I was doing some reading in astrology this afternoon, and ran across some discussion of "death." You might wonder why such a topic was discussed in an astrology book, but in fact one's destiny or fate is in one's chart, as is the search for meaning...and where meaning is likely to be found for each of us. Life, we all discover, is filled with suffering. And one of the most frightening prospects for us in the physical is the prospect of dying. So we don't think about it for almost all of our lives. Then, when it is time, we go into shock, denial, avoidance, fear, depression, and finally acceptance...that is, if we have time to go through those steps. Death comes suddenly for many through accident, heart attack or stroke, or cruelty from others.  But those who have studied the issue of dying teach that it is very helpful to contemplate and prepare for our death, for in preparing for it we have an opportunity to use our death as a teacher and mentor. And we have the chance to accept our death as OUR death...something that is not an ending but a transition...and perhaps even an adventure for the curious. (Not to say morbid!)

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I'm a Sagitttarian Sun, a Taurus Moon (Intercepted), and a Gemini Ascendant. Basically, that means that for most of my life, I was not able to reach a state of consciousness where I could FEEL alive. I am mentally adroit (Gemini) and even intuitive/imaginative (Sagittarian Sun with Neptune in Libra/5th House), but have never been particular attentive to this physical body walking around under my head. Well, that's where the trouble was, because it is very difficult to find a meaning in one's suffering--and we all suffer--when we don't feel alive and feel the sensation of pleasure in our bodies.

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So many of us go through life racing to get ahead, striving to be safe, struggling to keep a marriage afloat, the children in school and out of jail or the hospital, hold on to a job, maintain the standard of living. I remember distinctly a teaching exercise I had some years back to work through a maze blindfolded.  The maze represented my life. I was told that, somewhere in this incomprehensible passage, there was a treasure. But no one would tell me what the treasure was nor where I might find it. So I struggled, climbed, went under, wiggled through that maze, uncomprehending anything except that it was a very unpleasant experience. I had one thing on my mind: getting to the end of that maze as quickly as possible.

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Well, I did finally get through that d**d experience after two hours. I was weary, bored and battered when I got to the end. That is when I remembered the Treasure. So to make a long story shorter, I had to go back through that maze backward, blindfolded, looking again for the Treasure. I would have never found it. In the end, I cheated, peaking out and seeing where others were grouped. The Treasure was above everyone's head, in the ductwork running across the ceiling. Now, how was anyone to every find that Treasure blindfolded. Stumbling around the way we were, we were all LOOKING DOWN to keep our feet under us and not trip.

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Once I was out of that room, I realized something. I had lived my life exactly as I had passaged that maze. All I had in my mind was getting to the end safely. All I understood about life was that I had to survive my working years so I could reach retirement. And retirement was the "reward" of inactivity for all those years of slaving away. I was controlled by my fear of insecurity and poverty. Never once had I every "looked up" to find a higher purpose to living or to find any thing that would motivate me to live my life in a better way for me, specifically.  In fact, I had never thought of myself as an individual at all, or a person who might choose to live his life in a unique way compared to all those others working dads. The Maze was a hard lesson for me, but an important lesson. Life is too precious to live unconsciously. And yet we nearly all do live our lives in this way.

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The other thing about the Maze experience was that the "treasure" was located very near the beginning of the maze. You might think, as I did, that the reward would come near the end, because that is the way we all live our lives. We live our lives "putting off" the rewards we associate with careers and marriage and wealth until late in life because we are busy earning the rewards when we are younger. We live those early years stressed out of our minds, putting in the hours at work, fighting our kids and our spouses, trying to pay the bills for things we or our family purchased that everyone else had or wanted.

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One of the big shocks I had in my forties was the unexpected deaths of close associates and famous people in the news. Those people, I knew, had like me, put off the rewards of their lives until later, working themselves into exhaustion. But their time had run out. They got no reward. And it occurred to me after this Maze Experience that I had made a mistake. I had misunderstood what life was all about. I had chosen the wrong goals for my life early on and had struggled to hold onto those inappropriate goals all my life. I thought "All those years wasted!"

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So in short, I spent a number of years going back to find my own unique "treasure"...a dream I'd had as a child that had been dropped and repressed and forgotten many years before. I needed to find out what that was that was so clear then and so cloudy now. I realized that in my rush through life, I had forgotten the magical feeling of living that I'd had so clearly as a child. Then, I FELT alive and experienced such pleasure in play and imagination. Now, I felt deadened, numb, weary and my life was so existential. I realized I experienced no sense of meaning in my life. Why had I gone through all that suffering and struggle? For others? Because my parents taught me this was the way to live? Because I naively believed my school teachers? Because I thought a career was supposed to supply me with a meaning for life?

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I realized that this is MY life, and these years are the only chance I'll ever have to experience this world. I couldn't put off beginning to live one more moment. NOW is the time to start living.

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But as you know, there are so many distractions and insecurities in this society. We have to keep a job, pay the bills, pick up the groceries, go to the doctor, get the car fixed, attend PTA, plan our next vacation etc etc etc. We'll deal with this issue of life and meaning later. But death is no respector of our plans. Later is too late.

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When one begins to accept the finality of death, he realizes that there is no later we can count on. Death walks behind our left shoulder, waiting to reach out and tap us on the shoulder. This moment is all we have, all we can count on. If we accept our death and live each moment, we are never unaware that THIS IS IT. This moment, this precious moment, is the moment we have to collect our reward: experiencing being alive, ecstasy, pleasure, Beauty. That reward is being alive in this moment. It is all we had when we were born. We will leave it behind when we die. We experience this moment as a pleasureable experience or as suffering and boredom. How can we make it into a pleasurable experience?

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Act on our feelings rather than our logic. That is the key to pleasure and happiness. Happiness comes from doing what we FEEL like doing rather than what logic tells us we should do. Pleasure is experienced through the body and through the emotions. The mind feels nothing. The mind, in fact, has no idea what it wants. The body knows what it wants. It wants pleasurable sensation. It wants delicious food. It wants to see beautiful sights. It wants sexual experiences and the intimacy of friendships with both men and women. It wants to smell the wonders of this earth. It wants to feel awe and spiritual ecstasy. It wants to love and be loved. It wants to touch and be touched. It wants to hear lovely music, the soft voice of a lover, the wind in the mountains and the trees. It wants sensation, emotion and to explore this world. The mind wants....ideas, concepts, goals, budgets, timelines, beginning and end points, and other practical things society demands.

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But when the mind turns to supporting the body and its needs, wonderful things start to happen. The mind becomes aware of how it can act to support the body's needs and pleasures and wishes. The mind notices that it experiences feeling, emotion, sensation through the body. And this idea changes a person's whole idea about how life should be lived to FEEL alive and ENJOY being alive. Every moment can be pleasure. Every second can be a pleasurable experience when the mind comes present and pays attention to the sensations of being alive in the world. But to live this way, the mind must grow silent. Mind must not be permitted to go off into daydreaming or planning or remembering the past or into wishing we were someone else going somewhere else. There is no time for woolgathering any more.

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This moment is our reward and the sensation and experience of being alive is the reward we get for being born. All the work we feel we have to do, all the responsibilities we feel encumbered with, all the expectations others have for us draw us away from this moment and the pleasure awaiting us right here, right now. We all to easily surrender our reward in exchange for suffering and dullness. And this is madness.

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Society is Mad...Insane. Everyone is making this choice without realizing that their reward for being born is being given away thoughtlessly.  Those who wake up, realize that death walks behind our left shoulder, and ask "What the heck am I doing?" There has got to be a way to live in which I feel a sense of meaning to my life, in which I feel alive and happy to be here, in which I feel well and sane and content. And this is not it."

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Let death be our teacher and mentor. Each moment we let pass unconsciously living in an insane world is a terrible loss. Wake up now. Come to your Self. Take your power and your treasure back.