A Noble Death Song

Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place. Show respect to all people, but grovel to none. When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.

Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

Tecumseh - Shawnee Chief

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__________________
-Michael

something for us all to strive towards.

tracey xx

If you think about it, maybe it's more about letting go of something than struggling or striving towards something.

Fear is a burden you carry - a weight. Putting it down is liberating, to say the least.

As long as I'm in a philosophical mood (yay sativa!), I'll expound upon the theme by contending that people are only ever motivated by two things. What I mean is every human action, except necessary biological functions (sleeping, eating, urinating, etc.), is either caused by one of two basic emotions: fear or love. You can look at any situation, at any human action, and boil it down to one of those two root causes.

If that's true, I guess it's pretty obvious that most things humans do is based in fear of one sort or another. Look around you and peal away the layers of what you see, until you get to the bottom-most kernel - the essence of a thing, and you usually find fear lurking there. But, very rarely, there are truly genuine acts of love and selflessness which aren't motivated by religious guilt or deal-making with the gods or some other ulterior motive. Just don't hold your breath while you wait to see it, yourself. These things happen most often on battlefields and disasters where you see people sacrifice themselves for others.

It's funny how it takes something hideous and awful to make us beautiful... but, that's another subject, I guess.

It's really pretty simple. We just have a hard time seeing it, because it's so hard to get any perspective on things when you're down in the trenches, yourself, scrambling for your existence. (The trick is to stop scrambling, but somehow continue to exist, I guess.)

__________________
-Michael

Words and actions to go by.... I think it is a part of us to fear death and to fear when it might happen. With practice and soul searching we can let those thoughts that we might dwell on fade away, I know how life can be taken away in an instant, so live for this moment with your loved ones. Not that I am ready and waiting or dwelling on my passing, but I have had my song picked out for years now!!!!with the request that they smoke the weed while celebrating our life together as they are SITTING ON THE DOCK OF THE BAY ....

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It all boils down to the same thing: DON'T BE AFRAID! Fear is the mind-killer. Face your fears and let them wash over you.

A passage from Dune that I think I posted here before, somewhere:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

__________________
-Michael