“I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

—Woody Allen

I am intrigued by talk about death. It makes me feel somehow cosmopolitan but unique at the same time and full of unnoticed glory. Or at least, I blissfully revel in observing my own ego transform crazily into a type of perpetual fear. Ego doesn’t want to hear about death for a very obvious reason: the ego inherently protects its survival on Earth.

Most people’s greatest fear when it comes to their own death is the thought of a painful or a lonely death. Someone wrote that we come to this planet alone, and we leave it alone. There are no partners in this journey, and we have to get used to that thought and embrace it—otherwise we are destined to live in constant (and needless) fear of the thought of our ultimate demise.

They say that the ancient Egyptians were preparing all their life for the moment of death as the most important step to immortality. I don’t know if that made them fearless, but it must have made their life experience more purposeful (perhaps even joyful) as they were expecting an amazing event to conclude their life.

For the ancient Egyptians, the most important moment in that final journey was imagined as a ceremonial weighing of their heart in order to determine if their earthly deeds were virtuous. The jackal-headed god Osiris placed the heart of the departed on a scale opposite a feather. If the heart weighed no more than the feather, the departed was allowed to proceed to the afterlife—otherwise they were devoured by Ammit, a demoness with the head of a crocodile, and annihilated. I see so much wisdom and a great deal of information in this ritual. We only recently started focusing more and more on the power and importance of the heart—it is more than simply a pump. Imagine a heart that is as light as a feather, a heart filled with a lifetime of love, joy, compassion, and inclusiveness. That would be a heart that had shared, felt, and expanded, a heart that fulfilled its purpose and merrily joined the eternity.

What an uplifting dream!

Mariya