This

If I fear death, then of course I fear life, because life and death can’t be separated: they’re mutually dependent, present in every process, inextricably intertwined. For proof, I need look no further than my body, where life and death are happening every minute of every day — not as a battle between the two, but in a movement so beautifully efficient and harmonious that it makes them, in terms of purpose and design, virtually indistinguishable.

In fact, nothing can be separated. Everything is made of everything else: sky, soil, rain; animal, vegetable, mineral; human. All are of the very cosmos itself, and are engaged in an intimate dance and dynamic exchange. I see it demonstrated in a blade of grass, the act of breathing, the food on my plate. Nothing stands alone or exists independently, including myself.

With this insight, love, compassion, and gratitude are born, an appreciation and concern for all things. The insight is life-changing, revolutionary, because in it the illusion of separation disappears, along with the notion that I’m hero, villain, or victim in a drama of my own making — an egocentric view I’ve many times referred to as being a legend in my own mind.

Understanding, then, that my existence depends on the cosmos, it’s clear that I also contain the cosmos, and that the cosmos contains me. The cosmos and I are one — indivisible, timeless, and ageless. Therefore I have no beginning, no end, no birth, no death. Like a flower, whale, or star, I continue: I arise, flourish, fade, and manifest in different forms. If I were to try to express this understanding in a single sentence, I might say that I’m everything and everyone, and the entire history of all that is.

Ultimately, though — and this is where the realization naturally leads — there is no I, and no cosmos. There is only This. And This is consciousness; being; the ground of being; awareness of being; the awareness of awareness itself; the nameless, limitless field in which the entire play and dream of existence, in all its abundant, inexhaustible diversity, creatively expresses and renews itself.

It’s plain in this light that our fear, anger, loneliness, depression, sorrow — everything that has to do with running, fighting, and being unhappy human beings — is rooted in an inevitably isolating view: that we are separate from one another, and from nature. This is our tragedy, and it gives rise to our feelings of superiority, inferiority, entitlement, ownership, war, poverty, starvation, climate change, environmental harm, and the rest of our selfish, destructive behavior. And part of the tragedy is that we’re so deeply conditioned in this view, and so frightened of change, that even on the precipice of our own extinction, we cling to our habits, and to the narrow, crippling ego-sense of ourselves, numb to the results of our conduct. That’s why it’s imperative to recognize that our thoughts and actions are boundless and outlive us. Our thoughts are actions. For better or for worse, both have a ripple effect.

Now, experienced at the level of words alone, it’s apparent this insight is subject to the limitations and degradation of memory and knowledge; it can become an intellectual weapon; a form of psychological merchandise or currency; a spiritual attitude or garment; a source of pride, arrogance, laziness, or self-satisfaction. In other words, it can cease to be an insight, and descend into the realm of mere opinion.

Whereas, experienced deeply and directly, as vital, living truth, this insight is freedom. And by its nature, this freedom is beyond truth, beyond space and time, beyond experience, because This can’t be divided or contained by such concepts and distinctions. This is everywhere and nowhere, everything and nothing, everyone and no one, now and never, before, during, and after the word. And there is no word. This is you — timeless, ageless, infinite, with no need to cling, and nothing to fear or to prove.

[ 2027 ]