Are you afraid of dying? What are your thoughts when you experience the death of a loved one? Is it something you evade to think about? How do you explain to children that someone has died?
So many concepts around an experience that everyone of us has deal already or we deal at some point in our lives! And for the vast majority it is still something we are not educated to face it, to navigate with it and of course to overcome the grieving process in a much creative and compassionate way!
The experience of death is everywhere in this physical realm, when we see it in nature, in the animal kingdom, in the environment, everywhere we turn at any moment in time, in some part there's someone experiencing this difficult emotion of dealing with a loss!
That is the keyword in this context, the experience of losing someone or something is what make us feel a void, because we have trained and educated our minds to experience it with that perspective.
Nonetheless, this is just what we were educated with, this is just a conditioned way of thinking, because there's another concept that is more expansive and compassionate, probably in a more mystical way of thinking, but nowadays linked and backed up by a more scientific dialogue that also correlates with the same concept that energy is always transforming and everlasting!
Depending on your religious upbringing traditions and setting, you will have a concept of death that has to do either with God (in all its names) or with a more universal consciousness such as the one seen in the eastern asian cultures.
The western cultures usually base their beliefs in a God based existence that deals with death in a judgment of one supreme power (God) that will decide together with a tracking of all your actions whether you deserve a heaven or a hell final destination. At least that is the precarious way of thinking among many religions that are just based on fearing dying due to knowing that you have not been the best you can be! Instead of living with the best intention every day to do what is guided by your inherent inner loving nature as well as your divine like nature!
In the other setting of religions, the eastern cultures are guided by a more extensive way of living that has in some perspectives the way of seeing life as something that will end with your body but your soul will transcend into other realms, in some traditions they're believed to go to inferior levels or to superior levels making a resemblance with the God view of taking into account your actions or karma to decide which place you'll end up.
In spite of this religious views, there's an undeniable fact that we are all experiencing as you're reading this article, every moment in time is vanishing from your perception, so if you want to put it in other words it is a dying experience! In addition to that a huge amount of your cells, signals, internal messages are also dying to give birth to new experiences and to new life!
That's a more compassionate way of seeing the experience of death as a passing moment in time that is being experiencing by everyone whether they want to accept it or not, as mentioned by Deepak Chopra in one of his speeches about "Life After Death", the person that you used to be is no longer existing in this particular moment!
Our younger self, our child, our teenager that we used to be is no longer here! Is already death and it had to die in order to give birth to the person that you are now! All of your bad habits, your bad experiences, your sadness, your traumas are already death and they had to die in order for you to realize that you're always changing and upgrading, in the best scenario, to pursue a better life experience!
That should be the new point of view that could start maintaining as we move into a more expansive consciousness and having a higher awareness of what is this experience!
In fact, if we go a little deeper, we're not even sure many times that everything that we are living is real unless we have some point of verification, but that is another perspective of experiencing life!
Several moments in our life we got lost in mindless things, with people that also didn't value our time or presence, we certainly wanted a lot of energy trying to please others or worrying about their opinion and all of those efforts and low valued time is also death and won't ever be able to be recovered in your experience of life!
Which is something you should be thinking more when facing the death of a loved one! If you truly valued his/her time and give it all your presence and attention when he or she was here in the possibilities that you had then you might be feeling gratitude and appreciation for all those moments! And those are the treasured experiences we ought to remember more instead of blaming or feeling guilt for not spending too much time with him/her.
In fact, if you take this experience to a more creative perspective, you can start fostering a dialogue while you still have that connection with experienced her/his death by designing a journaling communication with your loved one where you simply talk, recount and share the simple things that you have been living! By doing that you will keep her/his presence near to you as well as being able to deal more with the fact that he/she is not in the physical experience with you anymore!
This journaling exercise can help you to deal with some of those feelings of missing time or things that you wanted to do with your loved one and you even be bolder and doing them in spite of she/he not being here with you.
Dealing with death has been overcomplicated by society as it is often a tabu, a dialogue that no one should mention and something that even in education and schools is not being given.
Ironically, we do speak in many social or biology sciences about death of famous people, death of animals, death of certain traditions and death of the environment that is something that is more palpable in this new digital era where the main stage is taken by materialism, destruction of the environment and the poor relationship with nature that many of us have due to misguided directions to see the shiny toys of the immense marketing industry in all its varieties.
And now that we’re talking about these kinds of aspects, we should also mention that if you really appreciate your physical experience and love the life that you’re having, you could be more careful in the way you take care of yourself to extend the possibilities of being here more time and sharing more of the joyful experiences that you would like to live with the people that are still here and also need your full presence.
Living life in a reckless way of trying to find shortcuts, of thinking that abusing yourself of momentaneous pleasures, that intuitively you know that are intoxicating your body and of course your emotions, is not really a wise way to live thinking that nothing really happen for maintaining certain bad habits, and also someday depending on pharmaceutical drugs to keep living should not be the aim of anyone but those concepts are also not integrated in us since we are children unless we have been extremely lucky to grow up in a more conscious and holistic environment, which for the vast majority was not the case.
That aspect is certainly related to death, as we often are unconscious of the connection that our mind, body and spirit have, they all always act and experience in synchrony what happen to us and many times we often made the mistake to think that they are separated entities, treating one of them poorly and of course in very short time frame suffering the consequences of those decisions.
In general, the concept of death as discussed earlier has a lot of implications that are broader that just not having the physical presence of someone or something in our lives, of course, not to diminish the pain or suffering that losing someone bring us, but to make it a more relatable experience that you should try to see from different angles or not just the one that also society has guided us to believe there is.
Inside our bodies, your cells have even a programmed death phase, where they inherently know they have to give way to a broader experience and their destiny is also set in that way in order to maintain a balance inside of you! In fact, when that event of a cell doesn’t happen, that means it becomes immortal, which is an unbalance inside of you commonly known as cancer.
Everything in nature, the environment, social life, every single experience is due to die in order to create a more balanced state of life! This outlook can be very helpful for you, in the experience of losing someone you loved very much, probably at the beginning it can be hard to digest, but if you start practicing the different reflection points laid out here and you start doing the catharsis journaling experience of recounting your days to your loved one, as well as probably sharing some the experiences that you still wanted to live and that you can still do them in her/his memory, then you will be able to also add this experience to your new recovery program that you can start designing as of today.
Therefore, let’s give some final takeaway strategies to allow the concept of death to be more digestible and creatively experienced with a compassionate focus of thinking:
Enlist the experiences that have died in your life in order for you to be a better person, what were the moments that have marked you in order for you to grow?
Who are the persons that also have impact your life giving you valuable lessons that are no longer here with you?
Which are your most treasured moments (list five to ten of them) that you were able to live with your loved one and have changed your life to allow you also to integrate something valuable in your life.
Compromise with your loved one to change one to three aspects of yourself that you know she/he would be proud to see them if she/he were still here.
Every day of your new beginning be grateful for one action, thought, emotion that you felt that day and envision one thought, emotion or action that you want to experience for the next day!
Finally, as much as the experience of losing our loved ones hurt, be open to feel all the rainbow of emotions from sadness to joy again, allow yourself some moments to let go the emotions that might build up during your day, as much as possible make the best use of your time with someone that is still here and that can help you to also listen and navigate this process with you!
Remember that these sad emotions will also pass and die to give birth to a much stronger and resilient person that is about to be born within you!