Salam,
I was looking to post in a different thread then saw this one again and my mind associated with it directly to the question "are we prepared"
Is it true that we all need to maximise our preparation for the grave, but even then we can not be truly unshocked by the experience. Quite a bit like child birth. No amount of the best preparation prepares the mother for the shock, yet she needs every part of that preparation she has been educated to believe in, still then her education is always inadequate, but once she fully realises the experience is not one her educated self has any choice in, and so she accepts fully herself in Allah, then, and only then, the passage of her self in her full fears is the perfect example of the positive future being born through feeling love as agony.
Here is another thing which today is on my mind:
It is by our selves accepting forgiving in an upwards direction as well as downwards, that we accept Death. When we forgive an Angel, for what we can not really comprehend reason in, but we know is an ill in the world, we are expressing an evolving love. If we only forgive in the downwards direction, forgiving those lesser than ourselves, we are expressing an involving love. One is the love of creativity and the other is the equally important love that makes certain of a happy future. Death is what happens to us in recognition of why we forgive the Angel of Death. Allah is not who causes our Death, and that is a fundamental fact, but Allah will direct us towards loving the Angel of Death for He can help us with certain things that no other living presence can help us to cleanse our bodies of.
What is important about Forgiving the Angel of Death, is that He is a distinct life to that of the Beast of the Earth, but until all Djinn are fully awakened, The Angel of Death is being prosectued in life as though His burden is that of the Beast of the Earth. What we forgive Him, through our own Death, can the Beast of the Earth relieve our Souls of. Only when we forgive the Angel of Death, and so absorb of that suffering He committed to, can we also be absolutely certain that the Beast of the Earth will eventually be whom absorbs all the non-Human self upon us.
Salamualaykum