The death meditation has revealed more fully to me many things, drawn my attention to:

– how much I do in my life from a sense of ‘duty’. I have let go of some events and quietly stepped back from some people already, gently, as a result of this growing understanding.

– how the ego of being a contemporary artist, yearning for recognition, is a veneer on top of a joyful practice of being a creative person. At the moment of impending death the veneer is stripped away. This is a wonderful reality check and is balancing for me. Like balancing on top of a ball, this is a precarious, ever-shifting state. I often slip into insecurity or yearning and have to do some fancy foot work to regain my balance.

– how the more I feel I will die, now, the less I fear it. There is still fear and struggle but I am very surprised that the sense of sheer terror diminishes relatively quickly.

The image above is of an artwork I made in the 1990s called Sarcophagus, a horrible piece of work in many ways, a failure, useful to contemplate when the old ego gets boisterous.