The Letter D

Dungeons and Dragons and Death, Oh My!

Are you grappling with your sense of mortality, right now?

I’m gonna predict that even if you don’t think you are, you are.

That’s what this episode of Miracles in Manhattan, the podcast, deals with.

If you’re angry with people on beaches without masks while you’re home, you’re afraid of dying. If you’re resentful at someone going to send time with their boyfriend while you’re staying home, you’re afraid of not living fully. If you’re applauding the healthcare workers at 7pm each day, you’re acknowledging that they may die.

It’s all about mortality right now. We are obliged to stay in and the reason is to make sure that if people are dying, they can get a bed and a ventilator in a hospital. The public conversation is about how not to die.

I’d rather the conversation be about how to accept death as a normal part of our ongoing, immortal lives. That’s not to say we don’t take care of each other by staying home, it’s just to say we do it without fear and anger; we do it with peace and without panic.

If you are finding yourself especially fearful about death and dying right now, there’s a wonderful buddhist meditation on mortality that I used for a number of years back in my 20s. I’ve included a link to a version of it below.

Buddhism really deals with death and impermanence very well. Awareness of death is what prompted the Buddha to perceive the ultimate futility of worldly concerns and pleasures.

And spiritualism, my chosen tradition, shows us that death is not the end, but merely a change of state. Being a Spiritualist Minister means I am a psychic medium and I talk with people who are no discarnate.

Of course, death meditations have been regarded as an indispensable element in a wide array of cultures: the Egyptian and Indian, the Chinese and Japanese, the Hellenic and Roman, the Hebrew and Islamic, in both their ancient and modern forms. Until fear of death is replaced by acceptance, one cannot be serene.

Formal meditation can be very helpful in facing and dissolving subconscious fears, especially the fear we all have of dying and with which we may not be in touch. It’s not meant to be an exercise in morbidity or self-pity, or in terrorizing ourselves. In fact one often feels light, happy and unburdened after directly acknowledging the truth of our inevitable death.

The truth is that most of us aren’t really afraid of death, bit our IDEA of death. Spiritualism shows us what it really is - a transition into the reality of beingness. When we die, we don’t end, we re-enter our true state; we go home after this exhausting and frustrating stint on earth school. The body dissolves, the spirit lives on.