This moment, final moment.

Such is one of the sayings of the Yaqui Indians.

When we realize we are living our final moment, we gain a new perspective on life. Our perception is enhanced. We look around for what really matters, and we overlook that which is irrelevant.

We may feel compelled to call someone and tell them we loved them. We may just want to hold a beloved one in our arms.

The final moment puts us in touch with the world of what is relevant.

Unfortunately, we tend to exist in the world of the irrelevant. We act according to the belief that we have all the time in the world.

In order for us to awaken into life, we have to become aware of our own mortality. This lesson takes place in Mexico, during the "Day of the Dead."

During this time, all members of the community go to cemeteries to have an encounter with the dead.

For two long days, there is nothing but reminders of death around us. And the message eventually sinks: we are not immortal. There we find buried loved ones, relatives, friends. Even living friends and relatives offer us some rhymes commemorating our final day. We call them skulls, "calaveras". Here they tell us what they were to remember if we were to depart from this world in this particular day. It is all done in good faith, and yet, the awareness that comes when we look at the sunrise as our last one, this breath as our last breath, brings us to our fullest life.

As we look around us, we are going to find many things that have been here before us, and are going to be here once we are gone. We have the Earth and the stars. We have the mountains, and the rivers. All of them our constant companions.

As we look closer we find that they are not only out there. They are in us. The fluid of our body a few months ago was at the top of the mountains in form of snow. The air that we breath just yesterday was the water of a river. The minerals that sustain us come from the rocks of the earth. We are made of the dust of the stars. The universe is alive at this moment, in us.

The awareness of this experience has been described in songs, poems, words, since immemorial time. The cosmic life, one that unfolds when we are aware of our oneness with the Universe. This experience is so vast that with it we become aware of life and death at the same time. It is just like our breathing. Life, inspiration, and death, exhalation. Both of them, there. With one life comes to us, with the other one, death departs from us. The cosmic life encompasses both and transcends them.

During "the day of the Death" we bring death out of its shadows, and into the light of the community. We deal with death in the open. Like with every other thing that is brought from the unconscious to the realm of consciousness, death then looses much of its negative or frightful connotations. It becomes part of life. Not an end to life, but the beginning of a new journey. The wall becomes a door. We realize that all other living beings before us have gone through it. And that we will go through it too when our day comes.

A path with a heart does not deviate with death.

You know how you can tell if you are following a path with a heart? If with notice of your imminent death you change the course of your life, then you were not following a path with a heart to begin with. But if you know that your death is coming, and you maintain the course to your last moment, then you have been following a path with a heart all along.

May your path be one of completeness, of unity, of love.