Note from the Webmaster: This is the spot where I always post some interesting email thread that's floated across my desk in connection with SKS. Some past entries have included Bob Cergol's essay from the Templeton Power of Purpose contest (the same contest that Augie Turak won with his Brother John essay), a remarkable set of emails we received from a total stranger, and a variety of just philosophical email arguments we've had over the years.

This one falls more into the latter category. The conversation was kicked off by an article in Beliefnet about how to deal gracefully with aging. The article offers eight tips, along the lines of "cultivate your spirituality" and "protect your health," but several of which focus on leaving a legacy.

As always, I have done a bit of minor reformatting, but the words are all just as they came through the email.

A colleague forwarded the link to me and I wanted to pass it along. Not because I think it is some great word of advice, but because I think it's not and am interested in other perspectives....

I have grown close to many residents since I came to work at <a retirement community> in January. Last week, one of those residents, John See, died. That's nothing new. I work at a retirement community. People I know die every week.

He used to stop by my office a couple times a week and chat about anything and everything...his wife died 6 months ago. He told me about his experience in the hospital after by-pass surgery when he was hallucinating about demons and the floor being filled with a half foot of water. He talked about how the most important thing in his life was his wife, she was gone and he didn't know what to do anymore. He asked me if I like to drink beer. He asked me if I believe in God, because if I didn't, it was about damn time to figure out why not. He was a sweet and lonely man.

It wasn't so much that he died, but how he died that's haunting me. Mr. See had a brain aneurysm that doctors had been keeping an eye on for over 6 months. A housekeeper in Mr. See's facility was making coffee in the lounge when she heard him calling her name. John always played tricks on the housekeepers, so she thought he was up to something once again. But something in his voice didn't sound right to her, so she took a few steps back and looked down the hallway. Mr. See was crawling toward her on his hands and knees, pleading for her help. She ran straight to him, yelling for someone to call 911, immediately sat on the floor and wrapped her arms around him. He died within a couple minutes. Paramedics said his aneurysm burst.

I'm sure the aneurysm was the biological cause, but it seems to me that loneliness was a culprit, too. It was as if he waited until he was with someone. In his last moments, he couldn't stand to be alone. And isn't that how we all are? We're born alone. We die alone. And we spend all the time in between avoiding loneliness at all costs...seeking distraction at every turn.

I loved Mr. See, but I don't want to be crawling on my hands and knees, begging for help when death comes. I want to go gentle into that dark night and live my life so that I don't have to rage against it. Is that possible? Do even the wisest of men rage at the moment of their death?

That's why the article bothered me so much. I think the aspects of cultivating ourselves that Dr. Ruppenthal discusses are important. But the last step (Build Your Legacy) especially talks about leaving your mark on the world. Create something that will outlast your life. He says, "Age matters less when we pour ourselves into people and things that will in their own way continue us." It talks about how the elderly should pass on what they know to the younger generation. Aren't we doing a dis-service by encouraging these elders to leave their legacy as opposed to face into what is inevitable much sooner than later in their case?

I suppose his article is meant to be a resource for those who are aging and are scared by it, so it provides comfort (and I think they need comfort) for them to have a list of things they can do not to be scared of death. And, perhaps, I'm thinking about it from the SKS perspective that we should face into death now and scare the shit out of ourselves, so we'll be as ready as we can when the time actually comes. I just don't think our lives should be spent on leaving a legacy so much as trying to understand our desire to leave a legacy in the first place. (Which then leads me to ask, if I really don't care about leaving a legacy, why do I want to do work that I define as "meaningful"?)

http://www.beliefnet.com/newsletter/printertemplates/inspiration.aspx?date=05-09-2006

It's neither here nor there. I just wanted to pass it along,

Nic

This is definitely an interesting question, and I like the way you raise it. Leaving a legacy can, of course, be just a big ego trip: "I am Ozymandius, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." But it can also be a very beautiful thing.

Here is a thought experiment. Which of the following would you rather say on your deathbed? (Assuming you can't say both.)

a) Before I died, I found the truth. I am absolutely sure I know what the truth is. I didn't have the chance to do anything with it, but my knowledge is deep and certain.

b) I lived a life of service to those around me. Of course, since I never found the truth, I have no way of knowing for sure that my service did any good, or even that it did no harm; but with my limited knowledge, I tried.

I vote for "b." Note that this is not what I would have said fifteen years ago.

-k

I more and more feel like there are different things that we are given to figure out & different ways we are intended to grow in our lifetimes—I guess from my perspective it would be more of a middle road where it's a combination of the two and the degree to which one or the other needs to be more important to you varies from person to person. For example if you believe in reincarnation (and I'm pretty skeptical myself, but it definitely works as a good metaphor, and heck it might even be true), then maybe someone has lived lives of service so in this life they're called to wake up more than anything else, but then they'll still serve to some degree and their ability to truly be of service will be enhanced by the amount that they wake up—and on the other hand maybe someone has had lifetimes of getting closer and closer to "getting it" and then in this life is called to really go out into the world and use his understanding to serve.

On the other hand, in some ways it seems to me that when someone really gets it then usually they're also called to serve in some way....whether directly (I'm going to do all this stuff in service of others, or I'm going to become a spiritual teacher, etc) or indirectly (the wife who's standing by her husband's bed as he has a deathbed experience of realization).

Regardless....Nicole, your email is moving. First let me say that I have a huge fear of that trapped fearful thing that comes as some get old. I remember visiting my great-grandmother in the retirement home, and there was this one woman who would scream all the time: "Help me, help me, oh please God help me"—total screams of agony—it didn't matter what people would do for her, she was just in utter physical and emotional pain, and this went on at least for months. I don't know what the answer is. I think a lot when I'm in deep pain that this is to prepare me for that, but the actuallity is that if I'm ever in that I have a stash of sleeping pills and I will almost certainly do everything I can do be prepared to abort out. I do know that in a lot of cases the physical and emotional devastation & horror do seem to be related to people who haven't healed psychic wounds. But then how do you explain animals that are in agony or little kids? Sometimes it just happens, or it's something that you don't have the tools to heal on your own, no matter how much you might try to consciously heal or face the truth or find God or get it or whatever.

At the bottom I don't know how it's possible to come to some kind of peaceful resolve about people being in severe physical or emotional agony, especially when it's followed by death. Or even especially when it lasts a lifetime. At least for me personally. As much as you can try to wrap a bow around it ("Well this person needs to learn this" or "well we're all spiritual beings having a physical experience" or "Well at least this might bring him closer to truth") in my gut I don't see how some of the ugliest and hardest to bear suffering can be justified, and that article made me a little queazy too, I guess because it seemed like it was saying, in a voice all cutesy and superior-like, "All your suffering can be fixed if you just try to think about happy beaches and puppies and connect with people a little more," which wasn't just saying that it was justified or something, which is hard enough for me, but was saying "Oh it's all a simple fix."

I understand the value and importance of service. For me, to serve another is to serve God. It could be holding a person's hand on his deathbed, building a house for Habitat, or simply cooking a meal for another. I agree with Georg: it's all about intention and focus on doing good. And I would choose B.

But that's still not what's bugging me.

Maybe Mr. See would have died at the exact same time even if he hadn't crawled down the hall toward someone, but the fact that he didn't die until the housekeeper's arms were around him still strikes up something I can't communicate. Even if we spend our whole lives serving others, serving God and claiming to have faith in life after death, will we be able to die at peace?

I think about my grandfather who was one of the most devoutly Christian men I've ever known, and, yet, he struggled to stay alive for 3 hours after they took him off life support. Eyes rolling back in his head, muscles tense, wheezing, fists clenching. It wasn't until my grandmother put her hands on his cheeks, touched her nose to his and said "Jim, we're going to be fine. We're all going to be alright. You can go now. Go to God." that he calmed down, relaxed his breathing, closed his eyes and passed within 20 minutes.

Then I think about Treya Wilber in Ken Wilber's Grace and Grit who died at utter peace, ready to face it, and on whose face a smile crept after she passed. Of course she struggled through sadness, frustration, fear, anger, all of it at some point.

Common denominator in all three is that they died with someone next to them. Mr. See and the housekeeper. My grandfather and his family. Treya Wilber and her family. What does that mean? Must we spend our last breaths with someone there, showing us that they care? That our lives meant something to someone? So we can see our legacy at the moment of our death? Maybe it's not for the man who's dying, but for those he leaves behind. We think we need to comfort him.

I am not saying that I don't care about my life meaning something to someone else. I absolutely do care. That's one of my 'things' approval and identity determined by outside sources. But if we toil all our lives to serve and have absolute and honest faith that death is not the end, why do we need someone there at that very moment? Can we have absolute certainty about death without going through it?

I feel as though my questions would send me back to remedial spirituality class (ha!) but this is the first time I truly feel that I have to know the answers. I've asked them before and claimed that I wanted to or already knew the answers, but I didn't. I realize that I have no freakin' idea about any of it.

I vote A

I also go for "b." Here's why:

My guess is, to the extent that there is a "truth", person "b" did, in fact, find it, she / he just did not know that she / he found it. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz—she had those slippers early on...when the time came to use them, their function was revealed. And even if she had accidentally tapped her heels 3 times and got back to Kansas without knowing how...still she got back, and was wiser for the trip.

Person "a" might have found the truth at the penultimate moment but never have had a chance to live it. Could lead to a major regret attack.

It's OK not to know as long as we know that we don't know.

Very very profound and deep stuff Nicole. You've done such a great job personalizing something that as you point out most of us only think of in the abstract. I feel real intensity here...

Nicole,

Rose wrote a poem, "Truth", which contained the lines:

Ah, Truth is a wonderful thing,
But a longely thing

The poem ends with the lines:

But here it is, night . . .
And Truth is too thin a blanket.

We come to the search for the Truth with all sorts of preconceptions about what the Truth will give us. We think the Truth will bring us happiness...or if not happiness, at least peace. We think that the Truth will innoculate us against suffering. We think that the Truth will protect us from all the human fears that we have about being alone . . . especially in the face of death.

But Rose and other spiritual teachers explicitly warn us against carrying these preconceptions about the "payoff" of the Truth. Truth is a thin blanket: it will not necessarily spare you from grief and fear, even grief for yourself and the ending of your own life. (I say, "not necessarily", because, who knows? Maybe it will. And then again, maybe it won't.)

So I'm not entirely sure it's a reasonable expectation to assume that you will face your death with utter equanimity. The Buddha promised an end to suffering, but that just means you are no longer identified with experience. There will still be pain, including emotional pain.

Also, I don't think a consistent desire for human companionship at the end of life is in any way an indictment of one's spiritual preparedness. You might think, "Oh, if I was spiritually fit, I shouldn't need any hand-holding, I can face death alone." But, really, think about it: in the light of Death, you have a chance to see things as they are. Trivial things appear trivial, and important things appear important. In that moment, what else on this planet would seem important to you, except connection to other human beings? Dying people look to other people, not because they lack a spiritual perspective, but precisely because they have a spiritual perspective.

The best illustration that exists for all this is the end of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Illych. Ivan Illych's epiphany, and his final peace, comes when he makes that last connection with his son and his wife. Read it again—my God, I've read it a hundred times and it never ceases to amaze me.

Moving Georg, really moving....

How we die is the last act of how we live. Can we avoid dying in fear or agony...? I don't think that we necessarily can. And truly facing THAT has huge implications for how we live now, and where we find meaning. My biggest fear is not death per se, but rather for having followed a "spiritual life" and so having an even greater regret for never finding IT. The whole misery of "oh my God, I wasted my life, I never found ANYthing!"

Wouldn't it be amazing to embrace death, to know when your time is up. But, I don't know that you can POSITION yourself to die one way or the other, in peace or in fear. However, I'm absolutely certain that it is important to have people nearby to release you. Permission to go. Because ultimately it IS peace. It is returning home where this whole question dissolves into wholeness.

I think the whole legacy thing is bullshit. First of all, we are already ALL creating a legacy, right now. Second, how BIG of legacy must you leave to be satisfied? It's seems like comfort food, and that is all.

To me, it asks what you spend your time doing, your PRESENT energy and the like. With the fear, there's a strange balance between engagement and detachment. Are you fleeing from your fear, or can you embrace it as a human response, as part of the right and proper unfolding of your life? And what would it mean to live free of fear? We would have so much more energy and life to give!

Final thought: Alan Watts pointed out that the youth never imagines that there will come a time when you want to die. The body wants to finish.

Perhaps part of me feels that this email chain is us going "What can we do about death? We're spiritual, right? Aren't we special?" NOTHING! Die now or die later, I guess. Georg is right, we DON'T know what our relationship to death will look like whether we "wake up" or not. And the ONLY waiting we do in life is waiting to die. It is in fact that VERY WAITING ITSELF that wants death. Take a look at that feeling—can you see that if it was gone, we still remain, fully engaged and free to create, because then the only question is what am I doing RIGHT NOW?

thanks Nicole!

Thomas

Loved this Thomas. Love the passion most of all....

I would like to respond to the e-mail discussion about the Belief.net article on aging/death.

I have recently found this website, and it gives me joy to see the kind of work that is taking place, and the topics that are being discussed. I was a student of Richard Rose in the mid 70s too, and it provided a tremendous foundation for the development of my life.

The recent discussions about death bring up some very interesting thoughts. Due to an experience that I had at a young age, I am not afraid of death. I do not wish for pain and suffering, yet I know that it all eventually ends. I know that I have gone through it before, and I can go through it again.

My real concern is life. I know that I am not always 100% diligent and attentive to life. Sometimes I tune out of it for a while. I am not referring to contemplation, reflection, and meditation—these are times of deep experience of life, but rather to the "zone-out" times. When there is more intensity of emotion and experience than I can process at the time. It happens less and less as I have learned to process experiences over the years, but still does happen. When I have "zoned-out", I have delayed an opportunity to grow and learn and understand—usually because of fear of the changes and possible disruption that the comprehension may bring, or of becoming conscious of negative aspects of myself. But, as my friend says, "Change, or be changed." Life's lessons keep reappearing in one form or another until we transform them with understanding, and thereby, transform ourselves.

For me, death is an inevitable transition. Whereas life—well, I have the freedom to choose how I live it. Every moment, I have the freedom to live in clear consciousness, and the freedom to ever refine the clarity of my consciousness. The call to know yourself is one of the universal spiritual callings. This path calls for introspection and reflection, but can really accelerate by interacting with others. People are the mirror of my Soul, and I am the mirror for them. Who I really am is reflected back to me in my interaction with others. The real gauge of how I am progressing on my path of spiritual development is revealed in how I interact with others, including challenging and so-called difficult people. That's when I really see where I am at the moment. When I can witness my behavior, and understand it, I can come closer to knowing my true self and can transform false aspects into true aspects.

Living my life in truth is my greatest concern and focus. When death comes, I hope that a very conscious and evolved "me" will be present to make the transition.

Cool sounds like the kind of person we want to have in our cyber group. But I still wish someone would straighten out Ms Collins when she claimed that she would rather help people than have the truth. While her sentiments were and are laudable and she is a gem for saying so she is also dead wrong. Like Fermat I have a wonderful little proof of her mistake but it is too long to fit in the margins of this email....

Two different concepts appear to be getting blurred in this discussion. The first, is the concept of the path of service—the intention to do good in the world and to help others. This is a process. The second concept is of a state of Being—to be in a state of Truth. So, one is a process, and the other is a state of Being—and therein lies the problem of comparing these choices (choice "a" or "b").

Being in a state of Truth does not say anything about the process that led up to that point, or about the choices and direction one took/will take after experiencing Truth. The processes leading up to and following the experience do matter, and are relevant. Goethe's story of Faust is a classic story of these issues. Truth without moral development can produce evil. That is another very large topic with many aspects to it.

Back to these "a" and "b" choices. The path of service can be a very strong spiritual path, if one does not suffer blind obedience. This path can produce many moments of awakening that build and build to a greater awakening. Nicole's observations and reflections about Mr. See are such moments. People often mistake kindness for weakness, whereas true kindness and compassion require great strength. Reactive empathy does not fall into this category.

So, I vote for a blend of "a" and "b"—where I did good in the world and found Truth too. (Choice "b" did not indicate what process lead to the deathbed awakening, so, I choose to fill that in with a life of good works, kindness, and compassion which resulted in awakening to Truth).

Nina

For what it's worth, I think that's a bit of a cheat. The classic ethics problem is the lifeboat dilemma: ten people in a lifeboat and you have to throw three of them off to survive. Of course, if there were a real life dilemma, then the best possible solution would be to find a clever way to save all of them. But as a thought experiment you can't get out that way, you have to choose. Similarly, my thought experiment was giving you a choice between truth and service, which I think are fundamentally different. Maybe one is a state and one is a process or something like that, but still, when you are deciding how to spend your time, you make choices which are based (consciously or unconsciously) or how you weigh these two noble goals. So my thought experiment was designed to make you consciously prioritize them.

Of course, they are not unrelated! I'm sure Augie's "too long to fit in the margin" argument is based on the idea that if you don't really know the truth, then you cannot be sure you are being of service: you may be doing more harm than good, etc. So in his view, truth is a prerequisite for service. Mr. Rose always said that "service and selflessness" were essential on the path, so perhaps service is a prerequisite for truth. Certainly, the two seem to be tightly intertwined.

Yes, you are right that I really sidestepped the essence of the question, and your points about Truth and Service are correct. When you have the real "either-or" life boat kind of ethical dilemmas, you can't choose both. Also true that all service is not good.

I stepped outside of the question, because most of life isn't "either-or", but somewhere in between. In some ways, in between is harder than "either-or." My parents grew up in famine and war in Ukraine, and they said, that as awful as it all was (and yes, they managed to survive, although my dad was tortured etc.), that in some ways, it is easier to make those split second decisions—no time to think about it—make a decision, then do it and do it fast. If you live, then you have the rest of your life to think about it.

If I had to choose one, I would choose "a", but again, since nothing was said about how I lived my life before, I would choose to have lived it with the intention of seeking the higher good—in awareness of how my actions affect everyone and everything in the world, that each raindrop that falls into the ocean does indeed have some effect on the ocean.

Yes Kenny you are pretty close to my "little proof." And they are very clearly deeply entwined. But my contention is that truth will always trump because what we want most is truth. If the truth was that everyone else in the world was really a robot would that affect our attitude toward service? Of course it would! If the truth was that there was a fifty percent chance we were robots ALL robots how much time would we spend getting at the truth before we "wasted" a lot of time on what might be robots? If we REALY REALLY believed this whole world MIGHT be a mirage or a dream how much time would we spend "helping" the dream and how much finding out whether it was a dream or not first? If we had amnesia and couldn't remember the "truth" of our own identities how much time would we spend trying to remember?

As I've often pointed out MOST movies are some kind of a variation on truth vs normal living. The "hero" inevitably suspects some kind of truth that he or she MUST get at and the rest of the world be damned. Usually this heroic quest is perfectly juxtaposed against "helping." In other words it ends up disrupting everyone's life, especially the loved ones of the hero, and uniformly making everyone around the hero and the hero himself miserable. Yet the hero MUST KEEP GOING or the movie is a failure. Ironically we don't identify, and never identify with the all the people telling Truman to just go back to business as usual and stop rocking the boat. We want the hero to keep going, we want the satisfaction vicariously that only comes when the hero gets to the BOTTOM OF THINGS even if the truth at the bottom is that he is a murderer,or his father is, or he raped a child while drunk many years ago or or or or or.... This possibility that the truth could turn out to be something that hurts rather than helps is what builds the dramatic tension. And of course in the end whatever the consequences of the hero's quest the movie must show that when he does find the truth it was all worth it on some level.

All these millions of movies all are metaphors for a spiritual path. They point to the fact that while it may seem like there is lots going on in life there is only one thing going on that is of any interest: The search for truth in the face of the fear of what it may turn out to be coupled with the profound intuition that the truth always turns out in the end to be worth it. the truth shall set you free.

And that is all I have to say about that....

It is without doubt that truth is essential to living a real life—a non-automaton etc life. Most movies talk about little truths, and searching for the little truths is a way to prepare for the big ones—Who am I, Why am I here, and Why is everyone else here? Finding truth takes persistence, diligence, and focus. The unfolding of truth in one's life very often has an element of grace—meeting an inspiring teacher, finding the right book, experiencing a situation that turns us inside out. Our effort is our own—no one can do it for us, but—we do NOT do it alone. If a child was born and put into a room, it could not live without the care and interaction with another person. Why do you think we were made this way? The Infinite Being, aka God, could have made us pop out fully formed and independent, but he did not. We learn about ourselves by interacting with others and then reflecting and understanding those interactions, and before we can know Truth, we have to know ourselves.

Bottom line—you don't get to Truth all alone! Therefore, part of realizing the Truth is realizing how you got there, coupled with gratitude and some element of service to the world that got you where you are, even if it was a painful process.

Truth without moral development and gratitude—well, many a "Black Magician" has that. We choose which path we are going to take.

Dear Augie,

I responded to your email the night you sent it, but I don't think it made it to you.

Thank you for your email. I am sorry that I misinterpreted the tone and meaning of it. I think it was referring to me in the third person as 'Ms. Collins' that threw me for a loop. It sounded so impersonal and distant. Which, I suppose, I am. I think I also misinterpreted the choose A or B exercise. I thought A was that you seek the truth, balls to the wall, no matter what to find the answer. B was to serve others even if you never know that it actually helped. I chose B because I'm not willing to forgo all else to find the truth. For me, serving others is how I find it. I feel guilty telling you that because it is, as you said in your email, a matter of life and death; it is your work—it is all that matters. I feel guilty, not because I 'm worried about what you think of my choice, but because of everything you have given up to teach people like me what the truth is. And even knowing that, we leave SKS, move on, and remember somewhere down the line that there was this "really cool guy I knew in college who busted my ass to make me understand the truth...hmmm, I wonder where I would be if I actually stuck with it? Oh, well."

It's not fair to you or to the SKS, but somehow that is the nature of the game (your never-ending cosmic chess game). Apply the pressure and people run. Point out their bullshit and they yell at you. Ask them to give up 2 hours on a Sunday to put up posters and they act as if you'd asked them to carry the world on their shoulders. I've been thinking about this endlessly. I have dreams about it. I have conversations in my sleep with Ed, Kavita and Kathryn and wake up, unable to decipher them from reality. It brings me back, over and over again, to the same thing.

I owe the person I am today to what you have taught me (and, also, a lot of hard-ass work on my part). All of the late nights, the countless hours postering, kicking a student's ass, hugging a student's neck gave me the business knowledge to know how to be professional and effective, the honest to goodness sense of myself, what I want and what I don't and, most importantly, a glimpse of the truth.

You transformed me from frantic, fragile, unsure, and self-conscious to confident, steady, and, one of the most important for me, unafraid (...of other people; to stare myself down in the mirror; to face the things that scare the shit out of me).

There are four people in my life (excluding my family) that I would fly across the world to help if they called me up at 3 in the morning and asked. All but one are in SKS. That is because of the space you provided for people to be forgiving and unforgiving at the same time...it is where the deepest relationships of my life formed. It is where I truly came to understand that God exists. Thank you so much, Augie. I can't say it enough times.

Love always,

Ms. Collins

Dearest Nicole,

This is one of the most amazing emails or letters I've ever seen. Not because it is so flattering to me and/or the SKS but because it reveals the heart so completely of a wonderful human being and first class woman. Nicole I have always been your biggest fan. You were the heart and soul of NC State, you worked your tail off for SKS, and you of all people I've ever worked with FEELS and always FELT the importance of this work. On top of that you MADE the last Avila retreat by going first and then setting the standard for honesty for everyone else. I miss you but I am behind you 150% in anything you do. You paid your dues and whatever you do I don't have anything more to ask of you. I am in your debt.

I also got tears in my eyes reading this when you were so honest about the angst you feel about spirituality etc. I think you are being extremely honest and that is all that is required. I think you say here in so many words that you chose helping others not only as a path to truth (which it is) and not only because it is an aspect of the truth (which it is) and not only because it is in some ways identical with the truth (which it is) but also because you were afraid that going "balls to the wall" (by the way how do girls go balls to the wall? J) for the truth was something you couldn't do. Your fear like mine and everyone's is/was that you would make all the sacrifices and end up with nothing but a life of sacrifice. So another reason you chose helping others is as a second choice. As something that while not the whole enchilada would still enable you to come to the end of your life feeling like you didn't completely cop out. It is therefore the compromise position, you know this, and it bothers you.

I think the reason you wake up still dreaming about SKS people is that you really do want the Truth. There is a splinter in your mind.

But don't be hard on yourself. We don't know how it is supposed to be. Do the best you can and trust God. That is all we can do.

Love you so much,

Augie

PS: I'd fly across the world for you.