Life and Death are Not Binary

Kind Mind

“To die each day to your certainties is to be reborn in wonder.”
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This talk was recording on October 20, 2024 at Speakeasy Spiritual Community.
We often think of life and death as opposites—life being everything, death being nothing.
This understanding overlooks the matrix of existence, where life and death are interwoven. Death is often a process—gradual, transitional, and even non-final.
And we experience metaphysical deaths throughout life: the death of youth, relationships, ideas, or phases of identity. In this light, we may discover the meaningful ways in which we are still dying to come alive.
In social psychology, Terror Management Theory (TMT) can explain how people’s fear of death paradoxically suppresses life and collectively drives many behaviors and cultural norms.
With death as the last taboo, groups may foster materialism, nationalism, or the pursuit of legacy and the upholding of social constructs as the means to symbolically "live on." Philosopher Ernest Becker’s “Denial of Death” contends that human civilization itself is largely an elaborate defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality.
(Music “Slow Movement in the Light” by Ethereal Ephemera)