I was speaking about how some people are concerned that if they let death into their thoughts, they’ll affect their fate. Their concern is that they might invite a cause of death which is not yet manifesting; they might die sooner; or they may subliminally bring dying on. I’ve met this species of fear in my practice, too – which I think of as a fear of the power of subliminal patterns. Let’ notice first, that this is not really a fear of death. Do you know what death is, really, to be able to fear it? It’s fear of the thought of death; which makes it fear of the mind. To call it ‘fear of thoughts of death,’ would be cumbersome, so let’s call it death-thoughts fear (until I think of something more elegant). When I talk of the children we were, at the end, this phrase works quite well.
The fear of the power of the subliminal patterns in respect of death particularly arises, when someone is doing some experiential exploration of how the thought of death lives in them. For the investigation, I might invite them to let the death-thoughts fear inhabit their body. This is bound to be scary for anyone. Sometimes, this is because the person’s criticising process tells them that they shouldn’t be fearful because that’s not admirable.
However, occasionally I meet someone in whom the criticising process (or a powerless child process) is saying that “If you do that – invite fear of death in- it will be bad karma.” There’s a belief that there is some independent power in the death-thoughts fear – independent of their awareness. It’s being conceived as having its own life, and it is a threat to the person’s well-being. It’s masquerading as a host, with you as its guest.
Before going any further, I want to say, I don’t know you, my reader. And, I respect that you might be an exception to what I say. When you read this blog entry, see if, by the time you get to the end, it calms you at all. Did the thought that this is not exactly fear of death, but the fear of thoughts of death, help your body calm any? Check your body as you go. If it gets too scary, at any point, go away and breathe deeply. Come back if, and when, you are ready; or maybe read it with a friend. Take care of yourself.
In my experience, the most harmful aspect of the death-thoughts fear is our lack of intimacy with it; the fact that it is ‘exiled,’ as they say in Internal Family Systems theory. When death-thoughts fear is unconscious in us, it forms an unexamined part of our ‘I’-making; which naturally rolls forward, conditioning further mind-states. It is this ego-dependence on death-thoughts fear that gives it its power. It is not independent of our awareness and intentions. The irony is that it gains a kind of independence through being disowned.
Let’s look at how intention works in becoming free from death-thoughts fear. Say that I know, upon reflection, that I’m harbouring what appears to me to be a fear of death. And, say that I introduce into my process the wish to be free of death-thoughts fear (because death-thoughts fear is a harmful process on our planet, and because it obscures my luminous presence). And, say that I wish to relate to other people (anyone, because we are all mortal) with a conscious process, rather than just blindly reacting from my fragmented ‘I’-process. Because I wish to relate to others mindfully and in full comprehension of my responses to our mortality, then it would be good if I understood my death-thoughts reactivity thoroughly. These are all healthy intentions.
Hence, with these intentions, I invite the death-thoughts fear to be felt in my body, so as to be intimate with it. I don’t just analyse it, because that only deals with the version presented by thought. And, I don’t just simply oppose it with a criticising process. That’s the old way, and doesn’t end it. I can instead invite it into my body, and feel it, and so become its host. It is my guest.
In this way, I access the meaning-laden way in which the fear lives in me. The death-thoughts fear has many meanings which will liberate. So, with skills derived from various experiential processes (for me it’s Focusing, Voice Dialogue,
and Buddhadharma, in particular), I can delve into this fear, and come to know directly the collection of processes for which ‘fear of death’ (death-thoughts fear) is a term.
I can, by inviting it into my body, feel the vulnerability that is behind it, with other fears, and the out-dated narratives. I can feel in my body – which is a non-dual truth detector – how unfounded these are. As a result, the death-thoughts fear changes – it loses its charge.
Now, the point about the flow of bodily energy which we call ‘the karma of inviting the thought of death’ is that it is necessarily intentional. Karma (which I’ll explore some more in the coming posts) is not some blind mechanism, a something out there in the cosmos inflicting itself on its victims. It is the accumulated thrust of consciousness formed out of our mind states – it is the on-going stream of our intentionality.
Can you sense how this enquiry into death-thoughts fear is itself a conscious process, and that it is supported by wholesome intentions? Wholesome intentions are processes that affect old patterns. So, exploring death-thoughts fear is an instance of awakening that has awakening to life, love, and knowledge as the intention, and what happens is the process of awakening interacts with the process usually called ‘fear of death.’ This is possible because processes in the human are not walled off from each other. They inter-are. So, I’m saying the karma of this conscious exploration is very different to the karma of the death-thoughts fear when it is in mere reactive mode.
So, the results of the unreflective karma of the child is being felt by the adult. Isn’t this what Wordsworth meant when he said (adapting his language), that the child is parent to the adult? (Seems so much less poetic than ‘the child is father of the man.’) How will I liberate the-child-I-was, and transform the death-thoughts fear which once belonged to the child, if I don’t bring it into reflective consciousness, as the adult I am? How will I liberate myself? The-child-I-was is a substratum without which I can’t continue my fear of my death-narratives, today. So, through this experiential delving, I become intimate with the way the child’s patterns of death-thoughts fear live in my experience now, and they dissolve.
This intention – to be fully conscious and free of fear of death (while not giving away one’s power, of course; and not being anyone’s doormat) this is by its nature a greater power, than the power of the fear of death which I call into my body. The host always has more space than the guest. This spaciousness makes it possible to hold the fear of death productively, turning it into the path of awakening. I cannot harm myself by inviting fear of death, when it is in service of goodness, truth and beauty; or, for the welfare of all beings. It may not always be pleasant, but it is always ennobling.
What about if selfish motivations, are in the mix? Like, such that I can call on the universe for abundance, secure more friends and influence people – or, like Milarepa foster power to get revenge, for yourself or others? To be sure, doing this work for those kinds of reasons is karmically fraught, because of their narcissism. However, can we be entirely free of these motivations, at first? No. There’ll be mixed karma in the first place. The delusion of ego-entity has many layers. So, it does help, usually, to have some tutoring in how to titrate the experience; how to ground yourself in the body, and how to invite the host consciousness, and so on – even to help you recognise your allies. Maybe in your case it might take some psychotherapy. I’m not saying that it’s a breeze – only that there is a way, and that the way is based on what is intrinsically available to you.
During the process of exploration, by continuously turning towards the ‘what is’ of death-thoughts fear with a love of truth-finding, the karmic momentum of the pattern is changed; the action of inviting the fear into your body brings it into contact with something greater which hosts it, and so it changes.