A Mosaic of Awareness
The ebb and flow of our awareness is like a complex mosaic made up of many tiles. But because we learn that some of those tiles -- parts of ourselves -- are considered unacceptable, we begin, at a very early age, to pick out -- or cover up -- the offending tiles: "Oh, no, I'm not supposed to be angry," so we take that tile away. "That part of my mind is too crazy for anybody to see." So we cover it up. "Oh, God, I don't want anybody to see my hatred. Or my jealousy. Or my confusion. Or my greed. Or my envy. That self-hatred, that guilt -- that can't be who I really am. That's bad. That's unacceptable. That's crazy. That's neurotic." So out they go, until what is left is a pale caricature of who we really are. But the dying tell us that is who we really are -- that continually changing flow of thoughts, those conflicts in values, that continual confusion and not knowing. This is our life.

Accepting "Unacceptable" Feelings
The dying teach us that because of our efforts to drive those "unacceptable" feelings out of consciousness, we end up wondering if we have ever really lived. They teach that it is better to sit quietly with our unwanted states of mind, to accept the pain, accept the waves of unfashionable feelings, to accept our own confusion -- rather than to let these painful events drive us out of awareness, into defenses that pull us away from life.

Perhaps the greatest gift the dying have to offer is the realization that we need not wait until we receive a terminal diagnosis to begin to relax our attachments to our images of who we think we should be. How much better, they tell us, to realize that we are not our fears, not our confusion, not our defenses. That it is possible to let those states of mind flow through us without identifying with them, without holding onto to them, simply doing our best to stay open to awareness.

They teach us that it is possible to let whatever needs to happen, happen -- without being driven into the life-denying reactions our fears would lead us to. It is possible to experience it all, to be threatened by nothing, to withdraw from nothing, not even death.

Learning to be Substantial
We are taught to make ourselves substantial, to take on certain roles and play them with utmost seriousness, to be responsible members of society. The dying teach us that we must live more lightly, take ourselves less seriously, accept our own impermanence, our own no-knowing. Not to harden against life, but to soften into it. They teach us that real growth comes from coming to the edge of one's model, then letting that model go, and seeing what comes next. The dying can teach us that it's possible not to be "something" but just to be.

Thousands of years of meditation practice teach us that thinking in terms of "the mind" rather than "my mind" helps clarify what's really happening. When you look at your flow of awareness as "my mind," there's confusion, because if it's your mind, then you must be responsible for what's in it. But when we look closely at our thought processes, we see that much of what arises in the mind is actually uninvited. We don't invite guilt. We don't invite anger. They come by themselves.

The Worst Possible Insult
Try this experiment: Think of the worst possible insult you can imagine, then suppose that you arrive home to find your living space broken into and that message scrawled across your wall. You would experience -- involuntarily -- a state of mind that you did not invite, expect, or want. Whose mind did that?