medical uses for LSD or MDMA (Ecstasy) is in terminally ill patients. LSD and psilocybin are known to produce states of ego death and rebirth. Studies from the late sixties and a few going on currently show that LSD reduces the emotional distress, depression, anxiety and even some of the physical pain associated with their imminent death.