It’s curious how life tends to bring certain kinds of events in batches. I suppose this is because when a certain kind of energy arises, related sorts of actions transpire. This can be due to how our attention is or the trends of time and local area awareness.
Recently, within days of each other, several people close to me experienced a health crisis that brought them close to death. One recovered quickly, another I arranged long-term recovery support for, and the third is in a hospice.
The third is a very spiritual person having a very conscious death. It has been fascinating to share her journey and see how similar death is to awakening. We could say every stage of growth has the same basic pattern.
In our culture, we tend to hide death away. Put the dying in facilities. Repress grief or at least mask it in public. Many of us have rejected superficial ideas of the afterlife but if this is not considered further, one is left with a blank spot. Death becomes an emptiness, invited by a grumpy old fellow in dark robes.
Yet if we read documented stories of people who have begun to die and have “come back”, we find a very different theme. While the details vary, the fundamentals are common.
A variety of scientific research has been mounted to try to understand this. But science is still hampered by the idea that mind and consciousness are effects of the brain rather than the other way around.
News article on NDE’s and the AWARE research project
A study of brain wave spikes at death (the opening)
Looking at the subjective experience more deeply, we find a common thread of stages. Stages that are similar to awakening. How similar depends on how conscious the person is – it may be something that just happens, it may be like soul realization or even close to Self realization. For the awake, death is the completion of awakening in mahasamadhi. (the great transcendence)
Close to death many:
– come out from behind the “veil” and ego story to some degree
– have celestial experiences of light, the predeceased and angels
– there can be a kind of practicing leaving, gradually expanding and letting go of the body
– threads of connection to others and the ego may resist letting go, pull us back
– uncertainty about “leaving” can gradually release
– a looking for something to “do” to die rather than surrender
[Update: as death approaches, there can be considerable expansion and possibly peak experiences, bigger versions of the above. ]
– when the trust is there, the surrender takes place and the shift happens
[ like awakening, there can be a burst of release such as intense happiness or love]
– after the shift, there is a newness, often astonishment or initial uncertainty
– realization of what seems to be happening or support from others
– deeper surrender to the process, and so on into the new state
This is by no means a complete list, just some recent observations. I don’t have a suitable name for this shift in state and perspective. Death Consciousness? (laughs)
Unlike awakening, death is not a permanent change or state. In fact, it can be quite brief. Only until a new roll is adopted. The film What Dreams May Come illustrates what one persons processing might be like. (stylized for film)
Many people fear death. This is often due to the egos fear of being lost and possibly prior experiences of dying roughly. (also the source of persistent phobias) But death itself is not unpleasant. It is a liberation of sorts. Many are quite relieved from the burden of an aging or injured body.
We tend to think of death as a concept and thus what happens afterward is unknowable. Yet many people do experience prior lifetimes. With sufficient detail, points emerge that can be verified historically.
Experiencing our long past and remembering prior passings will lead to the loss of the fear of death. This will also occur when we step deep enough into our eternal being. What is death when we are eternal?
The long past will also offer context to the curious circumstances we may have in our life and the backstory to some relationships. This will unfold naturally if its awareness will serve your journey.
One of my friends said “When we come into the world, we’re upset and everyone else is overjoyed. When we leave, the reverse happens. We’re relieved and everyone else is sad.”
That’s another difference with awakening. With awakening, everyone is happy. The heavens celebrate.
Davidya
Last Updated on April 27, 2018 by
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I am very aware of this process of dissolving the identity, prior to the actual physical death. If one has experienced this way of being, it is easier to just be with the process of surrender and letting go of the idea of death as something you do or make…..”to make a good death” There is nowhere to get, nothing to do, only to be, and to be astonished that your awareness is still here while you are letting go of your physical attachment must be a wondrous experience. My mother made her way to me while I was sleeping five minutes from the hospital, and she said, loudly, enough to wake me up, “Shelora!” The astonishment of a woman who had feared death ever since she was born dead, was palpable. It was like she was in the room, discovering that she was not in her body, and she could see everything. In further communication with her, a year after her death, I asked her how dying was. She said, “Not bad.” Very practical, my mother! But because she had spent her life in fear of it, she is now spending a great deal of so called time in eternity learning the only lesson there really is to learn in this lifetime, or any lifetime. Love.
Letting go of control and allowing Love to simply be. Everywhere. In the presence of Love, fear disappears, and there is nothing to do except be present. Blessings abound in the present moment. The human brain is a prediction machine designed to survive, so it avoids the present moment assiduously! Brings the past into the present and predicts the future, all patterns, no presence. The authentic Self is never able to be present as long as we are determined to survive. Allowing the possibility of surrender to dying as a process, not an event, is the awakening process of birth into a new reality.
Fly free, my friend, and enjoy the velocity with which your spirit can play at will. It is a delight to watch you leave so graciously and with such willingness and curiosity. i know we will experience your lovely presence and you will come back as the trickster you are, once you master moving and communicating at will. One of my friends who made her transition last year went from literally squealing with physical pain to moving beyond her pain body and squealing with delight an hour after her physical death. She spoke to me and said, Shelora, I am FLYING!!! She was free. What a comfort it is to have communication with those on the other side of this thin veil living in a parallel and equally real reality. Isn’t life wondrous and mysterious? Thanks, Davidya, for sharing your musings on this, the most fascinating of human concerns. What happens after we pass into the place beyond the physical. Life is actually all there is. There IS no death. Just different forms of life. Eternal.
Thanks for your thoughts, Shelora. I would say it’s the mind rather than the brain that lives in the past and future, but that’s perhaps quibbling. When we are absorbed in the impressions of mind, it is very hard to be present. And we give those impressions too much creed. But when we step beyond mind into our deeper natures, we step into presence and the present. It is easy then.
Yes, a wondrous experience indeed. Often a shift from pain and burden to one of light and happiness. My father spent several decades doing angelic stuff before he was reborn. Each style of living offers different sorts of learning and balancing.
Yes, all just different forms of life, different movements of the flow of attention.
I think I would agree with this thought on thought or mind being caught up in thought living int he past. Because without thought, there would be no past, as soon as thought takes place, it is grounded in memory which is rooted in time, and time only deals with the past and future.
The brain, at least from what is observed is like the body, there is no actually command line other than what its made to do, to allow the body to function as it should, and thus sinless, its the mix up of thought and past that causes the body or brain to react a certain way, if there was only presence and no past involved would the body ever react in a way that was missing the mark?
Have learned from those who have studied near death experiences, it is our souls that let go, decide when to vacate the body.
It is fascinating to explore. Time arises from perception when consciousness is localized so it becomes incremental. And we could say that we look to the past because we have a sense there is a gap there, something we’ve lost. And this is true. There is great richness in our common past. But by being present now, we can come back to that, not by remembering it.
Without conditioning, would the body react at all? Or would it simply act. Best example is animals. Curiously, in another way, our reactions are never off the mark. They are only judged wrong by that which caused the reaction. And that points to the crux of the issue. Making wrong, then making wrong wrong. A double negative that really isn’t very positive. (laughs)
Hi Louise!
Yes, the soul is the focal point, the collapse of the infinite Self in an infinite point. It is the way our Being expresses through us and shifts gears into death and another life.
Is it the soul that lets go? hmmm… yes. The me may want to stay or go, but the soul lets go when the time is right. The me doesn’t have much say, however it might think otherwise.
My friend passed after 11 last night. It was quite amazing what a difference being conscious makes. She went through a couple of days of massive expansion and then, in the couple of hours beforehand, was just BLASTING love. She’s now in completion for a few days before she moves on. Her experience confirmed the above.
The celebration planned will be quite something. Musicians galore. Chanting. And it turns out she has 2 photographers that have been shooting her for years, so there’s a rich treasury of pictures. She was a remarkable woman that touched so many lives. She’ll be missed but only in form.
Sundays service was dedicated to her. Very positive, uplifting message. Shared stories about her over lunch later. Several people mentioned “hearing” from her that morning. Sounds like she’s already begun her new role, even in completion.
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