Death and Transition
It has been a very sobering week for me as I have had 4 people I cared about - die within 5 days. Like most deaths, these were sudden, out of the blue, that leaves you shocked and at a loss for words. My training (mind) tells me that we are all born to die - however my human-ess (heart) feels the pain of loss. No matter how well read you are, how versed in your particular faith and its practice, I believe we all feel this pain when the person who passes on is close enough to you to affect your heart. Yes, dying is a part of life – I understand, but it does cause you to reflect on the things that are non-tangible and omnipotent - Love, Compassion for the living, and Spirit.
As we open our hearts more in our practice, it also allows us to become more vulnerable in a sense to feeling pain. First, we feel the pain of those around us - those we are closest to. Later, as we go deeper into practice, we begin to feel what the world would call strangers. We begin to realize that all human beings share this understanding of death and loss - and in a strange way perhaps – it makes us all connected. As we come together in loss, we feel the love that each individual had for the departed, and through this unification find compassion for each other.
I believe that this unification is the final and greatest gift offered by the one who has transcended the confusion between the left and the right brain. Let me explain. The left brain is the about the worry and predictions of the future. It is the brain that sorts the details out and itemizes them into categories of time. Our left hemisphere thinks in language - that ongoing brain chatter we Taoists call monkey mind. It is also the side that causes us to be that individual that says I need to do this and that and I should be doing this or wonders how other people perceive us.The right brain is about the present moment. The right side thinks in pictures and kinesthetic movement like when you fall in love and the whole world feels right in that moment - with love and connectedness for everyone.
I am not unfamiliar with dying, or even death. As a child and teenager, I was “pronounced dead” twice in hospitals respectively, and had my last rites (Catholic) performed twice. The first experience was written up in JAMA and the Lancet, two very prestigious medical magazines. According to records, I was “dead” almost 14 minutes before “Coming back to life.” This intrigued so many physicians, psychologists and clergy that my case was followed for almost 10 years thereafter – becoming one of the leading case studies for Near Death Experiences – Only, I argue that I was not near dead – I was dead. You can read more about this in my book “Air Passages Surviving Asthma Naturally.” I do not, however, write anything in the book about what I seen after death or what happens to you when you die – as the book is about what I did to survive, when all the physicians were in agreement that I could not live.
Once people hear my story they ask, what happens after you die? What you see after you die? What is heaven like? Are your pets and loved ones there etc.?Many have also asked, so why don’t you go public about this, write a book and become famous like so many others who reported their experiences?
The truth is, I answer these questions privately, as death or dying is a solitary act in itself – very sacred. As a Taoist priest, I believe in affinity, that those who need to speak with me - will find me. Patients, who come to me with MS, ALS or phase IV cancer for example, always ask these questions and we have lengthy conversations and how to prepare for the inevitable (We all die – but for each person it is different).
I will tell you this – That I do not fear death – as I have been to the “Valley of Death” and back. Upon returning, is when I knew I was to become a healer – but I had to heal myself first – and most of my youth was figuring out how –this was the greatest education that I could ever hope for - and it was all self-directed.In retrospect, it is always the living that has to heal and have to suffer. And so, my real compassion at the funerals - were for the people who were living.
better blog and felt it come from the heart. Death and dying issues need to be discussed from time to time. Better not to discuss what happens after death as there is too much controversey and those with religious views could misinterpret or turn off hearing such things . Well done
Much better than the other blog bagging other people's way of healing .
cheers
Peter
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Dear Dr Ted Cibik
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It's been almost eleven months since the time of my mother's passing through the veil. The months in grieving and healing have been unlike anything else I've experienced in life. It's taken a lot of strength to allow myself to fully feel the emotions and to take the path back to living my life and not just pass through the days.
At the time of her decline physically a couple of years ago I had started on my journey around the medicine wheel. The path in my tradition took a little over a year and a half to complete. I remember my mother saying to me at times that the only reason she was staying was because of me, and that she wanted to "go home". I knew what she was saying to me at the time.
After I completed the final direction of the wheel, she departed within a short time. Her final day at home prior to going to the hospital was on Mother's day. The day was a gorgeous spring day with everything in bloom.
As my father was putting together a family history album in the months after she left, he found the tickets that were issued to them to come to America. They entered into this country to start a new life at the end of May in 1951. Her passing was almost to the day fifty-six years later.
I often feel her presence around me. And now as I am ceremonially traveling around the wheel again, I am in the direction of Jaguar, of the death principle, ready to take the step of Hummingbird, of courage. I think of the courage I must now call on and realize that much of it has come from her presence in my life.
About an hour ago there was a rainbow outside and it made me think of her and prompted me to write this. And I appreciate being alive right now all the more.
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