We Live. And We Die

August 1, 2025 Cognitive Insights No Comments

Every human being shares this simple truth: we live, and one day we die. To live is to also face death.

This blog is an invitation to reflect on death not as a threat but as a teacher. It shows that life’s depth is found in openness, not fear. Death then becomes less an end than a passage. In the deepest sense, nothing essential is lost. To reflect on death doesn’t diminish life. It shows what matters most and brings us closer to the fullness of each moment.

[This blog may make some feel uncomfortable. In such a case, of course, it’s not needed to read on.]

Death as a mirror of life

To look at death is also to look at life. When death is accepted, fear loosens, and life becomes more open. It is no longer a question of how long life lasts, but of how fully it is lived. Death mirrors the meaning of life by placing it in a clear frame.

It teaches that each breath is precious, not because time is short, but because life is valuable. Death is a teacher in its own right, showing that comparing years and achievements belongs to the ego. Beyond that, there is only the timeless now. Always now to live, and when the time comes, now to die.

This resonates with The Good Death, where one does not turn away from mortality but accepts it as part of being alive. To die alive, celebrating the sun and the light in one’s eyes, is to live without fear of what will eventually come.

The one is about dying while living.

The other is about living while dying.

Ego-death as rehearsal

There are small rehearsals of death woven into life. Each time pride is set aside, control released, or rigid identity softened, the ego loosens. These are small ego-deaths, and while they may be unsettling, they also prepare for the larger letting go that no one escapes.

Deep meditation often shows this directly. The familiar outlines of self dissolve, leaving only presence, immediate and open. In that space, it does not matter anymore whether the ego holds on or not. What remains is the here and now.

A similar image appears in Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. Bob Dylan’s song speaks of laying down a badge, a role that no longer fits. To release such burdens is not weakness but liberation. It opens the overlap with others and teaches that even in dying, there can be peace in letting go.

Living in the overlap

What continues after the ego dissolves is not a ghost but a thread of connection. It remains in relationships, in influence, in love, in Compassion. The total self is never sealed inside its own borders. It is braided into other lives, and in that overlap, there is no absolute ending.

This is the wonder of Compassion. It makes the overlap visible, comforting, and liberating. When lived in this way, fear of finality eases. One expands beyond oneself and discovers a freedom to live more fully.

In this light, death becomes not erasure but a continuation into what has always drawn the self forward: love that knows no borders, eternal love that holds togetherness beyond time and space.

Honorably living, honorably dying

To live honorably is to ensure that one’s essence continues in others. Honor is not about external victory or recognition. It is about integrity, truth, and Compassion. Through these, life resonates beyond its own limits.

Honor and Compassion are close. Both create overlap. Both carry a life forward into the world. Sacrifice may sometimes embody this, even when the cause itself is doubtful. What is remembered is the giving, the courage to stand ― as a soldier, for instance, even beyond self-preservation.

In this sense, the distinction can be made between the good death and the great death. The first is a personal reconciliation with mortality. The second is a dedication beyond oneself, a dying that serves the life of others. In both, to be honorable in the face of death is to transcend it.

For the ego, such dying is defeat. For the total self, it is victory.

Death as transformation

For the ego, death appears as nothingness. For the total self, it is rather an opening. Life has always been a movement of growth and overlap. Death continues this movement. It is not the end of belonging but its expansion.

The imagery of a door helps here. Dylan’s song evokes standing before it, not barging in but knocking, humbly, patiently. Death is such a threshold. It is not an enemy but a passage, a moment of surrender into what is larger than oneself.

In this passage, sorrow can become continuity, even intimacy. To enter death is to enter eternal love. What begins in living fully finds its fulfillment in dying openly. Boundaries dissolve.

Embraced by love

Life and death are not two separate realities but a single flow. To live with openness and to die with trust are part of the same path. What is essential in the self is never lost. It expands into what it has always been moving toward: love that endures beyond time.

Such death is not a fall into emptiness but a culmination. To see this is to live without fear, to die without defeat, and to recognize that both living and dying are embraced by love.

Nothing essential is lost.

What dies is not the whole of who we are, but only the small self that believed it was separate.

Death does not erase. It transforms.