Embracing death

Inviting the natural rhythms of dissolution

Death is one of those topics that most people avoid discussing.  We don’t like thinking about it , acknowledging it and definitely not welcoming it, especially when we feel not ready for the timing of it.  There is often awkwardness, deep sadness, confusion, sometimes guilt and feelings of loss.  There appears to be this vacancy and longing for what was and a feeling of disconnection from it.  This is often one of the hardest states for us humans to accept.  

When I speak of death here I speak beyond just physical death of the body, though that is included.  We experience “deaths” all of the time.  Often we don’t term them death but instead we say we “lost our job”, “our business failed”, or our “relationship ended”.  Other deaths can be significant changes in our lifestyle, graduating from school, moving, changes in financial situations, or even how our body functions, sickness, and aging.  All of these things are deaths in their own right.  

Because the primary relationship that people have with death is loss, hurt and pain we tend to resist death rather than invite and embrace it.  We can even put on the face that we are accepting of it, but underneath the surface we hate it, again especially when we aren’t ready for it.  Our unreadiness for what life brings us sometimes can feel unjust, like a loss of our power, helplessness and even downright mean.  Sometimes we go into blaming the Universe, or God, or ourselves because our minds simply can’t make sense of it.  

Even though death is as natural a transition as birth it is riddled in the type of mystery that the mind hates.  Often rather than being able to envision the exciting future of light and unknown exploration, like we do when see a newborn child, everything seems dark and the unknown exploration feels dreary and scary.  

Beyond fearing death 

Learning presence within formlessness

I like to think of all the personal deaths of things I’ve created and experienced while in a physical form as a preparation for the ultimate transition from this human form back into the formless.  If you think about it this is what all deaths are, a transition from form into formlessness.  We first call this chaos, then destruction, then dissolving, and eventually emptiness.  

This formless state is a fertile ground where all that is unresolved in us can be more readily accessed because distractions are at a minimal state.  Those places where our “shit still lives” or where those things that are interfering with us being a completely clear vessel of expressing our truest nature are more available.  We can see where we have been letting trivial shit get in the way, begin to feel more gratitude for the preciousness of each moment and recognize just how short our time is here in this body.  

Death is such a beautiful teacher in this way.  If we use it, it can spark us into action to be ourselves more, share ourselves more, give more of ourselves to others, and cherish each moment that we are.  When we let the sweetness of what was pierce us all the way through, feeling the immense amount of love that we have for what was, we become more ready to allow it to go at whatever rhythm it wants to go even if that rhythm is not our preference.  We surrender to what is and to the mystery that will reveal itself to us in its own timing.

From our mind’s limited and separative perspective it can seem that we are simply a pawn in this great orchestration. The individual cell does not have awareness of the entire organism that it is a part of but its function is pivotal to the functioning of the entire organism.  It can’t possibly know how to coordinate the entire organism, but it can do what it knows to do and not resist the functions of its blueprint even when it doesn’t know where its going.  In this way the harmonious cell is in a constant state of trust.  It must surrender into the larger will of that which it does not know or see, but which it innately knows its a part of, less disharmony arises.  To be harmonious is to not mind at all what happens.  This is the lesson that we are all learning.  

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado