The following reflection is inspired after listening to one of the talks of Mark Pritchard (Belsebuub), in which he encouraged a reflection on what would it be like if we are now at the end of our lives and looking back on it, and then being given a chance to return back to younger age. What would we do differently then?

In the context of the inner work, one can meditate on the following hypothetical situation: Imagine that you are 85 years of age, lying on your deathbed. You don’t have much more to go, but enough time to reflect on your life. You see how things went, the ups and downs. You see yourself at one point of your life doing the inner work. Perhaps the memory of happiness and joy overwhelms you, the happiness that you had when you were living a spiritual life and when you were walking towards your Being. You then see yourself getting pressured by life, perhaps by some strong emotions of excitement, of pleasure, of the mundane flow of life that swept away the innocent joy that you have previously found in the Inner work. And little by little, you lost an interest in that which previously uplifted your soul.

As you became more and more inert and content with the worldly things, you forgot about your Spirit and the Work. Perhaps that period of life happened sometime in your youth. You then reflect on the decades that have passed by since then, on your life, perhaps on the family that you have had, children that you raised, career goals that you constantly aimed to reach. Maybe from time to time you noticed a “still small voice” in your essence, reminding you of the eternal. This have simultaneously gave you both an unpleasant feeling and a feeling of mystical yearning and of peace. It was a peace in which you rested for a while, but you thought that the river of life was too strong to do anything about it. And so the years have gone by, and you are reflecting on them as you are lying in your deathbed. You see that all of those things you lived for and that you acquired in this life have very little meaning now. You understand that your career, your family, your house, and everything else that was so dear to you, will soon no longer be part of your reality, and you also realize that all of those things will perish, in the same way as you will soon too. You sigh with deep understanding that your life is soon to end, that it is all over.

But something happens: imagine that Someone gives you another chance to go back to the time when you were doing the Inner work, or even before that. It is your last chance, but a great one, as now you have many years in front of you to start things anew. The question that arises is, how would you now live your life? What would your choices be? What would you do? Having deeply understood that material life is transitory, would you perhaps try your best to realize the goal of the Inner Awakening? Having suffered consequences and lived for many years in the sorrow and pain of an ordinary life, would you do something different this time?

Perhaps try and see what would you do different, and how could your life look life if you would to lead a spiritual life, walking along the path to awakening. I think this is an important meditation that anyone aspiring to the Spirit, can do. Our inner dragon of darkness is fighting against our awakening, laying down the traps into which many of us are falling into. Rebelling against it and against the current of life is not easy, but what is at stake? Would the aspirant of the Spirit ever be content with not discovering the deeper purpose of his existence, of why he is here, and how tastes the fruit of the Tree of Life, of the seed that can germinate in the depths of his soul?

H.D.P. , October 2017.