Recently, I had a dream about death, and it brought me through a familiar process of fully facing and embracing death and making a conscious choice to be here NOW. This dream was a reverberation of and energetic reminder of a near-death experience of mine. The dream represented a new level of integrated embodiment for me with embracing death and thereby embracing life. Seeing the original experience, the crossing of the earlier threshold, now from a different vantage point, I will share some of my own process around the acceptance and embrace of death as it feels highly relevant to our times and the current human experience here on earth.
We are living in a time and place where all we know is crumbling around us, and where the force of centuries of momentum is driving us into a time of systems collapse and a destructive downward spiral. The reason for this is that it is time for humanity to stop casting its shadow and move through the darkness – growing up and taking responsibility at the species-level – and the shadow is very long, the wounding and collective trauma very deep.
Yet, just as with us each on the individual level, the only way to get through this stage and pass the threshold into a higher order of society, a healthier humanity, is to go through this collective dark night, and to learn to do so with peace and with ease and in love and gratitude with full acceptance at every stage. The first place to find peace is with the self, for without peaceful individuals no peaceful partnership or organization or society can arise. In my experience, it is quite impossible to live peacefully if one has not accepted, and does not continue to accept, death and one’s lack of control over its ultimate timing, shape, and form. This begins, like all things, with the acceptance of one’s own death, then expands out to the acceptance of the death of all – ultimately moving towards embodiment of the knowledge and experience of Impermanence.
Now, I will take you back in time and tell you the story of facing the impermanence of my own life in this physical manifestation that took place several years ago. One evening I ate some psilocybin mushrooms and I set about painting. It was a relatively light dose. They were a native species, and they were a wood-loving variety. I had a light, visual trip, but as the night progressed, I started to experience strange physical symptoms. If I moved too much, any muscle I was using became temporarily paralyzed. I had enough experience to relax into this phenomenon, and I thought it was an odd effect, but felt that it was likely safe, and I went to bed.
I woke in the middle of the night and came upstairs to use the bathroom. I had a bit of a cough. I coughed a handful of times, then suddenly, I was falling in the bathroom, grasping at the bathroom sink, and gasping for air. My legs weren’t working, and I was also struggling to breathe. My lungs and chest and very breath was no longer responding to my cues to move. I tried to relax, but panic rose within me. It was a wave, and I let it. I managed to stagger into my kitchen, and I tried to call out for help. Thankfully I was living with two people at the time, and thankfully both knew CPR, and thankfully my quiet whispers for help were heard – but back to my experience of the near-death moments. At some point in the kitchen, I realize I am no longer panicking. I can still see myself, my body, fighting for life, and I support these efforts, but I feel like I am observing myself, and like I have a bit of detachment from my body. My egoic I is still my frame of reference, and this does not change.
I realize it is very possible I am going to die right then and there. I recall feeling a panic begin to well, but then very quickly a peace and surrender setting in. If this is it, so be it. I trust the transition, and I know that death is an end, but that it is also a beginning – and I feel this in that moment. I surrender. There is a black void in my memory. Next, I am breathing, there are paramedics there, they are talking to me. I tell them I ate mushrooms. They tell me I should be perfectly safe and to go back to sleep. The next day my legs don’t work until the afternoon, but then I return to my usual physical ability and strength.
On a side note, with further research came the understanding that the phenomenon I had experienced, which had almost killed me, was a rare and little-understood reaction, possibly an allergic reaction, possibly a sign that the mushrooms had been infected, associated with psychedelic mushrooms that grow in woody substrate. These wood-loving mushrooms can cause “wood-lover’s paralysis.” It almost never impacts breathing, and it usually is somewhat alarming, but perfectly safe. Here is a Vice article on the subject that I found illuminating. Now, back to the story at hand:
As that day and those that followed unfolded, I was both grateful to be alive and grateful to know that I could face death with peace and acceptance, at least in that one moment. There was a very real sense that in being willing to completely let go of my current life, I simultaneously became free to fully embody my Self (soul/higher self/individuation of all that Is) within it. It was a moment of full commitment to the soul path of the evolution of consciousness, by a contract that I made with myself for myself, and with All that Is, for the betterment of All that Is. The time to die was not then. Then was merely the time to be shown that I could accept fully the constant possibility.
Embodiment of this acceptance and integration has followed and continues. My recent dream brought a new level, as the question was asked and answered in fuller awareness now (in the dream), rather than a new awareness re-hidden initially to unfold over greater time like with the initial (and manifest) experience.
My dream revisited the experience of commitment, non-attachment, and embracing of death. Death not now but accepting the possibility in every moment. The dream went like this: I had some disease I was told would kill me, and I had arranged a day to euthanize myself. The day and time approached. I felt waves of fear, but also strength and loving confidence in my transition, I accepted that this was what was appropriate. But I began to feel better – stronger. Someone took my temperature; my fever had subsided. I realized I still had much to do, and that it was not, after all, a good day for me to die. Someone asked me if I was angry at those who had led me to the decision to euthanize myself. I said I was not; I was simply grateful it was not a good day for me to die. The state of peaceful gratitude was not a grasping, it was not a holding tightly, it was felt with peaceful distance.
When I awoke, it felt as though this sense of peace was integrated into my waking consciousness. In the days that followed, I continued to contemplate the dream, as well as where my relationship with death is now, and what these experiences are building on. For me, this dream brought to my awareness a new level of embodied acceptance of my own death, along with a confirmation of my deeper understanding of death as part of a cycle of death and rebirth as part of the evolution of existence and consciousness, together and through each other. Willingness to let go and let flow the natural way of things, which leads to a deep gratitude and love for this life, for this NOW.
I do not claim to know, nor do I need to know, whether there is a sense in which my current personality, my “Angie-ness” exists beyond this life. I have come to see, through my internal guide and journey in meditation as well as in psychedelic journeying, that the essential being, or the core of my being – the core of ALL Be-ing does carry forward. Our experience, our way of existing here, is recorded in the field and it informs the evolution of being. All things are temporary, yet all things are part of an evolving whole, and all things inform the experience and progress of this whole.
The individual is completely unique and inextricably part of the same field of existence. Individuals make up society in the same way individual consciousnesses make up the collective consciousness of the field. Changes in the individual are necessary for there to be any meaningful change at the higher orders. And, therefore, this life holds importance well beyond itself, there is nothing to cling to, and all is for learning and growth. Life for life’s sake, and death as a part of life, allowing the recycling of energy, the renewing of matter – of the physical body. But the physical is only one side of the coin. The side we can see during life, although we cannot touch it.
Holding and accepting death as a reality that could occur at any time, and certainly will occur for every living being, means facing the sorrow, the fear, and the grief and not turning away. It means feeling these feelings, but not holding onto them. It also involves transmuting any fear or resistance into love and acceptance. Acknowledgement is the first step, acceptance, and then peace. With practice, one can establish a pattern of grieving and feeling the pain that is inherent in our current way of existing, and perhaps in all life, as it can be an important element in growth and learning, in small parts throughout life. In my experience, a result of such practice is a deepening of the richness of life, and an increase in the gratitude experienced for every moment. Embracing death in this way, leads to embracing life. A greater sense of presence, a greater peace in now. From here, different way of relating to each other are possible. A new way of life can be born from love, and acceptance, rather than from fear. Humanity can shift to a new paradigm of understanding Self and Universe. One piece in this shift is a shift to acceptance and embracing of death as a continuance of life. And an understanding that, whether or, more accurately, however the egoic “I” self in one life continues, there is a greater Self of which that self is part that is eternal.
Not everyone must have the same experience that I have had, nor must everyone have such a direct and personal encounter with facing their own death, to move into this place of acceptance, surrender, and the gnosis (or direct knowing) that accompanies it. For me, the near death was an unexpected affirmation of where I was at the time. The dream was a continuing of this affirmation and showed me where I am with it at this point with respect to my own death. With this proof-in-hand, so to speak, of my own acceptance and embrace of my own death, it is far easier to similarly accept the death more broadly.
I want to be very clear now, however, about what I mean by “acceptance” and “embrace.” First: Acceptance. By acceptance I mean an integrating and active knowledge of the truth of the existence and the uncontrollable nature of death. In theory, we each know that we are going to die, for we know that every living being will one day die – it is a rule in this three-dimensional world of ours. A facet of the way that the physical universe works. A necessary part of the evolution of life itself. Acceptance means BOTH that we “know” it is true, AND that we act as though it is true. For, if we really accept that death is a fact of life – including of our own life – then we will act accordingly. In my experience, this acceptance leads to a vibrancy and a new appreciation for life, in the embodied knowledge that it is temporary.
Through acceptance, can come the embrace of the experience of dying, and embrace of death. Now, by this I am not implying a longing for death or a glorification of death. I mean that, with acceptance, one can embrace death as a natural part of living, and thus it need not be feared, and it need not be held off at any or all cost. It means that when we love other beings, we also accept and embrace their dying. Death is still a loss to those who continue to live because, although these loved beings continue on in essence in some form, that form is not manifest in our reality at this time. And it is perfectly natural to miss those we love once they are gone. Truly accepting and embracing this may look like grieving that loss slowly, over time, and working actively to release attachment to the loved one being here. This is much easier if we are of the understanding that the essence goes on, but the death will occur either way.
We have choices in what and how we perceive, and our dominant, Christian religious background in the West, and particularly in the United States and Australia (the two countries in which I have lived, and therefore with which I have true experience and knowledge), seems to be at odds with true acceptance.
I am not saying that anyone who applies a Christian belief system in their life must be at odds with death, but simply that the underlying message is one of fear. This fear lives in the field of our collective experience, and it is carried on generation to generation through epigenetics in the physical plane, and through the field that connects all that is on the non-physical. Christianity is, at its core, a fear-based belief system. You must be good, you must do the “right” thing, or you will burn in hell for eternity. Regardless of one’s conscious beliefs, unless a lot of healing work and re-patterning has occurred, there is a cultural underpinning of both the concept that (1) we each only have one chance to “get it right,” and (2) that the consequences of failure to “get it right” are to spend an eternity in some form of torturous pain.
Interestingly, as we have culturally fixated on avoidance of this pain, but have, in the process, created exactly what we feared, and we have it here and now – a hell on earth. What’s worse, the overlaying of the nihilistic materialism of the way that culture and our beliefs about our selves and our universe have shifted with the Newtonian era (an era we are currently still in culturally, even though science has moved beyond it with such additions as, for example, quantum theory) has contributed to this hell. For now we have something like a conscious feeling that there is no life after death, or that death is an absolute end, and that everything in life is meaningless as well, with still an underlying subconscious fear that we may be wrong – and that the only alternative we have is eternal damnation – so we may be headed for hell because we have failed to believe in this “God” who will now punish us forever.
The thought that there is an absolute end to life, and that life is random and meaningless, means that there is no reason to do anything “good” in this life – there is no reason to do anything but to satisfy the ego, since that is the part of being doing the living, and the other parts are rendered silent by lack of belief in them (or an unwillingness to accept them as “real” because, ostensibly, “science” has not “proved” them). And this ego is facing absolute destruction. Or…in case science has been “wrong,” eternal damnation is a possibility. It is obvious given this (admittedly, simplified) operating system why we predominantly and culturally seem to all live our lives in fear of death.
These belief systems of ours, and particularly in combination, have lead us to where we are now, and there is nothing wrong with them in and of themselves. That said, as a matter of the evolution of human consciousness, the time is now to move beyond this.
Thankfully, there are some models out there already of belief systems that do just that. And, as more people are awakening to their own, personal, connection to their higher Selves and to All that Is, organized religion is losing its grip in favor of personalized spiritualities created via the direct experience of the individual. Experiences of Truth and of higher levels and orders of consciousness may be interpreted through virtually any system of belief, but they are also opportunities to see what we see without putting an interpretation on it (because it is a direct experience, or a direct gnosis). Belief systems are a choice, but the way that our universe and reality works is not a choice – it just IS. Belief systems are models of reality that we use to understand and function in our world. They are sense-making devices, but they are also prone to unconscious substitution for our actual experience.
Investigating and bringing into conscious life our belief systems (or the core operating systems under which we are running our interpretation of our reality) is a way to begin to understand to form new ones based on experience, or to adapt the core model with new information. If we mistakenly think the system is already a complete description of our reality, then there is no reason to look into this or change it, and then we will simply repeat the same patterns over and over again, eternally going in circles, with no movement along the natural progression of the evolution of our very beings and our consciousnesses. This was the problem with religion when it was truly held to be True, it still is wherever this still exists, and it is a problem with the materialist, “scientific” world view of dominant culture today as well.
To transcend these belief systems, to evolve our consciousness beyond where dominant culture currently exists, is to understand that we are a species that is evolving. A species whose consciousness is evolving. And a rather young species, at that! If we accept that death is a part of life, that it is not an end, but merely the end of one cycle of incarnation in manifest reality, we will see that there is much room for us to grow! Much room for us to shift our perspectives. But, as a first step, we must begin to understand who we really are and where we really are with respect to all that is.
