I Want to Die at Heart Circle
William Stewart
I want to die in heart circle.
Life arises out of stillness, and when my time comes, I want to be lovingly witnessed as I sink back down into that eternal well of silence that is always at the center of our vessel.
Silence begets listening. At first, sitting in circle, I hear a sequence of different voices, each telling a unique story, distinct and individuated. But then, after a while, the strands begin to weave together, so that while I still hear the distinctness of each thread, I also start to see it all as the ebb and flow of life.
Like everybody else’s, my own individual thread is linear. My lifetime had a beginning, and it will have an end. But the circle is eternal; it revolves in cosmic time, like the seasons and the stars. It braids our finite stories into the universal stillness at its heart.
The circle existed before I was born, and it will continue long after I am gone. What a gift, to surrender my unique and fraying lifeline into the weave! To enter free-fall, knowing that whatever disintegrates is merely ego, and that the circle will accept me as I am, without judgment or problem-solving.
In circle I am part of the tribe. Here I understand: it is not my singular life that matters, but rather, the life of the greater whole. My experience takes on purpose and meaning in the context of the shared reality that’s cyclical and infinitely elastic. In circle, I rediscovered a basic human birthright, which our spiritually bankrupt modern culture denies to the psyches it has colonized: I know myself to be secure in an ever-changing, ever-balanced universe. Before empire, before agriculture, our ancestors knew this essential truth, now shattered by ten millennia of accruing ego and hubris. Heart circle brings me back there, into the collective embrace of the tribe, of soil, of seas, of spirit, where safety and substance inhere.
The circle expands with each heart’s sharing. It invites me to drop into the core of my soul, into the heart of the world. It invites me to die a little bit each time we sit together, so that my narrow and isolating sense of self can break apart and fuse with everything that is.
With each passing moment, I come closer to my final breath. New life, new stories will be renewing the fabric, even as I fade toward silence. Carry me in, lay me down gently by the fire. Here, at last, I can relinquish my failing body and wounded psyche, knowing that everything recycles, joining the earth, the ancestors, the spirits. Sing me out, oh my beloveds! Twine me into the eternal basket, the vessel of our collective heart, the circle of the cosmos. Lower me into the well of stillness, witness me as I take my leave. I want to die in heart circle.
