The Fear of Death

There is a fear most people carry quietly.

It doesn’t always speak loudly, but it sits underneath everything.

The fear of death.

You feel it rise in moments when you’re not in control.

When something shifts inside.

When the ground underneath you feels like it might give way.

I’ve seen it many times in ceremony.

When someone begins to dissolve into the medicine.

Ayahuasca, Bufo, mushrooms, Kambo.

The stories they tell about who they are start to fade.

Their grip on identity loosens.

That moment is what many call ego death.

And it brings a specific kind of fear.

A voice inside says,

“I think I’m going to die.”

“I don’t think I’m coming back.”

“I’m scared I’m losing my mind.”

It’s not the body dying.

It’s everything they believed about themselves beginning to fall apart.

And in that space, they feel like they’re disappearing.

For many, it’s the first time they’ve ever truly faced that fear.

And then there is the other kind of death.

The one that comes in life.

Sudden. Physical. Real.

A car crash.

An accident.

A diagnosis.

A split second that changes everything.

Or the quiet kind.

A panic attack.

A heart racing moment in the middle of the night.

A breath you can’t catch.

The body or mind whispers,

“This could be it.”

This fear of death lives under the surface.

It hides beneath the need for control.

It drives the chase for more.

More time.

More money.

More certainty.

It shapes choices without you even noticing.

People have spent lifetimes trying to outrun it.

But it waits.

Still.

Unavoidable.

As Benjamin Franklin once said,

“In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”

And what most people fear isn’t death itself.

It’s the idea that they might die without ever living the life they were meant to live.

That they might die with something important left unsaid.

A dream still inside them.

Unlived. Unspoken. Unfulfilled.

When you finally face that possibility and come back, you don’t return the same.

You come back clearer.

More grounded.

More honest about what matters.

Whether you met death in a ceremony or in real life, something shifts.

You stop feeding what doesn’t serve you.

You stop wasting time.

You stop chasing things that don’t matter.

You begin to live in a new way.

Not trying to outrun death,

but honoring the life you still have.

You listen more.

You slow down.

You show up.

Because once you’ve felt the edge of death,

you understand what a gift it is to be here at all.