Meditation for December 29th
The Only Way To Truly Know Yourself is to Die
If you are reading this, you are seriously trying to honestly know who you are and what you are meant to do or be. You are committing to spirituality and meditation to try to become a better person. I can only give you the straightforward tools and lay them at your feet, but these are only the tools I have used.
You could literally walk the same path as me, but it’s tough to start teenage alcoholism in your thirties or forties, and you can’t just catch cancer. You are forced to hope that those things didn’t have a significant impact on me. Maybe I am a better person because I kept almost dying.
You could try using the tools exactly the way I do, but maybe the experience that helped me find them only works for me. Maybe my life’s tools are universal, and you will be fine. But perhaps they aren’t, and the experience of not having a pulse or breathing is the only way those tools work.
To truly know yourself and to honestly understand the futility of the world around you, you must die for a few minutes. This is the only way to know reality. Fear of death when you’ve never stood on the line of life and death is much different than when you have. Having almost died is a powerful spiritual motivation to make the meaning matter in this life because it’s the only one we have, despite what a lot of people try to tell you. You don’t get a redo, or you don’t just come back and try again.
You will never see the world with the innocence and optimism that a living person will. You won’t be able to feel a genuine awe with life either. The bluest, sunniest day will remain grey. Dying is awesome, and I am using an older definition of that word, and it makes life have a little less spark.
But you will know yourself so well.
Before almost dying, I was uncomfortable with who I was. I didn’t like a lot about myself. Falling into the darkness of the abyss, I have found that I am just right. There’s no point in wearing any mask, though I still put one on; I don’t care as much what people think of me. I tend to find people who are scared of things unbearable, especially if there is no real reason for the fear, just a ‘what if’. They aren’t scared of death; they are scared of pain, and I think that makes a person weak. We must be broken to be fixed. We must fall to rise again. The only way for real growth is pain.
Don’t try any flatliner bullshit. Death must be a surprise. Maybe try jaywalking more, or buying drugs from strangers.
Prayer
Charon,
Please take me this time.
I have the money this time.
Stop rejecting me.
I keep having to go back there.
Back to life.
I have come to with crying people pounding my chest,
I have sat in hospital beds thinking about odds.
I have fallen, wondering if I won’t land right.
Thinking about my life as the ground comes flying up at me.
I have also just wanted to jump on the boat,
By my own hand.
But you kept rejecting me.
Some of the believers of young gods,
Think there is a reason I am still here.
I don’t see it.
I didn’t even ask to be alive in the first place.
So next time you see me,
Let me on the fucking boat.
Amen.
Craft
Styx discography
Styx I (1972)
Styx II (1973)
The Sperpant is Rising (1973)
Man of Miracles (1974)
Equinox (1975)
Crystal Ball (1976)
The Grand Illusion (1977)
Pieces of Eight (1978)
Cornerstone (1979)
Paradise Theatre (1981)
Kilroy Was Here (1983)
Edge of the Century (1990)
Brave New World (1999)
Cyclorama (2003)
Big Big Theory (2005)
The Mission (2017)
Crash of the Crown (2021)
Circling From Above (2025)
Goal
Don’t fear the reaper.