Die While You're Alive — Wayne Dyer on Detachment From Possessions

I tell people supposing you went to sleep and you had a dream and in your dream you had oh all these different characters and you had all of this money and you had everything that you wanted in your dream and then you woke up and then you look back at your dream and you became attached to the stuff that you had in your dream wait a minute I want that there was gold in there there was silver there was all of these friends there was Cars I had a Ferrari I gotta have somebody would cart you off and put you in a rubber room and say that was a dream you can't be attached to that that's just a thought that you have that's the way you got of your life instead of it being an eight-hour dream it's an 80-year dream or a 90-year dream and at the end of the dream you don't want to be looking back at all of the stuff that you wish you could have still had because you can't have it you don't get any of that so you try to detach yourself now while you're here while you're alive from the need to have that stuff instead you just let it sort of all flow as absurd as it would be for you to be attached to the stuff that you had in your dream is that absurd for you to be attached to the stuff that you're having in this dream you have to die while you're alive now that's a very hard concept for people to get you have to experience your own death while you're alive let me tell you a story It's a Wonderful story it's an old ancient story I'll paraphrase it there was a hunter who lived in India and he would go to Africa every two years and he would bring back animals and prizes and things like that well one year he took off and he went to the Jungle and he discovered this large Enclave inside the jungle and it was filled with beautiful parrots beautiful birds multi-colored and they all talked couldn't get over it and he put a net out over one of the trees and he captured one of the parrots and he put the parrot in a cage and he brought the parrot back to be with him in India as his pet and he fed the parrot sunflower seeds and he fed him rice and he took wonderful care of him he was very good kept him in the cage two years went by and he talked to the parent every day and he said to the parent I'm not going back to Africa is there anything you would like me to say to your friends back there in the jungle when I'm back there parrot said yes tell them that I'm very happy in my cage tell them that I am joyful and that I love being in my cage here with you just tell them that the Hunter went back to Africa he went back to the place in the jungle where he had been two years before and he told the story he said your friend that I took back has a message for you and the message is that he is happy in his cage that he is joyful with me and that he has no regrets at the instant of hearing that a bird on one of the branches keeled over and dropped dead drop dead stiff the hunter assumed that he was just filled with sorrow at hearing of what had happened to his friend so he went back to India and he told his parrot what had happened he said I went back and I did just as you said and I told them all out there and at the moment that I told him apparently one of the parrots was so upset that he'd missed you so much that he just dropped dead and at the instant that that happened the parrot in the cage killed over dead his legs went straight up in the air and he went stiff the hunter was beside himself he couldn't figure out how could this happen and he took the Dead Parrot out of the cage open it up and threw it out on the wood pile the instant that the parrot landed on the wood pile he flew up to the branch and the hunter said you tricked me what is this I thought you were dead and the parrot said my friend back in the jungle was sending me a message he told me by his actions that in order for you to escape from your cage you must die while you're alive okay now that's an old story that's an ancient story that's been told over the year what does it mean I mean don't you see that this is a cage the whole planet is a cage if you can just stand back far enough and see that we're still restricted by the limitations placed on us as human beings we're stuck here or maybe in our homes or in wherever we are we're all in cages and even though we have more room to manipulate we may even have a whole planet we're still sort of in cages how do you escape from the cage that you're in you have to die while you're alive you have to literally experience your own death all of us have to all of us are going to die so why not experience it in advance and see yourself out of your body gone but able to look back at what's going on now just like the Dream well you have the dream and you have everything you want but you're able to look back at it as you do that you begin to see the Folly the absurdity of hanging on to anything of being attached to anything of needing anything of telling yourself that I can't be happy if from the perspective of having died but being able to look back on it just like the dream as soon as you can do that as soon as you can experience yourself formless dimensionless [Music] form and all of the attendant things that you hang on to become irrelevant they're not necessary any longer you have a whole new way of living a new way of being [Music]