For several months now Jean felt he was dying. Was it months? Was it years?
A whole lifetime perhaps?
Without physical evidence of impending death, no definite symptoms, no diagnosis. Just a consistent deep feeling that he was dying somehow.
And the question – was he born to die.
He felt uncertain as to which part of him was dying – was it his body? His brain and mental faculties? His heart and emotions – or all of them together?
If perchance it were to happen, and in case sooner rather than later, he began to review his life. He understood that this was part of the dying process anyway but being Jean who liked to be prepared (a good Boy Scout!) he consciously started to do it anyway.
And there was so much to review!
Heavy burdensome experiences, light joyful ones, some that he could hardly remember. They were all there for him to see. As time passed it became rather like viewing a movie, his own movie, but it could be anyone’s movie.
He became objective about it all. And the process became automatic as well. As he continued with everyday life, the experiences just popped into consciousness, he no longer needed to actively recall them. He was often just somewhere else in his life, experiencing something else as his life continued on.
But strangely enough he began to notice something different, a lightening up, a sense of freeing. As if he was unloading a heavy burden.
He became aware of a part of him that wasn’t actually dying at all, it was becoming alive, being born.
A very spacious, delightfully empty place that appeared to be within him, that knew no opposites, no death. A new calmness and clarity that began to pervade his whole being, more and more.
He could let the old life pass by, let the memories float away and instead start to concentrate on this something new that was alive within him.
Listen to it, be guided by it. He asked himself – was he really born to die?
Or had this apparent dying process allowed something new to be born?
Was he not in actual fact dying to live!
