THE UNKNOWN COMPANION

CHAPTER 6

DEATH: THE HORIZON IS IN THE WELL

THE UNKNOWN COMPANION

There is a presence who walks the road of life with you. This presence accompanies your every moment. It shadows your every thought and feeling. On your own, or with others, it is always there with you. When you were born, it came out of the womb with you; with the excitement at your arrival, nobody noticed it. Though this presence surrounds you, you may still be blind to its companionship. The name of this presence is death.

We are wrong to think that death comes only at the end of life. Your physical death is but the completion of a process on which your secret companion has been working since your birth. Your life is the life of your body and soul, but the presence of your death enfolds both. How does deatzh manifest itself to us in our day-to-day experienc? Death meets us in and through different guises in the areas of our life where we are vulnerable, frail, hurting or negative. One of the faces of death is negativity. In every person there is some wound of negativity; this is like a blister on your life. You can be quite destructive towards yourself, even when times are good. Some people are having wonderful lives right now, but they do not actually realize it. Maybe, later on, when things become really difficult or desperate, a person will look back on these times and say, 'You know I was really happy then but sadly I never realized it.'