Death Throes

By Amaya Gayle Gregory

Death is the material world’s boogey man and aging signals its approach. It’s not taken too seriously when you are your twenties unless you have illness struggles, but once you cross the threshold of the thirties the fear begins amping up. This is the sales pitch of cosmetics, plastic surgery, and most everything on the market that’s designed to make you feel good about yourself and that new wrinkle, about that inescapable guest on your calendar. 

 Death is one of the greatest fallacies, perhaps number one. It is an unavoidable outcome of a separate self, only it, like the separate self, isn’t quite real. When you die, contrary to accepted opinion, you don’t miss a beat, for you have not died at all. Only the body has passed into legend.  

Kenny and I were driving south on Hwy 101, headed back to our sailboat in Mexico from a trip up north. I was meditating in the passenger seat as I often did and when I opened my eyes, I saw a big iridescent blue dragonfly smash into the windshield. That should have been the end of that beautiful creature, but it wasn’t. The dragonfly didn’t miss a single winged beat, flying right through the glass. It zoomed past my ear and exited through the truck’s back window glass. It was in form but not solid. 

Is something similar happening around us all the time? Are we simply not present enough to see it? 

Ten years later Ken died and if I had been truly present, present to life as it is without my resistance to his death, I would have seen him step out of his body and walk over to my side, put his hand on my cheek and kiss me goodbye. I was not present. I was grieving deeply, caught in the throes of loss, of what was and would not be, and missed his beautiful exit. 

I did however experience the end of his departure from the visible realm.  Several hours after his death, a whisper of grey smoke rose from the top of his head, a clearing of his crown chakra. It was faint, but not so faint that was easy to miss. I was beholding my lover for the last time in this incarnation and couldn’t miss the display of honor for a life well lived.  

When you die you disappear from the sight of those still residing in separation. If you didn’t believe in separation, if all the beliefs stabilizing the illusion had been seen through, you would see that this world, this materiality, is far from being all there is.  

You are always present to something, most often not present to what is. You are not truly present as long as any scrap of identity remains, as long as the separate self reigns. You are present to and living as that scrap of identity. I was present as the grieving wife, the one left behind, the holder of intense personal loss. Separation still had its hooks in me. The loss had set the barb ever more deeply. 

Being present, fully experiencing, is not about what was. It is not about the absence that will be. It is now, empty of all requirements for the actuality to behave any way other than as it is. It is openness, the willingness to feel all that wafts through the form, grief and anger included. 

Through years of heartache I have found that I can grieve absolutely in the middle of loss, that I do not need to escape this moment in any way. In fact, staying put, experiencing all the intensities of life, opens into edgeless bottomless uncushioned unqualified sensation – unfiltered experiencing. The actuality is experienced directly, a sacred giving way, and because it is not resisted, passes through unhindered, leaving no trace.   

There is no appropriate bio for Amaya Gayle. She doesn’t exist other than as an expression of Consciousness Itself. Talking about her in biographical terms is a disservice to the truth and to anyone who might be led to believe in such nonsense. None of us exist, not in the way we think. It’s actually much better than we can imagine. Ideas spring into words. Words flow onto paper and yet no one writes them. They simply appear fully formed. Looking at her you would swear this is a lie. She’s there after all, but honestly, she’s not … and she is. Love a paradox and life is nothing, if not paradoxical. Bios normally wax on about accomplishments and beliefs, happenings in time and space. She has never accomplished anything, has no beliefs and like you was never born and will never die. Engage with Amaya at your own risk.