The Art Of Mindful Disintegration
The intersection of conscious living and conscious dying
Disclaimer: I am not an employee of the Living/Dying Project, and the views expressed here are solely my own. While I discuss the teachings of its founders and am a registered volunteer, I do not speak on behalf of the organization.
We’re all gonna die.
It’s a lifelong process that’s famously unglamorous, with multiple industries built upon staving it off for as long as possible. From cosmetics to medical intervention, the amount of effort we put into feeling like we’re not actively dying is truly incredible.
But alas, that doesn’t actually make us feel better. Keeping/dyeing our hair, participating in activities we’re no longer fit for, or lying about our age isn’t going to help us much. In fact, I would argue that it’s harmful. We have an entire lifetime to prepare for death and squander it by hiding. Imagine how much easier and more fulfilling life would be if we didn’t live in fear of its conclusion.
So today, we’re going to be discussing how to approach death while living. If you want to know my thoughts on how to approach death while dying, you’re more than welcome to read my earlier post on the subject.
Some slight background on where I’m coming from…
For quite some time now, I have been a volunteer for the Living/Dying Project. For those unaware, the Living/Dying Project is a beautiful organization that pairs people who are actively dying—generally with a terminal diagnosis—with people who have been trained to assist people who are actively dying. I say "actively dying" because we’re all doing it—some of us are just more busy doing it than others.
Once paired, the duo generally uses the dying process as a vehicle for both people to learn, grow, and spiritually liberate themselves. Every pairing and case is different, but that’s what Ram Dass, Dale Borglum, and Stephen Levine largely had in mind when forming the organization and pioneering the conscious dying movement in the West.
Today, I am not going to get into volunteer work. No, I’m going to discuss something much more daunting: working on ourselves.
Sweet Agoknee
Quite some time ago, I tore my right knee. It was excruciating—not just the injury, but the dependency on others. I felt weak, burdensome, and horribly ashamed. I know it’s a weird thing to be ashamed of, but asking for help is something I’ve really had to work on.
And I cannot stress how bad I was at asking for help at the time. I needed to go to the pharmacy and could barely walk. People told me to take a cab. Me. Paying money to go somewhere only a few miles away. The audacity of my bastardly friends to suggest such a thing. I valiantly journeyed out for about eight minutes until my knee gave out.
Stranded once my leg completely failed, I took some time to reflect. Was it time to learn a lesson? I took stock of my situation and did the reasonable thing: I loaded myself into a nearby shopping cart and pushed myself for four hours to the pharmacy and back.
As time went on, I recovered enough that I could walk, and life was fine—until I tore the other knee last week. It has now become abundantly clear that I am being forced to learn two crucial course modules in being a person:
Limitations from pain
Dependency on others
So this is the perfect time to reflect upon the teachings of the conscious dying movement, apply them to my own life, and write about it on the internet—because it’s not like I can go for a long stroll instead.
Redefining Healing
When I say healing, I’m talking about repairing our hearts, minds, and souls. There may come a point where our bodies are beyond repair, but that doesn’t mean we can’t grow and heal in our lives. If you ask the Tibetan Buddhists, you may even have the opportunity to do so postmortem. So let’s look at healing from the perspective in which our bodies are vehicles for us to interact with each other and the world.
The conscious dying movement has a strong emphasis on embracing our slow decay—down to every new ache and wrinkle—as a way of befriending our mortal nature. It may feel counterintuitive to lean into the entropy and embrace it, but it’s certainly leaning into us, so we might as well. If we do so from the soul’s perspective, it not only reframes our suffering but transmutes it into profound healing.
A big teaching of the conscious dying movement is that every emotion brings a healing message. What is your pain telling you? Where is your fear coming from? Your emotions can guide you into healing through any trial.
For example: dementia. Most agree that it’s one of the worst ways to go. Who you thought you were slips away while those around you do their best to keep what’s left of you alive. A tragic, painful endeavor, to be sure. So what’s the spiritual perspective on such a hellish fate?
Your Soul Doesn’t Give a Damn
As I’ve discussed before, the soul just wants to go home. It’s not the part of you that feels the suffering; it just sees it. The part of you that cares isn’t the part of you that’s agonizing over being. So from the outset, the concept of dementia matters little to a soul, as long as it assists on the journey back.
So let’s say a soul is living a life as someone who clings to power and control as a way of feeling safe—far-fetched, I know—and they are diagnosed with dementia. This soul’s remaining time in its present incarnation is being forced to let go of control and pride. The curriculum is now fully one of surrender, with no other options available outside of death from another factor. It’s time to let go of what you thought was yours—including your built-up identity.
The emotions someone experiences during dementia, along the transition away from their health, bring to light the places within them they need to heal. If they’re afraid or sad, they can investigate what is signaling those feelings. Are they afraid of losing their eloquence? Their agency? Are they sad because they won’t see their great-grandchildren grow, or is it sadness that they’ll never play tennis again? Who is feeling these things? Do they identify as a great-grandparent, a tennis player, or something else entirely?
Healing Hurts
Once we identify what we’re clinging to, where we’re hurting, we can begin to come to terms with our situation. We can be open to letting those feelings come in, be felt, processed, and finally released. Once we practice that, the previously trapped emotions are freed, and we can uncover our default, peaceful nature within. We trade our separateness for wholeness once we find the courage to truly accept what we’ve been hiding from. And it doesn’t need to be an open endeavor—it just needs to be done in the privacy of our own mind and heart.
The investigation into our pain shows us the path to our joy through healing.
For those around the person with dementia, it’s time to learn other lessons, and those are often tied to the complex dynamics of the human experience. Whether you love or hate your relatives, caring for them after dementia sets in will generally have some impact. It’s their job to see what they’re holding onto, although it’s not always as obvious.
To look at the suffering as a difficult convenience is a game-changer. It makes the “why me?” transform into “my turn.” And I’m really not trying to make light of the reality on the ground: being a person can be excruciating, and I’ll never argue otherwise. I’m just proposing we marvel at the situation from where our soul is sitting rather than our emotions, bodies, and perceived identities.
Healing Is a Decision
How much we heal through the suffering is completely up to us. If you’re not ready to let go in this life, that’s perfectly fine. You’ll have plenty more. If you’re making the most of your opportunity to heal, but your loved ones aren’t, that’s their karma to work out, and that’s also okay.
If people don’t want to heal, don’t force them. If people identify with their rage and their suffering, that’s their egoic knot to untangle. In fact, I’d even go a step further in saying that it’s wrong to get involved without an invitation. If you rob someone of their suffering before they’re done with it, you’ve taken away the key ingredients needed in their internal alchemy. The soul-nourishing lessons they were to achieve would be no more.
See through the wise compassion of the soul.
Dying Daily
I’m doing it, you’re doing it, the mailman is doing it. And it hurts. To quote Ernest Becker’s seminal work The Denial of Death:
“Mother nature is a brutal bitch, red in tooth and claw, who destroys what she creates.”
We live with that reality until it kills us. So why fight it?
My knees being painfully useless are either an opportunity for me to suffer and mourn my inevitable death or a golden opportunity to work through my grieving process early.
Everything that we are is something we’re going to have to take off at some point in order to pass through the next door in the hall of eternity.
So what are you holding onto, and what’s it gonna take for you to let go?