What the fear of death takes from you the most

Prediction: you fear death more than you realise.

You might think you only fear death when it makes itself known in your life. Maybe you lose someone your age and it makes you question your mortality. Maybe you have a close call yourself.

Then you put it out of your mind and get on with life.

That “get on with life” part is a noble and wise strategy.

The other is just about neurologically impossible. It’s not neurologically healthy, at least.

It reminds me of this exchange:

Person 1: When I say, “don’t think about a pink elephant”, what do you do? You think about one.

Person 2: Ha! Wrong! No I didn’t! *sticks tongue out*

Person 2 is, with full love and respect, full of shit. I believe them when they say that the image of a pink elephant didn’t blossom into conscious awareness, but that’s not the point of that delightful little cliché.

Unless they were confused by that sequence of letters, they thought about it.

(Person 1, while not full of shit, is regurgitating a boring cliché. At least use the example of a blue horse or something new…)

Most of what you think happens unconsciously. When you do your best to forget something, it generally lingers out of sight of your conscious attention. You might never realise you’re thinking it but, if it’s important, you’ll never forget it on an unconscious level.

And your mortality is exceedingly important.

While you’re looping on that in the back of your mind, it robs you of something.

Now, I’ll admit, I don’t know the causality here. Maybe the fear of death takes this from you. Maybe cultivating this sheds you of your fear. Probably both, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is what it is and how to get it back.

What am I talking about?

A calm, focused and patient mind.

If you’ve never sat across from the Grim Reaper, in the privacy of your mind, and not flinched away, then you don’t have this – not like how you could.

Not like what you get with the exercise on page 28 of February’s Phronesis Accelerator.

But beware – the deadline to subscribe is merely hours away.

Get your legs moving on over here:

https://guided-thought.com/phronesis-accelerator/