My hope for all of us is that we come home to our innate knowing that life is a gift.
And yet so many of us live in deep fear. Trance-like sleep.
But we can’t receive it until we are able to let go and open to it all – including the gift of death.
I have long known that I need to find deep peace with death. I have faced some fears in my life, but I knew I’d never be free. Not while the fear of death still lived in my consciousness.
The fear of death is a global epidemic. It’s not so much ‘death’ that is causing this global suffering. It is the ‘fear’ itself.
It’s the biggest cover-up operation: hiding the truth of death from all of humanity.
Why? To control and direct us. This epidemic of fear has obscured our ancestral wisdom and is currently at its full force in our world.
But it’s not too late to reclaim the wisdom of our ancestors.
Our ancestors once knew the gift of death and were not afraid of it. I’m here to help rewrite some of this story and tell a new story.
It started in my dreams on New Year’s Eve, 2022.
The pivotal moment came when I was tucked up in bed on New Year’s Eve, tired and proud of myself for not being pulled to some event that would keep me up late.
And yet, just before I slept, I felt some uncomfortable feelings beginning to arise in my chest. I couldn’t identify what they were. I could feel my mind move to worry, beckoning to me with a whole box of scary possibilities.
I caught it before it could take over. “No, I’m not going to worry about what this feeling is.” A few thoughts kept repeating and I just continued soothing myself and giving myself permission to feel it all.
Ah. It was loneliness. I had found it.
A few tears rolled down my cheek as I accessed this feeling. I asked myself, “Why loneliness?” Until that moment, I hadn’t thought I was lonely. And yet here I was on New Year’s, breaking cultural tradition. And it was loneliness that came to the surface.
I realised that this is what has kept me going to parties on New Year’s Eve: deep down, a sense of loneliness will push me into conforming to the social norm. I instinctively moved to gratitude, sent my partner a list of things I was grateful for, called my spiritual team and put on a miracle frequency soundtrack for love.
I asked that my dreams be full of something important. That night, I drifted off into the night to be woken by my kids upstairs celebrating the turning of the New Year. I had a kind of smug feeling, like the one you might have if you’d slept the whole way on a long-haul flight and woken up just as the plane was landing.
The sense of “I’ve made it” reverberated in my ears. I looked at the clock and it was 00:01 on the 1st of the 1st, 2023. I felt a little bit irritated to be woken up, checked my phone, saw a lovely message from my partner and went back to sleep.
Then the dreams began. I dreamed of many bags. Some had shoes tied to them. They appeared to be like different hiking bags through the ages – and each bag seemed to represent a journey and a possible death. It sounds strange, but in the dream, it made perfect sense, as dreams do.
You see, when I’d accessed my loneliness, I felt so afraid. Yet, it wasn’t the loneliness that haunted me. It was the fear of it.
I realised that I need to address this persuasive fear in my psyche, to sharpen up my consciousness and identify the difference between fear and feelings, intuition and instinct.
* * *
We live in a culture where shock is a kick. I wanted to take fear on, and for that, I would need my warrior energy, a lot of plant medicine, and a purpose worth dying for. The bags in my dreams represented not only the deaths, but the many adventures death would take me on.
I knew death was about to become my ally. I knew that its representation throughout society was false, that suffering is not needed, and is created through a deep fear of death. And I knew grief would keep me safe, that letting go would move me forward, and that each breath would be a mini rebirth.
Death is not the enemy. Just like images of witches, the images we have of the Grim Reaper have been greatly misunderstood. Death holds the key to freedom; in fact, it is the key to life.
I believe death is the great liberator. It is in the hour of our greatest darkness that we often find our light. As these words spill from my hand, I feel I’m not writing them, but death is.
The thing that you probably don’t want to hear – the thing that can make you scared – is that there is nowhere to run to. Eventually, death will catch up with you and there, you will need to face all of your fears at once.
This thought alone is enough to motivate me to ‘get a grip on death,’ if that’s even possible. Most people on this planet are leaving their bodies in such extreme terror, anxiety and fear that it creates a ripple effect on all those whose lives they touch as they leave. The legacy is so much trauma and a generational debt of fear mounting up.
We are not designed to die like this. We are meant to learn from life’s mistakes and evolve. We must look back in time to cultures that had grace, love, celebration and acceptance around death.
We must look in and we must create new ways. We must go beyond duality to fully embrace death. We must awaken.
Are you ready?