Death-Your Questions Answered

We have been bombarded by the idea that if our body or brain is sick or injured, we are dead! It implies that awareness, consciousness depends on and is created by our body and brain. But how then do people whose brain shows no sign of life managed, like Katie who had a CAT scan that revealed her brain was abnormally swollen.  If not dead, she was certainly in a deep coma, and was placed on a machine and it breathed for her. Yet she was able to be aware of what was happening around her and at a distance. See Near Death Experiences 

The human personality, built as it often is upon shifting sands falls or fails. How many people need antidepressants to survive, or alcohol or drugs daily to face life, or who crack up or become murderers? I suggest it is because they have not been able to find the code to open up to their core. See Opening to Life

We gain the code by living and not avoiding the ever-increasing information gathered through our life experience. If only we could put it all together. If only we could see the pattern of our life experience, our education, our relationships. And then, when we actually solve the riddle and uncovered the code, it is all so simple. So was the whole process of life and death.

The code explains every part of our experience. It is the common denominator into which everything else fits. It links opposites, it explains and resolves conflicts, and it shows differences as only different aspects of the one thing, other sides of the same coin. But of course it is not gained by floating through life without any self-awareness. See Self Observation; Programmed

Sentience, awareness, consciousness is, as I see it, the very basis of being. The body is like a mushroom, which has been pushed up from a massive mycelium, a mass of threadlike growth underground. A 2,400-acre [970-hectare] site in eastern Oregon had a contiguous growth of mycelium before logging roads cut through it. Estimated at 1,665 football fields in size and 2,200 years old. The mycelium puts up a mushroom or toadstool to procreate. So it is a good analogy of human life which extrudes a body to procreate and to gather the code of living – and especially to experience limitations and its lessons and thereby develop and explore our massive potential. See Jesse Watkins Enlightenment – Enlightenment

Another person’s experience of the huge behind the small.

An experience which fascinated me while having a therapy session was that I wanted to go to the toilet, and stood and peed into the pan straight into the water. This created a lot of bubbles. As I did this I was looking at the bubbles. It was quite light in the toilet, and each bubble seemed to have an eye in the centre of the bubble. This seemed strange so I bent down to look, and saw the eye was a reflection of myself.

This was amusing because, if you think about it, I had peed into the water, and up had arisen all these countless little individuals, all living in their own little world. And they each had their own awareness. In a way they were all looking at each other and me. From their point of view, they were separate and unique. They could be thinking, I am Sue or Fred or John or Joan, but from my point of view they were all reflections of myself, and only had awareness out of my own existence. I was a sort of god who had given rise to countless beings out of myself. So it wasn’t lots of eyes but lots of I’s/Me’s.

Suddenly the realisation hit me, oh my god, I am myself a bubble! I have existence because behind all phenomena is this one big something that gives me life and awareness. And at that time it really frightened me. It felt as if I burst, like the bubble I am, I would disappear. It was quite threatening. But since then I have explored this. I have looked behind my own image of myself, and tried to get behind my sense impressions to see what it is out of which my existence arose. What I discovered is that my true identity is that everlasting changeless being behind the creation of the bubbles we call ourselves. This takes away all fear of death. It takes away the pain attached to the fleeting and illusory impressions of life we gain from our senses and thoughts. I had thought this meant a sort of losing of self, a death of self. It doesn’t mean that at all. It is really a gaining of everything.

Find the Answer Yourself

See Your Body Is a Moving Sea 

You will need about an hour to complete this exercise. The aim of ‘moving sea’ is to continue the development of allowing spontaneous movement. Once you have used the ‘water’ approach as suggested below, there is no need to go through the preparatory stages in future uses. For instance you do not need the yawning and arm lifting. Go straight into exploring the water movements. These can be used over and over with enjoyment and gain.

2 – Remind yourself of the feeling of spontaneous movement by using the ‘arm against the wall’ exercise.

Stand about a foot away from a wall, side on, so your right hand is near to a clear space on the wall.

Lift your right arm sideways, keeping your arm straight, until the back of your hand is against the wall. Because you are near to the wall and your arm is straight you will only manage to lift your arm part of the way. So when the back of your hand touches the wall, press it hard against the wall as if trying to complete the movement of lifting the arm.

Do not press the hand against the wall by leaning, but by keeping the arm straight and trying to complete the lifting motion. Using a reasonable amount of effort stay with the hand pressing against the wall for about twenty seconds.

Now move so you face away from the wall, and with eyes closed relax and be aware of what happens.

Try the experiment before reading on, and use the left arm afterwards. In fact try it a couple of times with each arm before reading the next paragraph.

1. Extend your awareness of how your body and feelings move spontaneously by simulating yawns and allowing them to develop into stretches or movements. Stand in the middle of your space and close your eyes. Lift your arms from your sides and take your hands high above your head. Do this a few times noticing the difference in feeling with hands high or low.

Pause with hands by your sides. Now hold the idea of taking the hands up high again without consciously attempting the movement. Take your time, and be aware of how your hands and arms want to make the movement. This means watching to see if the sort of feelings that entered into your yawning and arm rising sideways exercises are in operation here. If this includes the rest of your body, or your arms go in another direction than above your head, that is fine.

Stand in your space with eyes closed. Drop unnecessary tensions as you listen to the music. Hold in mind for a moment the idea that you are giving your body space to explore the expression of the quality of water. There is no need to think up what to do. Let your body explore. Trust it to find its own way to expressive movements. Allow yourself about 30 minutes for this.

Let your experience of yawning and listening to how your arms wanted to move be used here. Take time to observe and allow the delicate motivations – magnetic pulls – directing your body to watery movement.

You will find you have resources of imagination you did not suspect. Aspects of water you hadn’t consciously set out to explore will be expressed in your movements. If you are expressing deep still waters, you will actually feel a deep quietness and power. Or if it is the power of rushing rivers, then a feeling of power will surge through your body as you touch your resources of strength and healing. The flowing feelings that arise are actually healing.

As you learn to trust this process and allow it to grow in expression, you will find unexpected themes will arise. Even though you are expressing water, your expression will have in it feelings that are particular to yourself.

While recently leading a group practising inner-directed movement, I was struck again by how creative we all are if given an environment in which we can allow our originality. One woman in the group, exhausted from the demands of her job, experienced deep relaxation out of which enthusiasm and pleasurable energy arose, leading her to dance and bathe in her own joy. A man explored his relationship with love, and saw that he needed to gather to himself the love he received from others to call out his own resources of affection. A woman who worked as a nurse met the painful emotions arising from observing the difficulties of a mentally retarded patient. Her creative movements led her to find a way of accepting the reality of life’s difficulties. The pain cleared and she felt was ready to give a more flowing response to others in difficulty.

As with the woman mentioned above who found new enthusiasm in the midst of tiredness, you will find your creative movements deal with and heal personal situations. I believe this is because the self regulating or problem solving process that underlies dreams surfaces during inner-directed movement.

See the whole book – Death-Your Questions Answered – Dreaming about Death: Insight Into The Beyond: Amazon.co.uk: Crisp, Tony: 9798692508713: Books

An enlarged version of this has been published as an eBook and paperback – click on the image –