Speaking of mortality

Aging, sickness, and the possibility of death are issues I've thought about more and more  --- not surprising, since I and many of my friends are now in our 60s or beyond, and death has become an immediate fact or a near possibility for lots of folks I know and love.  When we were all younger, thinking about death seemed morbid.  But at my stage of life, it no longer seems morbid in the sense of life-denying or obsessive.  In fact, once we come to terms with the fact that life isn't going to last forever, we're motivated to spend our hours doing what feels meaningful. 

Beyond that sort of "Seize the day" philosophy, I've looked for a way of understanding life and death.  What follows is based on thought and theory, but the ideas led me to imagery which makes the end of life a much less disturbing prospect.   (For me, this understanding built gradually.  For Paul, who's far more intuitive than I am, it came as a profound image in a dream, and the logic came afterward.  I'm grateful to him for the galaxy-forming image.)

The whole of our universe --- including each of us --- is made up of the same physical elements:  oxygen and hydrogen in great quantities, with a lot of other elements.   We are  not really altogether distinguishable from the rest of the universe chemically.   The living beings and objects and even the air around us is made up largely of the same elements we're made of.   When I think of it that way, it becomes a little hard to picture what separates me out from all the rest.  In a quite literal sense, I really am one with the universe.

Watch a stream flowing over pebbles.  Here and there the water is caught into a whorl that spins for awhile in a motion that seems separate from the rest of the stream.  One of these whorls may be momentary, or it may move along with the stream and last for quite some time.   But eventually it melts back into the stream as a whole.

Look at smoke rising from a fire and you'll see something very similar.  A "bit" of the smoke is caught into a swirl which may move and rise and spin for some time, and then it's absorbed back into the motion of the whole.   

Watch a waterfall that's big enough for the water droplets to disperse as they fall, and you'll see that same thing again.

All those things have become my images of life and death.   A life is the whorl in the waterstream or the rising smoke, the momentary pattern in the falling mist of the waterfall.  Dynamic, even beautiful, but certainly not something that will last forever.   Also:  not something that is ever really separate from the whole, and when it ceases it is not gone, it is simply reabsorbed to become part of the whole.

I'd read many years ago that the cells or elements of our bodies aren't the same ones all through our lives; the molecules come and go, exchanged with the atmosphere around us, and over a period of months, there's no individual cell left of the body we started with.

What this says to me is that in an even more specific sense, we are never separate from the universe we are a part of.   I am a part of the ocean, the trees, the wind --- and some part of me has been, and will be again, a part of everything I see around me. 

Death is a name for the time when the elements that are (temporarily) me are reabsorbed back into the universe and stop being replaced.   The particular elements that were part of me at any given moment, including the moment of death, have all been elsewhere, and elsewhere is where "I" will be --- dispersed, a part of the smoke, the tree, the waterfall, the atmosphere.

I find that image satisfying, comforting, exciting.

That doesn't mean I'm tired of my life.   In fact, acknowledging my temporary status makes me more ready to know a range of experiences, and to treasure perceptions of many kinds --- certainly more ready to see the wonder and rarity of momentary beauty, this warm sunshine on my knee right now, the whoosh of a gust of wind through the trees, the glitter of light on a strand of spiderweb moving in a lighter breeze.  In the wide span of the universe, what an absorbing coincidence each moment is!

There are a couple of important pieces to this issue which I haven't fully worked out.  One is philosophical, and has to do with consciousness, the mind:  what is it, and how does it relate to the body?   I've read some treatises but so far none I've come to own.

The other is pragmatic and cultural, and has to do with body image:   why do we (especially "Western" cultures) so despise a body which is aging, being drawn by gravity, getting ready to rejoin the universe --- and can we change our minds (whatever they are!) and stop seeing those body changes as bad.   That's another post.

Comments

[John Dyer]

I thought I felt a mystic in there. I was once taught a beautiful image for this. If you take a circle with all the colors of the rainbow painted on it and spin it it becomes white. This is an artistic expression of "one" a mathematical and religious idea meaning unity. I also know you are interested in community, which is come unity. One. :) Thanks for posting these thoughts. They are now a part of the wisdom lore, available for someone who needs to see them for as long as there is an internet.

[jinx]

John, you think you detect a mystic in me. I'd say these ideas are on common ground with some mystical thought -- but I tend to reach my conclusions by observation and my reading of research plus logic rather than by intuition or revelation, and to hold the thoughts as working hypotheses rather than items of faith (and so, I wouldn't be offended at logical discussion of my reasoning).

[John Dyer]

To my point of reference, logic ends where it begins, with its assumptions or ground. I see much more to your thought than that. But this may be a word thing or that roller coaster v. ferris wheel thing again. I get that your mind comes to conclusions based on observations and what further information you are able to take in concerning them. I would not suggest something else.

It may be as simple as the use of the words "logic" and "reason."

We may describe the details of the process of observing, learning more and considering what it means differently, but that is what I do also. I just am comfortable describing it using different words than logic or reason. For me and speaking only for me, I am personally very comfortable affirming that both my observations and sources of information to explain and validate them come through routes that include the language of color, feeling, touch, smell, taste, hearing, temperature perhaps chemicals in the air for which I may have receptors that are still functional (the debate goes on about that), non verbal cues, the language of math (although I am all not that good- can't "see" it like some), the language of music (similar issues with "seeing") intuitive thought, etc. All of these are, it seems to me, different from logic.

I recognize that a discussion of ideas is often unwieldy when one references those sources. And worse, it has in the past been used to suggest that the "female" mind is lest trustworthy than the "male" (feelings v. logic and reason).

I personally, however, am very content to "own" the "female" mind as a capacity of my own, and all the components thereof and noted above. Evolution gave them to us for a reason and although I have some times had a very difficult time persuading others that a plan or concept that came other than from word logic and linear thought was useful, it is amazing how often those folks later admit I turned out to be spot on. From this I have grown in confidence in the use of other than linear word logic and reason.

So here is my logic, evolution provides us with capacities because they are useful. Therefore, there is a reason why all these capacities other than logic and reason are all a part of the mechanism by which we understand ourselves and the world around us.

What words mean to each other play a role in this kind of discussion. To some, the word "mysticism" implies a "spiritual" world that cannot be apprehended by ordinary means (and in fact is defined by being disconnected in some way and "other worldly"). Functionally, how does one have a discussion about what someone allegedly learns from their spirit guides? I am not using mysticism in that sense of the word.

I am using mysticism in the sense of the word of one who senses he is a part of a whole rather than isolated. I don't mean logics or reasons he is part of a whole, or "Sees" he is part of a whole, but senses it. It is experimentally and analytically demonstrable that we are part of a whole rather than isolated, but mystical experience is the sensing of it.

The words which we attach to the experience are chosen by us to explain what we are experiencing, and as I mention in another post, to me reflect our limitations in knowledge as much as what we know.