Caitlyn Eckhardt: A Child’s Death Prayer
“YOU WILL DIE ONE DAY.”
I was a child on a mission– to know, with certainty, what is my fate upon my death.
Around eleven years of age, this question haunted me like a Goat Specter, whispering hellish nightmares into my dreamscape, cracking them open in blood.
I did not yet know what I believed. I wanted to believe what I was being taught in the Christian church, but as a child, I was lost for how to see Truth in anything, and trust.
It seems evident however that while I experienced epic fear in considering what to believe about my death, there did exist a subtle, unconscious, steadfast knowing that when I prayed, something heard me, something gargantuan in size and immense in a polarized power.
This being I called God. This being I felt when I thought, heard, or read about God. There was no doubt, that God was Real.
And I was terrified of Him.
My concern was that upon my death, He wouldn’t want me.
That whatever Jesus did to save our souls, wouldn’t apply to me.
That when I died, my fate would be to face the gnawing of flesh and gnashing teeth, or else what’s worse– an endless, sulfuric burn.
And so I could not persist like this, with this fear, for the course of my life’s entirety. As a child I knew, never could I see the sunshine or hear an infant’s laugh or feel my own Heart beating, so long as this fear plagued my Mind.
And so I prayed to God, a child’s prayer:
“Dear God, please please if it’s possible, can I die just for a minute? Just so I can die and see you and Heaven and know that it’s all Real, and that I will be safe when I die. Please God, can I die and then I’ll come back and I’ll know you’re there and I’ll live a beautiful life for you?
But I don’t want to die forever God! I just want to know what death is, and that my loved ones and I will be okay.
Amen.”
From the depths of my soul, this prayer Became.
*When I refer to ‘God’ today, I mean it the same as all names for God including Source, the One, or my personal fave, ‘Uni’ (for, the Universe). I do not maintain any spiritually-based systematic or religious beliefs, nor do I align with any dogma.
This death wish was my Heart’s prayer which throughout my life I sometimes forgot, but never, it seems, did God.
“YOU WILL DIE ONE DAY.”
I was 14 years old, the night before my family’s big move from Indiana to Ohio for my dad’s job.
My oldest sister was in the ICU, fighting for her quadriplegic life after a damning car accident.
I was angry, sad, and scared.
I was heartbroken to be leaving my best friends.
I felt rebellious.
My friends were throwing me a last hurrah! A goodbye sleepover party packed with candy, romcoms, and Justin Timberlake’s SexyBack blasting through the basement stereo.
My mother would not approve, but I was entranced by the pop music of the day, and its banality. I felt euphorically happy and rebellious dancing sexy with my friends as the beats in my body drifted into daydreams of my grown-up high school self, books hugged tight to chest walking through the hall, boys hounding me for a date… A boyfriend.
Awash in this revery, then, without warning, Reality ripped itself apart.
“BOMBUMBOMBUMBOMBUMBOMBUMBOMBUMBOMBUMBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMB–
SCHHRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIK.”
I don’t know how to translate what it felt like, this quaking shift which then occured like Ancient Cosmic Gates cracking open after aeons sealed shut, but that at first, it was
NOISE LOUD NOISE EARTH QUAKING NOISE
and then, it was abyss. Dark, empty abyss. Terrifying nothingness.
And then, it was the Word, thus spoken:
“YOU WILL DIE ONE DAY.”
My consciousness was spagghetified, as what occurs when falling past the Event Horizon of a black hole.
The Voice, the Word, was Cosmic Power Incarnate.
My consciousness, held within the throat of this behemouth, was shredded not upon hearing the Word, but from within the Voice of the Word, itself.
“YOU WILL DIE ONE DAY.”
I imploded.
I returned.
With the clashing of cymbals and thrust of mountains collapsing, I returned to my body, fragmented and irreversibly,
Other.
I felt where I was before seeing, standing in my friend’s basement, seeking sight through a shroud of stormy inner clouds.
I felt the beating of Justin Timberlake’s SexyBack. I heard the faint sound of my friends as they giggled. I realized that no one but myself seemed aware that such horrifying disaster had just struck.
I had no name.
I possessed no point.
I fell to my knees in despair.
No one noticed.
No one could know.
Absent of reason, unable to conceptualize anything I had just experienced, I instinctually decided, without realizing what I was doing, to disassociate whatever ‘I’ was, from whatever the “You Will Die” Voice had now Made me.
This resulted in my engaging life as a half dead human. I remained in the front of my Mind as much as I could. I focused on teenagerdom–daydreams, music, school, softball, friends, family– as best I could muster.
However I remained far too terrified, to brave a boyfriend for many years.
How could I be vulnerable with anyone so long as this Goat Specter, rather like the god Pan, rode my back?
The proceeding 5 years of my life were haunted by this constant, incessant Shadow, squeezing, burning, piercing me with its propechy:
“YOU WILL DIE ONE DAY.”
I enjoyed little.
To live with the Goat Specter on my chest was to live a hopeless, dread life, devoid of any purpose, as all there was for me, was Doom, waiting.
Except, that by and by a LIGHT! surprise, should curl the specter’s horns.
Spiritual Awakening.
A process of which we many are aware.
And when it struck my clock tower at 19 years old, its path was wayed in Gold, and when I followed that Golden Path, to my death I was delivered.
This, God’s loving response to my childhood prayer:
to Death, know.
In “A Glorious Sunswim,”(1) I shared my transcendental, lovingly bound Near-Death Experience, which happened when I was 27 years of age.
This (almost) death was precipitated by 7 dense years of tumultuous, conscious, Love-inspired spiritual learning and growth, wherein God and I met halfway, and together, Became.
Godhead Vibratory Consciousness and ‘I’ cocreated the Becoming of my childhood death prayer, from the moment we conceived it.
Between Godhead and I, together we learned, there is no separation but that of perception.
Together, from within to without, we opened up to receive wisdom and transcendental experiences in loving exchange. God learned of human experience, and I learned of Godhead experience, so that we became so close enough as to intertwine.
*I perceive Godhead Vibratory Consciousness as an infinite spectrum of awareness and ability, within which all existence persists. All existence is the Godhead, and what I am describing is a (my) human child’s journey to this, Enlightenment.
I focused on Making myself the most free and loving human ME possible, open to receive, but also willing to act drastically within a blank space, Making New– transforming.
“REALITY IS A COCREATION.”
This, it seems, the seal of the circle of wisdom in my conscious journey, with God, through death.
Sought in fear and dealt back thusly, God revealed,
“I’m you silly!”
Footnotes
(1) “Caitlin Eckhardt: A Glorious Sunswim,”