We’ll never know the essence of death, or what lies beyond.  We’d be missing an opportunity, however, if we didn’t examine the issue more closely – what can be learned, where might it lead, are there clues to what may be after, is it only a phase of something greater?  One needs to let their preconceived notions go, and go deep within to explore and listen to what may come forth.

Physical and/or Spiritual:  The question of “Where did I come from?” Is really only addressing the “I” that is the physical body – but the physical aspect originated in non-beingness.  We come from mystery and we return to mystery.  The truth would seem to be that our essence is eternal.  Only our physical body appears to come and go in a cycle of birth and death.

The End or Reincarnation:  Perhaps it is not true that the expression of God through our physical self is an endpoint.   That would be to create an ego-driven life.  The lesson in this philosophical journey may be to recognize our primary identity as a spiritual being that is eternal and therefore impervious to both birth and death.  Perhaps the human journey in bodily form is barely a parenthesis in the eternity of our real self.  Before we shed our physical body and complete the return trip we can hopefully begin to understand our original nature – and by making an effort to be more like what we imagine our Source of being to be.

Living Consciously:  Whatever you do, you will die.  Whatever you manage to build will be broken down, sometimes while you’re still around to watch.  The day will come that your life’s work is unraveled.  It appears the lesson is to not be aware of what death is, but of what life is.  The best preparation for death is to become more and more enlightened in this life.

Dying Consciously:  The key to conscious dying is living consciously – knowing who we are, why we’re here, what we’re doing.  Everyone has the opportunity to find that out.  That’s conscious living.  Then we don’t have to worry about dying, because we will.  Death is the stripping away of all that is not you.  The secret of life may be to “die before you die” – and find that there is no death.

The Common Journey:  We do know that we are not alone.  There are others on their way on the same track.  We are travelers from nowhere to nowhere, on our way from nothing to nothing.  The track may be narrow and steep and boring and frightening, but everybody walks on it.  We are not alone but linked to everything around us.

The voice of Nature loudly cries, and many a message from the skies, that something in us never dies.  Robert Burns  (1791)

The spiritual life does not remove us from the world, but leads us deeper into it.  H.M.  Nouwen

We see in straight lines, but life is circles.  Anon

Body is like a suit of clothes.  It is not who you are.  We are spirit.   Course in Miracles

Enlightenment is realizing death does not exist.  One transcends death by realizing it does not exist.