Saturday, June 18, 2016

To practice death is to practice freedom



We do not know where death awaits us, so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

This wisdom comes from the great French essayist, Montaigne, and I count it as one of the essential rules for living.
    To live today to the fullest, we want to be ready to die. When we approach life in the knowledge that Death is at our left shoulder, we find courage and clarity that may otherwise fail us.
.    I have known this since I was a child, when I died and came back, as Australian doctors put it, not yet possessing the term “near-death experience”. In my books and workshops, I encourage people to make Death their ally rather than their dread, and to be ready to meet him on any day, on any corner.
     What does it mean, to “practice death”?
     An art of dying adequate to our needs and yearnings today must address at least these five key areas:

1. Practice in dream travel and journeying beyond the body. By practicing the projection of consciousness beyond the physical plane, we settle any personal doubts about the soul’s survival of physical death. This is not really an exotic or esoteric assignment. Every night, in your dreams, you travel beyond the body quite naturally and spontaneously; it’s a matter of waking up to what is going on and learning to use your natural gifts as a dreamer.

      2. Developing a personal geography of the afterlife. Through conscious dream journeys, we can visit the deceased — and their teachers — in their own environments. We can explore a variety of transit areas and reception centers, adapted to the expectations and comfort levels of different types of people, where the recently departed are helped to adapt to their new circumstances. We can tour the “collective belief territories,” some established centuries or milennia ago, where ex-physicals participate ins hared activities and religious practices. We can examine processes of life review, reeducation, and judgment and follow the transition of spirits between different after-death states. We can also study the different fates of different vehicles of consciousness after physical death.

3. Helping the dying. We can use dreamwork and the techniques of Active Dreaming – including vision transfer, which means growing a dream or a journey map for someone who needs one – to help the dying through what some hospice nurses describe as the “nearing death experience.” In many of our hospitals (where most Westerners die) death is treated as a failure, or merely the loss of vital signs, followed by a pulled-out plug, a disconnected respirator, and the disposal of the remains. 
          As we recover the art of dying, many of us in all walks of life — not only ministers and health care professionals and hospice volunteers — will be able to play the role of companion on the deathwalk, helping the dying to approach the next life with grace and courage and to make the last seasons of this life a period of personal growth.
    The skills required in this area include the ability to communicate on a soul level with patients who are unable to speak or reason clearly. A vital aspect of this work is facilitating or mediating contact between the dying and helpers on the other side — especially departed loved ones — who can give assistance through the transition. Dream sharing and dream transfer are invaluable tools in helping the dying to prepare for the conditions of life beyond the body.


4. Helping the departed. We pray for our dead in our churches and temples, and no good intention is ever wasted. However, you may have a hard time finding a priest who is willing to take on the role of psychopomp, or guide of souls, and provide personal escort service to spirits of the departed who have lost their way and gotten stuck between the worlds, causing pain and confusion to themselves and sometimes to their survivors. 
           Yet the living have a crucial role to play in helping to release earthbound or troubled spirits. For one thing, some of these “ex-physicals” seem to trust people who have physical bodies more than entities that do not, because there is comfort in the familiar, because they did not believe in an afterlife before passing on — or quite simply because they do not know they are dead.
     Sometimes our deceased need help from us in dealing with unfinished business, passing on messages to survivors, and getting their story straight. I have become convinced that an essential stage in the afterlife transit is the effort by the departed to understand the full story of the life that has just passed, in order to be ready to choose the next life experience.

5. Making death your ally. Finally, we are challenged to reach into the place of our deepest fears and master them: to face our own death on its own ground and re-value our lives and our purpose from this perspective. When we “brave up” enough to confront our personal Death and receive its teaching, we forge an alliance that is a source of power and healing in every aspect of life.


     Drawing: "Great Bird" (c) Robert Moss

8 comments:

Russian son said...

I have been getting a lot of synchronicity about death and transformation lately. I found a bat next to my elevator door on my floor. As i got closer to look at it it started backing up and fell through down into the elevator shaft where usually some people drop their keys. I felt terrible about it. I imagined the bats spirit flying out from the shaft and out of the building. That gave a bit of comfort and hopefully for the bat too? Idk anyways then i started to think about death and all. And i remeber reading something that an orgasm is a like a little death. Thats def an intresting frame to put into as death as an ally. I started to meditate on death and imagining the afterlife to be in a such way. And my body started to feel high vibrations.

Cassandra Hamilton said...

Great post and image. I am always amazed by how you say and draw profound things in succinct and evoking ways.

Russian son said...

I guess i am more working on the exotic and esoteric way of seeing death in that way. It helps to see it in an exotic type perhaps based off my personality. When i have to take a big risk for a big dream without any knowing how it will be and i have a lot to lose. It helps to juice me up by seeing that regardless of it all death is quite sweet in a certain sense.

nina said...

In some way we can practice living and dying every split second of our lives. They are so close that they seem to be inseperable but to be aware of it maybe requires some work.
As I slowly entered the second half of life I am getting more aware that one life is a beautiful opportunity in which some projects will be and some won´t be brought to fulfilment. And it looks like it doesn´t matter so much because when we contact that deep essence of us, we will just continue in every wortwhile work or service we started here.
I remember a mild shock I experienced when first reading Tristan´s marvellous book Le singe égal du ciel. One of many interesting characters is Kuan Yin as a female bodhisattva. In one instant she loses her divine appearance and falls down to the earth as a grey shadow. She is supposed to spend another two thousand years here to get rid of her identity as a bodhisattva and then she can become the Awaken one. She accepts it without any bitterness although she needs a real courage to take a first voluntary step "to fall down".
I think it is the same for all of us: when it starts to dawn on us why we are here we can be brave and die and be born countless times. We will always feel we are a part of a bigger plan, wherever we are sent.
Thank you very much for an optimistic and truly hopeful perspective for periods of transition.

Russian son said...

I love that story Nina! Thanks for sharing it.

Russian son said...

I must say that perhaps my actual state during my meditating death experience was also me visualizing all my fears feeling them and accepting death as empowering on the otherside. And that itself wasnt exotic it felt more like a void simple and empowering perhaps thats what gave the rush of energy. Would this process be called esoteric in a sense? I feel like i am making death as an ally.

Unknown said...

I'm a student of Robert Moss through books I've recently begun reading. I have to admit I gave up the notion of an afterlife long ago when I shed cultural/religious shackles. If anything, I've moved to a belief that death is a welcome transition to Oneness. The notion of an afterlife as Robert describes in this posting leaves me wondering (or worrying) about conditions on the other side; what will be the challenges? Will I have quiet, considerate neighbors?! Will there be true peace for ALL Beings? I've experienced shamanic journeying where I've conversed with Beings I've never known in this life so it does make one wonder what lies beyond this Earthly plane. If dreaming provides clues about what lies ahead, I'll continue my studies in dreaming with openness.

Anonymous said...

Great post and image. I am always amazed by how you say and draw profound things in succinct and evoking ways.
Thanks you!
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