I know there is a universal Spirit of which my own awareness is an integral part. I know this Spirit consists of joy and love. I know these things because I also know my body must die and dissolve, and that part of my consciousness that depends upon support from the physical body must pass away.
Knowing my physical mortality allows me to accept the inevitability of physical death and move past it. It is insane to fear the inevitable. Still, even calm acceptance of mortality is far from the exuberance of joy and love. If physical existence were all we had, then the sure knowledge that life is limited would be sobering, if not saddening.
Yet in meditation, and any time that I sense my connection with Spirit, joy and love are all that I feel. These cannot have their source in the body or the mind that depends upon it. They can only emanate from a Source that is eternal, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. That Source is Spirit, God, Life, or Oneness . . . I am, the unnamable. Mortality does not dampen my enthusiasm for Life because I am an individual manifestation of this universal Spirit. I am as immortal as God Itself, because God and I are one.