I think that moving towards a non-dual state involves a letting go of the idea of death as being something separate from life. The idea of life and death is one of the most extreme dualistic concepts that there is. What do we fear? The unknown. Death is a huge unknown. Sometimes we fear the known but those things we know are illusions. Our insecurities can cause our egos to convince us of all manner of false ideas in order to quiet our inner turmoil as it relates to the human demise. Ironically, the ego is the root of most, if not, all the suffering we create and endure. On my stepmother’s death bed, she said to me, “Honey, no one gets out alive.” Death is an integral part of living. Everything ultimately blends and recycles. Everything moves on.

Not all deaths are equal nor are the circumstances surrounding how we must deal with those deaths. There are tortuous deaths. There are suicides. There are murders. There are horrific accidents. There are drug overdoses. There are heart attacks. There is death that happens during sleep. Any manner of ways in which death occurs. In my life, I have lost my wife to cancer, my mother to an aortic aneurysm, my father to a heart attack and my mother in law to brain cancer. I have lost dear friends due to a number of issues. Pets and rescue animals (which can be the emotional equivalent to children) I have lost are too numerous to contemplate. We are talking hundreds. The emotional impact was dependent on how deeply attached I was. My spouse and family were the hardest hitting but there were several pets that I was very close to that elicited nearly the same level of grief.
There was a pulsing quality to the grief. I referred to them as waves of emptiness that seemed to suck all of the energy out of me and leave me devoid of joy. Over time the waves diminished in size and frequency, but the waves could go on for years.

Part of the problem around death is our finite and limited viewpoint. Our paradigm exists within a context that is physical. Time and space. It is all we know, and we define our world within those limitations. We work with the clay that we have. Our conscious awareness sees this corporeal world with beginnings and endings. The real world we experience is blended with an unseen and unknown realm that is vast and may even be infinite. Our minds are incapable of knowing this but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t so.

Our universe is mostly comprised of dark matter and dark energy (over 90%). We call it dark because we can’t measure it, examine it or describe it. We know it exists because of its effect on the parts that we can measure. If we rely totally on our senses our world is even smaller. Our hearing is within a small spectrum in terms of decibels and wavelengths. Our seeing is a miniscule band within the electromagnetic spectrum. Our sense of smell when compared to other animals such as dogs is abysmally lacking. Our touch is limited to whatever we can contact. On top of all that we are only able to sense what our brains can process. There are a broad range of phenomena that we simply do not have the capacity to recognize. Can we see a magnetic field? No, not without making it visible in some way that our senses can respond to its effects.

What got me thinking about this whole idea of death is food. Nearly everything we consume has to die unless it is ripe fruit which we consume as it is dying. We make conscious decisions about what we choose to eat. In that we are a trinity of selves, our food choices are focused on two of those selves – the physical and the mental with the food for the soul sitting outside the physical domain. As humanity goes, we are very diverse eaters. I have heard it said that if it moves, we will eat it. I can also think of a broad range of items that don’t move that we eat as well. We consume representatives from every single one of the six kingdoms of life. The interesting thing is that we are also made up of representatives of all six kingdoms of life. Maybe there is some validity to the sentiment, ‘You are what you eat’.

In examining the physical aspect of our being we need to understand the chemical makeup, systems and needs of our bodies. When deprived of certain nutrients, trace elements, vitamins, proteins, fats and carbohydrates our bodies start to malfunction and can eventually stop working altogether. As an interpretive naturalist I would teach my students about nature and natural systems. If I examine the skull of any animal, I can deduce what that animal consumed by looking at its dentition. The types of teeth or beak will indicate whether they were an herbivore, omnivore or carnivore. The human skull shows tell-tale signs of humans being omnivores. The evolved human body was a result of eating a diverse diet. Our bodies generally know what is missing and we develop cravings for certain foods to fulfill those needs.

The mental part of food decision making is where people make choices of what food they will eat based on a sense of correct action in the world. All the different forms of vegetarianism and vegan come about from perceptions of inequities occurring in the world or from a desire to be more humane and responsible with the environment. Some of these inequities are rooted in a definable reality, such as factory farms that treat animals like cogs in a money machine. The ways in which animals are treated is truly inhumane. Nothing can justify those actions. Stopping the consumption of meat for these reasons is valid and reasonable. However, animals that are raised in a humane environment and whose lives are honored and respected are not in pain or anguish. Animals that are treated with dignity and when they are killed are done so in a way where they do not suffer, that source of meat is not tainted. Because, with few exceptions, there is nothing that we eat that does not die. We are cutting short the lives of plants, animals, fungus and other higher organisms. But understand that we are part of the system. We are consumers. Even when we make decisions to abstain from hurting or using animals, we can never be true to that sentiment. When we eat lettuce, we are consuming living nematodes. When we eat any meal the tardigrades that live in our eyebrows fall onto our food and are consumed with them. Bacteria are consumed in great quantity with nary a thought as to their passing. Finally, game hunting for food actually keeps a lot of animals from dying of starvation.

Death is a part of life.