How to Overcome Fear of Death through Yoga & Meditation #2

This blog series consists of three articles:

#1 – The Root of Fear of Death
#2 – Turn Unhealthy Fear into Healthy Fear through Meditation
#3 – Asana & Meditation to Overcome Fear of Death

#2 – Turn Unhealthy Fear into Healthy Fear through Meditation

In the previous blog I introduced the concept of healthy and unhealthy fears. Today I will share more about how you can practically do that as we can go about this in a few ways. Firstly we can meditate on the reality of nature (prakriti, or everything that is manifested in this world) and its relation to the universal spirit (purusha). Doing that you might get a grasp of the idea that our bodies and mind is just a temporary form that after our physical death will dissolve in something higher/bigger/beyond our current ability of perceiving. This is what (Buddhist) practitioners try to understand when they say that they are studying ’emptiness’. Anyway this is obviously not an easy realisation to make and might cause a whole lot of resistance. So another way of going about dealing with fear of death, and fears generally, is to make the fear healthy. Rather then fearing death (which is inevitable – at least our physical bodies will dissolve at some point), accept the fact that you will die and make sure that you are prepared for death. For somebody on a spiritual path that might mean to use as much effort as possible to realise our ‘true nature’ and to prevent dying with an uncontrolled mind. Preparing for death could also imply going through processes such as forgiving and asking for forgiveness. Whatever feels good for you to do, go for it, and realize that you have turned the fear (of death in this case) into a useful process.

Another example of turning fear around: fear of rejection usually comes from the need of wanting people to like us. All the time. Maybe you can change this into start liking everybody else first! This makes that you are not constantly busy with yourself but you are reaching out rather. Another obvious ‘anti-dote’ is to simply not care what other people think of you, by truly accepting and loving yourself, even your sloppiness and laziness and physical imperfections. You can see how you can apply this ‘trick’ to any fear.

The mere fact that we can turn a fear around anyway means that all labelling comes from our own mind. Something that some wise men, uhm.. the Buddha himself understood ages ago:

‘Buddha, the Able one says:
This all fears,
And all infinite sufferings,
Arise from the mind’

and

‘… it is not possible
To control all external events;
But if I simply control my mind,
What need is there to control other things.’

(from A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life)

Meditation on Death
Many of us do acknowledge the fact that we will die but still do not fully ‘live’ that fact. We live life as if we will never die actually! Without the full understanding and acceptation that we will die we will not make steps in our life to die ‘prepared’. Also, would it be beautiful if you can prepare yourself right now! Do not wait till you are laying on your death bed, but just do it now. Also remember that we don’t know when we will die. It might all be over tomorrow! So the earlier you prepare yourself, the better.

Here is another detailed instruction of a meditation on death that i would like to share with you, as it helps you going through a process of dying. Your mind and body will really feel as if they have died. It is very powerful, especially if you go through all the steps as suggested. You will notice that as you come back out of the meditation you have a much stronger motivation to live your life with dedication and direction.

Please, read the instructions carefully and then practice on your own. What I suggest you to do is to record the instructions with your phone and then play it for yourself while you can do the meditation, so you don’t actually have to remember the instructions.

Stages of the meditation on death
Broadly there are two steps stages:
(1) First you will relax yourself completely
(2) You’ll imagine (visualize step by step ) that you are dying. And this very process will take you to the witness – to the Self within you.

Instructions Stage 1 – Relaxation
1. Lie flat on your back, using a rug or folded blanket to protect yourself from the cold floor/ board. Close your eyes. You may not feel very comfortable when you first try lying like this. The floor will feel too hard and you may find yourself tempted to shift position. But this you must not do, for in order to relax muscle by muscle, it is important to lie still. Make sure that you are lying comfortably with your weight fairly evenly distributed on the floor.
2. Once settled, take a few deep breaths slowly. Observe the inhalation and exhalation process while breathing, then allow yourself to breath normally again.
3. Now, you must be aware that our body is consist of  6 basic external part – two legs, two hands, one ‘neck & head’ portion and the remaining torso. What you have to do now is to relax these six parts one by one: start taking a deep breath and while you inhale, stretch one of your leg. Stretch it hard, making all the muscle along the way contract.  You will observe that while you stretch, the muscles quite far removed from the area with which you are experimenting contract in sympathy. When the air you are inhaling reaches inside the deepest point in your body, take a momentary pause. Hold the stretch at that moment. Then slowly start exhaling the  air and ( simultaneously ) release the stretch. Let go every muscle that you stretch while inhalation.
4. One you completely relax all these 6 external part of your body this way, apply this process of relaxation to the entire body in one go.

 

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