Tag Archives: death

A Day in a Life: Contemplating A Most Challenging Scenario

June 20, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

“Death is a twirl; death is a shiny cloud over the horizon; death is me talking to you; death is you and your writing pad; death is nothing. Nothing! It is here, yet it isn’t here at all.” *

Photo by Jan — What would I do if my parachute didn't open?

I ponder something I read in the local paper recently. A man went skydiving to celebrate a friend’s 50th birthday. Strapped to his instructor, he had never jumped out of an airplane before. They jump and begin the free fall. As the instructor pulls the gear that will release the parachute that will bring them safely to the ground, he is knocked unconscious, struck in the head by part of the gear it is surmised. The chute does not open. The two men, strapped together—the unconscious instructor and the novice—plummet to the ground, the twisted parachute totally useless, while the rest of their party, floating in the air around them, watches helplessly. They both die.

I feel deeply for the families of these men who died, for the rest of their group, devastated by this tragedy, and yet I cannot help but think about death as I contemplate this scenario. As the shamans are fond of saying, we are all beings who are going to die. If I know that I can die at any moment, don’t I want to be prepared, aware at all times that death is constantly stalking me?

I experience the shock of tragedy as I read of these deaths. I feel the pain of facing death in this manner, a most challenging scenario. And yet, I know it is really no different than any other death. In the scenario that I describe, the novice is with an expert and yet suddenly, at a most critical moment, the instructor, the expert, is suddenly unavailable. The expert is unconscious, the novice alert, yet he has no recourse. Death is certain. The novice, left on his own, must face his death. Yet, in the end, I must face that it will be the same for all of us. Whether our death is sudden and violent, whether it is slow and painful, or calm, coming in our sleep, we will all have to face our death alone.

I shift my thoughts to the teachings of the Shamans and the Buddhists, who spend their lives preparing for death. We can elect to spend our lives in avoidance of death, in worry of death, in fear of death, or we can spend our lives in acceptance of and preparation for death, not in a morbid way, but with awareness of its inevitability and its evolutionary potential. This is what the Shamans and Buddhists do. They understand the role of the instructor and the novice, the aware self constantly training the novice self, in waking life, sleeping and dreaming life, at all times learning how to remain aware no matter what scenario they find themselves in. They know that at some point there is always the possibility that the instructor will become unconscious and the awareness of the alert novice must take over and carry them through.

“When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can cling to.” **

I wonder. Perhaps these two men had prepared themselves well. Strangers though they were, perhaps they came together that day fully aware that they would die together. The reality is, that’s just what happened, they died together. Did they know? Now I must turn and ask myself: Am I preparing for my death every day, with awareness? Am I doing enough, saying enough, living and dreaming life to the fullest?

If life is indeed illusion, if this world as we perceive it, does not really exist—as the Shamans and the Buddhists, as the metaphysical thinkers, mystics, and quantum physicists alike declare—can I work to free my attachment from it more fully? Can I detach from this world that I live in, while simultaneously fully using it to train my awareness to be alert at all times?

Detachment, as I understand it, is not a negation, dismissal, or refusal to fully live life in this world, but a total living with awareness, keenly aware of the illusion, while taking full advantage of every moment to learn what that really means. Detachment is being curious, open, thoughtful, unafraid of that which is different or makes us uncomfortable, like contemplating death everyday. If death, as don Juan Matus explains to Carlos Castaneda in the quote I use to open this blog today, is nothing but part of the grand illusion, then death is now. As illusion, “it is here, yet it isn’t here at all,” as he states.

This idea is quite challenging, but if all that we perceive is illusion, then so is death. Death asks us to contemplate the self as nothing more than a novice skydiver, come to take the leap. Life asks the same of us, for we are all spinning and twirling to our deaths all the time. Are we aware of this?

I ask myself: Can I prepare myself to greet the inevitable, so that when I am in the same predicament as the man who dared to skydive, facing my own death, I will remain fully aware that I am leaving one illusion and about to enter another, even as the solid ground of this earth-time illusion comes rushing up from below to meet me with its solidity?

There really is nothing to cling to.

Contemplating the grand illusion I find myself in today,
Jan

*/** Both quotes are from A Separate Reality, as presented in The Wheel of Time, don Juan Matus talking to Carlos Castaneda.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Here Comes The Judge

February 10, 2012 Chuck Leave a comment

Sigmund Freud called the judge the Superego. For Freud, the superego is an amalgam of the significant authority figures in our early life—taken in, internalized as an active life force inside the psyche of every human being. The superego becomes the architect and active judging force that structures our experiences of right and wrong, good and bad. This judging function has its origins outside the human psyche—it is a Not I—yet, it is taken in and experienced as a formidable character, incessantly controlling and shaping the I of everyday life.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico saw the Mind itself as the judge, an internalized entity of extraneous origin. Like Freud’s superego, those shamans see the mind as largely shaped by the socialization each human being undergoes from the moment of entry into this world.

Socialization formats perception into a uniform interpretation system. The mind shapes reality. The mind tells us what is real and dismisses, as fanciful illusion or imagination, all experience that does not fit its precepts. The mind acts quickly to reshape and dismiss any perception that defies its definitions of real and possible. In fact, the mind acts so rapidly to forget irrational experience that we are left helpless in its wake. How quickly we forget the experience of the dream upon awakening.

Art And Photo by Jan — How dare you enter here!

The mind is actually a massive gargoyle that guards, through terror, the entry to the library of true knowing and seeing. Let he and she that transgress beyond its menacing countenance be forewarned: You are on your own! When you suspend the judge, you enter the theatre of the truly real. For the ancient shamans, the theatre of the real is interconnected energy as it flows in the universe.

I stepped out of my office on Tuesday night and into a dream. Almost immediately, a gargoyle appeared out of nowhere and embraced me, seeking my attention. I was caught off-guard by an onslaught of unrelenting intensity; the gargoyle in my face momentarily distracting me. The clock was ticking. I was aware, in some vague, deep place that I was on a mission. I had to gather my energy and maintain my focus. I stepped beyond the gargoyle.

For ten years now, I have not been able to fully recapitulate all that I experienced at the moment of Jeanne’s death. Others have dreamed that dream and reported it to me to jostle my awakening, but thus far my memory of that magical moment remains quite edited. On Tuesday night, I made the decision to go to the hospital to be with Jan. I made the decision to fully show up for death, the most meaningful encounter in life—to see what happens.

I exit the highway at the wrong Rinaldi Blvd. and enter the twilight zone. It’s dark, one way streets to nowhere appear. I’m caught in a maze with no reentry to the highway. I feel the clock ticking. I steady myself, drive the wrong way down a one-way street onto other streets that seem to lead back the way I’d come. Suddenly, I’m in the heart of Poughkeepsie and a sign appears: Rt. 9 South. Okay, let’s do it again!

This time, I exit properly and trace my way to the parking garage at the hospital. I’m met by a powerful river of cars and humanity moving in the opposite direction. I’m swimming upstream, against the current. Visiting hours are over. Will getting in pose a problem?

I enter a dimly lit, quiet lobby and proceed to the desk. Immediately a commotion breaks the silence. Gargoyle #2 is raging. His face is elongated, distorted, his eyes bulging. He cursingly demands drugs for his girlfriend, in pain, “improperly treated in Emergency!” he screamingly exclaims. The security guards and welcoming woman are pensive, seeking clarity, seeking to restore calm, unsure of his next move, seeking to avoid an explosion of lethality.

I remain completely calm. I give him no energy, simply stand quietly, awaiting my turn. Eventually, others engage the gargoyle and the shaken clerk at the desk informs me that, although visiting hours are over, she’s sure I can go up for a few minutes. A phone call is made; a pass issued.

As I get off the elevator, the sign for room 350 points to the left. I walk into a quiet dark area—Orthopedics. Something is not right.

I return to the elevator. The sign now points in the opposite direction. Though I now walk right past the room and must retrace my steps, I finally arrive.

Jan sees me. She is aglow, staring at me as if she has never seen me before.

“Oh my God! Look at you! You’re so young!”

I look back at her and think, “Her energy is amazing!”

We adjust our chairs and calmly await the miraculous. No words are needed.

I carefully listen to the breathing: I know how that works. My attention keeps being drawn to the feet: waving, jostling energy. Each time it happens, my mind wakes up and examines: “No. No movement, no activity,” it states. My perception is cursorily dismissed; my dream forgotten. But, it keeps happening! And each time the alerted mind steps in, reexamines and reaffirms its precepts: “This can’t be happening! Look again, there is no activity, only complete stillness, as expected.”

Soon enough, the final breath comes. Jan and I sit in total calmness, immediately recapitulating our shared experience of the energy body as it exited. The miraculous had occurred!

Carlos Castaneda once wrote that when he finally was able to see energy, he was amazed at the realization that we see energy all the time as it flows in the universe. But then—here comes the judge! And we remember only what it tells us “really” happened, as it rationally dismisses the magic of the real dream.

The mind persists in a steady effort to restore order, dismissing and forgetting what we really see all the time. It’s only through persistent recapitulation that we are able to change the mind, or, in reality, relativize its dominance.

The dream continues,
Chuck

See also Jan’s blog: A Clandestine Meeting, published earlier this week.

Jan's Blog, The Virginia Chronicles

A Day in a Life: A Clandestine Meeting

February 8, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

“Is this a clandestine meeting?” my elderly aunt asked me when I arrived at her hospital bed yesterday morning.

“Yes, it is,” I said, and we laughed.

We had spoken the night before. She was ready to move on, done with this world, in her 93rd year eager and happy, contented and determined.

“Will you see me through?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I’ll see you through.”

So began a process that we both knew had begun eons ago, lifetimes ago, not clandestine in the usual sense of the word, but more like a final meeting that we both knew was meant to be fulfilled. Not only had we conversed over the past few years and weeks about her death, but we both knew that we had been a part of each other’s lives many times before. There was no doubt that we had sat at each other’s deathbeds before, prepared to “see the other through.”

The day began with determination and focus. She was ready and the mission was begun. We went over everything together, making sure that she knew what to expect as we took her off the machines, and that all of her wishes were attended to. She thanked her body for being such a pleasant and steady vehicle her entire life, letting it know that it would be handled with respect when she left it behind. We talked about the dying process as like being born. In fact, this had been our conversation for many weeks. She had called me the night before.

“Why can’t I die?” she pleaded.

“Well, I’m going to be very straightforward with you. You are dying,” I said, reminding her of what we had spoken about. “You are in the process. You are going through the labor of dying just like you once went through the labor of being born. Your body remembers it even if you don’t. It will happen, you are already on your way. It takes patience and release.”

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”

We talked about her diving in and swimming into the light and not looking back or getting distracted. She was thankful for an image that she could work with as she lay dying.

“I’m ready to swim into the light,” she said when our preparatory talk was done, and so began her final journey on this earth.

In a most profound experience we spent the next twelve hours together, both of us going in and out of worlds. She spoke a few last wishes and then relaxed into the process. A few relatives came and went, the priest came and gave her final rites. We prayed for her. The prayers of my Catholic childhood, not spoken in many years, came easily to my tongue, spoken for her, a devout Catholic. I prayed for her in my own way too throughout the day, the things we had already spoken of: that her journey be peaceful, joyous, and happy, that she leave this world and its worries behind and go freely now.

I had told her that I would see her as far as I could, but then she would have to take over.

She nodded, and then asked, “When?”

“You’ll know,” I said, “when you’re ready.”

“Okay,” she said, and that was all we needed to agree on; we would both know when the time was right. I bent down and whispered in her ear, giving her encouragement throughout the day, until I felt my job was done. Then I let go of her hand and sat back.

Chuck came and joined me in the evening. We sat beside her together as she breathed her last breath. We experienced her energy calmly leaving her body, not looking back, her spirit freed, swimming right into the light.

We all have a clandestine meeting with death. My aunt knew this. She was well prepared, unafraid, looking forward to the journey. Today I feel her having that experience, as profoundly and fully as we had our experience together yesterday.

I too will one day swim into the light, and I look forward to going as peacefully and with as much dignity as my aunt did yesterday. I thank her for allowing me to be part of her long journey in this life and I wish her Godspeed on her new journey in infinity.

Jan

See also Chuck’s blog: Here Comes The Judge, on the same subject.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Facing the Inevitable

January 18, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

We make the decision to change and then we must face the challenges of having made that decision, each day, as the old world seeks us out and attempts to draw us back into our old comforts. With the advent of the year 2012 many people are suddenly aware of change. However, such change was intended long ago, set in motion and already in full swing before most of us were aware of it.

We too set our own intentions, activate change by our thoughts and desires, often unaware that we are doing so. Life itself has its own agenda, nature taking us all on a journey of change that we might only contemplate when we are older and ready to face the inevitable.

I believe that all of us who are alive now have been participating in a transformative energy our whole lives. Why are we suddenly so enamored, so struck, so frightened of this transformative energy?

I personally experience this energy as powerful yet also as subtle. This energy is confrontational though it also gently moves us along in the direction we need to go in. This energy asks us all to change and to face the fact that we are helpless in its wake.

Every day we are challenged to lose our self-importance, to embrace a larger world view with compassion and genuine love for all beings. At the same time we are asked, by the energy of now alone, to simplify our lives so that rather than contribute to a crumbling world we acquiesce to the truth of it. In a very grassroots way, we are asked to support a new world based on honesty, integrity, openness, compassion, and kindness across the board.

The Internet alone has expanded our views, introducing us to a far greater sense of the beauty and intelligence of ourselves as a species, as well as the ignorance and ugliness of our species as well. We are all part of this expanded view that the Internet affords us. We are all intelligent and ignorant, beautiful and ugly. We are all struggling to understand the meaning of our existence and the reason for our frailties. And we are all responsible for somehow finding a balance so that we, as human beings and the earth itself, may align in creating a far greater world. All struggles are valid, all actions necessary if change is to happen.

The energy of human progress constantly takes us outside of ourselves. As we face another day of challenge and conflict in the world around us, we must not forget that there is another world that constantly challenges and calls to us as well: the inner world.

On this day, as our Internet freedoms are challenged and their restrictions protested, as Wikipedia and many other sites go black, I will be in a most unique and humble position, attending a most natural part of our existence: death.

I will turn away from what is happening in the world to sit beside an elderly relative who is facing the end of her life. I will turn toward the timelessness of all life, the inevitability of nature to take us where we all must go. I will face the ultimate truth: We are all going to die. I am going to die. You are going to die.

I don’t mean to be morbid, but I also know I cannot stop what is natural. The intent that we must all change was set long ago; before we even existed we knew that one day we would die. There comes a point when we will all be challenged to face the inevitable. We must learn now, while we are alive and well, how to acquiesce and go with the flow, with awareness.

I see the little and big changes that we must face every day as no different from death. They are teaching us how to face death when it comes. Every day, as we are challenged to keep pushing ourselves to grow, to move into new lives as our circumstances change and our spirits push us, we are preparing ourselves to face our deaths.

If we see each moment of change as a little death we prepare ourselves for our final death. We learn what it means to be aware, what it means to acquiesce, what it means to go with the flow, and our fears of death diminish, for we have practiced for it our whole lives. When we are able to face death as just another moment of change into new life, when we accept the inevitability of both death and new life, we have indeed transformed. You see, important times of transformation don’t have to wait, we can experience them every day, as we challenge ourselves to constantly grow and change.

I am grateful for the position I find myself in today. And, as the shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s line say: I am a being who is going to die.

I keep this in mind every day.
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Peeling Away Fear

December 14, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Each day as I wake up I must face who I am. I am not perfect. I am not special. I am nothing.

These words may sound like negative mantras, but in reality they are extremely freeing. In the context of the world we live in, it may be hard to understand what that kind of freedom means. It means that, as I do my inner work, I slowly free myself from ego, judgments, attachments, greed, etc. I free myself from the desire to be special and, in so doing, I can simply be. Largely, this kind of freedom means facing my fears, for really there is little else that keeps me caught. As I see it, fear is the biggest challenge to overcome in this life.

If I ask myself why I reacted a certain way in a certain situation, I will find that at the root of my reaction was fear. We all suffer from fear. There is fear of what others will think or say about us. There is fear of doing or saying something wrong. There is fear of making the wrong decision. There is fear of getting hurt or hurting others. There is fear of financial loss, of loss of our jobs, our homes, our lovers, and those closest to us. There is fear that we are not enough, that we have failed to live up to expectation, that we are unloveable, bad, not pretty or handsome enough, that we are too fat or too thin, that we are doing everything wrong. And finally there is fear of death.

When we look at all the things we fear we see only negatives; depressing truths or untruths, perceptions or judgments that keep us caught in an endless cycle of suffering. Fear is tied to being inadequate, unfulfilled, unevolved, imperfect. So how do we accept that we are not perfect, not special, that we are in fact nothing, and actually feel good about it?

The Buddhists say that we are here to suffer, that it is how we evolve. That evolution is tied to transcending suffering, but only by facing it. The Buddhist sitting in meditation confronts what arises, going deeper and deeper into the dark space that yawns wide open inside the self as fears arise. What we discover as we confront our fears is that they lead to truths, whether hidden and totally unknown or known and rejected, they all eventually give way to more fears and more truths. Each layer of fear and truth asks to be explored and reckoned with. This is the same process that the shamans engage in while doing recapitulation. Both meditation and recapitulation offer the means of facing fear, the means of finding out why we suffer, and they both offer the transcendent quality of nothingness that we reach as we go deeper and deeper into the self.

As we meditate or recapitulate with an open mind—letting loose those ideas and judgments that I spoke of earlier—we allow what comes from within to guide us. As we mediate or recapitulate with an open mind, we ready ourselves to face each fear and ask, over and over again, “Why do I have this fear?” And then, as we meditate or recapitulate with an open mind, we allow ourselves to explore deeply—until we hear an answer.

Our answers may be as varied as we are, but I guarantee that our answers will eventually lead to just another fear, another thing we are afraid of, lying just beneath the last thing we were so afraid of. As we face each fear, we peel away judgments and perceptions—some self-imposed, some imposed by others—and find a little bit more of Self, a little bit more of who we have the potential to truly be.

As fear after fear gets peeled away and the thick layer of our suffering selves begins to thin, we begin to feel lighter, better, less negative, less attached to the old self. We gradually become more and more intrigued by our process. We want to see how far we can actually go. We want to know what else there is to learn about us. We want to become as free as possible.

In undergoing this process of peeling away our fears we offer ourselves access to what it means to be imperfect, to not be special, to be nothing—and to be totally satisfied with being in this state. In fact, we might discover the joy of being in that state of non-attachment. We might discover that our suffering has a greater purpose; that it has the potential to lead us beyond the confines of this world, tapping into far greater freedom, enlightenment, new life, and wholeness than this world alone can offer.

In facing our fears we face our humanness in its entirety, and yet we also face our immortal, infinite selves, for in doing our deep inner work we face all of our fears, including our fear of death.

It may seem like a daunting task, but facing our fears will lead to the freedom of non-attachment and opening the door to greater exploration of our fuller potential now, while in this life, so that our death becomes just one more seamless exploration of our greater potential.

I am not perfect, I am not special, I am nothing,
Jan

Riverwalker Press