Death in General

[Starman]

I believe in a glorious afterlife, and I have seen lots of people die. I am the last surviving member of my parents family; all of my siblings and parents have passed. A thanatologist is someone who studies death; they are mostly psychiatrist, like Elizabeth Kubler Ross, and pathologists.

One of the classes I used to teach was on death and dying, it was a class for students going into careers as counselors or nurses. Death can be sudden or it can be from a terminal condition, in fact human life is a terminal condition. You can usually tell when a terminally ill person is going to die because usually within 24-hours of their death there is a lot of energy around them, even if they are in a coma there is energetic activity in their eyes. Most loved ones usually take this as a sign they have gotten better but often they die shortly after that burst of energy.

People react differently to different ways of dying; they act differently to terminal illness then they do to suicide, or differently to homicide (murder) then they do a sudden death due to an accident. I understand that how a person loses a loved one has to do with the way they grieve. Grieving not only has to do with loss but also how the loss occurred. Suicide is usually the most bewildering loss where surviving loved ones struggle to find reasons. Reactions to death on a large scale, which means dying with a bunch of other people, are also different from a solo death of a loved one who dies alone.

The death of a baby or child has a more potent impact then the death of an adult, even to first responders and hospital workers. The medical field categories death as either Clinical Death or Brain death. As a former ambulance EMT I have seen doctors from the Coroners Office in various counties pronounce a person dead, and we took that person to the local county morgue, and that person woke up in the morgue and was alive. Yes, this does happen! But it is infrequent.

I have not counted but I feel like I have seen hundreds of people die. As a combat medic in Vietnam, later a civilian ambulance paramedic, then also as a nurse working in hospitals and at a hospice. I consider it a privilege to have been with people when they took their final breath, often helping them on their way by slowing them down and helping them be in the moment with their dying. Some people die in great fear and loathing while others die at peace with themselves and accepting death. Some die with light in their eyes and a smile on their face while others die in great fear with a gruesome grimiest on their face. To me death without pain is important.

I remember one of my hospital patients who only had a few days to live and he and I would laugh and joke together, mostly about his death. He had accepted his death and was very light hearted about it. When his loved ones came to visit I left his room but did peak in there every now and then and saw his relatives crying with heavy sadness. He had accepted his death but his loved ones had not, and after his loved ones left he was depressed over this. But there are also survivors who are relieved and thankful when their loved one dies, especially in terminal illness but also in other cases.

Don’t worry about death, I am not afraid of death. Whether you are afraid of death or not is irrelevant, death will still take you, and in my opinion, it is a natural process. The only question is the method by which a person dies.

[Native spirit]

I view death the same way as you do.


Namaste

[inavalan]

I view death as a wake-up from a dream that you didn't know you were dreaming.

[Bluto]

I rarely use the word death on it's own these days - maybe I do if I'm speaking with normal people haha. I tend to say bodily death, because I don't think there is such as thing as ultimate death. I've grown convinced, through what I've read, heard, witnessed, and experienced, that we are essentially an eternal spirit/soul behind a veil of forgetfulness whilst inside our 200lb meat overcoats.

This might sound deeply unpalatable to some, but I don't view bodily death as a big deal at all. I see it as release from prison, or finishing a heavy workout at the spiritual gymnasium. From a cosmological perspective, bodily death doesn't matter at all. I'm odd in that I feel almost celebratory about it. Though it's a personal loss to me, I see it as a huge gain for the them, like a graduation event, so I'm happy for them. I'm very comforted by the cast iron guarantee that one day my body will die.

[Starman]

There is a profession called a “Death Doula,” they are people who help other people with the transition which we call “death.” Depression often accompanies loss and the loss of a loved one is no different.

Depression is the most common mental disorder in the world, everyone on Earth at some point most probably will experience depression; now whether the depression is chronic and long lasting or not is another question. Most people just experience acute depression.

There is a graph which shows the impact of grief on people in various traumatic situations. We grieve loss in all of its forms but the loss of loved ones to a death has a particular kind of grieving. The closer you are to someone, usually the more grieving takes place.

The pain from loss has a way of sometimes pushing us into places where we would rather not go. How are we going to be without that person in my life, etc. Fear is always about what is going to happen next, even if we are laying on our death bed. Basically, ego is the only thing that may freak out at the time of death.

Death basically removes our mask, our covering. We all have a persona or presentation, but for most people who are dying there is no pretense, when you look at a person who is dying some of them can see right into you. They have been stripped of everything and most are emotionally naked, frail and weak. It is important to be honest and genuine, because most who are terminally ill and close to death can tell if you are not. The death experience is probably the most intimate experience you will ever have.

[AngelBlue]

Originally Posted by inavalan

I view death as a wake-up from a dream that you didn't know you were dreaming.

My son told me pretty much the same as this when he was 6 !

He saw me looking at the Beautiful blue spring sky and the sunshine ans he said ...

" It's not real mummy. None of it. It's just a dream and we only wake up when we die "...

I was speechless and asked him if was told this in school. He replied "No-one told me . I just know ".....

[Starman]

I think I will move on also. I am teaching a class on Death and Dying in
April and I hope those who signed up for it are open-minded. People who
are looking to make a point often end up arguing or debating that point.
I am not into that. The emotions that people have around death or how
people die are only negative if we see them as negative.

Peace and Good Journey to all

[Native spirit]

I agree with you whole heartedly


Namaste

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by AngelBlue

My son told me pretty much the same as this when he was 6 !
" It's not real mummy. None of it. It's just a dream and we only wake up when we die "...
He replied "No-one told me . I just know ".....

I can't hear this enough.

(At 8 yrs old I was shown the same thing in a summer field...my first STE...
Spiritually transformative experience.
There are many STEs told on the NDE website.)

[JoeColo]

Originally Posted by AngelBlue

My son told me pretty much the same as this when he was 6 !
" It's not real mummy. None of it. It's just a dream and we only wake up when we die "...
I was speechless and asked him if was told this in school. He replied "No-one told me . I just know ".....

For some, the Veil of Forgetfulness is very thorough, and for others, much less so. Obviously, he’s one of the latter. I’m one of the former, as I describe on my new thread, “False Continuity of Awareness” in the Members’ Cafe.

I had a very different kind of unusual experiences in my early childhood, as I describe on my other new thread in the Members’ Cafe.

(I didn’t know if I should put in links to my threads in the members-only forums, so I just mentioned them here.)

JoeColo