We Are Dying Every Day - Deepak Chopra

One reads in many mystical traditions that every person dies at exactly the right time and knows in advance when that time is. But I would like to examine more deeply the concept of dying every day.

To die every day is a choice everyone overlooks. I want to see myself as the same person from day to day in order to preserve my sense of identity. I want to see myself as inhabiting the same body every day because it is disturbing to think that my body is constantly deserting me.

Yet it must, if I am not to be a living mummy. Following the complex timetable of apoptosis, I am given a new body via the mechanism of death. This process happens subtly enough that it passes without notice. No-one sees a two-year-old turning in her body for a new one at age three.

Every day she has the same body, and yet she doesn’t. Only the constant process of renewal – a gift of death – enables her to keep pace with each stage of development. The wonder is that one feels like the same person in the midst of such endless shape-shifting.

Unlike with cell death, I can observe my ideas being born and dying. To support the passage from childish thought to adult thought, the mind has to die every day. My cherished ideas die and never reappear; my most intense experiences are consumed by their own passions; my answer to the question “Who am I?” totally changes from age two to three, three to four, and so on throughout life.

We understand death when we drop the illusion that life must be continuous. All of nature obeys one rhythm – the universe is dying at the speed of light yet it still manages along the way to create this planet and the life forms inhabiting it.

Our bodies are dying at many different speeds at once, beginning with the photons, ascending through chemical dissolution, cell death, tissue regeneration, and finally the death of the whole organism. What are we so afraid of?
Adapted from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2004).


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The Incident

The Incident

“What the hell happened,” Richard Stever pondered, eyes opening to consciousness.

He shifted his body away from the steering wheel where he landed after impact with the deer. As his mind grew less fuzzy, he took in his surroundings. Broken glass had splintered and imbedded in his face, torso and legs. Pain shot through his left arm as he instinctively jerked away from the gap between the seat and door.

Richard noticed the broken windshield was shattered on the driver’s side though intact. When he turned his head to the right, he was horrified. The entire passenger side of the vehicle pushed against his body, the rear area thrust against his seat back. As if encapsulated, Richard found he had only the small driver area to maneuver.

The figure of a man appeared at the driver’s side door; middle-aged, clean-shaven face, sharp violet eyes and dressed in white shirt and pants. Richard felt relief, thinking, “I’ll be all right now that help has arrived.”

He heard the sound of footsteps approaching and turned toward the kind face peering through the broken window. Before he could speak, the man silenced him, “You will be fine. Help is on the way.”

Within seconds, two men appeared asking if he was okay, telling him not to move. They removed the door from its hinges, placed him on a gurney, rolling him toward the awaiting ambulance.

“Where is he? Where is the man dressed in white?”
“We didn’t see anyone, son,” came the response.
“You had to have seen him. He was right there talking to me a second before you arrived.”
The paramedics shook their head in puzzlement, thinking the young man in shock and babbling.

“Don’t know about any man but you’re sure as hell lucky to be alive. Your entire vehicle is crushed and mangled, except where you sat in the driver’s seat. It’s as if someone held you up and plopped you down after the wreck. ”

And Richard Stever would have never found out that angels do exist had it not been for the accident.