Remember, You Will Die
Memento Mori - the Latin phrase translating as "Remember, You Will Die" is well-known in our culture and society and yet deeply misunderstood. On one end, It’s been hijacked by purveyors of mindless* hedonism as simply going forth and satisfying every single impulse of instant gratification, like a toddler let loose in a sweet shop, unsupervised. And at the other extreme, it’s been snatched by those puritannical representatives of the fiction of a wrathful, judgy, old bearded white Father-God, warning against an afterlife of hideous hell and damnation if the sinful, filthy compulsions of the body and senses are not completely subdued, denied and repressed.
*Mindful hedonism - a branch of the Poison Path - is a potent tantric-alchemical initiatory lineage path to liberation so the distinction has to be made. It is the lightning, left-hand, feminine path to radical, non-dual self-awareness. Also a path not to be embarked upon without the guidance of one directly schooled in its ways. More on this in a future missive.
As with all polarizing extremes, both are insane and of no use to those of us seeking radical inner-decolonization.
Both completely miss the depth and liberating potential of Memento Mori.
Our modern post-industrialized global culture is steeped in a total rejection of Death, even though, sooner or later, we are going to die. Stop and allow that to really sink into your body-mind-spirit for a couple of uncomfortable moments, outside of simply the intellectual awareness of it.
Breathe it in, and notice how you’ve been conditioned to reject this fact of life, how your body literally tenses and closes up against life.
Death is the ultimate taboo, the ultimate orphaned aspect of this realm of duality, a realm that our wild and kinky souls chose to incarnate into. We have been trained into the madness of behaving as if it can somehow be avoided, bypassed.
Death-bypassing is a condition that we have all been colonized into absorbing by rejecting Death’s incontrovertible inevitability.
All that that ends up doing is creating an inner soil fertilized by fear, which makes us pliable, easily controlled and ready to give up on living our lives fully and in open-hearted celebration of all that is - and where Death is given the seat at the table that it rightfully deserves.
The brazenly joyful Major Arcana of Death from my deck of choice, the Thoth tarot, accompanied by these words:
"The Universe is Change; every Change is the
effect of an Act of Love; all Acts of Love contain Pure Joy. Die daily!
Death is the apex of one curve of the snake of Life:
behold all opposites as necessary complements,
and rejoice."
I’m not talking about going out and taking dumb risks to put your life deliberately in danger. Death is coming for you sooner or later- you don’t have to go chasing after it. I’m not talking about any reductively comfortable meanings that the baby-ego grasps for (see above re. Hedonism and religious puritanism).
I’m talking about the tantric-alchemy of the full-bodied and emotional embrace of the inevitability and mystery of Memento Mori - of remembering you will die, could die at any given moment - as a regular practice that affirms every precious breath of Life.
Of course, New Age Law of Attraction types will throw their collective hands up in horror at such abominable suggestions. Let’s just put those wolfish puritans dressed in sheep’s clothing to one side for a moment and dance with Death.
We each of us have an unknown allotted time in this given lifetime, in this particular incarnation. Looking after our health and well-being ensures that the quality of the lives we lead are relatively easeful, and this can, in many cases, prolong our lifespans, giving us more time to spend living our precious and fleeting lives.
This is great. If you have a happy and balanced lifestyle - as you were, keep doing what you’re doing. Living well, long and prospering is good for your health, the health of your family, your community and that of the planet’s - especially when you’re able to cultivate a vivid awareness of yourself as an actual, physical, interconnected, extension of Gaia.
But underpinning all of that is the inescapable reality that you could die any day.
None of us know when or how Death is coming for us, and that is one of the great, unassailable mysteries of Life. Cultivating a regular practice of contemplating Death creates such a full-bodied, brave, joyful and compassionate celebration of Life - of your own and of all that is - that your heart will open and transform into the pulsing, vibrating turbo-charged morphic field of resonance that it was intended to be.
And this morphic field encompasses that other rejected, neglected orphan of lived experience: Grief.
Yes, you will open up to the experience of Grief (the other side of Love) with such gentle, vulnerable fortitude, that finally you will come to know the extent of your wholeness - the wholeness of all that is.
And why is it important to feel Grief?
Because Grief has been so maligned and marginalized in pretty much all post-Industrialized societies around the world - which have rejected the Joy-Grief-Life-Death dance of Shakti, the ineffable, gender-defying Feminine principle, that Grief is stuck. She’s literally dammed up in our collective unconscious and collectively, we are now literally forced to face and feel her, along with Death.
Death and Grief- like the countless rejected and colonized parts of our biodiverse wholeness - have been pathologized in our psyches, in our bodies, in our lives and societies. And like all pathologies, they deserve our grace. They deserve to be witnessed, to have their stories restored to them. They deserve transmutation and integration through mythologizing.
Contemplating Death - where we shall also meet with Grief - and opening ourselves up to them will allow for the Ten Thousand Jewels of hidden revelations of meaning and sensation to emerge. This is one of the esoteric meanings of the symbol of the lotus - revered through the ages, from the ancient Egyptians, to the Indians, to the Tibetans.
And if you are on the path to radical liberation, for yourself and for all beings everywhere, then: Memento Mori - Remember, you will die.
This radical liberation through the intentional contemplation of Death by necessity involves radical inner-decolonization: it makes us less pliant to being controlled by the dogma of fear - that is, the fear and denial of Death, whose meaning has been enslaved and distorted by patriarchal imperialism and capitalist greed.
Death is an emanation of the primordial Dark Feminine, after all. And this aspect of Her has been literally demonized so that we are so afraid of the Mystery that comes after Death, and of the painful vulnerability of Grief, that we will relinquish the birthright of our dignity and sovereignty to be present and centered for the high sensation of all that Life is - which includes Death.
This is tantra. This is alchemy. This is why we’re here. Our bodies have literally been holding this energy of fearful repression, handed down from our ancestors, ever since the fullness of the Feminine was neutered.
Opening up to the art of Death Contemplation - still practiced in many Buddhist lineages - will not only transform your life, potentiate and bring forth its innate gifts and blessings, it will invoke the wholeness of the Divine Feminine back into this world.
And that, my friend, is some deep, radical work of inner/outer decolonization.