Photo Credit: Sammie Vasquez
This talk was given at the Boundless Love Project’s weekly group meditation (now virtual due to the pandemic) on 4.7.2020. We make it available here in audio, video, or article format for your convenience. This talk is part of The Wisdom of Peace Pilgrim training series.
BEFORE YOU START: If you have the book, Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Times in Her Own Words, get that as well. (If you don’t have her book, please order a free copy of it here). Thank you.
Audio Version
We invite you to listen to the Intermediate Sounds Meditation that was presented before the talk.
Video Version
Article Version: What Are You Willing to Die For?
Walking the Path of Love to Overcome Our Fear of Death
As of this morning, the death toll from COVID-19 in the United States is 10,783. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics Estimates released a study yesterday predicting that if all U.S. residents engage in "full social distancing through May 2020" we can limit COVID-19 U.S. fatalities to 81,766 thru August 4th. In other words, their best-case scenario is almost 82,000 U.S. residents dying from COVID-19.
COVID-19 has already claimed many people:
• Minnesota's Lieutenant Governor's brother Ron.
• Actor Lee Fierro from the movie Jaws.
• Top Chef Masters winner Floyd Cardoz.
• Pastor Tim Russell from the Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis.
• Tony-award-winning playwright Terrence McNally, who wrote Love! Valour! Compassion!, Master Class, Ragtime, and Kiss of the Spider Woman.
• Country singer and songwriter Joe Diffie.
• Jazz legend Ellis Marsalis.
Let us take a mindful pause and energetically send love and goodwill to all who have died, and to all who have had loved ones die, and to all who are sick, and to all who have loved ones who are sick. May they all be free of suffering and the root causes of suffering: greed, fear, and falsehood.
• • •
Death is inevitable for all of us. And the fear of death--be it our own death, or the death of other people--may become a preoccupation, or even an obsession, of our mind. In these times where sickness and death and the fear of sickness and death are rampant, I encourage you to not be afraid.
Now, I am not encouraging you to be reckless and foolhardy. Remain skillful and wise. Take the necessary precautions of sheltering-in-place, social distancing, washing your hands frequently, and wearing appropriate protective gear. As you do these things, let love for your neighbors and yourself be the motivation for these actions, not fear.
Fear is one of the emotions Peace Pilgrim encourages us to renounce entirely. She says:
I have been asked if a certain amount of fear is healthy. I don't think any amount of fear is healthy.... I believe we are required to do everything possible for ourselves and therefore when I walk out onto a street I always look up and down. But I don't think that's fear. That's just being sensible. I don't connect that in any way with fear. For instance, I know that if there are little pebbles scattered over a smooth rock, I'm liable to slip if I step on those little pebbles, so I'm careful not to. I'm not afraid, it's just the sensible thing to do (p. 68).
In the same way that you don't need to be terrified to look both ways before you cross the street, you don't need to have fear motivate you to take precautions to protect your community and yourself.
Through mindful investigation of our own fear, we know how unpleasant, unhelpful, untrue, and unskillful it is to live in fear. A fearful life is a life not fully lived.
In this talk, we will consider how Peace Pilgrim used her love to relate to death skillfully in a way that allowed her to be fearless and courageous in the face of difficulties.
Focus on What Serves You
As with all information I share, you are invited to explore, experiment with, and embrace those ideas that help you, serve you, and benefit you. You are equally encouraged to ignore, set aside, and forget those ideas that upset you, disturb you, or do not help and benefit you.
Gently listen with an open heart and mind, play with the ideas, focus on what helps, and ignore the rest.
The Path of Truth Leads to Love
Those of us who mindfully embrace a deepening spirituality, will walk two paths: the path of love and the path of truth.
The path of love leads us to truth.
The path of truth leads us to love.
Both paths lead to the same destination of truthful clear seeing, perfect love, egolessness, and full enlightenment. These different words all describe the same thing.
Between these two paths, we may have a preferred path that feels easier for us.
For those of us who have a tender, empathic, open heart, we may prefer the path of love which leads us to truth.
For those of us who have a strong, discriminating intellect, we may prefer the path of truth which leads us to love.
Both paths result in us embodying a synthesis where we have a strong, discriminating, mind that abides in truth, and a courageous, compassionate heart that abides in perfect love.
Over two talks, we will address both of these paths in how to relate to death skillfully and free of fear. Today, however, we start our discussion by looking at the path of love.
The Path of Love
For those of us who have a tender, open, sensitive, connected heart, we may find the path of love best serves as our primary path. On the path of love, we lovingly surrender our life to a cause bigger than ourselves, and in taking up the cause, our love for others leads us to shed our ego, our fear, our greed, and our falsehoods. Let's explore this path now.
What Would You Die For?
During this COVID-19 pandemic, front-line healthcare workers, often provided inadequate personal protective equipment, risk their lives to help people infected with COVID-19. Put another way, they are willing to die to help the sick.
The path of love requires courageous service to those in need. The front-line healthcare worker's love for their patients, overcomes their fear of discomfort, illness, and death.
Most of humanity goes through life serving our ego, or what Peace Pilgrim calls the "self-centered nature." The ego, with its endless fears, greed, and falsehoods, can never be satisfied. Trying to please the ego on its terms leads to a life of misery, conflict, and despair.
But if we go deeper, and listen to our deepest essence, our true self, our conscience, or what Peace Pilgrim calls our "God-centered nature" we can understand our true purpose and calling on this earth.
Over the next week, I want you to contemplate and meditate on how you are called to serve. You can do this by pondering various questions:
• What is my true calling?
• How am I called to serve?
• If I knew I would die a month from today, how would I live? What would I do with my remaining time? What that I focus on now would I consider unimportant? What that I put little time into, would I consider to be more important?
Use whatever question or questions speaks to you most. Among those questions, also include one that heightens the stakes and thus sharpens the question:
• What am I willing to die for?
Let's get started this contemplation now by taking a mindful pause.
• • •
As you feel your breath and calm the mind. Just gently drop the question into the spaciousness of your mind: What am I willing to die for?
Once more: What am I willing to die for?
• • •
There is no need to answer the question now. If answers come, then notice them. You may have many answers to this question. Notice them and keep asking.
This week, every morning when you get up, ask: What am I willing to die for?
This week, during every meditation, drop that question into you mind: What am I willing to die for?
This week, every night before you go to bed, ask: What am I willing to die for?
Notice any answers that arise. Get clear on what you are willing to die for. Then mindfully notice how this clarity affects your energy, your passion, your focus in life.
To clarify, this question is not about having a death wish or living recklessly. We are still called to act wisely and skillfully. This question helps you discover your priorities so you can lovingly live in harmony with those priorities and with your true calling here on earth.
This question is also about overcoming your fear of death. When you discover there are some things worth dying for, your tap into more energy, power, resources, and love than you knew you had. All the petty concerns of the ego, including the fear of death, start to melt away.
So keep asking yourself: What are you willing to die for?
Peace Pilgrim Was Willing to Die for Peace
Peace Pilgrim was willing to die for peace, for love, and for humanity. In fact, on the first year of her pilgrimage, she almost died in a freak and heavy snowstorm in the mountains of Arizona.
Despite the penetrating cold, isolation from help, and blinding snow, she recounts the experience like this: "I felt so free; I felt that everything would be all right, whether I remained to serve in this earth life or if I went on to serve in another freer life beyond" (p. 82).
She survived that experience, but her willingness to die for peace, love, and humanity, lead her to fearlessly serve all life through her pilgrimage.
At the age of 44, she vowed to "remain a wanderer" until humanity "learned the way of peace" (p. vii). She walked proclaiming to all who wanted to speak with her, "This is the way of peace -- overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love."
She walked pennilessly and did the journey without a companion or group support. Her rules were that she would walk until given shelter, and fast until given food. Moreover, she refused to ask others for food or shelter. They had to offer her these things of their own accord.
Sometimes she went without food for 3 days. Sometimes she slept alone under a bridge, on the side of the road, at a truck stops, or on a concrete slab. Despite all of the seeming hardships she endured, her pilgrimage gave her great joy, meaning, and purpose.
Her pilgrimage lasted for 28 years before she passed to "a freer life" at the age of 73.
Peace Pilgrim said, "I haven't the slightest fear" (p. 66) and given how she lived, I believe her.
What was her secret to fearlessness? Quoting the Bible, she said, "'Perfect love casteth out all fear.' (p. 30)"
Elsewhere she added, "Perfect love is a willingness to give without a thought of receiving anything in return." (p. 140). In other words, perfect love is unconditional love.
We need to connect with our unconditional love. Our unconditional love would willingly, and possibly joyfully, suffer and die for others. Keep trying to connect with your unconditional love by asking: What are you willing to die for?
"You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live”
Civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth was a Christian Minister, and he was willing to die for humanity, for the beloved community, for love, for desegregation, and for social justice.
As someone who had his home bombed by the Klu Klux Klan, Fred Shuttlesworth knew what he was saying when he said, "You have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live."
"You have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live."
Why would he say that?
Because if we are not prepared and ready to die, we live imprisoned by the fear of death. That fear can be a constant companion, especially when you are part of a minority that is humiliated, attacked, and discriminated against by elements in the wider culture.
When you face daily indignities and oppression, then you can only assert your dignity and worth as a human being if you are not afraid to die. Otherwise, fear will keep you obedient and subservient in an effort to avoid persecution.
His love for himself, his family, and all of humanity was bigger and more powerful than his fears. His love drove him to take risks, to speak out against oppression, and to endure violence without retaliating with violence or hostility of any kind.
After attempting to enroll two of his daughters at an all-white school, a mob attacked him and his wife with baseball bats, bike chains, brass knuckles and a knife. His wife was stabbed, but they both lived.
At the hospital, he told his kids to "always forgive." He knew those who attacked him were confused, fearful people who needed the healing power of unconditional love. He knew that hate injures the hater, not the hated. That is why he told black ministers at a conference in Washington, D.C., "No man can make us hate; and no men can make us afraid.... and let History, and they that come behind us, rejoice that we arose in strength, armed only with the weapon of Love..."
Despite Fred Shuttleworth's willingness to die for love and social justice, he died of natural causes at the age of 89.
Sophie and Hans Scholl Were Willing to Die for Peace and Freedom
But not all who love as deeply are so lucky.
Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans, were willing to die for peace, truth, justice, and freedom. As Germans living under the Nazi rule, they formed the White Rose, a nonviolent resistance group that opposed warfare and the Nazi regime. She and her brother, Hans, were caught distributing anti-war literature, and convicted of high treason. Both were killed by guillotine on the same day. At the time of their death, she was 21 and he was 24.
Sophie's last words were:
How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?
You may be noticing that all of these people who are willing to die for love have reframed their death into a positive thing. Sophie sees it as a flash point that will rouse thousands to action to stop the wars and the Nazis. Fred sees death as what helps him fully engage in life and live with dignity and respect despite the discrimination and hatred that surrounds him. Peace Pilgrim sees death as a "glorious transition to a freer life."
In my next talk on walking the path of truth to overcome the fear of death, we will go into this more deeply. For now, just notice this pattern of thinking among courageous people.
In addition to Sophie's positive view of death, her other comments are also provoking. Why is it that so many people willingly join the military and risk death to fight in wars and inflict violence on our so-called enemies, but so few of us are willing to die in the name of peace, and social, economic, and environmental justice?
Are we too timid and bowed down by the fear of death and the threat of repression?
Are we too comfortable with our own lives?
Are we maybe unclear where our priorities and allegiances lie?
Keep asking your inner wisdom the question: What are you willing to die for?
What Are You Willing to Live for?
As you ask this question over the next week, pay attention to your answers.
Experiment with living as if you are willing to die for those answers. Mindfully notice how this impacts your life, your energy, your focus, your priorities. Kindly notice if this way of living feels more or less meaningful? more or less rewarding? and more or less joyful? Gently notice if you have more or less fear? more or less greed? and more or less ego?
You may even realize that this question you are contemplating, pondering, and working with: "What am I willing to die for?" actually answers the question "What am I willing to live for?"
Knowing what you'll die for. Knowing what you'll live for. This will help you connect with your perfect, unconditional love. Then you can discover from your own experience what Peace Pilgrim knew:
Love is the greatest power on earth. It conquers all things. One in harmony with God's law of love [or life's law of love] has more strength than an army, for one need not subdue an adversary; an adversary can be transformed.
Perfect, unconditional love can transform our adversaries: be they external or internal. Let your love transform your fears of death and dying into the courage to love boldly. Let your love transform your attachments to life and comfort into generosity and service. Let love transform your false and fear-inducing thoughts about death into the life- and peace-giving thoughts of truth.
Be clear on who and what you love. Be clear on how much you are willing to sacrifice for them. Work to live your life in alignment with that love. Then let your love work its transformative magic on you and those around you.
• • • •
Thank you for reading this article. Please join us at our virtual meetings every Tuesday at 6:15 pm (Central Standard Time) on our Facebook page as we continue with this series: The Wisdom of Peace Pilgrim. And, if you haven’t already, be sure to order a free copy of Peace Pilgrim’s book, Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Times in Her Own Words, and bring it with you to our virtual meeting. Thank you.
Wishing you boundless love, peace, wisdom, and joy!