Beautifully written. Life is indeed for living, but in order to live, we must also acknowledge that there is always something dying so that something else may live
Thank you, Kimber. I'd need to check the exact figures, but I seem to remember reading that approximately 110 billion people have died so far, so, we'd be in all sorts of trouble if it wasn't something that happened!
Memento Mori my friend. I found your posts a while ago and wanted to share it with my dil. She recently lost her father too young. I hesitated to send it but I think I will send this one. I’m a retired trauma nurse and have always thought about death a lot. Keep up the good fight but I know that death is not a bad thing, a transition perhaps. There are things worse than death, quite a few honestly. ♥️
Heather, Memento Mori indeed, friend. Thank you. I’m so sorry for your dil’s loss. I’d imagine that your work as a trauma nurse saw you needing to think about Death an awful lot, it certainly puts a different context on things.
A transition…that’s my intuition, too. And yep, there’s a whole lot worse out there.
Really glad to have you, and your perspective, here ♥️
Not only is your content profound but the continued conversations here in your comments are incredible. Thank you for this post and thank you to all of you commenting and sharing your own insights and wisdoms. I have never been this excited to read comments on any posts on any platforms. You are all my teachers. Looking forward to continuing to learn. 🍃
Naomi, what a beautiful comment, thank you. And thank you for acknowledging the sweet little community that seems to be forming around these topics. Everyones input makes the space richer, and I’m moved by how willing people are to share their personal experiences, thoughts and processes. So happy to have you be a part of it 🪶
That fawn is the cutest, daintiest little eater: chew, chew, chew, swallow, yum, yum, more. 🤣
How did we lose our way with death? Maybe when we started shutting away the dying in hospitals and care homes and we didn't have to deal with it at home? I love that you are throwing back the curtain and opening the windows on such an important subject, Chloe - it needs some light and air.
Troy, THANK YOU for acknowledging the Disney-levels of cuteness of the little fawn, he's heaven isn't he?! I honestly thought he was going to eclipse the entire post.
In terms of how we got here, I think you're right on the money. I think something happened post-industrial revolution that really trashed our collective relationship with Death. I think that Death 'leaving home', so to speak, is a huge part of it. Then there's Darwin / evolution / rise of Nihilism and loosening of the grip of the church (not a bad thing, but I think there were big consequences in regards to a shift in belief from Death = judgement = Heaven / Hell, fingers crossed for the former, to Death = nothing / annihilation).
Iain McGilchrist also talks about the shift towards Left hemispheric dominance happening around the time of the industrial revolution, and to the Left hemisphere death is super insulting (to the right it's an integral part of the ecosystem). Anyway, this is for another post!
Yes, sheer heaven. I would like to add it to my imaginary menagerie, which currently includes an elephant, donkey, baby goat, a duck and now Bimbo the fawn, named after a popular brand of bread here in Spain.
You know I was going to say the death of the church in modern era, but didn't want to hog the stage :) But I think it's true that spirituality got thrown out with religion, which used to provide a "whole" view of life/death and has now been replaced by perpetual PROGRESS while ignoring inevitable DECLINE - exactly as you and your table point out. I believe at some point the pendulum will swing back to include spirituality without (we hope) all the problems that led us to abandon the whole shebang. 🕊️
Well, since we're on the subject... I've been trying more and more to think of death not as an ending but as a returning, and life not as a building but as a clarifying. That way, "death" is just a word for the transition between the specificity of individual identity and the universality of pure potential; while life becomes the search for truth, the slow discarding of what we are not as we come to understand our true nature as one facet of an infinite diamond of potential awareness. So. It's going well! Coffee helps... 🤣🤣🤣
Oh, coffee is absolutely essential 😂 We’re on the same page, I very much feel like death is a transition (and one that actually takes a much longer time than most people think). I thiiiiink 🤔 it was Carl Jung who talked about life being bookended by Mystery. It makes a lot of sense to me that after Death we return to whatever was going on before our birth. Much like how in meditation sometimes a thought is described as a wave coming up out of the vast ocean, pitching, and then receding back into the vast ocean (while, all the time, still being OF the ocean, but ‘identifying’ as a wave). I think we (anything living) are much the same.
Reading “the slow discarding of what we are not” gave me such a physical sense of relief. This subject is so important, otherwise we arrive to our dying time in the grip of fear, and I personally have some concerns about what the spiritual repercussions of that might potentially be, but that’s for another post—or perhaps another (anonymous!) Substack entirely! Thank you so much, Troy. You’ve started my Sunday off on exactly the right foot!
Growing up, my fatherr used to have all these funny saying and witty comebacks. I remember when I wanted him to do something for me so badly (mostly buying me something or taking me somewhere) and I would whine 'but Dad, you haaaaave to!' And he would respond by saying 'the only thing I HAVE to do is stay Black and die'.
Even in jest, there was something so freeing about the truth in that that always stuck with me, and maybe opened up the early thoughts of death. And now, while I don't make that joke with my kids (because it's too close to home), I do allow them to witness and share my grief with each transition/passing while being light in reminding them that death is the only condition of life.
Thank you for sharing this, my love. I’m pondering on what it is about such a statement of fact, no matter how off-handedly said, that inspires a sense of ‘freeing’—and the only thing I can land on is certainty. There is so little (real) certainty available to us, and yet we all seem to yearn for it on some deep level. I suppose that something being an absolute certainty can, when we really drop into it, release us of some of the impulse to rail against it. It opens a channel through which there’s the opportunity to engage, and form some kind of relationship with the certainty.
I could easily go off on a tangent about time and how I wonder whether, if time is not in fact linear (as some suggest) but only experienced as such, any future certainties are something that we have in some sense already experienced, and thus have the potentiality to prepare and teach us here, in the perceived now. But I won’t. 💗
So well written and so important a topic to be aware of and thinking about. I don't think I was ever in the "don't think about death" side, but over the last decade my mind has increasingly become accustomed to, accepted and thought a lot more on death.
Have you ever heard Sam Harris' thought on this? I think he did a whole podcast on death and how he thinks about it each and every day (in a good way). I can dig up the link if you haven't and you're interested.
Hey Nathan, thank you, and thank you for reading. It's such a nuanced thing, all our unique histories will naturally form a very specific relationship (or lack thereof) to Death. I can totally understand the 'don't think about it' approach, we naturally recoil from things that we perceive as, or associate with, pain. I was always on the other end of the spectrum, I thought about it constantly from a young age (initially in a very unhealthy way, but now, I think, I hope, in a healthy one). I appreciate you thinking about it, now, Nathan. 🪶
I haven't heard Sam Harris talk about it, and would absolutely love to (if it's not inconvenient you finding the link, no rush, of course). Thanks again, Nathan
OK so there's a few places, I think, plus some might be paywalled (his Making Sense podcast allows you to listen to the first half or so for free, so you can get a feel anyway):
Being whole. Now there's something worth aspiring to! One of the many beautiful filaments in this amazing substack is that in turning our attention towards death you simultaneously turn our attention towards life. In this particular essay, it's life as imagined in the fullness of Jung's rich formulation versus life offered to us by Madison Avenue and Hollywood as merely the place furthest away from and least similar to the End. Magnificent.
Chris, hello. Thank you so much for being here, and for your very kind (and equally astute) comment.
It’s an interesting aspiration to hold, wholeness. It’s interesting to notice the multiple forces at play (internal and external) which just don’t want you to do it! The conditioning to behave as fragments of ourselves is deep, and leads to all sorts of misery and destruction, it seems.
I do think that wholeness is also quite a fun aspiration. I’ve found being surprised by myself to be extremely enjoyable. Like getting to know a new friend.
Thank you for this framework. I’ve been grieving the loss of my father while simultaneously celebrating the birth of my first son and experiencing the closeness of life and death (rebirth) has convinced me that we truly cannot have one without the other. Both are potent portals of magic with gifts to share.
Making room for the sacredness of grief, loss, and the exhale is a practice I’m deepening within. I am grateful for others to share with on the journey! 🙏
Mariah, thank you so much for sharing the duality of your experience. Blessings in your grief, and on the birth of your son 💗 I love to hear that you’re on a journey of deepening into the practice of fully feeling all that life has to offer, heartbreak and all. Really grateful to have you here, and to walk alongside you on this path 🙏🪶
Chloe thank you so much for this beautiful rousing piece in defence of all of the things we’ve been told should be avoided, bypassed, pushed down and because of that, the associated feelings that come up like guilt and shame and exile. Like you, I finally realise I would much rather be whole than good. Learning to invite death into my everyday life has been life giving. It has awakened an aliveness and a capacity in me for holding life b all its multitudes. Much love xxx
Thank you so much, Amanda. Feeling blessed to be on the path alongside you. The ups and downs of inviting everything in is a wild ride, for sure. So often I feel as though I’m teetering right on the edge of ‘too much!’, but my balance is improving with time, and practice. I loved how you used the term ‘in defense of’; it hadn’t really landed in me that that’s what I’m trying to do, to defend that which we’ve exiled. I deeply appreciate you offering that lens. Much love to you ♥️ xxx
Oh such a wild ride! I see you finding your balance and bravery to walk that edge for you and all of us, I’m so grateful for that and for you friend. I really believe that’s what is being asked of all of us, to find comfort in our discomfort somehow. I love that you are bravely offering the gift of you’re medicine/knowing to the collective Chloe. I’m here for it! ❤️🔥
Just wanted to come back to this to say how moving it is to receive the words “I see you”, especially when it’s clear that the person saying them really does.
I’m deeply grateful for your acknowledgment. I think I had to let it sit in my body for a few days before putting words to it! Love to you ❤️🔥
Anna, I so appreciate you sharing your journey, and would like to acknowledge & honour the courage in what you did. It is a super power, you're living more fully, more deeply, for it.
I'm especially touched by you being able to speak with your mom about her ageing, that is a profound gift, for you both. Thank you again for sharing ♥️
Beautifully written. Life is indeed for living, but in order to live, we must also acknowledge that there is always something dying so that something else may live
Thank you, Kimber. I'd need to check the exact figures, but I seem to remember reading that approximately 110 billion people have died so far, so, we'd be in all sorts of trouble if it wasn't something that happened!
Memento Mori my friend. I found your posts a while ago and wanted to share it with my dil. She recently lost her father too young. I hesitated to send it but I think I will send this one. I’m a retired trauma nurse and have always thought about death a lot. Keep up the good fight but I know that death is not a bad thing, a transition perhaps. There are things worse than death, quite a few honestly. ♥️
Heather, Memento Mori indeed, friend. Thank you. I’m so sorry for your dil’s loss. I’d imagine that your work as a trauma nurse saw you needing to think about Death an awful lot, it certainly puts a different context on things.
A transition…that’s my intuition, too. And yep, there’s a whole lot worse out there.
Really glad to have you, and your perspective, here ♥️
Not only is your content profound but the continued conversations here in your comments are incredible. Thank you for this post and thank you to all of you commenting and sharing your own insights and wisdoms. I have never been this excited to read comments on any posts on any platforms. You are all my teachers. Looking forward to continuing to learn. 🍃
Naomi, what a beautiful comment, thank you. And thank you for acknowledging the sweet little community that seems to be forming around these topics. Everyones input makes the space richer, and I’m moved by how willing people are to share their personal experiences, thoughts and processes. So happy to have you be a part of it 🪶
That fawn is the cutest, daintiest little eater: chew, chew, chew, swallow, yum, yum, more. 🤣
How did we lose our way with death? Maybe when we started shutting away the dying in hospitals and care homes and we didn't have to deal with it at home? I love that you are throwing back the curtain and opening the windows on such an important subject, Chloe - it needs some light and air.
Troy, THANK YOU for acknowledging the Disney-levels of cuteness of the little fawn, he's heaven isn't he?! I honestly thought he was going to eclipse the entire post.
In terms of how we got here, I think you're right on the money. I think something happened post-industrial revolution that really trashed our collective relationship with Death. I think that Death 'leaving home', so to speak, is a huge part of it. Then there's Darwin / evolution / rise of Nihilism and loosening of the grip of the church (not a bad thing, but I think there were big consequences in regards to a shift in belief from Death = judgement = Heaven / Hell, fingers crossed for the former, to Death = nothing / annihilation).
Iain McGilchrist also talks about the shift towards Left hemispheric dominance happening around the time of the industrial revolution, and to the Left hemisphere death is super insulting (to the right it's an integral part of the ecosystem). Anyway, this is for another post!
Thank you for your insights, dear Troy 🪶
Yes, sheer heaven. I would like to add it to my imaginary menagerie, which currently includes an elephant, donkey, baby goat, a duck and now Bimbo the fawn, named after a popular brand of bread here in Spain.
You know I was going to say the death of the church in modern era, but didn't want to hog the stage :) But I think it's true that spirituality got thrown out with religion, which used to provide a "whole" view of life/death and has now been replaced by perpetual PROGRESS while ignoring inevitable DECLINE - exactly as you and your table point out. I believe at some point the pendulum will swing back to include spirituality without (we hope) all the problems that led us to abandon the whole shebang. 🕊️
Oh I have a baby goat in my imaginary menagerie, too! Her name is Biscuit. Bimbo will be very happy with you, no doubt.
And, seriously, hog away. I love this conversation, I live for talking about this stuff.
I think the pendulum has started to swing, it's just moving very slowly.
As Johnny Paycheck famously (actually Kesha, way more famously, sung) 'Only love can save us now' 💕
Well, since we're on the subject... I've been trying more and more to think of death not as an ending but as a returning, and life not as a building but as a clarifying. That way, "death" is just a word for the transition between the specificity of individual identity and the universality of pure potential; while life becomes the search for truth, the slow discarding of what we are not as we come to understand our true nature as one facet of an infinite diamond of potential awareness. So. It's going well! Coffee helps... 🤣🤣🤣
Oh, coffee is absolutely essential 😂 We’re on the same page, I very much feel like death is a transition (and one that actually takes a much longer time than most people think). I thiiiiink 🤔 it was Carl Jung who talked about life being bookended by Mystery. It makes a lot of sense to me that after Death we return to whatever was going on before our birth. Much like how in meditation sometimes a thought is described as a wave coming up out of the vast ocean, pitching, and then receding back into the vast ocean (while, all the time, still being OF the ocean, but ‘identifying’ as a wave). I think we (anything living) are much the same.
Reading “the slow discarding of what we are not” gave me such a physical sense of relief. This subject is so important, otherwise we arrive to our dying time in the grip of fear, and I personally have some concerns about what the spiritual repercussions of that might potentially be, but that’s for another post—or perhaps another (anonymous!) Substack entirely! Thank you so much, Troy. You’ve started my Sunday off on exactly the right foot!
Wave/0cean the perfect metaphor... You are a beacon, my dear... ⭐
"I've been trying more and more to think of death not as an ending but as a returning, and life not as a building but as a clarifying"
At some point I'll tell you my story, but for now, I would just like to say, THANK YOU so much for this...
I'm glad - would love to hear your story, Danette.
Thank you for sharing this, so fantastic and fascinating as always x
Thank you LRT x 🙏
You’re so welcome x
Growing up, my fatherr used to have all these funny saying and witty comebacks. I remember when I wanted him to do something for me so badly (mostly buying me something or taking me somewhere) and I would whine 'but Dad, you haaaaave to!' And he would respond by saying 'the only thing I HAVE to do is stay Black and die'.
Even in jest, there was something so freeing about the truth in that that always stuck with me, and maybe opened up the early thoughts of death. And now, while I don't make that joke with my kids (because it's too close to home), I do allow them to witness and share my grief with each transition/passing while being light in reminding them that death is the only condition of life.
Memento Mori indeed
Thank you for sharing this, my love. I’m pondering on what it is about such a statement of fact, no matter how off-handedly said, that inspires a sense of ‘freeing’—and the only thing I can land on is certainty. There is so little (real) certainty available to us, and yet we all seem to yearn for it on some deep level. I suppose that something being an absolute certainty can, when we really drop into it, release us of some of the impulse to rail against it. It opens a channel through which there’s the opportunity to engage, and form some kind of relationship with the certainty.
I could easily go off on a tangent about time and how I wonder whether, if time is not in fact linear (as some suggest) but only experienced as such, any future certainties are something that we have in some sense already experienced, and thus have the potentiality to prepare and teach us here, in the perceived now. But I won’t. 💗
This too shall pass and we won’t be here in this form anymore. Reflecting on it makes life richer.
Amen, Heather 🙏
Hey Chloe,
So well written and so important a topic to be aware of and thinking about. I don't think I was ever in the "don't think about death" side, but over the last decade my mind has increasingly become accustomed to, accepted and thought a lot more on death.
Have you ever heard Sam Harris' thought on this? I think he did a whole podcast on death and how he thinks about it each and every day (in a good way). I can dig up the link if you haven't and you're interested.
Hey Nathan, thank you, and thank you for reading. It's such a nuanced thing, all our unique histories will naturally form a very specific relationship (or lack thereof) to Death. I can totally understand the 'don't think about it' approach, we naturally recoil from things that we perceive as, or associate with, pain. I was always on the other end of the spectrum, I thought about it constantly from a young age (initially in a very unhealthy way, but now, I think, I hope, in a healthy one). I appreciate you thinking about it, now, Nathan. 🪶
I haven't heard Sam Harris talk about it, and would absolutely love to (if it's not inconvenient you finding the link, no rush, of course). Thanks again, Nathan
No inconvenience at all.
OK so there's a few places, I think, plus some might be paywalled (his Making Sense podcast allows you to listen to the first half or so for free, so you can get a feel anyway):
https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/263-the-paradox-of-death
https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/essentials/making-sense-of-death
Plus there's some crossover with his Waking Up app:
https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/the-lessons-of-death
Thank you so much Nate, looking forward to listening to the podcast.
Frank Ostaseski is such an interesting dude, and the Zen Hospice Project is such an inspiration. 🙏
Yeah, incredible. I was in awe when learning about that.
There is an incredibly moving documentary about it called End Game, I think it's on Netflix, and I cannot recommend it enough
Thanks, I'll take a look 😊
Being whole. Now there's something worth aspiring to! One of the many beautiful filaments in this amazing substack is that in turning our attention towards death you simultaneously turn our attention towards life. In this particular essay, it's life as imagined in the fullness of Jung's rich formulation versus life offered to us by Madison Avenue and Hollywood as merely the place furthest away from and least similar to the End. Magnificent.
Chris, hello. Thank you so much for being here, and for your very kind (and equally astute) comment.
It’s an interesting aspiration to hold, wholeness. It’s interesting to notice the multiple forces at play (internal and external) which just don’t want you to do it! The conditioning to behave as fragments of ourselves is deep, and leads to all sorts of misery and destruction, it seems.
I do think that wholeness is also quite a fun aspiration. I’ve found being surprised by myself to be extremely enjoyable. Like getting to know a new friend.
Very glad to have you here…
Thank you for this framework. I’ve been grieving the loss of my father while simultaneously celebrating the birth of my first son and experiencing the closeness of life and death (rebirth) has convinced me that we truly cannot have one without the other. Both are potent portals of magic with gifts to share.
Making room for the sacredness of grief, loss, and the exhale is a practice I’m deepening within. I am grateful for others to share with on the journey! 🙏
Mariah, thank you so much for sharing the duality of your experience. Blessings in your grief, and on the birth of your son 💗 I love to hear that you’re on a journey of deepening into the practice of fully feeling all that life has to offer, heartbreak and all. Really grateful to have you here, and to walk alongside you on this path 🙏🪶
Chloe thank you so much for this beautiful rousing piece in defence of all of the things we’ve been told should be avoided, bypassed, pushed down and because of that, the associated feelings that come up like guilt and shame and exile. Like you, I finally realise I would much rather be whole than good. Learning to invite death into my everyday life has been life giving. It has awakened an aliveness and a capacity in me for holding life b all its multitudes. Much love xxx
Thank you so much, Amanda. Feeling blessed to be on the path alongside you. The ups and downs of inviting everything in is a wild ride, for sure. So often I feel as though I’m teetering right on the edge of ‘too much!’, but my balance is improving with time, and practice. I loved how you used the term ‘in defense of’; it hadn’t really landed in me that that’s what I’m trying to do, to defend that which we’ve exiled. I deeply appreciate you offering that lens. Much love to you ♥️ xxx
Oh such a wild ride! I see you finding your balance and bravery to walk that edge for you and all of us, I’m so grateful for that and for you friend. I really believe that’s what is being asked of all of us, to find comfort in our discomfort somehow. I love that you are bravely offering the gift of you’re medicine/knowing to the collective Chloe. I’m here for it! ❤️🔥
Just wanted to come back to this to say how moving it is to receive the words “I see you”, especially when it’s clear that the person saying them really does.
I’m deeply grateful for your acknowledgment. I think I had to let it sit in my body for a few days before putting words to it! Love to you ❤️🔥
I love that you took the time to do that for yourself Chloe. So much love to you too! X 🪶🤍✨
Anna, I so appreciate you sharing your journey, and would like to acknowledge & honour the courage in what you did. It is a super power, you're living more fully, more deeply, for it.
I'm especially touched by you being able to speak with your mom about her ageing, that is a profound gift, for you both. Thank you again for sharing ♥️