Strong is Oblivion

"Strong is the elephent,
but could you say less strong is the goad,

Strong is the mountain,
but you could you say less strong the thunderbolt,

Strong is the darkness,
but could you say less strong the light.

Strong is oblivion,
but could you say less strong is the heart that loves you."
--Ancient Saivite Poem

As a child I would often wake up in the middle of the night, terrified. I wasn't worried about monsters, ghosts, or anything like that. I was terrified of oblivion. I was terrified of the idea that when we die there was nothing. An eternity of nothing. The very thought of eternity would keep me awake all hours. I could not fall asleep again until the first light of dawn began to arise. I would pass the time with music and books, anything to make me feel like there was still life, there was still people out there, that I wasn't so deeply deeply alone.

I tried to talk to my parents about this, but it was so difficult to formulate for a young mind. I was only six years old. And these were the eternal questions. In many ways, these long nights were the genesis of my spiritual path. They were the essence of wondering who we are, why we are here, where do we go when we die, what is life.

Many years later, after building up a sense of self, and then watching it fall apart, I went on my first meditation retreat. It was a tibetan buddhist retreat, but they held it at a catholic monastery, not too far from where I lived. And over my bed was that famous saying from the Bible "God is love, whosoever abides in love abides in God."

And again, many years later (or in that wonderful phrase or Virginia Woolf "time passes") we were on a power journey, and I was given the gift of seeing into my life, into the different possibilities and probabilities. And I saw my deathbed. And I was asked what it was like. I said, without really thinking about it, "A dissolving of separateness." The light, the love that is God seemed suffuse my environment, it seemed to flow through me, and out into the world, it was the world. And there was no fear. And there was no oblivion.