Choosing Life or Death

A message from Dan Bennack and Alexandra Mahlimay to a friend.

Dear Friend,

Thanks for your courage in writing about your recent experiences, and about wanting to release your trials, and your body, through death.

I feel it’s important to honor our choices; even those we make to exit this world.

I also think it’s important not to romanticize, mythologize, or otherwise misrepresent death or suicide to ourselves.

Death is a natural process. It is a transition from one state of consciousness to another.

This transition can be accomplished by releasing the physical body through death. But it can also be accomplished while we are still living in the body. It’s all a matter of choice.

Death happens all the time. Think about it.

Oftentimes when we enter a process of deep, transformational change, we suffer as though we are dying.

We engage in a process so profound that it requires us to relinquish apparent control over the direction of our lives in order to FEEL the True Leadership and Direction of the Soul.

Yes, deep transformational change can feel like death. And it resembles the experience of dying.

But when this experience happens upon us, we are still living. This is the paradox. It is not confined to the moments in which we approach, contemplate, or experience physical death. It hits us, full stride – right in the middle of the life we're living.

I have suffered and psychologically died in this body at least three times. Once, about a month after birth, and twice as an adult.

The experience of death requires that the ego be still and surrender before the Greater Reality of the Soul. This may be what you are feeling now. It can be quite overwhelming.

(The ego is the fragmented, distorted perception of our personality that we experience in our day-to-day living. It is filled with inner conflicts and unmet needs, as well as healthy attributes.)

At certain times in life, we realize that the ego-driven personality can’t resolve our problems.

That’s when the obstacles to our progress seem insurmountable and our lives become heavy with the burdens we are no longer willing to carry.

That’s when the ego panics. It feels threatened.

Its fragmented, helter-skelter approach to life is not working, and it knows it.

Its habitual way of rationalizing, sentimentalizing, and doing whatever is expedient to control our life is falling short; and it can’t handle the news.

That’s when the Soul approaches.

That’s when we feel the call.

That’s when we know there must be something better than the challenges we’ve been facing; and we long for it.

We begin to feel the Soul’s Presence and respond to it.

But at this critical time, especially when sadness, depression, and desperation are running high, the ego may make one last attempt to wrestle control from the Soul.

It feels the Soul coming in to comfort and guide.

It knows it cannot beat the Soul because the Soul offers something Real and Priceless, while the ego offers nothing but trinkets and illusions.

The ego believes that it will be supplanted or eliminated by the Soul, when the Soul steps in to consciously direct our lives.

The ego assumes that it will cease to exist, as the Soul takes over where it has failed to resolve life’s challenges.

In a moment of vulnerability and desperation, when we are ready to concede that there MUST be a better way, and then choose it – that’s when the ego may play one last trick, one that allows it to retain influence to the very end.

It will agree.

It will say, “Yes, the Soul is what you need. I agree completely. You do need to be comforted and sheltered from the harsh realities of this world.”

“Go and rest. Welcome the Soul into your life. This is what you need.”

“And by the way, I will take you there. I know exactly how to meet the Soul and find the peace you have longed for. It’s easy. Just listen to me.”

Then the ego will propose the preposterous. It will say that there is no other way to take up a Soul Life, than to join the Soul in death.

The ego may sound comforting and truthful while presenting this information, but it’s a lie. There are other ways.

The ego will tell this lie because it knows that when we choose to join the Soul now in Life, the ego will cease to exist.

It knows that when we embody the Soul in our physical forms, that this will be the ego's undoing.

When the Truth and Reality of the Soul consciously takes up residence within us, all that is unreal vanishes.

The bullshit stops.

The ego disappears.

The ego – that vast amalgam of sub-personalities competing for our attention with incompatible interests and unreasonable demands – ceases to exist.

It returns to Source. It becomes part of the Greater Life of the Soul.

This is terrifying for the ego. It would rather kill us than cease to exist itself.

That’s why the ego, with it’s twisted logic, may propose suicide as a way to return Home; rather than relinquish its control to the Soul, as the Soul takes up conscious residence within the physical body.

My advice to you, dear friend, is this:

Welcome the Deep Changes in your life that these challenges are bringing you. Allow them to provoke a Transition in you. This is a natural part of the evolution of your consciousness.

But rather than undertaking this transition through death, consider allowing your Soul to come closer to your physical form in Life.

Give your Soul permission to enter your life and operate where the ego can never go.

My friend, I honor your choice, whatever it is.

Just remember that whether you choose life or death, you will still find yourself at the same place.

You will find yourself – whether on this side of the veil or the other – having to dismantle your ego.

In order to make the transition in consciousness you long for – so that you can experience a Soul Life fully – you will still have to reclaim the power and control that you have ceded to the ego.

And then you will have to put this back in the hands of your Soul – where it belongs.

This is the “price of admission” to Heaven – whether you choose to experience Heaven here on Earth, or somewhere beyond the veil of death.

There are no short cuts in this process. None at all.

So my advice is to go to the depths of your current experience here on Earth. Make a commitment to see it through, even if you feel frightened or discouraged. Promise yourself to see the other side of this experience.

You may feel like you’re dying along the way. But, so what?

When the ego is finally undone, and the psychological death and suffering you are experiencing has ended; you will awaken closer to your Soul than ever before.

And you will be amazed at the New Person you have become.

Remember:

You don’t have to die physically to live as Spirit.

You can take up a Soul Life, right here and now, in the body. That’s the whole point of the Earth Experiment. That’s why we are here.

With love and honor for a life well-lived,

Dan Bennack