Dying

There is this idea that you can’t die in dreams.  I’ve seen it said, in any event.  I’ve heard it.  But I’ve died in my dreams many times.  I died last night, in a severe car accident, and floated away.  It took me a second to remember it was a dream.  I’m usually awake in my dreams, but not always.

And I felt the beginning of the Life Review.  What have I done?  What use have I been?  Part of you is the sum total of the influences on others you have had, what you have left behind, if on balance you gave or took, if on balance you left more or less than was there when you started your journey here.

And part of it is how you have ordered your time, what aims you have pursued, who you have become.  A life lived in solitude, neither hurting nor helping anyone, can be very valuable too, if you use that time to cultivate an inner beauty, an inner radiance, a capacity to be a sender of light.

Someone quoted Abraham Lincoln on my Facebook yesterday: if I had 8 hours to cut down a tree, I would spend 6 hours sharpening my axe.

I would take that spirit to life: if I knew, for sure, I had 80 years to live, I would spend 60 figuring out what was worth doing.  You can’t start knowing, not from your own observation.  But 80 was very old for much of human history, so jump starting the basics with a religion was not a bad idea.  But we need to grow beyond religion.  God has given us everything we need.  It’s lying out there, in plain sight.  Why do we fight over it?