Doesn’t the title of this post make you want to break into song? If I felt more confident in my singing voice I’d serenade you. Ahem, anyway, all this week I’ve contemplated the circle of life. Within the span of 24 hours I found out two people I know are pregnant and another lost her mother. The juxtaposition of the two was enough to give me emotional whiplash.
Death is no more than the “off” interval of existence, and in that it is nothing to be afraid of. If we might understand this fully, the trajectory of our lives will be profoundly altered. To abide in this “death sense” is to live with power.
For many of us, death is not something we think about until someone close to us passes. We may find ourselves ill-equipped to handle the intense emotions that come with losing someone we love. We may not want to think about death as it could make us upset or frightened, yet it is the people who reflect upon dying that find both a deep gratitude for being alive and an urgency to focus on what matters most in this life.
In a previous article, When you need Rajas: The Ayurvedic Element of Change, the three main elemental principles (or Gunas) of yogic and Ayurvedic philosophy (Sattva, Rajas and Tamas) were introduced and spoken to. In this article I want to explore the tamasic nature of stagnation, decay and death and how honoring this element in our lives can serve us wildly.