yra is an old town that was part of the ancient kingdom of Lycia. The main structures that remain from that ancient time is a Roman theater and a necropolis that is etched on the face of the mountains. I had the good fortune to visit Myra during my trip to Turkey last year. The most striking feature of these two old structures is that the necropolis overlooks the theater. It gives you the feeling that the dead are watching the play of life as it unfolds.
A series of dreams and conversations brought Myra back to my memory. This time the scene in Myra brought with it, and somehow paralleled, an ancient concept from a different ancient civilization; it is the Toltec concept of making death a witness to one’s action in life. On the face of it, this sounds like a macabre talk, but in its essence, it is a way of softening the heart and tuning the spirit.
The Mayan predicted the end of time to come on December 21, 2012. The date was set through an ancient calendar that calculates a 5125 years long cycle. The attitude of the vast majority of people towards that prediction was to take it literally, either in the sense that the Mayan prediction is nonsense and nothing is going to happen, or the Mayan prediction is real and I better stock as many tuna cans as I can. The symbolic significance of the prediction was, however, lost.
Let’s, hypothetically assume that December 21, 2012 was, beyond doubt, going to be the last day of life on earth, would you, still, have been doing what you were doing on December 20, 2012? If your answer was yes, then congratulations, you have your life on the right track. If your answer on the other hand was no, then this prediction had a message for you. Humans live their lives as if they were immortal or as if death is never going to touch them. Therefore, they feel that they can do all the things that are injurious to the self and to others, because they believe that there will always be tomorrow when they can fix things. The truth is, there is no guarantee whatsoever for me or for you that our lives will continue beyond reading this sentence. Death can, and does, tap humans of every age and in every possible situation. Ignoring this fact, or not thinking about it, does not mean that it is not true.
Imagine if we do the opposite, that we bring this possibility to the forefront, would we continue acting the way we do now? Would we still get involved in petty squabbles with everyone? Would we still not share the words “I love you” with everyone we love? Would our priorities then be the same as our priorities today? Would we still go to jobs that we don’t like or lead lives we don’t enjoy? Many people who are living with terminal illness say that the awareness of their impending death has changed their attitude to live. But why to wait, until this late point in our lives, to act in the proper way? Why not to always ask ourselves before doing anything whether we will still do it if it was our last act on earth or not?
By taking an aware attitude towards death, we will be more alive than ever, and in a better way I assume.
I see light blog
The image is a courtesy of "Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische"
A series of dreams and conversations brought Myra back to my memory. This time the scene in Myra brought with it, and somehow paralleled, an ancient concept from a different ancient civilization; it is the Toltec concept of making death a witness to one’s action in life. On the face of it, this sounds like a macabre talk, but in its essence, it is a way of softening the heart and tuning the spirit.
The Mayan predicted the end of time to come on December 21, 2012. The date was set through an ancient calendar that calculates a 5125 years long cycle. The attitude of the vast majority of people towards that prediction was to take it literally, either in the sense that the Mayan prediction is nonsense and nothing is going to happen, or the Mayan prediction is real and I better stock as many tuna cans as I can. The symbolic significance of the prediction was, however, lost.
Let’s, hypothetically assume that December 21, 2012 was, beyond doubt, going to be the last day of life on earth, would you, still, have been doing what you were doing on December 20, 2012? If your answer was yes, then congratulations, you have your life on the right track. If your answer on the other hand was no, then this prediction had a message for you. Humans live their lives as if they were immortal or as if death is never going to touch them. Therefore, they feel that they can do all the things that are injurious to the self and to others, because they believe that there will always be tomorrow when they can fix things. The truth is, there is no guarantee whatsoever for me or for you that our lives will continue beyond reading this sentence. Death can, and does, tap humans of every age and in every possible situation. Ignoring this fact, or not thinking about it, does not mean that it is not true.
Imagine if we do the opposite, that we bring this possibility to the forefront, would we continue acting the way we do now? Would we still get involved in petty squabbles with everyone? Would we still not share the words “I love you” with everyone we love? Would our priorities then be the same as our priorities today? Would we still go to jobs that we don’t like or lead lives we don’t enjoy? Many people who are living with terminal illness say that the awareness of their impending death has changed their attitude to live. But why to wait, until this late point in our lives, to act in the proper way? Why not to always ask ourselves before doing anything whether we will still do it if it was our last act on earth or not?
By taking an aware attitude towards death, we will be more alive than ever, and in a better way I assume.
I see light blog
The image is a courtesy of "Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische"
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