“Underneath I See You Lurk.”

Die, if thou wouldst be that which thou dost seek!
~ Percy Shelly

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A dear friend lost her brother to suicide recently. Everybody that he touched was devastated - their lives shattered by the despair that took him and which swallowed them whole. It is a tragedy beyond words and imagining - I did not want nor need to try on that coat. Still, with the deepest intention and love, my heart sought some connection to her sorrow and confusion, and what came was the memory of the emotion called "hopelessness".

What does hopelessness feel like?

I dared to follow that thought, those memories and emotions, and perceptions. My mind, like Theseus, prepared with a golden thread lest I lose myself in its labyrinth, then my body, like Agean jumped into an ocean of despair, and then my heart split wide open, swallowed me into the realization:
 
Death comes not to this body first.

It is preceded by the tender wounds that form scars or within the habits of deep ignorance, blaming others for our unhappiness or lost in the words of others; or when we don't have the skills to revisit our beliefs - when we disempower ourselves from the senses, investigation, and wisdom that help to navigate and transform our experience, keep us far from "home".

Is there nothing eviler than the idea of life stealing away the vital alive moment that is here right now?

When we are not in touch with our True Nature, we aren’t living, or alive. We are the walking dead reacting from the past rather than rising from it. All these things – these objects, these possessions, these relationships, these identities and roles, these ideas about what life is and isn't - are merely postponing the life that is available right here right now.
 
What difference will this object/idea/belief/habit make when I’m dead?

When I die, everyone that knew me and who is still alive will mourn me. My name will be spoken, and memories that include me will tug, but within the appropriate time, my stuff will be taken, given away, or thrown away, and the images of me will fade.

Everything that I thought was so essential to my happiness will no longer exist - I will be forgotten and all that will remain is my essence, the taste of me that I have offered others mixed with the taste they have offered me. Even if my name is not spoken again, nor images exist, I will continue to exist in the vibration of choices and responses of love that affect those still living and all those with whom they come into contact.

It begs me to ask, "How do I want to be remembered?"

What difference will these words make if they deny the meaning and reality of our predicament - if they do not serve the Truth?

What we so deeply desire is masked in our fear of death, or in what these words mean about the death of this person or this ego.

As long as we seek solely with the mind, thread or no thread, we will get lost in the philosophy, psychology, and biology of its relationships and theories about those relationships. However, if we navigate this moment with the heart … if we use this moment as a vehicle for peace or freedom, then we recognize that it is the saturation of this ego that makes us feel like we are dying.

Dissolution is like stirring a tablespoon of sugar into a large glass of water: the sugar is still there, has a taste, and is included in the experience of the glass of water; death is over-saturating the glass and being overwhelmed by the idea of this body of fearful thoughts. 
 
Noticing this distinction is the opposite of hopelessness; this is hope itself - that with attention, awareness, and moderation, we can exist within and through this glass - we can taste God, Love, this isness that we are.

And if we practice by allowing ourselves to feel the feeling of inclusion also known as dissolution and not action upon it through our thoughts or through any effort that would oversaturate it, we would know Faith.
 
Faith!

Faith that creation is happening – that the world and nature are happening and there is nothing left to "do" but "be" - like falling asleep and willing wanting to be alone from any thought or idea about what you are -- trusting that this is truly being awake and being held by all that cannot be seen.