Not Afraid of Dying - Letters from Readers

I received an email from a reader that I wanted to share with the community. This particular reader has requested that I withhold information about identity, which of course I will do. 

The letter includes this: 

"You write about how the fear of death affects everything we do. I don't believe this. I'm not afraid of dying.   No one in my family is afraid of it.  We know that it's going to happen, and we've accepted it.   Why don't you write about grief more?  Grief is the biggest problem with death and dying, it seems to me.   People need help with grief."

Thank you, first of all, to this reader for submitting this letter. I read every letter I get, even if I do not respond to all of them.   

Secondly, I want to address a couple of points here.   

When I say that we are afraid of death, I am referring to our western (colonial) culture as a whole, or the culture of conquest.   In this type of culture, death represents an ending, and generally it is subconsciously viewed as an ending to power.  So anytime there is question of power, there is the dilemma of keeping it. In colonialist culture, power is tightly controlled, and generally the control is maintained through fear.  Please understand:  this is not about a group of people.  This is about a mindset: a paradigm.  It may have initially been perpetuated by a group of people (conquistadors, colonialists, etc.), but it has moved far beyond one group.  So this colonialist paradigm keeps us as separate - as individualized elements that have our own sovereignty and worth independent of one another and our planet, so that we have come to believe that we can do/say/be/think anything that we please, because it is ours alone and has no impact on others.  This is false. 

Our grief is for what we've lost through cultural amnesia - not through death. 

So when I talk about the fear of biomechanical death here, I'm talking about the fear that is subconscious, one of which we are generally completely unaware.   We may discuss death and "final wishes" with our families; a lot of us prepare ahead of time for our furnerary rites, the disposal or interment of our remains, etc.  But this does not indicate an absence of fear around death.   In fact, in the statement provided that says "We know it's going to happen, and we've accepted it," the fear of death looms very close to the surface.   The fact that death here is viewed as something to be accepted, or tolerated somehow; an unavoidable irritant that chafes at us, but which we cannot circumnavigate - this demonstrates that death is still viewed as other - it is something that we must suffer, relegated to the same category as such irrtitations as taxation, limited parking, high prices, and the like.   This sentence may as well read "We know we have to pay taxes, and we've accepted it." Those of my readers in the West are likely familiar with the old adage "death and taxes."  One is viewed as unavoidable as the other; both are hated nuisances. 

Biomechanical death is not the significant milestone we make it out to be.  It is not a cessation of anything.  It does not deserve our fear. Our science is already proving that consciousness extends beyond the boundaries of the biomechanical death process, but that doesn't mean that just because science is only now proving it that it is only now the case.   Great cultures in antiquity spent a sigificant portion of their time pondering death and afterlife - the Eyptians built expensive (both in funds and labor) tombs filled with treasures to honor their passage into afterlife, and there is much evidence that indicates that prehistoric cultures held firm belief in an afterlife, as well. Our modern colonialist culture (now global, I'm sorry to say) has fostered our amnesia, not only around the truth about death and dying, but with each other, as well.  

And herein lies our grief.   So yes, we do need help with grief. But it isn't grief over death.  Not really.  It may appear to us as that, but really, what we are grieving is all that has been lost as a result of our amnesia.  We want to remember; we want to re-member ourselves and our connection.  Our current paradigm simply doesn't allow us room to do so.