Make Peace With Death

The most profound gift you can give yourself this season or any season is to make peace with death.

This gift will serve you, your loved ones, and inspire each breath you take.

The spirit of Death is synonymous with Nature.  Death manifests everywhere in the rhythm of the earth, sea, and the heavens. A death occurs each night as the sun sets, as the moon wanes, and each year as the earth nestling downward for the winter, and each time the ocean cycles on the seashore.

With each Death in Nature, there is also the promise of hope, resurrection, and rebirth.

The conversation within the bounds of death is a lifelong relationship and more than can be summed up with words alone. Death undeniably escapes sufficient verbalization—eternally beyond, if not wholly other, or incomprehensible.

In light of this profound contemplation, I offer you a few tools that have been helpful in my life and with my clients.

Meditate on Death.

Create a sacred space to sit in silence and observe your thoughts and sensations around death.  Take the time to become clearer within yourself of your triggers, fears, denials, and deep feelings about death. When we have an intimate relationship with Death, we can experience an alchemy that leaves us more at ease with death and fears begin to melt away.

Honor Death.

As silly as this seems to state the obvious— all that lives will die. We understand this cycle of life, yet we live life as if we will never die. We will someday join the ranks of all ancestors that have walked this earth. All things move through cycles, and one day your body will follow the natural order of life and return to the soil that birthed and sustained its life.

Contemplating the cycles of life delivers us to a deeper connection to the greater whole. We can begin to gain glimpses of our interconnection with each other, in the trees, plants, flowers, insects, and animals—they too will die.

Prepare for Death: Before, During, and After.

Life is precarious. We can't usually control when or where we die, but we can have a plan in place that will bring peace to our minds and allow us to embrace life with greater ease.

Today is a perfect day to contemplate, visualize, and prepare for how you would like to die.

Please give a profound gift to your loved ones by sharing your hopes, wishes, and dreams. These conversations will inspire connection, intimacy, and love.  

I will not lie, the process of contemplating our death can be extremely difficult as there is no escape from facing our mortality. However, once we forge through this dark forest—the light will shine and bring a huge exhalation to the heart and mind. Once we face our ultimate fear in life—we are free to live without the looming dark fear of death. Life is sweeter and more precious.

Consider these questions for contemplation:

• Do you wish to die at home?
• Who can you ask to care for you when you may not be able to care for yourself?
• What is important to you about your physical care?
• Who do you wish to be by your side when you die?
• Do you wish to be cared for by your loved ones after you die at home?
• How would you like to say goodbye to your loved ones?
• Do you wish to leave your loved ones a final love letter?
• What are your wishes for your sacred personal effects?
• Do you wish to be buried or cremated or....? (For eco-friendly burial options see https://bodhitree.com/eco-friendly-burials/)

*The above questions are a few deep contemplations that I have found useful in search for meaning. Please feel free to contact us for further inquiring in preparing for the end of life. Contact Us.

Be the Witness to your Own Experience.

Take the time to develop an intimate relationship with yourself—your hopes, dreams, visions, fears, and inner beauty. This intimacy with yourself is a profound path to building a relationship with your true nature and your divine source.

Because we often find ourselves within the silence...

Schedule time for:

• Meditation
• Yoga Nidra
• Yoga

Because we encounter the inherent truthfulness of our selves within the complexities of nature...

Schedule time for:

• Solo or quiet walks in nature
• Sitting or strolling in a quiet natural setting like a park or garden
• Spending time near water - a beach, lake, pond, or river

Love All of Life.

Find gratitude. Honor the suffering as much as you honor the bliss in your life.  Life encompasses all the colors and textures of our emotions. When we deny the difficult emotions—we also deny a part of this life.

Live, laugh, cry, dance, sing, and embrace all with wonder and awe.  

Fill your life with nature where one encounters the inherent truthfulness of ourselves within all that is and all that ever was.  

Be you. Be love. Be…

With love from my heart to yours,
Dr. Deerheart