Why Fear Death?

I was consoling a dear friend this weekend, someone who was struggling with difficult, but non-life-threatening, issues. I pointed out that the mind likes to create anxiety around worldly affairs because this gives it power and justifies its claim as the true self. In actuality, the mind is simply a tool given to the true self to help carry out its purpose while here on earth. Of necessity, the mind/ego differentiates self from everything else, but when things aren't going well in life this sense of separation can cause desperation because we feel that we are the victims of fate in an uncaring universe. And if that isn't enough to make one feel depressed, toss in the fact that we're all gonna die (my friend also finds the thought of ceasing to exist extremely disturbing).

So, I said the thing to work on is getting past this feeling of separateness. Best is to have an experience, beyond the mind, where the boundaries between self and other dissolve. This, I would say, is the main motivator of spiritual practice. But you can also start by reasoning: all things in this universe emerged from a single point in space/time, so we're all made of the same stuff. It all came from One and will all go back to One. In the interim, everything is just temporary conglomerations of the same stuff. Yes, each person is a unique combination of stuff, but ultimately it's all the same stuff and separateness is an illusion. There are, or course, much more profound reasonings for why we're all connected, but you get the point.

My formula for happiness - apply your inner resources to the challenges that life presents, but don't follow the mind into getting overly absorbed in worldly problems. Remember that we all came from One and, when we die, we'll all dissolve back into One. Look around, everything will dissolve back into One. When we connect with that pure essence that runs through all things, the essence of beingness that animates this universe, there is no separation, no fear - only a longing to forever remove that which separates us from the source of our being.