For liberation to happen you must be ready to die

Let us make no mistake: enlightenment involves the death of the ego. The death of the sense of one’s self. The ending, finished. It is a psychological suicide and it is every bit as fear-inducing as physical death. In fact, the difference between enlightenment and physical death is a small one, merely a matter of the body staying alive in one case and dying in the other, just the physical body. So are you ready to die? And if not, why not? What attachments do you have in the material world that hold you back from psychological death? What fears do you have of death – the death which is the unknown, death which is final, irreversible?

This gives something of a feel for the final stages on the path to enlightenment, where we have to gamble all, with no certainty of a prize in return. It is the ultimate gamble, everything we think we are, laid down as a chip in the great casino of life, to be scooped away and perhaps, if we are lucky, something comes in return. But perhaps not. We have to be prepared to take that gamble, take that risk, to step into the unknown and give everything up. In that surrender, in that psychological death, comes the space within us which existence can fill with beauty, with peace, with the ultimate flowering, with god.

So, are we brave enough?  Do we have the courage to risk everything, to gamble all, to stake our very psychological existence, to be prepared to die psychologically? For this is what it takes. Nothing less will do.