Empowerment

2025, January, Issue 132

We think we have time,

we don’t, we don’t, we have no time;

We’re kidding ourselves

kidding ourselves if we believe,

we think everything will remain

all right, all right;

Our lives are just a flash of light,

flashing up there in the sky,

in the clear bright sky, we think,

forming fantasy and belief,

just a figment of our imaginations;

We don’t, we don’t have time

to prepare for death,

nor for all these sicknesses,

these illnesses we most certainly will have

at some point, some point soon;

They say, if we’re lucky,

that we will have an old age,

that we’ll get old gracefully,

not mentioning the pain and suffering,

that we’ll have all the time in the world

to do whatever we want when we’re old,

someday, some day soon;

We won’t, we can’t,

because, most certainly

our physical bodies will decline,

we’ll be sick, we’ll tremble,

then die,

it’s inevitable;

Just when we think we’re fine,

we’re not so fine as we thought;

Did we spend our degrading

existence, our lives where energy leaves us,

preparing for death,

or did we just bumble along,

not knowing what we were doing?

This life, this spiritual opportunity,

This incredible chance that we may miss;

This is our chance, our golden prize,

Our chance to prepare,

Despite the blessings of good health,

Preparing for our next step,

Preparing for the inevitable,

We empower ourselves when healthy and able;

Prepare for illness, old age and death;

We prepare to awaken from this dream,

This nightmare we call life;

This life is our chance.

A poem by Robert Aho © 2025

Within cyclic existence, our health is really something that we take for granted, especially when we are young. It’s hard to imagine that we will start to fall apart, or even that we’ve been falling apart for years, that we just simply won’t admit it to ourselves. We don’t really understand what it means to feel good, to be healthy. It seems like something far away, something that will always remain elusive.

When we are healthy, we act like we have all the time in the world, that it will always be this way. When things go horribly wrong, we don’t know what to do. It’s upsetting. We might freak out or even panic.

Now, as someone who has been met with a great many illnesses, and even death, in this lifetime, I can say with total confidence that Spiritual Practice made it so that I was able to endure even the most horrible things. I’ve had cancer, a heart condition and numerous other things. All three of my heart procedures involved something approximating death. I met that with complete and utter ease. It was absolutely no problem for me.

I’ve come to a point in my life where I simply have to admit that I’m disabled, and it’s not a problem. I simply have to take things slow, not be afraid to ask for help now and again, to allow myself to experience and accept what is not so pleasant. Spiritual Practice made this possible.

It might even be said that, because my Spiritual Practice has progressed so quickly and intensely, that it exacerbated the health decline. When our karma is extinguished, there is much less holding us to this life. The life will then decline. With Spiritual Practice, we must courageously face this loosening of what binds us. If we are unable to do so, then we’re unable to prepare for what certainly awaits us all.

I went as far into the death bardo as is possible, while still being able to return. I was completely at ease. To say that I was unconcerned about all the turbulence and lack of a physical body is an understatement. I had completely let it all go. The only thing that concerned me was this body that I knew was in steep decline. The pain and suffering was something that I had to accept, or returning would have been out of the question.

When I returned from the death bardo, what I really had on my mind was to encourage people to be empowered through Spiritual Practice. What we face when we die is such that we need this empowerment; or, if we’re not empowered to face what awaits us, we will be utterly helpless. I can’t imagine a more horrible thing than that, to find yourself in the death bardo with no spiritual abilities whatsoever. It’s not the place where you would ever want to be helpless and, yet, being utterly helpless is what most beings practice throughout their entire lives, even though they don’t know that.

When we are floundering helplessly in the death bardo, we are being swept up by our own karmic winds. This condition we call death is when we discover that our physical existence had been nothing other than an illusion. Now that we’ve lost our physical bodies, we’re not quite so sure about what to do with this energetic condition we’ve realized. We need to be empowered in our lives now, and the easiest way to become empowered is to proceed with Spiritual Practice. We need to do anything and everything in order to become fully awakened.

This is my sincerest wish.

Blessings in Light,

Robert Aho