"Okay", I told death, "hit me."
I was laying in bed, and decided to speak to Death directly.
Give it to me, I'm ready. I'm ready to talk.
It was just before that moment, that I finally came to realize I had to face Death, and make friends with her once and for all.
So I gave up my three decades of running away from her and stopped in my tracks, at last, viscerally feeling ready to face her.
I had heard a notion that stuck from Castaneda's books, but I understood at that moment that I never could quite make out what it really means.
Don Juan told Castaneda that when we die, we offer everything to the Grand Eagle. And that, a warrior, knows how to prepare for that meeting, that stripping away of everything regular humans were not aware of, until the final moment had come.
The preparation had to happen during one's lifetime. Crafting a shell that once the moment comes will be as easy to sacrifice as merely breaking an egg.
But when I heard that back then, I didn't really know where to begin and how to know one is doing it for real.
That evening, I knew. I could feel it in my bones.
I will give that to you, as a matter of fact, I am giving it to you now. Take it.
Curiously, it was the first time I felt myself willing, truly willing to give that of 'myself'. It did not feel like giving anything 'up'. It did feel like making a real offering.
Willingly, with a touch of intriguing pleasure.
You, of all, deserve it. You are the only one that is worthy of having it. You are the only one, such is your power, your grandness, your relentless fierceness, that I almost happily give it to. You are one of the only I know I truly respect. This is my gage in return, this is what I will give you that I give no one else.
Take it all, I understand now what you want of me. You want this life. This life I always believed was mine, but it is not me at all.
Take it.
I have nothing to do with this story; with all I have around me. Take it.
I get it, you want all I am experiencing on the outside. All that my senses record. Take it all.
You want what my eyes see, take it.
You want what my ears hear, take it.
You want what my nose smells, take it.
You want what my mouth tastes, take it.
You want what my skin touches, take it.
Take it all, for through your gift, I can truly see now.
I see it is all not real. It is all just an appearance, take it.
I now know what is real, and now I understand what you are letting me have. Real life. The true flames. Inside.
I see now, you want all of that and nothing more. You are letting me keep my inner existence.
Sooner or later, you are going to strip me of all the outer world, and like a bone, will spit out all that you won't consume; my inner experience.
So make it now.
What my senses experienced you are going to take, but what the real I, the formless eye, experiences, you will let me go on with that.
Thank you Friend, I am grateful to you.
I lovingly give that all to you, because you are the only one who is meant to have it.
I am grateful you make me see now.
For you are not greedy, you are merely the vulture of what cannot pass.
For that I thank you, helping me strip it of me, and reveal what eternally lasts.
Original sketch of mine, KPHI