An Awakening …. to Death

January 7, 2018 by Barbara Gia 13 Comments

„God is the denial of denials“  Meister Eckhart

For most people, a Spiritual Awakening – as unsettling, disruptive or shocking it may appear in the beginning – is perceived as a positive, eye-opening, mind-expanding experience. There’s another type of ‘Mortal’ Awakening happening right now, one that may be experienced just as disruptive and upsetting – or even more so. While the first opens our perception to something that’s beyond this world, this reality, and let’s us take a ‘look behind the veils’, the latter is showing us what’s right in front of our eyes: what’s happening to our physical world.

As my own Spiritual Awakening seemed to unfold over the course of many years, my ‘Mortal Awakening’ in 2017 was more of the jolted-me-awake type. Both events represented life-changing shifts of consciousness for me but they had another important aspect in common: DEATH.

One of the crucial elements of my Spiritual Awakening was the realization that physical life may end with death but consciousness does transcend it. This shift in perception was significant but didn’t affect any of my day-to-day life much until 14 months ago when I woke up from my blissful ignorance about the current ‘state of affairs’ and became acutely aware of the predicament we are facing. When I say “we” I mean all living beings on this beautiful planet. After extensive research and diving into the science of Abrupt Climate Change, current level of pollution, limits to resources (and growth) on earth as well as exponential growth,  it was clear to me that we are in another extinction cycle. One of several this planet has gone through.

Nothing to get excited about, really…except for the fact that things are happening much faster than previously predicted. Generations of humans currently alive will witness dramatic changes worldwide within a much shorter time than we ever have in history (at least to my limited knowledge). I suppose then my awakening was caused by a ‘near-death-experience’ as you frequently hear about in spiritual circles, only this one was the awareness of a potential ‘near death’ (whatever ‘near’ means)  for not only myself but many other species as well, a mass extinction.

How can it be then, that on the spiritual websites that I used to visit in the past there’s only talk about this magical, wonderful world that we are about to experience soon? I suppose they‘re not referring to this reality. But if they are, they‘re truly waiting for miracles to happen. As much as I love miracles I’d then tend to go with Carolyn Baker and Andrew Harvey‘s assessment of an „…emphasis in spiritual cirles on a fake compassion and cheerfulness….[where] people have been trained in habits they call spiritual but which really are designed to reinforce bypassing and dissociation…“

Suddenly it dawned on me: this sense of hyperactive overindulgement in numbing entertainment that I’ve been witnessing around me (and been guilty of myself) is simply an attempt to dissociate from the reality we’re facing on this planet. Now it all makes sense. The human collective, or rather the collective unconscious, is – at a deep level – very aware of the dire situation we are in. That’s why anxieties, depression, aggression and a constant state of busy-ness are dis-eases going rampant these days. These are either direct responses to the lifestressors we’re currently exposed to or distractions, defense-mechanisms to keep that growing knowledge about our – and so many other species‘ – demise at bay.

I was shocked to see how much I, myself, have been guilty of either escapism and spiritual bypass (when I tried to escape to the other realms where everything was so much better) or complete denial by „always being too busy“ or „too exhausted“ or simply numbing myself by surfing the internet.

Thanks to my „Awakening to death“ I realized life is too short for this sh!#. Time to live. 2018 will mark a new chapter in my book. One of my first steps was to quit my job. No idea where this journey is taking me but it’s time to make the best out of what remains. Love fiercely and live (com)passionately to the fullest!

Happy New Year!

 

For those of you interested in further reading I added a few links that only represent a portion of those that I found helpful in understanding what’s going on. If you’re interested in finding out more about the planet’s environmental situation, climate change etc – pls search for your own sources, there are plenty to choose from.

http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/kali-takes-the-world-dark-night-of-the-world-soul/

https://charleseisenstein.net/essays/mutiny/

http://www.debozarko.com/awakening/

https://www.kosmosjournal.org/news/19905/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death

http://www.peterrussell.com/blindspot/blindspot2.php

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2016/apr/19/why-limits-to-growths-forecasts-are-still-relevant-today

….and check out articles or the book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert ‘6th mass extinction’