From our single cell beginnings, to this very moment of breathing in and out, death has been a part of our life. Almost every cell in our body is replaced in just a single year of existence, so we live with death every day. From day to day, nothing is ever the same. Not in ourselves and not in the world we live. Just being alive means existing in a constant state of flux. We know there is no negotiating with the inevitable journey of change and our dance with death.

Ernest Becker in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Denial of Death. Becker describes in great detail how culture has evolved in human consciousness as the direct result of two predominant driving forces:

• the human need to avoid death

• the human need to pursue immortality

The terrifying reality that you and every person must face every day includes:

• Yes, the cradle of life is death, and your life will culminate with this inevitable reality.

• Not only will you die, but your death can come at any moment by accident or happenstance.

• The meaning of your death will be no different from the road kill you see along the highway.

Now, before your mind starts running for the hills in neurotic desperation, let’s reference one of Becker’s mentors, Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard attempts to explain how we can deal with this overwhelming dilemma in human cultural evolution. He has his own formula for what he believes it means to be a human. He describes what he calls “the knight of faith.”

This figure (the knight of faith) is the man who lives in faith, who has given over the meaning of life to his Creator, and who lives centered on the energies of his Maker. He accepts whatever happens in this visible dimension without complaint, lives his life as a duty, faces his death without qualm. No pettiness is so petty that it threatens his meanings; no task is too frightening to be beyond his courage. He is fully in the world on its terms and wholly beyond the world in his trust in the invisible dimension. He continues: As the knight of faith has no fear-of-life-and-death trip to lay onto others, he does not cause them to shrink back upon themselves, he does not coerce or manipulate them. The knight of faith, then, represents what we might call an ideal of mental health, the continuing openness of life out of the death throes of dread.

Cultivating an awareness and knowledge of your death can lead you to having faith and trust in the sacred vitality of the universe. You can have faith in being a part of a big story, one that brings meaning and purpose to your life and one that will lead to your cosmic legacy in the form of power and wisdom, passed along to future generations.

Based on “Faith” topic discussed in Dance With The Elephant : Life’s Cosmic Equation