Step 2:
From Resistance to Letting Go
The spirit flight, the ecstatic flight of the shaman, is a journey beyond death. To learn how to die is to learn how to live, for you are claimed for life and never be claimed for death. In a sense a person of power spends a whole life learning how to die.
—alberto villoldo
Surrendering to your death is losing everything, but it is also gaining the possibility of what you have always wanted unconsciously. Why you fear surrendering to your death is that it feels extremely scary to face the unknown. You do not know what you will be gaining if you surrender to it. You don’t want to surrender or confront the fear and the accompanying chaos because your constricted self wants to be in control. It is more comfortable for you to be in the constricted self than to be in the unknown. What is often the case regarding our death is that the constricted self goes into fear, depression, and despair many times before it is willing to let go. To surrender your physical life is to let go of the constricted self, this personality identity that you’ve created and lived with all your life.
What is the constricted self deeply frightened to give up? The constricted self is giving up the connection to the outside world as well as all it has experienced within you. Most important, it is giving up the body that houses it. It does not want to let go into the unknown, into totally new territory. Clinging to the outside world has been a habit developed from birth. The deep challenge of your constricted self is that it has to give up all its habits, judgments, emotions, thoughts, friends, family, and the materiality it has worked so hard to acquire, let alone the body that you believe you are. To your conscious mind, you must give it all up, but this seems impossible. Yet the suffering at the end of physical life becomes so great that you can feel a release is imminent even when you are afraid of it. What is the experience of dying you are releasing into?
Dying brings you so many different kinds of experiences. As your body and mind alter from the physical dissolving, you may have blissful or not so pleasant experiences in the process. You may have various strange hallucinations that are related to the medicines you are taking. You may have reactions to the autointoxication, which refers to your own body toxins poisoning you as the dying process proceeds. As you deepen into dying, you can experience altered states of consciousness. Sometimes there are mystical experiences of encountering deceased relatives, profound insights, and a deep sense of purpose about your life and what lies ahead that can’t be shared in words.
If you take a moment and look back at your life, you will notice that there have been points of major changes where you have had to let go of something. When forced to change, you made a shift. All your life, you have had transitional periods. You have made major changes and entered into the unknown. It is important to identify those times.
As difficult and challenging as it may seem, trust that capital “S” expanded Self in you that gives you a knowing that you are more prepared for this major transition of death than you think. Isaac Asimov, scientist and author, ruefully said, “Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.” 21 The transitions are only troublesome when you are not prepared for the dying!
In this chapter, you will understand that birth and death mirror each other and this can create for you a revelation that death fully understood is a natural part of living day to day. I also present eight characteristics of letting go to death that is the key transition process and a wonderful dying preparation for yourself and others called a loving kindness practice.
Transitions from Birth to Death
Birth and death as transitions have similar physical, psychological, and spiritual components. Birth teaches us about death and death teaches us about a new birth.
Even if a woman is wanting to get pregnant, there is often a psychological and physical shock as things change in her body and psyche. Even though we know intellectually that we will die, at the same time there is a denial that “It will never happen to me.” When dying begins, we are often shocked and not ready.
The pregnant mother begins to nest and gather all that is needed for the arrival of the baby. A conscious dying person reverses the process, giving things away and getting practical things in order for their family, so as to complete their life.
The pregnant mother can wonder if she can find room in her heart to love another new being. The dying person wonders how to let go of the ones they love.
The pregnant woman may feel the body has a mind of its own as the baby grows. The dying person may experience the dying of the body as someone they can’t control.
As the time comes for the birthing of the child, the mother worries about the process of giving birth. “Will it hurt? Will I like the baby when it arrives? What will the baby be like? Will I have supportive, nurturing people to help me?” And so on through many feelings of anxiety. In reality, as the dying person approaches their death, they have the same anxiety with many of the same questions.
The body knows how to give birth if interventions are kept to a minimum. Too often, medical interventions can prolong the dying process and interrupt the natural inner experience of the one dying.
There is a restless, despairing stage in childbirth when, after hours and hours of trying, the woman cannot seem to birth the baby. In the dying process, the intense struggle between holding on to life and letting go may seem endless. In the New Testament, Jesus speaks to his disciples about his death. He says, “When a woman is about to give birth, she is in great pain. But after it is all over, she forgets the pain and is happy, because she has brought a child into the world. You are now very sad. But later I will see you, and you will be so happy that no one will be able to change the way you feel.” 22
As with the birthing process, fear and confusion can interfere with the dying process, for the one dying and for the family and caregivers. Surrender and letting go are needed in both dying and birthing. In the end, as you go through the positive nature of this transition, no one will be able to change the way you feel. Kahil Gibran, in the book The Prophet, said, “You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?” 23
Remember a time when you made a significant transition into a new stage in your life. Contemplate these questions and record them in your notebook. If working with a group, share your answers.
• At what age did you make this important transition?
• What did you have to let go of from the previous stage of life to move through the transition?
• In the transition, what did you feel was pulling you into the next stage?
• What did you need to be receptive to in order to open to a new stage of your life?
• What did you need to respond to even though the outcome was unknown to you?
• What were three actions you took that helped you engage in what was pulling you forward into the next stage of your life?
The Revelation
Death can become an amazing revelation to you as you begin to let go to it. As you become more adjusted to and accepting of the prognosis that you are going to die, you become increasingly prepared to accept that dying is part of your living. When you enter into this place of acceptance and surrender to what is happening to you, there is a growing awareness that death is real and you will die. For some, there comes the deep insight that everything dies and this is natural. This awareness begins to open the door of your heart and mind that you will be separating from physical life. From this realization, a shift occurs away from the negative thoughts of the constricted self that has dominated your psychological mind as you struggled in the chaos of resistance.
The Indian saint Shri Nisargadatta said, “The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it.” 24 In the chaos, you enter a dark night of the soul as your mind goes deeper inward to face death and painfully experience a stripping away of the elements of your constricted self. With this revelation and surrender to your coming death, the outer battle of psychological struggle comes to an end. As you surrender, the mind becomes still. With the mind quiet and stilled, the inner world of your life begins to be revealed without outer distraction.
St. John of the Cross, the fifteenth-century Spanish Catholic priest and mystic, wrote the famous book The Dark Night of the Soul. This is John’s account of his journey of surrender and awakening spiritually. At one point in the book, he writes about his struggle to surrender and be free: “I will cry out for death and mourn my living while I am held here for my sins. O my God, when will it be that I can truly say: now I live because I do not die?” Finally, in response to his struggle, he says, “That perfect knowledge was of peace and holiness held at no remove in profound solitude; it was something so secret that I was left stammering, transcending all knowledge.” 25
As it did with St. John of the Cross, the inner world opens itself to you in a revelation. The inner world reveals that there is no personality, there is no constricted self; rather, there is only the true expanded self in which you are everything. What seems like a sudden knowledge has in fact taken years to reveal itself to you. All too often, this knowledge comes at our death. For most of us, we have been cut off and disconnected from our expanded self by our constricted self our entire life.
As I’ve described, this constricted self is not who you are. It formed very early in your life from your interpretations of your experience and the way others described and judged you. This constricted self was created to survive the deep separation you experienced at birth, and you continued to develop it out of your continuing need to survive. This constricted self began and can continue to tighten your consciousness and perception and wider awareness of everyday life as well as spiritual dimensions, if you do not learn a different way. The truth in this revelation at the end of your life is very clear: You have been alienated from your expanded self all your life, but it is what you really are. The question you face now before you confront your actual dying is, “What is my expanded self and how do I open to it?” Whether or not you discover this expanded self now, it is this true self-presence that will take you through the transition of your dying.
Who you are, your identity, is the ongoing question throughout your life. Contemplate the following questions and add your reflections to your notebook.
• What in me doesn’t want to let go?
• What do I need and what could help me the most as I prepare to die?
• What do I fear the most about my physical condition of sickness or dying?
• What is it like to let go of something I have cherished most of my life? What is that something?
• Create a six-month story in which you know you are dying. How would you prepare for your death?
• What is the meaning of your life up to this point? Is this what you want to take into your death?
• Describe how you would answer the question “Who am I?”
Eight Characteristics of Letting Go of Death
When the revelation comes to you that you are going to die, the letting-go process deepens. There are typically eight characteristics that you can observe within you as you move closer to the doorway. These nine are in a general way the normal sequence, but each person may respond differently and have a different unique sequence of responses. These eight characteristics will give you some sense of the process as you move toward your death:
• The stage of resistance ends when the constricted self experiences a feeling of despair, which means that you have no hope of remaining alive.
• The constricted self has been your protection, but as it loosens its hold on your psyche there is a movement into feelings of dread, panic, and even for some a sense of wanting to commit suicide because you feel you are losing your identity as a person. If your expanded self opens too soon into the mind and heart of your being, it can cause the constricted self to contract suddenly back into fear. At this transition stage, you must let the constricted self dissolve in its own timing.
• As the outer battle of resistance ends with the inner release to your dying, the outer world slips away and the expanded self of awareness begins to reveal itself.
• The will to live is strong in you as part of your biological imperative, even as you move closer to death. Even though you begin to let go, you can again resist and let go again and resist again.
• As you move closer to death, the constricted self has no choice and no place to go but to let go or remain in resistance and terror.
• As you surrender, the expanded self emerges in your consciousness. There are often feelings of being engulfed by it, plunging out of control, and a sense of being trapped by this new consciousness as the constricted self tries to regain control and survive.
• As the expanded self emerges in you, it continues to dissolve your ego identity as a personality and you experience your constricted self disappearing into silence.
• As the silence within you grows, a deep inner expansion begins as a gradual movement into a spatial awareness. This awareness of space is the emergence of what is meant as the expanded self.
Dying Preparation for Self and Others
In many spiritual traditions, there are also practices that emphasize compassion and kindness for yourself and others.
• Relationships: The first stage of preparation as you soften into your letting go to your death is to resolve any incomplete issues you have with others in your life. Resolution is necessary because it shifts you out of resistance to others and enables you to come to completion in your relationships. You need relationship resolution in order to embrace your journey into and beyond death with a clear mind and open heart.
• Fears: This phase of surrender is also a time to express your natural fears to family members about leaving them. It is an important time for you to express any sadness, grief, or other emotions that you have held back from yourself and for others. It is a time to admit guilt, shame, and pain and seek forgiveness in such things as not being honest in your life with others, regrets about incomplete relationships, actions and rejections that hurt others, fears regarding any financial burdens that you may be leaving behind for others to take care of, or any spiritual fears about what lies beyond your physical death.
• Family Issues: Most important, this time is to clear any issues between family members and you. Your dying can bring healing between family members, resolving old hurts and eliminating conflicting energy patterns that may have existed for generations. You will want to settle as many inner and outer disturbances as possible so that, as you leave this life, you feel free and complete.
• Interpersonal Contact: As you move into this acceptance stage of healing with others, it is not the time to isolate yourself from family and friends. Contact with others will give comfort, assurance, and support as the journey of your dying deepens. The caution here is to own and affirm to others the limits of interaction and your physical boundaries.
• Self-Care: As you die, you need to be in your own rhythm with family, friends, and caregivers, as you are with yourself. You will need freedom to sleep, eat, pray, and meditate as you remain in a consciously aware state. As endings create sorrow, express to yourself first and then to others around you that you need space in your day to seek inner quiet and solace. Simply having people sit silently with you can bring great comfort. You will begin to discover that those around you will bring a great deal of caring and love for you as you let go of your own resistance to dying. This is a precious moment in your life.
• Good-byes: Most of all, it is time for affectionate good-byes, forgiveness, and letting go of negative attitudes, fears, disappointments, and actions with yourself and others.
As you are considering your preparation for death as well as when you are in your dying process, there is a wonderful meditation practice that comes from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for self-caring and self-compassion.
Exercise: Sending and Receiving Love and Kindness for Self
This meditation, a practice called Tonglen, is a preparation for death while you are alive. It is a Tibetan Buddhist practice to develop compassion for yourself and for others. The Tibetan word tonglen means “sending and receiving.” This meditation is designed to eliminate the source of pain and identification with your constricted self. It is done by learning to send and receive loving kindness. You do this practice so that you can come to love yourself as well as cherish all other people and beings more than yourself. Tonglen is a training to develop limitless, fearless, unbiased compassion toward all creations. It is a compassion practice designed to unravel the selfish patterning of the constricted self and gradually reinforce your confidence in the radiant wisdom and compassion of your expanded self.
The main purposes of Tonglen are:
• To heal the difficulties and illness on your physical and spiritual self
• To heal your past suffering
• To release your constricted self and its conditionings
• To transform your relationships with others
The importance of this practice is to shift your perspective to viewing life from your expanded self, or what I call discovering your “home base.” As you begin this practice, spend time settling and relaxing your mind and body in a meditative state. If either your physical environment or the atmosphere inside your mind is uncomfortable or tense, transform it with the simple practice of breathing and relaxing that you’ve done in previous exercises.
Following are the practice instructions. Record them or have a friend or family member read them so you can listen to the instructions with your eyes closed. Be sure to pause between the individual instruction phrases when indicated with (pause). The instructions are divided into two practices. The first is for yourself and the second is for the caring of others. The two practices are modeled after teachings I have received over the years.
• Sit quietly and allow your body and mind to relax by breathing slowly and deeply for several breaths. (pause)
• Now that you are centered, move your attention to your heart, feel its warmth, and focus on a deep appreciation for yourself. (pause)
• Take a breath in and deepen your attention on your heart. As you exhale, notice from your heart a clear compassion and love beginning to radiate outward as a warm light. Keep your breath moving in and out as the radiation of light builds in your heart. (pause)
• When you are ready, take in the atmosphere and feelings of negativity from your external world as well as your internal world. Notice the negativity appears over your heart as a dark cloud. This dark cloud is the band of fear that hardens your heart. (pause) As you exhale, notice the negativity is transformed at your heart center. You are now to dissolve this cloud and open your heart to light, love, kindness, and spaciousness. You can dissolve this cloud of negativity by visualizing the cloud breaking apart when your in-breath touches the cloud. (pause)
• As you exhale, permit the negativity to dissolve and be transformed at your heart center into more love and radiant light. (pause)
• Continue to breathe into the raw feeling of your own pain like hot air is cooled by an air conditioner. Inhale and exhale gently. (pause)
• Keep repeating the breaths until the dark cloud has disappeared. On the next inhalation after the dark cloud disappears, fill your inner atmosphere with calm, clarity, and joy in the form of light. (pause)
• As you exhale, send calm, clarity, and joy out to the world around you. Keep repeating inhale and exhale breaths until you know you have come to an inner balance and peacefulness. Sit in silence absorbing the love, caring, and compassion for yourself. (pause)
• When ready, move your body and open your eyes.
Exercise: Sending Love for Others
Record the following meditation or have a friend or family member read it so you can listen to the instructions with your eyes closed. Be sure to pause between the individual instruction phrases.
• Sitting silently, relax your body, starting with the muscles around your eyes, moving from your face and head down to your shoulders and arms, and then down to the rest of your body to the tips of your toes. Take this time to fully relax your body. Now, breathe several deep breaths and let your mind quiet and feel the relaxation, calm, and peace within you. (pause)
• Imagine a spacious sky in front of you. Within this spacious blue sky see before you the presence of a being for whom you feel devotion. If there is no special being you feel connected to, simply visualize the form of a Presence of Life. (pause)
• Ask for this Presence to open compassion in your heart. Visualize the form of this Presence sending powerful rays of compassion and wisdom into your heart. Notice as these rays continue to penetrate you at your heart that your cloud of selfishness and fear melt and dissolve, revealing the warmth of your heart. (pause)
• Imagine the hurt, brokenness, pain, and struggle of people in wars, natural disasters, hunger, and political and human intolerance as well as the destruction of the natural world. As you bring all this to your mind and inner vision, breathe in the suffering of all beings and of the pain of the world, into your heart center. See this suffering in the form of the dark cloud. Allow all the suffering to awaken your compassion. Concentrate on some particular image of suffering in the world as this dark cloud. (pause)
• In your heart center, visualize and dissolve any traces of the pain and suffering of the dark cloud with the brilliant light that penetrated your heart from the being of light. (pause)
• Breathe out as you send to others a brilliant light of love, light, warmth, energy, confidence, and joy from your heart. Continue the giving and receiving for as long as you like. (pause)
• At the end of the practice, affirm or pray that the compassion is dissolving the suffering and even the cause of the suffering, filling all beings with peace, happiness, and love. (pause)
• As you conclude the practice, bless the positive healing power to all who have benefited from your practice and to all beings who are as limitless as the vastness of space. (pause)
• When ready, move your body and open your eyes.
21. Isaac Asimov, Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain, Vol. 2 (London: Grafton, 1988), 275.
22. Holy Bible: Contemporary English Version, John 16:21–22 (New York: American Bible Society, 1995), 1307.
23. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923), 80.
24. Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, translated by Maurice Frydman, 2nd American (revised) edition (Durham, NC: The Acorn Press, 2012), 8.
25. St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul (Radford, VA: Wilder Publications, 2008), 83.