Dying before death is the greatest accomplishment of a lifetime. To die before you die means to truly live.
We each wake up each morning with an impression of who we think we are. We carry an identity around with us our entire lives. It’s a personality, with a name, and a set of roles and responsibilities. This identity has a list of grievances, a past, a set of beliefs, a way of being in the world and so on.
There’s this idea of who we think we are. And then there’s the True Self. Who you really are never changes. To rediscover and come home to your True Self is the best use of this lottery ticket called life. If you’re using your time for anything outside of being your True Self, you are wasting your life.
To die before you die means to say “I am ready to let it all go. This personality, and the drama that surrounds it. The list of grievances and the beliefs. The wants and desires. The theatrics. The complaints. This person I think I am. The story. I am ready to die before I die. And in the space that creates, I am ready to experience the Truth of Who and What I am. I am ready to be free. I am ready to Truly Live.”
You must be truly ready. And when you say you’re ready to die before you die, you must truly mean it. You must have every cell of your body on board, and not a single ounce clinging onto anything else. You must dive fully off the diving board.
The funny thing is that there really is nothing to cling to. You already ARE your True Self. You already ARE whole and complete. The ego wants you to believe the stories you carry keep you safe somehow. The grievances it holds are imginary life-vests made of thin air, doing nothing but keeping you miserable. When you’re ready, you’ll have come to the realization that the ego is the exact thing causing the turmoil. The call is coming from inside the house. The only place that safety lies is in the full and complete surrender of it all.
To die before you die requires only choice and total surrender. Pain can be a beautiful catalyst, as it brings you to a place so unpleasant that you’re finally good and ready to be free. So if you’re in a great deal of suffering, this can be a turning point. That can be a place of surrender in your life.
You choose and surrender. You say
Surrender Prayer
“I am ready to let this all go. I’m ready to give you the misery, the story, the beliefs, my name, my ideas, my pain, the struggle, the chasing, the waiting, the preoccupations. All of it. Take it all. Take every scrap of it. I am ready to be free. There is nothing more important to me than this.”
When you’re ready, the words will come. You’ll say it in your own way, and you’ll truly feel the heartbreak of the ego. You’ll feel the devastation of saying goodbye to the lifetime of illusion. And you’ll also feel more at home than you’ve ever felt. You’ll discover that you’re not “losing” anything. That you’re finally gaining everything.
The rest is handled by the Divine. The universe rejoices at this decision. The angels dance and sing. You are now making space for something other than the small self to run your life. And there’s no faster way to attain a “good life” than this choice.
In dying before you die, you have chosen to live. There are no words to describe the miracle of this choice.
What Life is Like After This Choice
The outward appearance of your life after this choice doesn’t matter. It might look different, or it might not. What matters is that YOU are now different. You are now choosing differently. You are now handling yourself differently. You are now seeing things differently. You are truly living.
In the past, you might have sought success or love or material possessions for the sake of feeling whole. You’ll still enjoy success, love, and material possessions, but they will no longer be for the sake of feeling whole. They are now an outward expression of your wholeness. You enjoy them, but they aren’t “You”.
Whereas before you saw yourself in your achievements, life events, problems, and relationships, you now experience your wholeness as independent from the outer world. The outer world is happening within you, and it is not you. You are not your things. You are not your job. You are not your relationships. These are the phenomena of life, which you enjoy or don’t enjoy. But they have no effect on YOU.
The ego doesn’t disappear. The ego is now a servant for you. The ego, body, mind, and spirit are now in concert for YOU. You aren’t a slave to the ego any longer. You are now in a healthy relationship with it, appreciating it for what it does and doesn’t do. Holding compassion for its little quirks and wounds.
The most important result of this choice will be your Freedom. No matter what happens in your life, you will be free. You will be unaffected by the moving parts of this ceaselessly changing world. You will be eternally anchored into the loving truth, which is stated so beautifully in A Course in Miracles:
Nothing Real Can Be Threatended
Nothing Unreal Exists
Herein Lies The Peace of God.
Love,
Brenda
