Being Who You Really Are
This post is about how to be who you really are and how to stop living in fear. It’s about how to not be afraid of what people will think if you just let yourself shine.
It’s about being honest with yourself and, by extension, everyone else in your life. It’s about doing the thing that scares you most, even if they don’t like it or understand it at first. It’s about being okay with all the mistakes you make because they will usually teach you something valuable. It’s about being more the person you feel you are inside than the person that other people expect you to be.
This is how to be who you really are. And this is how to stop living in fear.
Know Why You’re Here on Earth
A few years ago, I had an experience that changed my life in a very fundamental way. It was then that I understood what death and dying were all about and why we humans live the lives we do. And it was also then that I realized which direction I should take my life in and what it all means, how it all fits together, and why we are here on earth.
I hope what happened to me can be a help to you, because I certainly benefited from it and am now ever so much more at peace with my life and myself.
A Wonderful Message About Death
I think I’ve seen death…
Once, when I was 14 years old, I saw a book in one of the many metaphysical bookstores here in Amsterdam called Center of the Circle by a man named Baba Hari Dass. For some reason this book really got me going. For a while, it was my all-time favorite book.
Near the end of that book, there’s a beautiful illustration by the artist Ruth Cauldwell. And there she is, right in the center of the circle, surrounded by flowers and fruit and birds and butterflies…all kinds of lovely things swirling around her. She has this wonderful smile on her face and she’s looking off into space with a very faraway look on her face. The colors are vivid and saturated and so real they almost hurt your eyes just to look at them. They seem to seep into your soul like nothing else I’ve ever seen before or since. They are absolutely breathtaking in every way imaginable.
There’s a copy of this illustration as well in a book called The Last Laugh by Tom Robbins, which I read about 10 years later. But the illustration in Cauldwell’s book was the one I’d fallen in love with. Now that I think about it, it was probably this illustration that inspired me to go to art school.
So many images from my favorite books stayed with me for so long that, years later, much of my life seemed like one big “dream within a dream.” Real life seemed very dull and boring compared to the images and people I’d met while reading, watching movies or listening to music.
I read this book when I was probably 16 or 17. And it, along with many other books I found while reading and learning, eventually became part of my being and changed my life forever. In fact, it’s written in some of the same language as my post “Being Who You Really Are.”
Hind Swami Bhagwan Dass was a Hindu sage who lived during the 11th century in India and died about 1020 A.D.
What was most memorable about this book for me involves one particular passage: one that he wrote that contained the clearest description of death I’ve ever read in any source. (Death and dying are never really described very well in any books.)
And the remarkable thing about this story is that it was so clear and so detailed that I actually saw it…I actually saw it all happen.
The Death of a Saint
In this passage, a man tells us of a saint who had lived during his lifetime. He says that the saint would go into the forest every day, look up at the sun, lie down on the ground, close his eyes and die. And he did this for more than 20 years. The guy lying there would appear dead to anyone who happened to pass by. Yet after a while, the tribe of bohemians who would always gather around the saint began to worry because he wasn’t there.
After many days, they started to talk about his death. They wanted to bury him in their own way.
So, one day, a man walked up and stood over the dead body of the saint and said, “I see you are dead. Don’t make us bury you as we want. We’ll do it our own way. You go on living if that is what you want to do.”
And the Saint opened his eyes and said, “I see you are dead. Let it be done my way.” And he rose from the ground and walked away.
The man who had stood over him sat down to weep. He said to himself, “This is not the way we do things here in our village. I know death has come here but he does not belong to us anymore. He is gone and I am gone.”
So, in the story, the man who was visiting realized that it was himself lying there dead on the ground. It was he himself who had died. And he had no idea what to do or how much time he had left.
He ran into this beautiful young woman and fell madly in love with her. He said to her, “I’m dying, but I don’t know how long I have to live here or what will become of me when I die.”
And she said, “I’m dying, too. I do not know how long I have to live here or what will become of me when I die.”
He said, “We have no more time to wait because we are going to die here together very soon and I don’t know what will become of you, but I want to be with you all the time until the end. We must find a place where we can be together before it is too late.”
So they went out and found a beautiful place in the woods and there he lay down on the grass next to her and died with her….
Conclusion
It is said that the sage Bhagwan Dass was speaking about death to those who were gathered around him. And he spoke so clearly and so beautifully that we can see him telling the story in front of us as if we were sitting with him.
This passage fully explains why this book is so relevant to me, why I come back to it time and time again, why I have memorized hundreds of quotes from it, why this poem by poet William Blake is engraved on my heart…why I have been reading it for so many years:
The Soul’s Immortal Journey – William Blake.
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Being Who You Really Are