Fear of Death

People fear death for various reasons—the unknown, the perpetual darkness, the feeling of total loss etc. I talked to a lady who recently lost her husband to heart attack. She told me that she was never afraid of death before her husband’s death, but she is afraid now. Her husband was the provider and financial manager of the family, she never spent any time to deal with financial matters before. She had a vague idea how much money they had but never got into the detail of managing it. Now she realizes that her husband left a quite amount for her. Since her husband’s passing, she has been working on getting a handle on her finance, which has taken most her time and focus. Well, I couldn’t help but think that she has developed an attachment.      
Attachments make it difficult for us to die. In life, we can develop attachments to many things— our relationships, our children, our money, our properties, our expectations (our dreams), our titles, our achievements, our success etc. We don’t want to die because death means loss of all these---these things.
If that is the reason we fear death, a person with more things are more afraid of death. The person with minimum, a homeless person for example, is least in fear of death…. because he really has nothing to lose if dies. When we lose our spouses, we lose an important attachment, which makes us less fearful of death. Many people have said they are not afraid of death anymore after their spouses died.  However, when we develop new attachments (a new relationship, or the finance like the lady above), we become a little more afraid. So the more we have, the more we fear; the less we have, less we fear. When we have nothing, we fear nothing.
Imagine that you have absolute nothing---no money, no relationship, no properties, no children, no friend, no external things, are you still afraid of death? If you are, because of the unknown, the uncertainty, the perpetual darkness you feel, it is good to know that there is something in you that never dies. All external things will disappear when you die—that is to say that when your physical body dissolves, you will lose all external things.
What truly lives in you is spirit. What is spirit? Many equate that to mind or thoughts. But it is not. When your mind is empty, which means when you don’t have any thought, is your spirit gone as well?  During a clear night, when you look stars in complete quietness and all by yourself, your mind is completely empty, what happens to your spirit? When you go to Yosemite National park, you stop at distance to look these mountains, you couldn’t help but are awed by their magnificence and natural beauty. When you look at a beautiful flower in wildness in swinging wind or in complete stillness, you are immersed with it and feel that you are part of it. These are moments when your mind is empty but your spirit comes alive. 
So your spirit is NOT your mind or thought. On the contrary, your spirit (your true self) appears at the exact moment when your mind stops. Your mind thinks; your spirit feels. If you feel your spirit, you know it exists, forever. That is also the moment given by God. You cannot see God, but you can feel God.
So, what is the point? When you die, you relinquish all external things including your physical body, the only thing that lives is your spirit, your true self. As some say, your true self never dies, which is to say that there really is no death. If there is no death, what are you afraid of?  Once you are free of fear for death, you are truly free. Only when you are truly free, you truly live.