Death and Dying Articles

Here is my collection of articles on Death and Dying. Click on the title of any article to read its complete text. Commments are always welcome.

Balance of Life - The balance of life is crucial to holistic personal development. I learned of its importance sitting on a hill in India late at night, many January’s ago, listening to a very special soul reflect on the purpose and meaning of life. He was asked, “How do we balance the material and spiritual aspects of life?” And then this man, whose name was Eruch Jessawala, the embodiment of simplicity, said with his gentle voice: “Plan your material life as if you are going to live a thousand years. And live your spiritual life as if you are not going to live to see the sun rise in the morning.”

Online Memorials -- Registry of Life - Online memorials are becoming more and more common. And for good reason. When people lose a loved one to death, the question of how best to remember and honor the departed needs to be answered, along with how to deal with the grief of the loss. On-line memorials serve all of those purposes. Why should memories end with a memorial service? Why should a grave stone be the only way to tell the world that someone lived here on Earth, someone who was vitally important in the lives of many, whether as a father or mother, a brother or sister, or as a son or daughter, or as a dear friend?

The Passing of My Mother - It’s been about seven months since the passing of my mother. I’m still making the adjustment. When a happy event happens in my life I still have the thought, "Call Mother." So I just talk out loud as if she is in the room, hoping that somehow she can hear me.

Past Lives -- The Sojourn of the Soul - Past lives have always fascinated me. This fascination became most intense 22 years ago when I had an overwhelming sense that I was home again when I arrived in India on my first trip there. The experience was so strong that it brought tears to my eyes.

Life of a Spiritual Being - Why is it that one of the most disgusting creatures -- a cockroach -- has such a strong survival instinct? And while they are scurrying around trying to survive, thousand of human beings are committing suicide. If any living creature could feel justified in suicide, I’d think it would be a cockroach. Think about it, if you woke up one morning in a Kafkaesque kind of way, as a cockroach, wouldn’t you want to kill yourself? But they want to live. I’ve heard it said that if the world exploded in a nuclear holocaust that cockroaches would be the only survivors.

Zen and the Art of Life After Death - It's a very Zen-like thing to do -- letting go. Life after death happens to everyone, sooner or later. But what do we do? Where do we go? What do we need to do to prepare? You may have seen the Visa commercial about all the great places that don't take American Express. Well the afterlife is one such place. But they don't take Visa either. Don't worry about it. They don't even take cash. When it's your turn, leave your wallet at home. Leave everything at home. It's time to let go.

Life and Death --
A Synergy of Awareness - Life and death are so connected that the understanding of one is not complete without the understanding of the other. The synergy of the two leads to heightened awareness. I remember hearing the following words of advice on a cold January night in India: "Live your spiritual life as if you aren't going to live to see the sun rise tomorrow morning." That was a wake up call.

Spirit World -- Life Between Lives - Throughout my life, my thoughts have often turned to death and the spirit world that awaits us all. I have lost to death my parents, a sister, an ex-wife, and almost all of my closest friends. I think about death not because I am morbid but because death is useful to me in putting life into perspective. For some, death is a reminder that they are not their physical body. They believe they have a spiritual existence that exists beyond death and they have first hand knowledge of it. As I mentioned in an earlier article, my sister's doctor consciously knew about his last 16 lifetimes. To those who know, death is but a transition to another realm of existence, between lifetimes. This is the realm of the spirit world.

The Last Day of Your Life - Have you ever imagined the last day of your life? I find it to be a helpful exercise. It seems the wisest people alive are the ones that are so close to death. They experience a peace that seems so elusive to everybody else. I once lived through a night when I was convinced I would not see the sunrise the next morning. It was a night of sweet surrender. It was a night of letting go. It was a night of transcending form and connecting with the formless. It was a night of bliss.

Fear of Death - Fear of death is a problem for a lot of people but the root of the problem stems from ignorance, an ignorance of who we are. We are not just a pile of flesh and bones. We are consciousness endeavoring to know ourselves as nothing but consciousness. But we get disoriented and confuse our physical state of being for what we really are. When our identity is wrapped up with a physical form that suffers illness and disease and ultimately death, it is easy to get frightened.

Rising from Ashes - Rising from ashes--what could be more uplifting in a film than that? Yesterday when I wrote about identity shifts and attractor energy fields, I mentioned the fact that the night before I watched a violent movie and the fact that it had a deadening effect on my consciousness. Well, tonight (Sunday night as I write this) my wife Maggie and I went to the local theatre and saw We Are Marshall -- the epitome of a movie raising one's vibrational energy. It is an uplifting true story about the rebuilding of a football program after the tragic plane crash that wiped out all but four players on the Marshall University football team in 1970.

Learning of My Ex-Wife's Death in a Novel - I lost track of my ex-wife Karen. It had been many years since I have seen her. But recently, I picked up a novel at the library by Amy Tan, Saving Fish from Drowning, and discovered that Karen was dead.

Dealing with the Death of a Parent - I was able to process her physical departure and be accepting of it. I intuitively knew that she had returned to an unmanifested state of being. Her consciousness is no less for having left behind her physical body. She is a spiritual being, and she just completed an 89-year physical experience.