you and everyone you know and love are going to die now this is quite an unsettling truth and something we don't really want to think about but I want to share a perspective that allows this reality to actually bring Liberation and it offers quite a lot of freedom instead of fear so when you face this and you really Ponder on the fact that you're not going to be here forever I'll share a quick story yesterday I celebrated my first Ash Wednesday mass at the start of Lent never done this before and during the mass the
priest puts ashes on your forehead and says the piece of scripture which is Genesis 3:19 remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return so for the rest of the mass I think that's the idea you're meant to ponder on this and you're meant to think about it but I had already you know the question to be or not to be a lot of people do really think about this and I'd already thought about it so I kind of have my answer but it was nice to have this to think about so when
you really think about it Ponder on the fact that you're going to die you realize two things one there is a sense of urgency whatever you're going to do during this life you only have a set amount of time to do it so you better get on with it and two it gives you a sense of Freedom all these things you're worried about and all these fears you have of what other people think about you or what the outcome's going to be it all goes in the end it all goes back to dust you know
it doesn't really matter this isn't an excuse to do degenerate things and be a bad person I see it as like permission to do good and shine your light in this world because we often stifle ourselves cuz we think oh I don't know what that person's going to think of me you're going to die they're going to die they're worried about their life and their fear of death so they're not focused on you so this actually liberated me it it motivated me to get on with the things that I want to do and it gave
me the freedom to do it because I realized well everybody else is is in this same predicament they all have this fear of death so I heard I think it was echart toll said all fear is fear of death and all knowledge is knowledge of self now you can ponder on that for about five years and that's what I've done and I've kind of I think I understand what he's saying now so the realization that you're going to die can be the end of all f because if all fear is fear of death anything else
shouldn't actually scare you so I'll give you an example in my life I wanted to be a YouTuber since when YouTube came out so this is like over 10 years ago I think and I remember this was like a childhood dream of mine before YouTube I had cameras I was a photographer I take pictures of everything I've been a professional photographer it's kind of like a vocation I would see beauty and I wanted to capture it and I wanted to to be a YouTuber but I had a lot of fear associated with it I always
wanted to film ah no I always wanted to film somebody else and I never wanted to get behind the camera myself because I thought oh it's cringy my friends are going to judge me and I had all these negative fears associated with it it took me 10 years to get over this and I've I saw a comment yesterday somebody said like you're so brave going on camera well done for doing what you're doing and they wanted to do a similar thing but obviously it was fear that was holding them back and I can relate that
comment like really struck me because it was 10 years of fear I didn't act on it for 10 years and it was this it was the realization that I'm going to die you better get on with it you've been putting this thing off for 10 years you're going to die one day and you can't do it so you might as well get on with it now so that's the motivating side of the fact that you're going to die then the freedom well if I do say something silly on camera or people judge me negatively I'm
going to die one day and it's not going to matter and the people watching are going to die one day and they're not going to remember and we're I realized everybody's just focused on themselves anyway so they're not really they judge me for about 5 seconds and then they're over it so all of these fears are less bad than the fear of death so if all fear is fear of death I thought well it's not going to kill me if I go on camera say something silly or controversial and everybody thinks I'm an idiot I'm
not dead it's still not I'm not like gonna die from it so all fear is fear of death and none of my fears manifest it was cringy I've done YouTube for about a year without much success learning the ropes and just talking about what I was into and nobody ridiculed me I mean I get some negative comments but it wasn't the fears were not real so do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain I'm pretty sure that's a Ralph wdo Emerson quote and the opposite has been true more recently I'm getting
cuz it's my peers it's my friends that I went to school with that I thought oh they might think it's a bit weird but I had a good friend so Harry if you're watching this if this video shows up for you I appreciate your message I had a good friend message me and say seen your recent videos and he resonates with them he likes them and I didn't expect that because it's a bit cringy so you have to do the thing you fear and if you realize it's not going to kill you then you might
as well get on with it and you've only got a certain amount of time to do it so there's urgency there and I've had a bit of a strange relationship with fear because I don't actually fear death I would ride I had a motorbike that was extremely fast and we would go to the aisle of man and I would ride over the mountain at 140 mph that's legal over there because of their um National speed limit laws I could have died like that and I didn't fear death but I at the same time I had
social anxiety and I would fear going to the supermarket and talking to the checkout person I would rehearse that in my head 10 times hello how are you very strange what a a the fear is irrational what an irrational fear to have talking to somebody at a checkout but I'll ride my motorbike over the mountain with cliffedge drops at 140 able to die at any moment very strange but when you realize you're going to die something's going to get you then the fear drops away I shouldn't be scared of talking to somebody at a checkout
and I definitely shouldn't be scared of putting up a YouTube video cuz all fear is fear of death and if it's not death that you're facing then there's no need to fear it so I heard I'm not sure how true this is that everybody has two inbuilt fears the first is the fear of heights and that's because our brain is at the top of our body it's the furthest away from the floor so it's kind of a built-in fear because if you're if you fall over and hit your head that could be the end of
your life that could be death whereas other body parts like for example my my uncle had a motorbike accident in his 20s and had to have one of his legs amputated but it hasn't affected his you know you can remove an arm or a leg and it's not as bad as if you damag your brain so we're all built with the fear of heights and we're all built with the fear of public speaking and I'm not sure what the psychology or the reason is behind that so I think it's it was kind of normal and
natural that I had a lot of resistance to talking on camera so that is an inbuilt fear for some reason so having pondered on this for a long time I've come to the conclusion that the fear of death is really a fear of having never lived it's a fear of regret based Al so when you think about it you are ashes and to ashes you will return that should Inspire these two things it should motivate you and say you know you've only got a certain amount of time to do this so you better live your
life if you've got fears holding you back I had the fear of making YouTube videos for 10 years it held me back I would have died with regrets and I know this isn't a big thing it's YouTube videos but they've had a lot of positive impact they' helped a lot of people so don't use this as an excuse to go on a rampage doing degenerate things because there is you do have a moral compass so you have a certain amount of time but use it to do good in the world so allow the realization of
your mortality to give you urgency to give you motivation but to also give you the freedom to not have the fears so do the things that you're called to do shine your light in this world so I find this interesting because I'm approaching Christianity with faith but also with logic and if you just look at that statement remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return that's just the truth that's reality it's in the scripture but it could be your dad saying it you know your dad could be like remember mate you're going
to die one day so don't worry too much about what people think and you better get on with it whatever you want to do in this life you better do it don't have fears hold you back that's just great advice so that's the Bible verse for today Genesis 3:19 remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return so I'd invite you to ponder on that and allow the realization that you're going to die to give you Freedom give you urgency and do what it is you want to do and when you think about
the fear of death you fear death because you don't know what comes after so if you have faith and you have a belief system that tells you what happens after death and the Catholic faith has a pretty robust idea of what happens after death and I believe in that perspective but that might not be the case for you you might believe in reincarnation or whatever then you don't fear death anymore so that's where faith and belief comes in but that's a topic for another video so I hope that helps speak to you soon
