Chapter 15 Death Meditations- A practice to dissolve conflicts and resistance

 

I have written about death mediations over the years for many different publications and lead numerous workshops taking participants through this powerful practice.  I highly recommend this practice for any adult over the age of twenty-eight. Last fall and early winter are the best times of do the death meditation.

Recently I’ve been persuading medical care givers who are attending to end of life patients to do this mediation themselves and also offer if for their patients if they are still cognizant enough to benefit from this preparation for the events at the end of our lives.

We plan for everything else- birth, marriages, retirement-all events that mark new beginnings. But we do not celebrate endings-divorces and death. Although attitudes towards death have improved greatly over the past few years, there is still a mindset of death defiance in our culture. This meditation is also an excellent preparation for any psychedelic assisted therapy session.

If individually and collectively as a society we could come to terms with our own death, then violence in all parts of the world, and in a myriad expressions within our homes and families would diminish. Violence is usually an expression of the fear of death, and paradoxically, societies that deny death are the most violent. By an acceptance of death, we can embrace living in a more present and graceful manner.

This transcript began with my question about a conflict between my parents and me. Their answer was completely unexpected. We went to some interesting places after that.

 

Julia: Can you say something about my conflict with my parents.

River: Your conflict is with your own death. We would suggest that you think about this for the next week. We would suggest that you explore your fears around death. We suggest that you write out what is death? When you have come to terms with death, your conflict will be erased. It has really little to do with your parents, but much with yourself. So, how can you integrate death?

Julia: I could think about what it is like for me to die.

River: Yes.

Julia: I could think about past lives when I've died. I could read books about it.

River: Can you take the other aspects of feeling and doing, and work out this week feeling death in yourself, your son, your husband and your parents. Secondly with the same people, what is the experience of doing this death meditation. What would be the activity of death?

Julia: Do you mean a ritual?

River: No, we mean writing out, what are you going to feel like experiencing the loss of each person in your life. Explore the feelings. We would suggest that first by imagining that your son is dying. We do not mean this literally, we mean this as an exercise. Sitting alone, experience all the aspects of what it is to have a son dying. Explore all your feelings, inside of you. Move on to your husband, your parents. You may require more than one session this will bring about a resolution.

Julia: I don't understand what you mean by the doing of this death meditation.

River: By this we mean, a structure to follow. We suggest, with your eyes closed, imagine in any way you want, the experience of your son dying. Perhaps, hit by a bus, he is dying and you are there with him dying.

Julia: You mean imagine the physical setting of my loved ones dying?

River: There are two great fears in life. There is the great fear of living and there is the great fear of dying. Much conflict comes from one or the other. This meditation explores what it means for each individual to be fully alive, or what it is for each individual to be fully dead.

Facing these two fears in their fullest meaning is a meditation practice that ancient people have performed for centuries for their own wisdom paths. Facing these fears are extremely difficult, neither are more frightening than the other.  For this conflict between you and your parents, though, it is the fear of death that is causing the problem.

Julia: So, my fear of death is triggered by people who will die soon?

River: Your conflict with death is embodied by your parents. They are a symbol of dying for you. You will tell us next week about how you imagine, how you understand this statement - my conflict with my parents is my fear of death. However, we don't want this to be work you do in a thinking way. We do not want you to think about this as work as “My parents symbolize death”. We want you to separate from your parents and do the meditation for yourself. Therefore, you will work with death and people around you.

It will be interesting to hear what you have to tell us. As you know, things are simple and complex, both at the same time, and death in this case is the integration of these aspects, both simple and complex. Of course this is not what you wanted to hear.

Julia: It's different from what I expected.

River: Good (Laughs) When you think about death?

Julia: Usually in the middle of the night, when I get up to go to the bathroom. I have some other questions for but perhaps it should wait.

River: We are glad that you asked us about your conflict, we have been waiting to give you this chore. We laugh. Do not labour it too hard, but make it meaningful, even if you do half of it, do it to the depths of your soul. Starting with yourself first. Ask yourself questions, over and over again until you know the heart of death for yourself.

Perhaps in this book, there could be a section on meditations on death and life. Certainly, meditations on life, on what it is to be alive. This is very valuable.

Julia: Is this to be a two-week meditation? This week I will imagine people in my life and next week I will work specifically on my parents?

River: This week you will work on death of these people and next week we will ask you what you have done and then we will see. Perhaps you will have to do it again.

Please ask us next week for meditation on death and life.

The River continued with a specific instruction on the Death Meditation.

 

I gathered what courage I could and began that week's work of facing death, beginning with imagining those around me as dying. I diligently sat in meditation at the end of each day doing battle with my monkey mind to bring it to a realization of death.

When I thought about the death of my loved ones, I cried and cried.  Then I sat down again and asked myself why the sadness? I tried to follow the thought home, why the grief? Why the regret? Why the disappointment? Over and over I asked myself, where do these emotions rise? Where is their home?

When I followed back on my thoughts about disappointment, regret, wishing things were different. Why couldn't my son live longer, until he reached maturity, until he reached at least 30 so he had an opportunity to realize the fragility of the human ego, long enough to realize some sort of alignment with his life purpose? In meditation I begged for reprieve of each one of my loved ones, but finally, in the home place, I knew that they would die, and that the time of their death will always seem premature, no matter what the circumstances. I found that they couldn't have been different, they simply were. If I sat back from each situation without attachment, I could see how all the pieces fit together. Then all the actions and events made sense, it could not have been otherwise. Given all the elements that were at play. In the words of love, it was simply the flow of life.

Then suddenly, as if the clouds had suddenly broken and the sun was again visible, I came to an acceptance of their deaths. The deaths of all the people in my life whom I loved. Their deaths were alright, since all action and thought arises in emptiness. Why attach blame to the achievements or the lack of achievements of another? When I understood that their death was as perfect as their life will be I had found the resting place of my grief in acceptance.

Shortly after this experience I wrote this poem column.

Following back with sorrow

 

Can be seen.

 

The emptiness of future and past

 

 

I continued my meditations, moving my imagining to others in my life that I loved. With great struggle I release them, one at a time, from the restrictive expectations that I had about their lives. Whom I thought they should be before they die. What I wanted them to achieve before they died. I released them all, as if they had died that very moment before my eyes.

But this was not a short and easy process. It took many nights, and even today many years later as I write this, I still feel the pangs of attachment to these people. My parents have passed on now. I have come to accept their deaths. But I still feel pangs of attachment for those who have passed on.

The illusive task of facing my own death was impossible for me to feel entirely! No matter what I did, I could not fully enter the concept of my own end. I sat in deep meditation and went through the process described by the river, letting go of each part of my body. Letting my body fall away. Then with great expectation I waited for the cathartic insight, but there was always something that clung! Either the waiting, or the breathing, or sounds, or little concerns or memories that would suddenly jump up into consciousness, and I would return to Julianess. And I would have to start all over again.

The Zen parable about killing the Buddha if you meet him along the road made no mention of the great difficulty of killing oneself if you meet yourself along the road. I needed something different, a new approach. In the next session, The River said that I would reach a resolution about death about 10 days after my birthday. Time was running out, I had a deadline to meet. Pun intended.

Then my chance came, after sincere begging to my spirit guides to help me, I was given a reprieve. It came during the night with a full moon. I had a fever from a flu and couldn't sleep. I woke at 3: 33, a common time for me to wake, and I went to the bathroom. When I was walking back to my room to snuggle back into bed, I realized I wouldn't sleep even if I lay down again. My body was too uncomfortable. I suddenly thought about the death meditation, what a great time to leave to die! I made a detour into the meditation and stood looking into the darkness of the cold room.

Now to share a little secret about myself, more than anything else in the world I'm afraid of ghosts! If I were to die on this dark and cold night in January, what would happen if, ghosts appeared? To taunt me, to hinder or to test me! Abject fear reached out her icy grip for my throat, my breathing quickened.

But no- I reasoned this was too good a chance to miss. I could feel it. It was as if a window had opened in the world that night and through it, I would be able to fully grasp my dying! Filled with determination, I entered the meditation room not even bothering to put on the lights. Tonight was the night to fully die!

I pulled a comforter from the closet, small comfort it was, wrapped it around my body and sat down. After a few minutes, I realized if I was going to die, I had to lie down in the corpse position. I threw myself down and pulled the comforter around my body. I decided if I was to fully die, then I should not be able to feel it my body!

Then began the long process of letting each body part dissolve into death. I told myself there was nothing to be afraid of since I would be dead and fear can only appear in someone alive. If I were to achieve a death like state then there would be no one for the ghosts to frighten. The proverbial tree falling in the forest, no ears, no sound. With this thought, I took courage and continued.

First, I released my feet. Now my feet are dying, they will never be able to have movement again. I could feel all the bones in my feet. I'd never really appreciated all of the fourteen little bones in each foot that had skipped, hopped, danced, ran and walked me around for the last thirty something years. I felt very sad saying goodbye to my feet without really getting to know them. But I reminded myself, regret itself must die in the end too. I moved up the body to my legs and repeated the process.

Finally, I reached the crown of my head, released my entire into death.

Now the really difficult part came, dying the mind and spirit. As the work progressed, I was helped along by meditation. Every time I thought or identified with a thought or sensation, I reminded myself that there was no one to have a thought or sensation. The “Julia” that had been known before- now vanished without a trace.

The final part of this meditation is perhaps beyond description. If I were to describe it would not be true, because I had a glimpse of nothingness, and how can that be described? I was filled with a great release, and great ecstasy in the release. Then I (who was no longer there) experienced what could be described as pure being or perhaps pure nonbeing. I saw that these are the same, but in life they take one form, in death they take another. I rested for a long time in a state of radiant beingness.

I could feel the urge to return to life, which would be the desire to reincarnate again. But I was able to stave the desire of long enough to have a glimpse of eternity.

What did that experience give me? How did it change me? Since that fortunate night I have been sillier. I laugh more, I talk loudly sometimes if I see the great cosmic joke played out in yet another situation. I don't get angry as often. I'm drawn with much more difficulty into an argument or struggle with another. I have joy bubbling up in the strangest, most common place experiences-watching chickadees at my bird feeder, staring into the shadows of a cedar hedge, gazing at the skin of a river flowing by.

Simply, I feel freer. I love myself, my life and others more. What a gift!