Die Before You Die

“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

It is one thing to know this is truth.
It is another thing completely to actually live it.

A few years ago, I chose to live it in a very different sort of way; by stepping out of the rat race, slowing down so I can focus on what is most important in my life.

And that has made all the difference.

Enough talking about stress and the rat race.
Enough talking about wants and desires, longings and hopes; inaccessible stuff that is out there somewhere.

Inner peace and joy are already within; accessible by choosing and doing.

Time to reconnect to life and people in a whole new way.

 Die Before You Die

Life is less about the living
and more about the day by day
quality and depth of our dying.

For it is only when a seed
lets go and is let go of,
falls to the ground and dies,
is buried and cracks open,
It is then and only then,
that transformation and birth
of new life can come forth.

“The Mystery of ‘Die before you Die’ is this:
That the gifts come after your dying and not before.
Except for dying, you artful schemer,
No other skill impresses God. One Divine gift
Is better than a hundred kinds of exertion.
Your efforts are assailed from a hundred sides,
And the favor depends on your dying.
The trustworthy have already put this to the test.”
(Jalaluddin Rumi)

For from the very moment we are born
we begin to die.
All of life is a day by day process
of letting go… and letting come…

“Do you know what it means to come into contact with death, to die without argument? Because death, when it comes, does not argue with you. To meet it, you have to die every day to everything: to your agony, to your loneliness, to the relationship you cling to; you have to die to your thought, to die to your habit, to die to your wife so that you can look at your wife anew; you have to die to your society so that you, as a human being, are new, fresh, young, and you can look at it. But you cannot meet death if you don’t die every day. It is only when you die that there is love. A mind that is frightened has no love, it has habits, it has sympathy, it can force itself to be kind and superficially considerate. But fear breeds sorrow, and sorrow is time as thought. So to end sorrow is to come into contact with death while living, by dying to your name, to your house, to your property, to your cause, so that you are fresh, young, clear, and you can see things as they are without any distortion. That is what is going to take place when you die... So one has to live every day dying, dying because you are then in contact with life.”

– Krishnamurti, The Book of Life