“If you learned you were going to die in a few days, what regrets would you have? Which of them could you resolve if you were given another 5 years? …Do you try to envision your future and live now as you think you’ll one day wish you had?” ~ Gregory Stock, The Book of Questions
“After a medical examination, your doctor calls and says you have a rare lymphatic cancer and only a month to live. A week later, she informs you that the lab test was wrong and you’re perfectly healthy. Do you think the insights from having to face death this way would be worth the pain? …What life changes do you think a close brush with death might provoke for you?”
Gregory Stock, The Book of Questions
“Would you rather die peacefully among friends at age 50, or painfully and alone at age 80?” ~ Gregory Stock, The Book of Questions
“It does not matter how long you live. It only matters that you love it while you’re here.” ~ Ellen Gilchrist, Acts of God
“If you were to die right now, what would be the feeling texture of your last moment? Are you feeling the infinite mystery of existence, so that your last moment would be one of awe and gratitude? Is your heart so wide open that your last moment would dissolve in perfect love? Or, are you so absorbed in some task that you would hardly notice death upon you, until the last instant, whoosh, and everything is gone?” ~ David Deida, The Way of the Superior Man
“Long life is indeed a blessing, but maybe we overdo our concern for the length of our lives and give insufficient attention to the passion we bring to whatever time we have. The meaning and purpose of life are great mysteries, and in that light a very brief life, of only minutes, can be full and rounded. The soul has appeared in the flesh; then it returns to its home of origin.”
Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.
“Almost every day we are asked to extend the range of our acquaintance with life. It is one of several ways to live intensely, and it is also a way to prepare for death. For death is the ultimate stranger. This is not necessarily a morbid thought, because only by allowing death to play a role in daily life do we really live. Opening to another society or another individual – they are two levels of culture – we die a little death in relation to what has become familiar. But those little deaths create openings to new life.”
Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.
“Unless you know yourself as eternal beings, part of the whole, you will remain afraid of death. The fear of death is simply because you are not aware of your eternal source of life. Once the eternity of your being is realized, death becomes the greatest lie in existence. Death has never happened, never happens, never will happen, because that which is, remains always – in different forms, on different levels, but there is no discontinuity. Eternity in the past and eternity in the future both belong to you. And the present moment becomes a meeting point of two eternities: one going toward the past, one going toward the future.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
“One of our problems is that very few of us have developed any distinctive personal life. Everything about us seems secondhand, even our emotions. In many cases we have to rely on secondhand information in order to function. I accept the word of a physician, a scientist, a farmer, on trust. I do not like to do this. I have to because they possess vital knowledge of living of which I am ignorant. Secondhand information concerning the state of my kidneys, the effects of cholesterol, and the raising of chickens, I can live with. But when it comes to questions of meaning, purpose, and death, secondhand information will not do. I cannot survive on a secondhand faith in a secondhand God. There has to be a personal word, a unique confrontation, if I am to come alive.” ~ Alan Jones, Theologian
“It is very important that you only do what you love to do. You may be poor, you may go hungry, you may lose your car, you may have to move into a shabby place to live, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do. Otherwise, you will live your life as a prostitute, you will do things only for a reason, to please other people, and you will never have lived. And you will not have a pleasant death.” ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.” ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
“Just remember, loss is imaginary. Nothing ever disappears in the universe; it only changes form. If there is something that still wounds you, it’s because of the meaning that you have linked to it. Maybe what you need to do is to have faith and say, ‘Even though I don’t know why this has happened, I am willing to trust. Someday, when the time is right, I will understand.'” ~ Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then ’tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.
~ Emily Dickinson