Q: Please share your views on suicide.
First, my answer will be speaking largely from a nondual perspective. Second, let’s get it out on the table that suicide is a highly charged topic that people have very strong emotions around. It’s an action that’s been condemned. There is a major effort to govern by fear of punishment, even eternal punishment, in the effort to prevent it. And yet, even these guardrails are not wholly effective.
So many judgments are placed on suicide: psychological, religious, societal. The perception is that if people choose to kill themselves, it is a psychological weakness that they could not overcome. They were not strong enough. If you’d let yourself think about it for a moment, it takes massive strength to kill oneself.
Q: But we read that those who fail in their attempts at suicide are often glad they failed. Isn’t this cause to do all we can to prevent suicide from happening?
Of course, if you’re faced with that circumstance, yes, do all that you can. But let’s talk about fate and destiny for a moment. Talking from an All-That-Is perspective rather than from a personal perspective, all is determined. It’s determined at the moment of birth. In the case of suicide, life events will unfold in such a way that someone will be funneled into that path of no return.
When someone does not succeed at suicide and then expresses relief that they failed, that was also their destiny. The attempt becomes an experience of hitting an extreme reset button. Sometimes we don’t know how to value what we have until we try to throw it away. That is the second fated scenario.
Let’s return again to the idea of judgment that is placed on suicide in terms of religious control. It’s based on fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of death. Fear of breaking the laws of religion that have been specifically established by men to control. That no one should have the power to take a life other than God. And yet most wars on the planet have been religious wars, with multimillions of lives taken by men (and only very recently, women) in the name of God. You don’t get to have it both ways.
Suicide is another life experience. It is another way to experience death. The plane of existence we occupy is about gaining experience. Because only through experience can we know. Not think we know, not guess, not wonder, not try to empathize, but actually know through direct experience.
There are many spiritual masters who have chosen their own deaths, who have decided at an appointed time they will leave their bodies. And yet they are not held in contempt for choosing suicide. Again, you cannot have it both ways.
Q: So, how do you see suicide affecting the journey of the soul?
It doesn’t affect the journey of the soul. That journey was all encoded from the beginning of time. It’s part of destiny.
It is the fear of the unknown that we humans struggle with. One of the greatest fears of the unknown is death. There is also a fear that somehow suicide could become contagious. If one person could kill themselves, why couldn’t everyone kill themselves? So, there is a desire to avoid, to not think about, to quarantine, to separate, to make wrong or bad that which we are afraid of. When it just is. It is part of the All-That-Is. It is another available experience in the infinite number of experiences that souls cycle through to gain all-knowing.
Q: On the subject of destiny… Those who don’t like that concept often think that if you believe in destiny and that it’s all fated, there is no motivation to do anything. No reason to care. Because it has all been settled. How would you describe how we accept destiny and yet still have the motivation and the energy to live life?
We are always trying to fit into boxes what we don’t understand. Or to make up plausible answers for what we cannot truly know. Meanwhile, destiny is having us live out that which has been encoded. Go ahead, try to give up. You may be destined to try for a period of time to give up, and then destiny will sweep you back up into the river of life, and you will move forward again, or sideways, or whichever way the river moves you.
Giving up is not part of destiny. At least, it is not possible in a permanent form. It’s the same as your heart beating or your lungs breathing. That happens without you. You can try to stop it for brief periods of time. And, if you’re really determined, you could kill yourself?—?which would be part of your destiny. But 99.999% of people will have to start breathing again or will cough to start their heart beating again. It has its own life. You are just being carried along, thinking that it’s you who are steering the boat. There is no boat. There is only the river.
But humans are always looking for ways, again, to make boxes to put themselves in, to feel safe. The box boat, the box house, the box car, the box workplace, the box church. So many boxes. And yet, if we all were willing to walk out of the boxes and let ourselves fully experience what is, our awareness and understanding would exponentially grow. Those who do are the people on the path to awakening and enlightenment. They know they don’t want the boxes anymore.
Q: What would you say to someone who feels guilt that they couldn’t stop someone from taking their life?
Because people do not know how to communicate with someone who has transitioned through death, there is a desire to not want to lose a loved one to any kind of death, but especially to suicide. The normal reaction of almost all people is to feel guilt, “There is something more I should have done.” “There is something I should have said.” “I should have been able to stop them.” “If only I had seen the signs.”
If you were meant to help them, that would have happened. If they were meant to die, they would die. There is no one alive who can stop the river of destiny.
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