The intense experience of The Last Hour Experience and personally facing your finiteness here has essentially two main benefits:
1. Fear of death diminishes;
2. Life awareness increases, resulting in a greater appreciation for and joy in life.
By confronting your fear of death, naming it and taking on the confrontation, your fear of it decreases to a great extent.
Because what we hide from and what we hide away always comes back stronger. But what we dare to acknowledge and name, dissolves and disappears.
That does take courage.
On the other hand, through The Last Hour Experience and its aftercare, you come to see life differently.
You think even more consciously about your values and how you want to live. What you want to live for. Awareness of the life that is there, which is temporary and not a given, is increased.
Facing death
to paradoxically,
as the ultimate mirror,
become free of fear.
To be able to live from the truth,
in joy and love.
From your true Self;
from inner peace,
with others,
with passion.
Julian van der Wouden â Vita Florentis
This awareness brings something very valuable: we can close the gap in our lives between knowing and doing.
Because it seems like we humans can live parallel lives.
On the one hand, we know what is good for us. On the other hand, we can completely ignore that and, usually driven by lower urges, elevate the opposite â destructive â to actions.
Next, we can distance ourselves surprisingly easily from this gaping chasm.
That discrepancy, goes to the heart of Vita Florentis.
Because we know that such behaviour will make us regret it at the end. But then why do we do it?
The trick is aligning those different, parallel alter-egos within us, each with their divergent, conflicting interests and contradictory to our higher good.
To bring and keep them in line, like frogs in a wheelbarrow, the key is to look ourselves â the alter-egos â deeply in the eye.
For that, there is no better mirror than bringing our own finitude to life.
Because life is too short to keep letting the life we actually want to live be sabotaged by the various alter-egos within us.
Far too short.
Although the idea of ‘beginning with the end’ â for those who don’t know any better and don’t know the context and purpose â may sound quite exciting or even sinister at first, the fact is that things are said and shared in this way that you would otherwise keep to yourself.
As the end approaches, we are often suddenly surprisingly open and honest.
It can be compared to the fascinating phenomenon of a conversation in which you talk about small talk for a very long time, only to suddenly have the courage to say what you really should say when you close and part company.
The urgency of: ‘now or never’ suddenly becomes clear. If there is no more time, we have to.
And that’s because fear falls away against necessity. Our ego has nothing left to lose. It no longer matters.
All the facade and all the masks we so often wear fall away in the light of our earthly finitude and physical mortality.
 Suddenly, truth remains. All adornment eliminates and what remains is authenticity. Who we really are and what is really relevant. And if we are not prepared for that, that truth can hit very hard.
Rien ne va plus.
Were we living all-in?
The Last Hour Experience creates the unique situation of suddenly being faced with your own end. Your last hour. Unprepared. Now. No turning back.
How did you live?
This experience can be very intense. If you hide away from it too much, it can suddenly make you realize that this life is finite.
That time is limited. Something we don’t give enough thought to due to everyday busyness, noise and drudgery.
We know it rationally, but we don’t feel and experience it. Put the too-confrontational thoughts away quickly, and therefore we don’t live by them permanently and we don’t live in the truth.
As a result, many people seem to live as if this life is a dress rehearsal for a later life. And do not live consistently and with conviction for what really seems to matter to them. A life that serves that purpose.
But this is life.
NOW.
What do you do with that time?
