Embracing death is not only vital to the process of transformation, but it is also essential for achieving freedom. In the final analysis, embracing death is but the natural result of having learned to live on the edge, and is often referred to as dancing the edge. However, living on the edge and dancing the edge are not one and the same thing. Living on the edge means that the warrior has reached a point in his life at which he has, either through his own endeavours, or through the circumstances within his life, been catapulted into the unknown. Once in the unknown the warrior finds that unknown challenges demanding the acquisition of new knowledge are coming his way thick and fast and from all directions, and that any behaviour that is less than impeccable spells physical, mental or emotional.
Dancing the edge, on the other hand, is the acquired ability of the warrior to balance his fear of annihilation with sobriety, and it is this ability that enables him to mount and surf every wave that comes his way, for not to surf those waves would also spell annihilation in one way or another. In other words, dancing the edge is the ability a warrior acquires as a result of having accepted death as his best advisor, for the warrior knows full well that not to do so would be to refuse to acknowledge the actions of the sharpshooters of the universe, in which case he could be annihilated at any moment. Therefore to accept death as one’s best advisor boils down to accepting the fact that one has no option but to learn the dance of death in order to dance the edge.
January: Dancing the edge
