A Guided Meditation On Your Own Death – How Witnessing My Own Death Helps Me Live

I woke up this morning, took a breath in and out, and felt so strongly my own force of being in that moment. Then, I imagined that force of being go. That being, meaning “I” “Anwen”, no longer existing. A thing of the past, but no more “me” to experience a breath or drink a cup of coffee in the morning. I used to not be able to do this practice without being scared in a way of my own death, without holding onto my ego that was screaming that it needed to live forever. However, now I can imagine my own death, and be in complete awe without fear. I can be in complete awe about the mere being of my own self in this very moment, and realize how sacred every breath that I take is. I began this practice when reading Ram Dass’s book “Be Here Now” and Jack Kornfield’s book “A Path With Heart”. I want to share the practice that “Be Here Now” shared with me, as well as some beautiful pictures from the book.

“Ritual death has been practiced throughout the world for centuries…Laura Huxley has members of her seminars experience their own death psychologically. For example:

‘Have the room comfortably dark or dimly lighted. Lie down on your bed or sofa or the floor. Let your body go. Imagine that the life is out of it. Do not speak or move. Imagine that you have died: Your body is passive, lifeless, useless. Your body is discarded. Your funeral is about to take place.

Let go of your body. Let it be there as something which is no longer yours. Follow to the limit this feeling of being completely alone, abandoned, not loved – not in life, not in death. Cry, scream, curse, if this is what you feel. Go to the limit of your feeling. And after you have cried and screamed and cursed, when you are empty and exhausted, stop and listen.

This is your last party. Speak to everyone there, tell them all about yourself, about your mistakes and yoru suffering, about your love and longings. No longer do you need to protect yourself, no longer do you need to hide behind a wall or a suit of armor. It is your last party: you can explode, you can be miserable or pitiful, insignificant or despicable. At your funeral you can be yourself.

This is your chance: do what others have failed to do. Look at the unloved one, the miserable one. This is your chance to do an act of love toward one who has had no love. This is your chance to do justice where intentional or unintentional injustice has been committed. This is your chance to give warmth and courage to one who feels only coldness, loneliness and death.

Let your tears flow from the very depth of you. Let your bitterness flow out with them. And when the bitterness is out, your tears will be gentle and sweet. Then take the hand of this lifeless body of yours, take it in your hand with respect and love bring it to your lips and kiss it.

Now gently come back to your living body. With this feeling of respect and love, come back to your living body, and let this feeling remain with you, inside of you. Let it spread to each nerve, to each muscle, along every vein and artery. Let this feeling of respect and love spread inside you, throughout your entire organism, and then let it spread out around you in everything, object or animal or human, that is part of your life. Feel this feeling of love and respect circulating inside you with the force of life itself; let it be in your blood, in the air you breathe. Feel it – accept it – give it”

I have recorded myself reading this passage so that I can sit and follow the guided meditation. I have also read this passage to others and had others read it to me. There is no running from death. It is in our every day life, and the death of our body is waiting for us. But in Western cultures we have been taught that death is bad and ugly, and that we should hide it, rather than celebrate death as a natural part of life.

In the words of Aldous Huxley in his book “Island”:

”Lightly, my darling, lightly. Even when it comes to dying. Nothing ponderous, or portentious, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremelos, no self-conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Goethe or Little Nell. And, or course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the Clear Light. So throw away all your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly…”