Are we aware in any real sense that we are dying?

Can we perceive the countless illusions that separate us from directly relating to our mortality? When we open into an awareness that we and all other beings are dying, a new wisdom ignites within us. We begin to sense the beauty and preciousness of each moment. Our eyes finally orient toward the essence of every being.

Without a real intimacy with death, total aliveness is not possible. Our culture does
everything possible to insulate us from our fear of death. Unfortunately, this avoidance limits our ability to be vibrantly alive.

The Death Series
offers an in-depth investigation of our relationship with Life and Death in three parts.

Part 1 - Death, A Conversation
Part 2 - Death, A Preparation
Part 3 - Death, The Essential Practice

In The Death Series we open into becoming familiar with our essence and its radiance. It encourages and develops the skill of radiant living, NOW. The Death Series is a profound training that uncovers what has always been there.

Part 1 asks, “How do we become intimate with death?”
This is the question that is the core work of this portion of the series. It moves deeply into our theories and concepts about the entire death process, which holds some of our most terrifying thoughts. It is within the experience of the chaotic, confused, repetitive mind (ordinary mind), that we undergo change and death. This is a mind, which is totally unprepared for the opportunity that the moment of death offers. No one can die courageously until they have realized the true nature of the mind (beyond the ordinary thinking mind). Only this realization can offer stablity during the chaos of the death process. The purpose of reflecting on death is to allow insight into the constant dance of change and impermanence. This dance reveals much about the partnership between the ego and our essential nature. So often, it ignites great anguish and anxiety for us. We find ourselves grasping onto THINGS, desperately, even though all things change.

Part 2 begins to look at the “Gaps “which the ordinary mind ignores.
These gaps or transitions are the training ground for the periods of uncertainty that the mind finds so difficult to navigate and is terrified to encounter. This uncertainty or “unknown” becomes even more intense at the moment of death. We take a look at the various emotions that accumulate within our psychophysical system. These emotions create whole realms in our inner world. The creations in these realms obscure the ability to see our true essential nature. As a result, we clutch onto happiness and suffering and interpret these as REAL. As a result of our misunderstanding, we engage in unskillful and ignorant actions; we go on sowing the seeds of our reality . It is from form of thinking that we literally materialize the next moment or the next rebirth. This misidentification and the actions that follow keep us bound to endless cycles and repetitions. It is the ability to feel the full impact of our own mortality that allows authentic compassion to become the organizing principle of our life.

The observation exercises in Part Two develop a clarity about WHO is habitually running our life and usurping the vital force of life. This awareness is absolutely essential for the birth of compassion and presence. These attributes determine the capacity to truly be of service in the world. We examine all that stands in our way, all the self-deceptions, self-grasping and self-cherishing, which limit the practice of compassion and presence. We enter into a powerful ALCHEMY by engaging in the art of dedicating our suffering and exchanging pain. The key to “presence” at death becomes the core topic. The core question becomes: Can we embrace death totally?

Part 3 The Essential Practice, addresses the process of dying.
This consists of two phases of dissolution. The first is the dissolution of the senses and the outer elements of the body. The second is the inner dissolution of the gross and subtle thought states and emotions. In order to discuss the disintegration of these at death, we need to investigate the components of our body and mind and understand how the outer elements, which dissolve at death, also have a correlating inner experience.

A structural language based on these elements, their own vibrational color radiance, their physiology and their psychology and wisdom aspects will be presented. At the same time, a traditional spiritual language will be used to help us enter the process as deeply as possible. For this purpose, I have chosen the Tantric Buddhist tradition of Tibet because it offers an explanation beyond our western viewpoint and incorporates the language of LIGHT. At the level of subatomic reality, quantum physics recognizes that we are, in fact, frozen light. Therefore, inviting a traditional viewpoint that holds this fact as its foundation makes our investigation particularly rich. It allows us to observe the encounter with four increasingly subtle levels of consciousness as the “Rainbow Body” spectrum.

Part 3 examines the great opportunity for liberation in the dying process and on what terms this opportunity is offered. This dying process is available now at every moment.
Most of us are totally unprepared for the Clear Light that dawns for us all at death. Our ordinary mind has no means of responding to its immensity or of RECOGNIZING it. This is because we have not made ourselves familiar with ways to do so in this life.