| A Second Life |
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| — This Is Your Last Chance — |
Try shifting your perspective from seeing human beings as physical forms to seeing them as beings beyond form.
And from that perspective, recall the news reports about the sudden death of the superstar once described as "a once-in-a-generation talent."
The media reported it all at once.
How did you feel when you first heard that news?
And now, after changing your perspective in the way we have discussed, how do you feel as you think back upon it?
Is there not a difference between the world perceived through your eyes and ears and another world that resonates directly within your heart beyond images and sound?
Certainly, within his field, he may truly have been blessed with extraordinary talent beyond compare.
Indeed, that was probably the case.
Gifted with remarkable ability, able to obtain almost anything he desired — such was the life he appeared to live.
But what about the world within his heart?
Did the music and dance he loved truly heal him?
The inner world of someone who described himself as a machine was probably beyond anyone's ability to fully understand.
Leaving behind immense wealth, he suddenly departed this world, and the shock of his death sent waves through society.
I do not believe his death was truly "sudden."
It was something that, in a sense, had long been moving toward inevitability.
I believe he killed himself — not in the literal sense of suicide, but because the thoughts and pressures within him gradually drove him toward destruction.
The endless medications.
The alcohol.
Perhaps through such things he barely managed to keep his body functioning.
His physical body already seemed completely exhausted.
No matter how advanced the medicine, no matter how many renowned doctors surrounded him, sooner or later he could do nothing but stop the life within himself.
This is something one can feel when turning awareness toward the world of his consciousness.
Does your heart not sense this as well?
If he had awakened to his true self, perhaps he would have understood the immense suffering within the heart that drove him to push his body beyond its limits.
And perhaps he could have treated himself with greater kindness.
Naturally, such awakening would also have transformed the way he lived.
Sadly, however, he left this world without fully learning within the circumstances given to him.
And yet, although his physical body — the form we recognized as him — no longer exists in this world, the world of his consciousness, the world of his heart, the part of him beyond physical form, still unquestionably exists.
Even when the body disappears, something remains that never disappears.
That is the world of consciousness.
We human beings are now struggling and striving in countless places and circumstances in order to learn that we continue to exist as consciousness regardless of the body.
He, too, was simply one among us.
I only wish he could have treasured that opportunity for learning more deeply.
If he had come to know the cries within his own heart and had been able to pour boundless kindness upon himself —
No...
Perhaps that was what he had longed for more than anything.