I don’t believe in death. I never have.

Sure we lose our recognizable form as our physicality disintegrates over time; but our spirit, the essence of our being, exits the body that disintegrates. Yet, we cling to the body as representing life because it is the tangible thing we know, but it is just a shape.

We choose not to think about death because we cannot comprehend the unknown. It is scary to think our bodies, the solid form we take on to define us, will one day cease to exist.

Our egos tell us we need our bodies to define us, to shape us and to give us a recognizable form. But it is out of fear that we define death based on the existence of our body.

Death is optional. It all depends on how you define it.

If the moment your body stops functioning, you do not believe your spirit will endure, then for you death exists. If you choose not to let the shape of you body determine your life, then death does not exist, because you believe your spirit lives on.

This is not a new concept and is not even radical. Philosophers have spoken of it. It is the idea that the spirit endures. I like to think of the spirit as a life force, much like the air we breathe.

It is constantly flowing and changing; yet it is eternal. This spirit fuels our body, pumping our lungs, flowing through our veins. It is the unique rhythm of our heart beat. We think it a metaphor this constant creation and destruction.

We use terms like the phoenix will rise again and where there is life there is death.

It is a constant cycle like the shapes in a kaleidoscope, bodies reform, but spirits remains the same.

Lately, the idea that death is optional, has been raised by advances in science and technology.

This is not the same belief I share. To me, this idea is man made and clings to the ego in the same way some choose death when their body loses its form. For these people refuse to give up the body, they just recreate it and program their spirit into it.

This self-reincarnation in robotic form, some call Terasem, is the stuff science fiction is made of. It is not a new concept, before Terasem there was Frankenstein.

My refusal to believe in death is based on a trust that I am a part of something much larger than my body. I can be one, and exist in nature. I speak of an everlasting flow of energy, a spirit, a series of positive and negative charges flowing through atmosphere. Our bodies exist as a matter of practicality, they are vehicles to transport the energy that is our spirit.

After a rain shower, I look to the sky and I see a yellow belly thrush. I hear its song. Maybe one day someone will look to the sky, hearing its song and think of me. That will be my spirit living on.

Signs in nature are markers of a force much greater and grander than these bodies in which we are contained. They are signs of life.

We do not need to program robotic likenesses of ourselves to live on. We have a choice to cling to its form. And that is all that death is a refusal to let go or a certain shape and form.

~

Author: Jane CoCo Cowles

Apprentice Editor: Julie Barr / Editor: Sara Kärpänen

Image: Skitter Photo /  StockSnap