Conscious Living, Conscious Aging by Ron Pevny

Author:Ron Pevny
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beyond Words/Atria

8

RELEASING THE PAST IN THE DEATH LODGE

When we reflect on our mortality and the passage from this life to whatever comes next, most everyone hopes to die in peace. We want to be able to feel that our lives have been well lived, that we have done our best to use our gifts, that we have loved and been loved, and that we can let go of this life with grace and without regret. Yet so many people do not die this way. Colleagues, friends, and retreat participants who work with hospice say that those who die the most peaceful deaths are usually those who come to their deathbeds unburdened by a lifetime’s accumulation of resentments, regrets, dysfunctional relationships, unhealed grief, and closed hearts. Besides manifesting as emotional turmoil, such unfinished business often results in prolonged physical agony, while the dying person clings to a life that feels incomplete and unfulfilled. Often the greatest gift that hospice spiritual directors give to those they tend to is help dealing with unfinished business so that the patients can let go of this life with hearts that are more open to love and peace.

While the conceptions of what comes after this life vary greatly among the world’s spiritual traditions, they appear to be unified in their belief that what we carry internally to our deathbeds is critical to what we experience thereafter. In various traditions, heaven and hell are not places but magnified reflections of our inner state at the time of death. Whether we die with peaceful, loving hearts or conflicted closed hearts very much determines our experience when we are without a body. And according to traditions like Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism that include reincarnation, the extent to which we have healed the past plays a key role in determining our experience when we next inhabit a body.

The work that prepares us to be at peace as we leave this life and step into the great unknown is the same work that prepares us to become conscious elders. It is the work of healing our past and leaving behind our self-identification with our previous life stage so that we can move into the mysterious next chapter that awaits us. Both physical death and the passage into conscious elderhood are, for the psyche, the death of an old way of being. They are also both doorways into new chapters in life’s journey of growth. Besides helping to complete unfinished business that ties up our energy, closes our hearts, and dims our vision as we age, this work of healing our past is valuable because it helps us keep our inner work current so that we are ready whenever death calls. When I had my health crisis several years ago, I became acutely aware of healing work I needed to do and legacy stories I needed to share with loved ones. Yet I felt too weak, ill, fearful, and emotionally drained to do any inner work at all. It was all I could do to hang on and keep the myriad of strong emotions that swept over me from turning into overwhelm.

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