Edward’s Diary Entry 103: Talking Trees

You commune with humans, with family. You talk as far as you can get, as a long as time permits… Then you take to your feet and go out for a walk. A dog accompanies you. He’s excited – it seems like the very first time he’s every been out on a walk. He’s so intense, he smells and marks everything, he’s an inspiration on how to extract every single instant of life from every single moment of living. He’s perfect – he doesn’t need a coat and scarf like me – he’s got his coat. He doesn’t need boots – he has his padded paws. He doesn’t think about life – he’s already exuberant and crackling with life. He doesn’t ask where he going – he just knows and accepts it. We wandered up the hill. I had been here in the summer, with leaves of green, sky of blue and misty mornings that became sun-drenched days. I would sit in front of a five-trunked tree and do my exercises and become meditative. Now, I see that that same sitting place is still grassy, completely clean, not a leaf on it, whereas all the surrounding ground has dried brown and grey leaves fluttering around, and clumps of grass. It looks like someone still uses it and sits here every day. I wonder whether it is a deer or a bear. My dog finds interesting smells nearby in the field. I inspect and tell him that must be deer dung. But he already knows it. This five-pronged tree is silent, waiting for my return, perhaps. But the trees close at hand are “talking”. There is strong wind and the boughs and branches are rubbing together, making a funny creaking noise as if they were conversing. I listen. I seem to understand it. I find sense in that talk. I’m afraid to say it, but I find  more sense in it than talking with humans sometimes. I review the terrain, breathe my breaths and walk down the hill again and 28 sheep and a black ram are waiting to run towards me. Then they follow me down the lower field. They finally scatter, saying “he’s going back to the humans, he’s leaving us. He’s one of them. The ones that talk endlessly, solve little, and wreak not a little havoc on this planet.” If only humans were like trees, only talking when the spirit of the wind pushes them, then we would talk more sense, and be more human than we are. So… Happy Christmas, let’s listen to the wind inside our hearts and talk more sense – today and in the coming year.

Edward’s Diary Entry 102: A Birthday, a Deathday, an Everyday

It isn’t every day you get to celebrate a 92nd birthday, but today we did. And especially a mother’s 92nd birthday, and yet it happened. We stayed in and we went out, socialising at home and having a fish fry at a restaurant. And then, finally alone, I sat me down under a cloudy night sky and breathed the air. My crow tree in front of me, empty during the night. Because the seven crows congregate here in the early morning, and only lucky I can view them then. A cat at my feet, a dog sniffing around the frosty ground. The pale night sky speaking of snow tomorrow. A well to drink from, with freezing water to chill my mouth. The clock has ticked on for another day, and we’re all still alive. Almost everyone we know. And my mother is well, and others in the family I suppose. I hear of a 4-year-old who has died of malaria on a faraway continent, but I never knew him. His mother will cry. My mother has her two children still. Why should there be anything fair in life, or unfair? Who knows what life has in store for us. And look, my love sits by a bedside and holds a hand getting colder and colder. He won’t last much longer, they say. He’s reached the end. Lived a good life, he says. Been applauded by four children for being a good father, but he will be sorely missed. It wasn’t really time, or was it? I guess it was – it is his turn to pass on, with body ravaged by disease. And my love will be sad, bereaved, bereft. She won’t have him any more in the flesh. Only in memory. But she will have me, and I her, until that too comes to an end, if ever. It isn’t every day you get to celebrate any birthday, or a deathday, or any day for that matter, so every day is special, every breath is new, every instant is the only time we have. Fuel awareness and live, my love; live for now, live for today, and live perhaps for another day… Whatever happens I will love you.

Edward’s Diary Entry 101: Breathing and Dying

We already said we are only 2 minutes from death. We can probably go without food for weeks. We can survive without water for days. Without air, we die in minutes.

But life is so strong, so intelligent, so bent on living within us, that we can’t stop our own breathing. We can just get a taste of that final moment by trying to hold our breath and seeing how impossible it is. Nature abhors a vacuum and will get that breath out or get it in despite our most strenuous efforts to quell the flow.

I remember seeing someone die in a hospital bed, when the intermittent breathing just seemed to wheeze out and wind down, not without some clicking noises, and then there was silence, and the chest no longer rose. The room was darkish and the scene was illuminated from behind by the lights coming in the window, maybe the moon, I don’t know. It was many years ago.

So our prescribed natural death can come at any time, effortlessly. We don’t know when. It’s just like our normal breathing. We are not aware of it, it just happens in us. We get up, brush our teeth, have breakfast, work, play, smile, get angry, suffer stress, and we hardly know we’re breathing at any time, unless we are so hard-pressed that we have to run and gasp for air – then we notice it for a minute. Or as the Spanish say, we put on a new shirt and have sex on a Saturday, and suddenly we know at the final moment that we are breathing hard! Ha-ha, it’s also a climax for breathing!

But if not, we spend 24 hours breathing like animals, without awareness, without realizing its magic. Maybe 8 hours in complete unconsciousness when sleeping, but then 16 hours like ghosts. Why talk about dying in this context? We’re already partially dead, because we haven’t even started living like real men and women yet. Unless we place awareness in our breath at some point throughout the day, and perceive that magic – the kind of magic that is omnipresent and unseen, multifaceted but unheard, universal but only dimly experienced. So some lucky few do pranayama in yoga class and are finally aware of their breath for a few minutes. Or get a workout at the gym and struggle for air, if they’re not simply focusing on growing muscle fibres. Or maybe smoke a cigarette and finally breathe more deeply and notice their breath, albeit tainted with nicotine flavours.

What we need to do is to breath like human beings, who are endowed with a consciousness that is higher than that of the animals. That means marvelling at the power of breath, its depth, its connectivity… We have invented “social networks” out there, but we have always had a highly social network right in our throats, because breathing connects all living things on the planet via the atmosphere. It also tells us we’re alive and pulsating, not dead and awaiting decomposition. So let’s get some more Self-Awareness into our respiratory system and stop acting so unconsciously – which is what causes all our human problems. Human “problems” decrease with an increase in Self-Awareness. It’s simple.

Edward’s Diary Entry 100: Sleeping and Dying

It’s not as if we haven’t practised dying… We do it every night. Whether we lay us down “amidst these humble bowers”, or “beneath the fragrant myrtle”, or in a simple white-sheeted bed, our Awareness is snuffed out, we lose consciousness, we drop off, and disappear. And with it the whole world disappears, and if perchance we dream, a new split-second or timeless world opens up before our eyes, and we live another brief life. We toss and turn, come up for air, as it were, and then fall back into nothingness again. And suddenly, whether the cock crows, the birds sing or the smart phone chimes, we come to ourselves again and say “we have awakened” to a new day. Isn’t this kind of death wonderful? It seems we have the assurance of a new awakening every time it happens…

So most of us who don’t have somniphobia, the irrational fear of going to sleep, simply die every night and are reborn in the morning. And we hardly notice it. This is our daily “2-1-0” movement, from Waking Consciousness (called Self-Awareness state 2 on this blog [see article]), to REM phase sleeping (Self-Awareness state 1) down to deep dreamless sleep (Self-Awareness state 0). When we only dip in and out of these 3 phases, our life is pretty shallow. Because state 2, normal waking consciousness in this fantastic being self-proclaimed homo sapiens sapiens, is a conditioned, self-centred, opinionated existence based on preterite experiences – the past inputs from the five senses only. In other words, the scientific classification is the best-case scenario or most optimistic view of the subspecies, but it is a misnomer in that “knowing that we know” is only a potential, but not an actuality, in the majority of the 7.4 billion currently occupying this planet.

What we need to learn from the “little death” of sleeping every night is how to live more fully when we wake. And that involves striving for Self-Awareness state 3, where there is a real experience of a Witness or Observer that is the actual Awareness in me, which does not necessarily identify with all the comings and goings of the mind-body complex, because it sees that my impulses are my body’s and can be ordered properly, my feelings are triggered by experiences and thoughts, and my thoughts do not have to roam aimlessly, they can simply be watched. The Watcher is the Controller observing the play of the mind and its five senses, accepting some inputs, disallowing others, ordering and re-ordering others, and generally standing firm in the face of adversity. If this is happening, we are in a different state altogether compared to state 2, where consciousness is merely stimulated from outside, from the external world, and all manner of excuses are invented by the mind to accept sensory input and our own mind-recycled input as reality.

So dying can happen in various ways:

1) the loss (meaning disconnection of the energy source from its various bodily devices) of the body and its mind-body complex while sleeping deeply: from state 0 (deep sleep) to state X (death state, or unknown state);

2) the loss of the body and its mind-body complex while dreaming: from state 1 (REM sleep) to state X (death state, or unknown state);

3) the loss of the body and its mind-body complex while in so-called “normal waking consciousness”: from state 2 (societal state) to state X (death state, or unknown state). This may be from accident or terminal disease (with various states of pain-suppression if required, thereby influencing awareness), or simply from old-age shutdown.

4) What we don’t currently know is what the loss of the body and its mind-body complex is like from Self-Awareness state 3.

That is what we have to find out. And to do this, falling asleep every night is the field of practise. Is it possible to be intensely but gently AWARE at the very moment we are falling asleep, and if so, what happens? That is the lesson of sleeping and dying. And practise, they say, makes perfect… so let’s do it and see.

Edward’s Diary Entry 99: Living and Dying

I have been travelling for two weeks and adapting to difficult care and nursing situations… Yes, I've been visiting an American nursing home every day, where few come out warm and alive, as most are kept there to die. They come out stiff and cold, ready for the undertaker’s. Some are far gone and do not respond to stimuli very much, some manage a smile occasionally, whereas others are even joyous at times, maybe just recovering from an accident or fall. I gave as many patients as possible a chance to smile, I think. And now I am back home and have been met by another impending death. But just like the farmer philosopher said about her little lambs – that they were “born to die” – we too, as human beings, are all born to die and will pass sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time.

What disease and impending death should do for us is open the doors to Reality, and then we can apply this Reality to ourselves to become more cognizant of the fact that we are going to die, probably sooner rather than later, or probably sooner than we think we would like. Now what that does, if we are intelligent, is to strengthen our Awareness so we can live better lives now, at this very moment. We take the memory of a death as a message; or we take the news of an impending death as an encouragement to live more fully now. We cannot just break down and cry, or we mustn’t believe in crying if we do cry. If we need to cry, we cry; but this is just a reminder to our Awareness of Self that all of us must pass –  we too – and therefore we bow down to Reality, accept our mortality and make the best of our time here and now. All too often, unconscious immortality blinds us to both ourselves and others, and simply makes our lives more stressful.

So what I have done is to take two weeks as the limit. That's right: in two weeks I’ll be dead, and even that's a lot of time. This is because there is someone near and dear to me who will die in a few weeks, or a few months, or perhaps survive a year or so, but in any case his time is strictly limited, as we have recently been told. So now I walk the streets and look at everyone and imagine their death in only two weeks’ time. If they approach me I will treat them compassionately; I will never be angry with them; I will interact with them kindly; I will help them; I will show them love and compassion. And more. Because they are soon to die. There is no time to waste. What does it matter that I don’t even know them? Others know them; they have parents, children maybe, friends, relatives and workmates who will miss them. That is enough. Place yourself in that position and you will see. It doesn’t make any difference what difference you may happen to have with their opinions, ideas, beliefs or what have you. We are both goners. We’re both dead, in the long run or the short. We’re both only here for a brief time. So have mercy.

This means there is much less room, time or space for wasting time, getting angry, upset or impolite about anything, or picking fights. Because you know the clock is ticking away and you’ll soon see someone dying or experience death yourself – leaving the body behind all cold and stiff, and either Catholically being buried in concrete vaults (sorry no more stone: as if we didn't have enough concrete and asphalt while we're alive, it has to be concrete when we're dead, too!), or being cremated, packed up tight in a decorative urn and perhaps being thrown to the fishes or the worms.

The body will go; it is just physical and returns to its source – the Earth, as modern-day recyclers should know. The emotions were just intense impulses produced by a brain-mechanism made to produce them; from thoughts that were made to be produced by a mind fuelled by the same energy that pervades the whole universe. Both petty and (for humans) lofty thoughts were produced by that brain, that mind. But all is gone now. It’s all to be recycled, because we live in a sustainable world, where we create nothing, we destroy nothing; we only recycle it. Whatever lay behind that body producing emotions and thoughts, making such things possible, that Awareness or Consciousness, is perhaps washed clean and given another chance to seek out its own meaning in another life, who knows? What those who are left to live on this Earth can discover or can know, is that either we rise above body, emotion and mundane human thought, or we simply die and have to start all over again, or are destroyed forever. Either way, life is all we have when we have it, so why not live to discover what it really is? Or are we simply to believe what others and society tell us? Is that all we think there is? Impossible. Life goes on, the universe is functioning perfectly. It’s just we humans who can get into sync with it. Either living or dying. So at least let's give it a try. Today. Before it's too late.