In the summer of 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I thought it was an appropriate time to take on a personal 40-day challenge to live each day with death on my mind.
This challenge was inspired by the late spiritual teacher Stephen Levine’s book A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last, a classic manual for conscious living and dying. In the spirit of Levine, I resolved to keep a “death journal,” in which I’d offer my daily reflections and meditations on specific themes related to death.
During the 40-day period, I partook in the Buddhist Maranasati practice (meditation on one’s own death), reflected on my first encounter with death as a child, looked to the natural world for answers about birth and death, and spent many nights in silent contemplation of the future passing of loved ones.
Two intentions for the 40-day challenge
Throughout this 40-day exercise, two intentions were always foremost on my mind. The first was to cultivate greater joy in my life by opening more deeply to each moment. The second was to constantly remember the impermanent nature of our physical reality.
Through activities like hiking in nature, I experienced the overflowing joy, unbounded freedom and mysterious wonder of a child. And through exercises like the Buddhist Maransati practice and recitation of certain death mantras (inspired by Levine’s own death chants), I managed to keep death and dying on my mind for the 40 days.
While more fully opening to death, I noticed that time seemed to slow down, yet somehow each moment grew with a greater sense of urgency. This is among the most important lessons I took away from the challenge: Each moment is truly sacred and filled with meaning. Knowing that we can die at any moment should be enough for us all to rise from our chairs and live our lives with more passion.
Transcending our bodily forms
During this 40-day period, I experienced greater joy and became more aware of the impermanent nature of my physical body. As an added positive benefit, I also became more identified with the soul plane. Working through my own fears of death and dying allowed me to vraiment see that while our bodies will inevitably die, some eternal essence of who we are (call it the soul or the self) is deathless. I’ve long believed that our spirits are infinite, but during those 40 days, this mere belief solidified into a firmer faith.
However, despite all the personal breakthroughs and insights I encountered during those 40 days, I also experienced moments when my old fears of death crept back up on me. Two examples stand out. On the fifth day of the challenge, my old publisher Aaron Y. passed away. Less than one month before dropping his body, Aaron had learned the devastating news that he had Stage 4 cancer. His sudden death hit me like a ton of bricks.
For days afterward, I struggled to grasp the question of how someone so positive and caring (Aaron was really such a beautiful and kind soul who always believed in me) could suffer through such a painful and sudden death.
I really stewed on this question for a long time because something about the nature of his death just didn’t sit right with me. So, there I was on an ego trip (yet again) somewhat self-righteously judging events of the Universe as if I knew how it should all really go down!
And that’s when it hit me. We truly have no control over the time and manner of our passing. As the great Indian saint Neem Karoli Baba taught, we don’t die one moment before or after we’re supposed to. When our time comes to transcend our forms, that’s it. There can be no bargaining it away. No holding it off for tomorrow. The wheel of birth and death fatefully turns down the karmic road of creation.
A fear of flying dissipates
The other moment that really exposed my old fears occurred while I was flying on a plane during Day 21 of the 40-day challenge. Ever since I was young, I’ve always had a fear of flying. But flying during a pandemic only seemed to worsen my anxiety.
Upon arriving at the Atlanta International Airport that day, I recall feeling more anxious than usual. Seeing everyone wearing face masks was unsettling. It felt like I was trapped in some bad zombie apocalypse movie where my fear of contracting the virus somehow equaled my fear of flying. Of course, as I boarded my flight and settled into my customary seat by the aisle, I felt that familiar fear rising inside me once again.
Something miraculous happened in that moment of sheer terror: I somehow managed to flip into the witness mode for just a minute to see that my fear of death was at the root of all my anxiety.
As the plane took off, I attempted to calm my mind by repeating the Maha mantra (The Great mantra in the Hindu faith devoted to Sri Krishna). Repeating those sacred words greatly helped ease my discomfort. But then about an hour into the flight, the plane hit bad turbulence and I felt an anxiety attack coming on. As the turbulence worsened, I noticed that both my forehead and the palms of my hands were covered in sweat and that my breathing had grown fast and shallow.
Then something miraculous happened in that moment of sheer terror: I somehow managed to flip into the witness mode for just a minute to see that my fear of death was at the root of all my anxiety. As soon as I acknowledged this fear, I instantly began to calm down and then rode through the remaining turbulence with only mild concern.
While I ended up working through my fears during the flight, I’d still allowed myself to be sucked into my own melodrama. When the plane safely landed and I exited at my gate, all I could do was laugh at my own irrational fears of dying while flying.
Try the 40-day challenge when it feels right
When the time feels right, I highly recommend embarking on your own 40-day challenge to live with death on your mind. If nothing else, I promise you’ll experience at least a mild loosening of your own fears surrounding the moment when you, too, must transcend your body.
As the great mystic novelist Leo Tolstoy once said, “Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs.” It would be a great benefit to us all to heed his wise words and get on with our fearless journeys in this life and beyond.
«LECTURE CONNEXE» A LIFE WORTH LIVING: Death, Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich and the effects of mind-wandering»
image 1 : geralt; image 2 : Delta Aircraft Cleaning
