At Your Funeral, You Can Be Yourself
Life is measured in the number of our funerals—or, at least, a life well-lived is.
Hi,
How are you this week? Have you survived your own death?
“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things,” the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote. The growth of our hearts is proportional to the number of battles they were required to fight. Each one cracks their shells open wider and wider, allowing new qualities to sprout and change the landscapes of our beings together with the terrains they inhabit.
“Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future; therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go,” reminds us the Irish poet, author, priest, and philosopher John O’Donohue. As we journey through our lives, the place we need to be taken to is, at times, our own death.
At your funeral, you can be yourself
Most of us want to learn how to live well, but few are interested in mastering the subtle art of dying. We must, of course, live before we die. But we must die many deaths before we can live fully. Life invites us to learn the craft of dying at any given moment. Yet the fear of losing what we know and cherish directs our gaze away from this delicate secret.
Our deaths mean we shed the old and shrunken elements of Self that we’ve carried for years—sometimes since we were little children—and make room for the necessary transformation to take place. Snakes shed their skin to grow (some even eat their own tails to be reborn, such as Ouroboros). On my walks here in Portugal, I watch the eucalyptus trees shedding their bark to accommodate their growing bodies—expanding inside out according to their innate wisdom.
In order to embody our deepest truths aligning with our inner calling, we must let go of who we are. Then, as Rumi, a great Sufi mystic and poet, wrote, “We can become who we might be.” The opportunity of our deaths is akin to bark-shedding or tail-eating. And our funerals are celebrations of growth.
The funeral marks the crossing of chapters, a blooming into new, more mature versions of our beings. In this most intimate moment with ourselves, we get to choose what to carry onward and what no longer serves us. “At your funeral, you can be yourself,” wrote Laura Huxley, an American author, psychotherapist and lecturer. These are the only moments in life when we face our true selves just as they are—stripped of all decorations and frippery that our minds use to spare us discomfort. And then we die—to complete the cycle. Life is measured in the number of our funerals, or at least, a life well-lived is. Each of them brings us closer to who we are meant to be.
By opening our hearts and softening our gaze, we can gain a priceless opportunity to die many times while still alive. All we need to do is take life as it comes and soothe ourselves into its offerings with our hearts trusting, feet firmly on the ground. If going forward requires us to die, we die. That’s the only way to live the life each of us is called for in our own unique ways.
The art of self-welcoming
“A new beginning is ultimately the art of self-welcoming,” writes John O’Donohue. To complete the cycles of growth which our souls guide us through, we must muster the courage for radical honesty. We need to welcome ourselves in our entirety and embrace everything we come with. To the best of our knowledge, there must be no place hidden from the sunshine of our awareness.
In the intimate moment of dying, our task is to investigate ourselves thoroughly and fully so that the grand unfolding of life can occur through us undisturbed and with grace. It’s the wish of our souls. In the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, “I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed, for where I am closed, I am false.”
The fear of change is the fear of knowing the truth. It contracts our heart, blurs our vision, and clouds the mind. We fear living fully because we fear our own potential. In the silent hour of solitude, we can sense what we were made for. This calling is throbbing within us as tangibly as the blood pulsating in our veins. With every breath, it makes itself known; its moist touch never abandons us.
“Where your fear is, there is your task,” said Carl Jung. It’s our responsibility to look it in the eye, and repeatedly so. Stepping through the fear into our many deaths, over and over again, we embody the roles our lives want from us—our deepest potential. We let go of our expectations and personal desires, and instead open up daringly and trustingly, paving the way for our souls to lead us. For that, we need to be gentle.
The art of self-welcoming is the act of opening our hearts wider, offering warmth and love to all hidden parts of ourselves, even, or especially, the ones we’re utterly ashamed of and wish would remain hidden. It is tending to our wounds, mending our broken hopes; touching with reverence, and sweetly, the riverbeds carved out by the tears across the landscapes of our soft cheeks. As life undoes us of all our pretence, our task is to turn our gaze inwards, and whisper, “I’ve got you, and I am with you through all of your unfolding.”
People will come to us as we blossom, and many will leave us as we transition through periods of death. There might be times when our funerals are attended by none. For those testing occasions, Rainer Maria Rilke in his “Letters to a Young Poet” advises us to “be happy about [our] growth, in which of course [we] can't take anyone with [us], and be gentle with those who stay behind.”
The gentleness our deaths ask of us is something we need to offer to others and ourselves in equal measure. It’s best if we grow courageous and trusting enough that we no longer expect any understanding, neither from people around us nor, at times, even ourselves, as it can limit the vastness of our unfolding. Instead, we can “believe in a love that is being stored up for [us] like an inheritance,” as Rilke continues to advice, and “have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that [we] can travel as far as [we] wish without having to step outside it.”
Love ripens through grief, and as we grieve the parts of ourselves that no longer belong to the new beginnings of our life, and we part ways with the people who stay behind, we expand the terrains which can be homed within its embrace.
The treasure chest of love is at the core of our beings. Through our many deaths, we get closer to our truest selves, closer to love. Whatever form it takes, and wherever it takes us in our everyday lives, this is where all finds its beginning and end, day after day—in the everlasting cycle of love. The calling is to embody the love that we are, to welcome ourselves within its boundless embrace.
A kindness to time
We might grow impatient at times as the roads we need to take unfold steadily before us. Many only become visible as we take the next step, for which we have no map or compass other than the gentle whisper of our souls. “The strongest position you can be in is complete surrender,” as a frequently cited quote says. And yet, we yearn to take charge, to speed things up, to be there already instead of always, incessantly, here and now.
In the grand happening of life, a helpful thing to remember is that there is no such thing as time when it comes to the journeys of our souls, and if we live our lives well, that is, if we give in to the many deaths that are asked of us, we will do all the things for which we came.
Patience is the most efficient time machine, I have found. It is also the grace we offer and become, as we repeatedly grow and fall apart. “Have great patience with all attempts at changing, for patience is respect bestowed on the present and a kindness to time,” encourages Maria Popova, a Bulgarian-born, American-based essayist and poet.
As things shift and transform through us, inside out, we can find patient steadiness within ourselves. The ripening of love, the courage of our hearts that we gain as we are defeated by greater and greater things are there to ground and centre us around our innermost truth. This truth is the axis upon which our lives spin, letting fall off everything that grows too small for it, setting us free. The respect we bestow on the present and the kindness we extend to time offer us in return the gift of slowness. Steady and centred, we’re better equipped to see our light illuminating the way forth.
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy,” wrote Rumi. Underneath the fear of the unknown, we might at times sense a gentle pulse of joy. Let us follow it, for it is the calling of our soul; it is the current in which we’ve always known how to swim. Returning to this joy day after day, moment by moment, we steady ourselves in the light of awareness that shines a spotlight on the potential of here and now. In this endless garden bed of time, we cultivate our new beginnings.
Question to you, dear reader:
What truth do you need to speak now, even if it leads to your death?
the flaking bark of the Eucalyptus is absolutely stunning. i enjoyed this thoughtful essay, perhaps especially the gentleness you've granted to the process of these deaths. there's a beautiful line in C.S. Lewis' Cupid and Psyche retelling, Til We Have Faces, "you must die before you die." the first time i read it, it felt quite abrupt. on a second reflection, it reminded me of the untangling you've described here. little deaths are difficult chances to bear and to bare our faces. perhaps that is, as you've written, a most eloquent kind of tenderness. <3
So beautiful!