“We Don’t Die Alone"
Letter to a Friend
…Contemporary psychologist James Hillman describes the conventional notion that “death is lonely and the dead are far away” as a kind of thought disorder, “an ego view, a lonely isolated view.” Rather, says Hillman, “Death is communal, entering the community of the dead, and the dead are already present in the heart.” — The Role of the Dead in Our Lives
Hello Dear Friend!
I hope this finds you well. You asked if I’d share my thoughts regarding Hillman’s words, writing that “My soul responded to this as if it was just naming a Truth that it already knew, but my ‘head’ responded with‘What????’ I have always read that we will die alone.”
Of course, there’s already a dramatized portrayal of my personal thoughts on this subject in the fictional story I sent to you (“Seance As If”), but here I can say a little more…
Some time ago I envisioned a series of “Peace-Building” workshops focusing on the use of art-making, music, and writing for cultivating inner peace as a sound basis for “peace-building” in Caesar’s world. One of the workshops was called “Spending Time with Death & the Dead.” The idea is that by spending thoughtful, creative time in the milieu of death and dying we begin to open a deeper receptivity to “What Is.”
As you described in your own response to “We don’t die alone,” our Head may scratch itself with a “What???” but the idea that dead souls co-exist with us invisibly in ordinary space is a no-brainer for the Taj Mahal of the Heart. The whole drama in my “Seance As If” story consists of simply (and not so simply) helping the bereaved father ease out of his socially conditioned brain into the possibility of a direct experience of contact with his dead son. The socially conditioned brain is usually alienated from the conscious expression of strong emotions, which loss of loved ones can’t help but involve and demand. Without our deepest feelings about the dead, we can’t perceive the dead.
After those words of James Hillman, I wrote, “My own experiences during ordinary states, dreams, and shamanic ceremonies have shown that perception of the dead is a natural, though subtle, part of the continuum of consciousness, and can be cultivated by using the sensitizing power of the arts as a focusing tool.”
In other words, by using the arts, music, and writing in a skilled and mindful way, human imagination can become a gateway to direct experiences of inter-being by gently de-structuring the socially-conditioned and habit-formed mind. But emotion is part of the bargain.
As with the arts and art-making, so too with dying: our socially conditioned minds may begin to loosen and dissolve as part of the process. Dying people often become consciously or semi-consciously aware of the presence of the dead around them. My own brother was a case in point.
I could say it this way: Even for those of us still alive in bodies, whenever we “die into the heart,” people we’ve loved (living or dead) come back to us, as memories, voices, feelings. Poems and songs are written, pictures are painted, rituals are performed that open our hearts and reconnect us with both the living and the dead. The Love-Organized Universe is quite spectacular and filled with feelings! As we learn to pay attention in a certain way, the imagination and the spirit world become part of the same thing, and even our physical senses become magical and lucid. As we become more imaginatively sensitized and awake, the soul part of us seems curiously adept at perceiving “presences” without much regard for whether they are dead or alive.
I love that!
Or say it this way: When my head aches, or even when my life aches, I’m learning to find a way into feeling and tears and heart-opening prayer wherein many unexpected presences and feelings come alive. At the same time, I consider these imaginative responses to normal everyday suffering as a kind of practice in the ancient Art of Dying.
I would love to die the way poet William Blake did, singing his heart out! As Caesar’s world dissolves, the luminous feeling-world of a Christic heart shines on the Sea…(or something like that). In any event, I’m pretty sure at least some of my lost loved ones will be there when I die, since they are here already.
I wrote “Seance As If” as a way of introducing the kind of “death work” I’d like to offer to others: Various imaginative ways of spending time with death and the dead, which bring a sense of security and inner peace. I know in my own life, when the “inner kingdom” is not firmly established in myself, then Caesar’s strange world of empire, consumerism, violence, and environmental suicide seems like more of a hopeless monstrosity than it really is. This is not to minimize the madness and danger of Caesar’s world, but to arrive at a more divinely secure perspective for facing the enormous challenges of our time…
What are your thoughts?