'I'm Dying'

 
'Mum,' said Josh a couple of years ago to me by way of casual conversation, 'It's very hard to have a normal conversation with Granpa. Whenever you ask him how he is, he just says "I'm dying!"'

The casualness and acuity of Josh's observation made me chuckle deep and loud, as of course his grandfather has always enjoyed extremely good health (for which his family is exceedingly grateful!).

That we are dying every moment is true for all of us, but nonetheless a no-play rejoinder to a conventional conversation starter. Especially with a kid!

Death for the spiritually awakened is not a grim prospect, but a welcome one - celebrated by many Sufis as a wedding of reunification (urs) with the Source of all existence.

Death surrounded by blood and gore and terror brings with it sadness and grief for the trauma and suffering endured. But generally, a breath breathed from a still and luminous heart is one that heralds a new state, far greater and more enduring than the chimera of this life.

I grew up with the following Sufi adage often repeated: 'The Sufi cries when someone is born and laughs when someone dies.'

The explanation for this contra-flow to social norms is that once born into this world of illusion and distraction, man has to journey through a process of learning to inhabit his earthly body and to fully subscribe to all the biological realities and social values his life brings him. From a state of unconscious gatheredness he has to learn to negotiate the separations of existence, much of it painfully. Separation from unconscious being, separation from the womb, separation from the breast, from the home, from school, from the familiar, from comfort zones, from health,  from spouses and children, from friends, from attachments  - the list is endless.

All the while he is impelled from within to seek a unifying thread connecting his origin with his end, whether he realizes this or not. Through varying mixes of disillusionment, worship, unveiling and devotion he can steal glances and visions of the 'world' beyond. Greater openings into the unseen Reality behind this contingent-filled reality come as gifts bestowed upon those ready to receive them, that is, those who are willing to let themselves experience a sensory death. Ultimately the greatest breakthrough to a transcendent, ineffable state that soars above the limiting planes of existence will be through physical death - and for that the Sufi has cause to celebrate. Finally the journeyer knows. He has returned. Joy!

The tragedy of being ripped from roots which Rumi instructs us to hear in the plaintiff, haunting tones of the reed-flute accompanies the dramatic sub-stories of life. Death and life come together as bridesmaids to life, as well as bride and groom. A mother has to be wiling to face her own death in giving birth to her child. The warrior worth his salt has to himself disappear into his art and become the weapon. The artist journeys through beauty and wonder away from her structured self as she hearkens to the formless light of her soul. The meditator has to extinguish sensory input and mental acrobatics to find death-like stillness within from which indescribable depths of joy and peace (nothingness, infinity) can be tasted.

Maybe Josh's rejoinder  to his Granpa's 'I'm dying' should have been 'So you can live?!'