What comes next?

I’ll never forget someone rocking up to a coaching session with me a few years ago, and reporting in, with the somewhat random observation:

“D’you know, this is going to sound really odd, but I suddenly realised the other day, I'm no longer afraid of dying!”

I say ‘somewhat random’, because we hadn’t gone anywhere near the topic, over the course of our time together. This was an accomplished professional who’d come to me, off work with stress & burnout. We’d had a good block of sessions together and they’d made huge strides—seen lots, had huge shifts and come out the other side of their troubles—and then this: no more fear of death!

“Ah, splendid. My work here is done,” I replied.

😆

It’s that unnameable formless essence that lies at the heart of us again – what I most frequently refer to as ‘Innate Health’, but you’ll have your own take. I'm not going to put words in your mouth.

I bring this up, because one of our Premium 🔖 Subscribers asked this question for our group call, and I never got round to answering it:

“Years ago, I gave up on organized religion, because so much of it no longer made sense to me, but I guess I am trying to replace that with a philosophy that takes away some of the fear of death. I love being alive and death ends that. Perhaps you could talk about that?”

What comes next?

Well. I don’t have a huge amount to say on the subject – because we’re immediately in the realms of ‘headcanon’, aren’t we? (i.e. what the Giles Ego Construct 📦 believes, or has been conditioned to believe, which is all just stuff and nonsense at the end of the day.)

Brought up going to church regularly, I too “gave up” on organised religion in my teens, as it “no longer made sense to me”—I became pointedly anti-religion during my Uni days—but I’d say nowadays, since coming across the 3 Principles, I’m a lot more comfortable with things like religion and ‘God’ … and yes, death, too.

Not so much because it’s “a philosophy that takes away some of the fear of death” but because it’s given me a totally new relationship to my thinking.

And that’s what ‘death’ is, isn't it?: A thought about the future, which is unknown. (With ‘fear of death’ being a fearful thought about the unknown future.)

Time to trot out this one, only because I can't quote it enough:

And that's what our dear subscriber was describing with their question: this fear of the ‘known’ (i.e. life) coming to an end.

Energy, spirit, soul, whatever

As a doctor, I've certainly been around death. It only happened once or twice during my training, but I have witnessed the moment when someone goes from being alive, to being dead.

It's remarkable how little changes, and yet how much, in that transition.

And I can still remember visiting the hospice after Mum had died. There ‘she’ was, body just the same as hours previously, and yet it had never been so apparent to me that ‘Mum’—who she actually was; her energy, spirit, soul, whatever—had gone.

I felt no real connection to the lifeless flesh that remained. That was not her.

What we are is energy, temporarily housed—and animating—this meat suit, like the one that types for you now.

Waves on the ocean

As a scientist, I know that energy can neither be created, nor destroyed. It has to go somewhere. It's like in that fantastic BBC documentary The Secret Life of Waves, where our lives are shown to be just like waves: a transfer of energy from one place to another, crashing on the rocks and transmuting into a different form.

So I feel like I know (believe) that death is not the end, per se, just different.

Still energy… just no longer contained by the carbon-based atoms and molecules of a human body.

Awareness of experience

The one constant to our existence that I feel like I can state with any degree of certainty is awareness itself. (‘I Am’, ‘Pure consciousness’, or ‘Being aware of being aware’.)

And who's to know whether that sense of awareness persists, after death?

I've not gone down the rabbit hole of exploring reports of NDEs (near death experiences) because I've never really felt the need, but from what I've read, they do seem quite consistent, in terms of consciousness being outside the physical form… which gels with my increasing suspicions that the mind doesn't generate consciousness, it receives it.

As for ‘who’ might be experiencing that, after dying… well I don't think it's going to be ‘Giles’ because as far as I can tell, ego (i.e. the sense of a separate self) is just a creation of the mind – an explanation it's come up with for the experiences being felt, while constrained to this local wave-on-the-ocean of a human body.

Logically, to me at least, energy no longer constrained to that physical form wouldn't retain, or require that illusory identity, I'm guessing. (I dunno – I'm making it up as I go along.)

Oneness

The spontaneous ‘enlightenment’ experience that Sydney Banks describes having in many of his talks (most notably ‘The Experience’ from the Long Beach Lectures) has a lot in common with NDEs: a tunnel-like sensation, bright white light, profound peace, a feeling of arriving ‘home’, a loss of fear, and a deep understanding of the nature of things.

Which may well be what remains, when we remove all the literal trappings of this meat suit we temporarily inhabit. No body, no sense of self, no material world, just one, singular energy.

The closest I ever got to this, was my own ‘waking up’ experience, standing in the doorway of my daughter's bedroom, when all thought temporarily dropped away, leaving me in a state of I-don't-know-what.

In a series of posts I wrote about that whole experience, from its beginning, I described it like this:

My mind went silent—a level of silence I didn't even know was possible—and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

Time ceased to be a thing and to this day I have no idea how long I stood there, gawping, silently, with a feeling of total emptiness and expansiveness—as if I were transparent—looking down at my daughter picking up bits of Duplo and continuing to build her tower.

Into that space came the strongest feeling of love for my daughter I'd experienced since the day I first held her in my arms. I felt so connected, so at one with her, and in a flash—without effort—I instantly saw the entire scenario from her perspective.

🫥

A few days later, ‘I’ (i.e. the version of ‘Giles’ I'd been inhabiting for 46 years) died up on stage, in another somewhat profound experience.

Fear of death

Circling back to our original question—how to take away some of the fear of death—it seems to me, to be in part down to:

1. Seeing that the ‘fear’ component is made of thought, and
2. Getting comfortable with your own headcanon version of death (i.e. what remains when we take the carbon-based life-form out of the equation)

I've shared mine, above, and I have to say, none of it sounds like much to be afraid of – in fact, I'm rather looking forward to it!

😆

To our dear, inquisitive Premium 🔖 Subscriber who brought this question to the group call, I would say that I too “love being alive” – in this form.

The fact that ‘this too shall pass’ and I don't get to choose when (or how), is all the more reason for me to show up each day and write these Daily Reminders, push this meat suit to its limits, and share the experiences available on beautiful planet earth with the other localised clusters of energy I call my friends and family.

If I can combine all three, all the better!

💖

Giles

p.s. Another great comfort for those experiencing grief, or a fear of death is the book Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying by Ram Dass & Mirabai Bush.

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When two becomes one, becomes none… as related by Syd Banks 😆

The Daily RemindersGiles P Croft