The Only Death That Matters
The only death that truly matters is the one you have in your mind.
To recap: Bliss is a state of being, called presence, that occurs when we are without thought. The quandary we find ourselves in, however, is being in a world without thought means death to the thinking mind.
Freud almost had it right with his ‘pleasure principal’ - we do seek pleasure and try to avoid pain.
But again, using consciousness to clarify our question, what do we mean by pleasure?
Pleasure is an absolute state of connection and of presence. It is absolutely objective. To use my previous example, we do not question when are orgasming. We simply know and we know this through feeling.
Connection and presence is a state many people find while on psychedelics, altered states of consciousness, deep relaxation, and heightened artistic or athletic performance. It is when we have successfully left the world of the thinking mind and accessed flow.
How do we successfully walk the thinking mind back into the present moment?
Through education.
Through education, we teach the ego that what it really wants is connection, but in order to achieve this it is going to have to stop doing what it knows best, which is thinking. The ego will protest this, to which we must also teach it that this is normal because to it, it will feel like death. However, in that death, this will lead you to exactly what it is you have been searching for.
We are not here to kill or enslave the ego. We are here to re-train it to seek presence instead of disconnection. We do so by feeding it things it likes, such as the egoic concept of self-improvement and power, but this time, in a healthy way! The ego can be trained to work for its own death if it means an upgrade to its own powers. Clever, see?
By building a narrative that helps the ego walk towards death, which again, to the ego is lunacy, we build a muscle back to the present moment, which is where we all truly wish to reside.
And just how do we coax squirrely egos into letting go?
Through our breath.
