Resurrection

Physical death is final and irrevocable, despite mythologies of resurrection. There is no hard evidence to the contrary. Our bodies simply stop working. We are our bodies.

Allowing this reality into consciousness is hard for most human beings. The inevitable losses of a long life gradually educate and desensitize the elderly to their coming end. However, few attempt to master the acute consciousness of inevitable death as fuel for an exuberance in life. Many elderly people pull in and isolate themselves when they fully accept their mortality.

I have found the consciousness of mortality very helpful in resurrecting my life through practice. By accepting that I have very nearly ended as a human being twice, I have been able to more clearly see the importance of daily practice for healthy living. I have resurrected my body twice through practice with the good fortune of living in a society with advanced medical technologies. By maintaining a daily awareness of this good fortune, I am happy to do what I must do to live a healthy and engaged life.

I experience moment-by-moment resurrection as a benefit of my practice. If I descend in mood or behavior to a less mindful or less compassionate state, I can choose to resurrect my life to a state of mindful compassion. In that moment, I can choose creative life over habit or conditioning. Living out of mindless habit or conditioning is a form of living death. The death of the human capacity of self-awareness and choice makes us less human.

As a humanist, I see resurrection whenever I observe another human being embrace life intentionally. This does not require divine intervention. It often requires love and compassion from other human beings. In this way, we can bring each other back from the death caused by simple inhumanity.