Lifeletter #89: The Red Pill

A woman I was working with died recently. She was very dear to me, and I have been grieving the loss of her, and her beautiful spirit. I was aware that she might die, but it happened much more quickly than I expected. After I received the news, I could hear myself speaking to her,  saying, “ Oh, that was too fast. I wasn’t really ready for that.”

Then I was drawn into a deep questioning, that just went on and on. ‘When have I ever really been ready for death? Is it even possible? How much time do I spend avoiding it? What kind of life would we have together, if we could begin to make friends with death?’

 

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? 

                                                                                            ~ Mary Oliver

 
I have worked with Hospice grief groups over the years. In those circles of grieving there are so many gifts being given and received, gifts that you would not expect. One of the strongest  is the gift of clarity. Death is actually the great awakener. It pulls all of the cobwebs out of our mind, and cuts away, like a bright sword, all the things we have been making so important. What we are left with is what matters. What was always important, we just failed to really notice.

But that clarity comes with a price. Waking up is not comfortable. Facing death takes a lot of courage. It’s like taking the red pill in the Matrix.

Here’s what the urban dictionary says about this:

“This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill: the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill: you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” – Morpheus, The Matrix

‘Red pill’ has become a popular phrase among cyberculture and signifies a free-thinking attitude, and a waking up from a “normal” life of sloth and ignorance. Red pills prefer the truth, no matter how gritty and painful it may be.

The urban dictionary is right–this human thing is a lot more gritty and painful that most of us like to contemplate. Who wants to think about death? Who wants to be a red pill? It’s morbid, dark, scary. Let’s take the blue pill, every morning, with our coffee or tea. Let’s pretend death is never going to happen and get on with the business of living. Let’s leave these deeper, larger matters for people like the Dalai Lama. It’s too much for me. I’m just a little human, trying to get along…

Until something happens—which it will. I was talking to a client yesterday about how being a highly successful and accomplished person in the world has nothing to do with how you will show up in the face of death and dying. It’s an entirely different dimension of life, requiring different capacities. Luckily, this man I am working with has developed some of those capacities-he is in a chemo ward right now.

I asked him this question: “How do you connect with that which is unconditioned, sacred, and boundless, in the midst of what you are going through?”

He paused for a moment and then replied, “I connect with unconditioned being most easily in the midst of three different experiences: when I am sad, hopeless and grateful.”

I felt my whole body awaken as I received the living truth of his answer.  He really had no idea why those three experiences would be his doorways into that space where separation disappears.

When we explored this together, it became apparent that sadness softens the heart and opens us to the nature of impermanence, the relentless flow of life, in which all of us are being carried.  Hopelessness offers us surrender, a chance to really feel how little control we have. And gratitude is what happens when we stop arguing with life and feel how much has already been given.

These three doorways are like death itself. A great friend, disguised as something I might turn away from, flee from, reject.  A friend who comes, again and again, to deliver me into what is right here, to awaken me to the preciousness of this moment.

 

with love,

Shayla