I don�t know what happens after we die, but I do know, for me at least, there will be music, and peace. Endless peace.

Peace is one of those strange things too. We will never find it if we keep searching for it. Peace begins only when all desires end, and acceptance begins. Peace isn�t something that you think, its something that you know. I know that there have been several times in my life that I�ve experienced real peace. It wasn�t during one of our President's peppy speeches either. Nope. It was when I died.

There�s a card in the tarot deck named Death, and people hate getting it. When I lay that card down in front of a people they normally grimace, envisioning all of the people they love that could die. In the foreground of this card is a skeleton in black armor, bearing the cross of death, and all people seem to be able to see is him. When I look at death, and this started at the very beginning, I see the background of the picture. You know what�s there? The most beautiful sunrise. Death brings beginnings. I love getting Death. I get to see change, something new. Do you see it now? Every time something dies you grow, you get to touch a new shore.

In my life I�ve not only had the chance to have many things die, like many others have, but I�ve also died myself. It most often happens in dreams.

Picture me in the middle of some odd, unimportant dream. I feel a strange pull, and suddenly I am flying through time and space. I land in the driver�s seat of a pickup truck. The truck is careening down the road. I see blood on the window, and looking behind me I see the back of man who is mortally wounded laying in the backseat. Seeing as this is a dream I accept it, and turn back around. The truck seems to go faster and faster as though the gas pedal is stuck. We are flying down the road, heading straight for an intersection. So vivid. Picture the traffic light shinning at me, cherry red. Picture sunlight glinting off of all the cars crossing the intersection in front of me. Summer trees in full bloom. A late dusky feel to the air. And me in this truck careening towards it all. I turn the wheel hard to the right while slamming my foot on the brake pedal. I can see the line of cars I�m going to smash into, so real. Closer. Closer. The scene is out of control. A dirty white semi. The man in the backseat is crying. The break pedal pulls away from my foot. I lean down to reach it, millimeters away now, and the scene grows deafeningly loud, then completely black. In the darkness a screen appears before my eyes. A name in green with a green bar beneath it, already half gone, begins to flicker where it once shone bright. It is the name of the man that was in the backseat. It flickers out, and the screen is gone. Then, and this is important, I died too. There was just this slow floating sensation. Like entering a vacuum. And peace. Total peace hovered in the air. It was almost as if there were explosions of wings and light, but softly. I had no more body, I simply existed. Awareness watching awareness. It only lasted for a moment, and gently I fell back into my body. Slowly, my eyes opened, and I awoke.

It is a theory held both by my mother and myself that that night I helped in the spiritual accompaniment of that man�s death. Whether this is true or not, I know that that night I died myself, if only just for a moment.

When I say dying I don�t mean physically, not exactly at least. I mean, I have no idea what my physical body was doing while my spirit wasn�t with it. But no, I�m talking about spiritual death. When the spirit leaps out and all the limitations of the mind die. When the conscience dies; when the self-hate dies; when all of the endless wants, desires, and worries all die; that�s when you wake up. I�m sure you�ve heard of spiritual awakening. Well, you have to die before you wake up.

Remember the dream I wrote about in the last issue? The one where I get shot and wake up just before I die? Well now I know why I was sad that I didn�t die. I knew that if I died in that dream I would get to fly again. I would embrace peace once more. So when I woke up that night I know why the sadness filled me. I had missed the experience of dying. Or total freedom, however you choose to look at it.

So recently, after my emotional breakthrough, I�ve just been floating along. I�ve been living on a much higher spiritual level lately. My yoga is taking up more of my time. I�ve been eating a lot healthier. I don�t hold in my emotions, and I read a great book about freedom, happiness, and enlightenment. That book, Happy Yoga, Seven Reasons You Have Nothing to Worry About, by Steve Ross gave me lots of simple things I could do to enhance my life and spirituality. I found myself breathing deeply a lot of the time; taking small breaks to just stop thinking, to just be aware of everything; and seeing humor and happiness in the world.