Death: The only certainty in life

“Man is immortal
Therefore he must die endlessly
For life is a creative idea
It can only find itself in changing forms”
(Rabindranat Tagore)

Along with life, death is happening in many different forms to give space for life to unfold.
Every moment life is sprouting like a newborn baby, a fresh spring leaf, the sun rising into a new day, the in-breath nourishing the body, a start of a new experience. Millions of people are dying every day, some die with their mind and hearts open, melting gracefully in the miracle of life, and many die in pain and confusion, regretting an unlived life and holding in fear to a death they cannot accept.

Death is the only certainty in life, everything else is a possibility.
And death is one of the greatest taboos in our modern world, and that is one of the reasons most people feel confused and fearful in the face of death. because the mind cannot comprehend it, it tries to avoid its reality, pretending it is just a fiction in movies and TV news.  Normally as well as with death, we take life for granted and keep on missing the tremendous miracle of being alive.

Because of the denial of life and death, when the actual death of the body comes,  finding us tight up in our rigid body-mind structure, it can be a very overwhelming experience.  Usually, we accumulate unfinished situations, with people and with ourselves, and keep on postponing, using our time rather accumulating material things and investing on building our personalities. When we realize that none of that we will take with us in death, it may be too late, and much pain and fear comes from a sense of an incomplete, unlived and unloved life.

When we are born, first we breathe in, and when we die the last thing is to breathe out.
A similar phenomenon happens each day with sleeping and waking up. Each day we wake up and are surrounded by colors, forms, sounds, sensations,  life is happening, and when we go to sleep there is a falling into the unknown, the formless, and death happens.

Death is present in every situation of life: In the falling of the leaves, when we separate from a loved one, when we move to a new place, when we change work, when someone close to us dies,  when we let go of our ideas and opinions.

Moments of death are opportunities to wake up our emotions, when pain, anger, fear, resentments can come up.
When we don’t fight with our emotions and welcome the ways of life with awareness, allowing those energies to come out from the mind into the body, to be seeing with clarity, a great amount of life energy becomes available and can be directed into love, compassion, and creativity. We start understanding that those moments of “death” are actually a process of renewal, they are moments of transformation and an opportunity to go deeper into the experience of life.

When we start facing death and become conscious that death is inevitable we start enquiring about life, and start understanding life as a precious opportunity and recognizing the uniqueness of each moment. 

“Die Before You Die”, is a workshop inspired in Sufism and Tibetan Buddhism.
These are mystical traditions that understand life as an opportunity to prepare for death, and death as an opportunity to live the life totally. in this work we create a space of love and acceptance, that support us to go deep into ourselves and inquiry about our relationship with life and death,  to review our lives, to release and honor the past and allow our energy to flow in the present.

This is an invitation to go deep into the miracle of being alive as a human being, an invitation to come closer to oneself as body, mind, and emotions.  Sufis are lovers of life, so they don’t choose which aspects to celebrate, whatever life presents is a reason to celebrate. A Sufi lives each moment as the last, in this way the moment is unique and absolute. Each experience of life becomes a great mystery and a great adventure. we allow the experiences to come and let them go and learn from everything that life offers.

Love and acceptance are the guidelines for the journey.
We will use Sufi technics, Zikrs (which means “remembrance”), that combines breath, sounds, and movements and works on the body and mind, waking up our vital energy.  Those exercises are done in a circular form and has a playful and ecstatic quality, and at the same time works deeply in the body and the mind, flushing and energizing the whole system, opening the body for relaxation and bringing out from the unconscious what is needed to be seen. Once the body is energized and alive, we use technics from different traditions, Osho meditations and deep relaxation to practice awareness and let go.

When the relaxation of surrender starts to happen, much energy is liberated, and we bring back this energy to our center, trough singing, poetry, whirling – the Sufi dance, and play. Celebrating the beauty and the mystery of life and death.

“Wholeness is not seen as the duration one has lived but rather the fullness with which one enters each complete moment”.  (American Indian Wisdom)