The Fear of Death: Why We Fear What We Do Not Live
To understand death, we must first awaken to life — and the love that transcends both
Why are people afraid of death? And why do questions about life after death arise so often?
Perhaps the better question is whether we truly experience life before death — whether we are even aware of it.
If we become conscious of life before death, death itself may no longer seem so foreign or frightening. Someone once said that there are only two emotions: fear and love. Where one reigns, the other cannot exist.
Indeed, in the face of mortal fear, there is no love. In the presence of love, there is no fear — or death.
When love remains, life continues in full force. Life that knows no death.
Death, then, becomes just another profound moment within life itself — a transition where the game continues.
The moments of dying are, in truth, moments of the highest celebration of life’s mystery.
Just as the peaks of change are the most intense — when one barrier collapses, allowing a river to break through, reaching a magnificent, almost orgasmic climax — so too is death.
That singular moment when life sheds its illusion is nothing less than the ecstatic pinnacle of a love that gives rise to the next unfolding of life.
Life flows like blood through veins, nourishing every part equally, making no distinction between organs or cells.
Death is simply the end of one phase, one form, as consciousness seeks a broader field of expression.
Until we awaken to this deeper awareness — to life itself — we will fear not death, but life.
Because life demands freedom. And it is freedom that terrifies most people.
In freedom, we encounter our true faces, reflected in those around us.
Everything we do to others, we ultimately do to ourselves.
There is no promised paradise, no future salvation. Heaven and hell are already here, and it is up to us to choose between them.
The fear of death is, at its core, the fear of surrendering ourselves to others, of giving love freely, of dying for it.
It’s easy to place that responsibility on God or the gods.
But when we are called to carry that burden within ourselves — here and now — we invent religions, philosophies, and countless excuses to postpone the moment.
We create rigid concepts of time, yet time itself is an illusion. We become only dimly aware of this at two moments: in death and in the act of making love.
In both, the worries of the past and the hopes of the future dissolve into the eternal now.
That’s why the archetypes of death and sex are so intimately connected — so taboo.
There can be no true pleasure in sex, no genuine lovemaking, where the fear of death remains.
The fear of death is the fear of life.
The fear of love.
