Death as an Awakener

You say you want freedom.
And yet, true freedom goes beyond what is known.

How is your relationship with the unknown? (journal prompt)

Think back to all the moments in your life where you felt truly free.
Notice what the variable was.

Let me guess: you were living out of your comfort zone. You had entered the unknown—
the void, the space between. There’s an exhilaration past what we know.

In all my years of holding space, I’ve observed a pattern that repeats itself.
This is a natural cycle that moves through a death process.
And this process, although often painful, is the gateway to more freedom.

Maybe something in your life dies—not just literally, but energetically.
For instance, a friendship ends. You get fired from your job. You face a health crisis.

This rupture doesn’t always need to be external.
In fact, over time and with inner refinement, you’ll find that the change can start—and stay—within.
This might show up as the death of an identity, a belief system, or a habit.

Take a moment to feel into what is dying in your life or asking to be let go of. (journal prompt)

In a culture that fears death, it can feel momentous to trust the process of letting go.
However, when we allow ourselves to be guided beyond what we’ve known by an invisible force, something powerful happens.

It becomes an act of faith.

We will know we are facing a death process because all sorts of irrational and exaggerated fears arise.
Fear isn’t to be feared—it is to be faced.

Ask yourself: are you in a state of consciousness, a present reality, where fear is dominant?

Take a moment to feel into and identify what fears are haunting you. (journal prompt)

A Child Imagines Her Funeral

I remember as a child, often playing out my death (well, my funeral, really).
I’d lie on my bed and imagine who would be there, who would come together, and who would be the most upset.

I’d also imagine the memories of the person who was grieving.
What would they be thinking?

This would often set me off, and I would tap into a huge well of grief while lying all alone, imagining my funeral.
Little did I know it was my way of processing grief that I just couldn’t rationalize or access at that age.

Yesterday, the strangest thing happened.
I was lying on my bed, just starting to drift off in a semi-asleep nap.
And I started to have an image of my daughter taking her first driving lesson.
And in that moment, she was thinking of me, missing me. In the dream state, I realized I was dead.

I stirred awake, and a huge, big tear rolled down my cheek at the thought of missing her at this phase in her life.
It created some questions: why was my subconscious showing me this?
What do I know about death and my fear of it that needs holding?

Where it led to was waking up the next day feeling a deep need to contemplate death more.

Death as Teacher

I trained as a death doula a couple of years ago.
Many of the teachings have since enhanced my work and attitude.

In our training, we called in grief as our teacher.
And yesterday, I felt the presence of death—not as a scary prediction or the grim reaper,
but as the higher teacher, Anubis (an Egyptian god who works with death).

I felt guided by Spirit to create a practice around death.

I’ve often said: if only we invited death more into our contemplation,
we would find ourselves more activated to live—to feel deep gratitude for life.

It’s so easy to take life for granted, to overlook all we have and all we love
in the quest to be “living more,” achieving, healing, or chasing whatever we think we need more of.

The truth is (or should I say, the irony is):
in our avoidance of facing death and our fear of the unknown,
we live in states of disconnection, discontentment, and disease.

The 3 D’s of life.

Without death in our lives, we miss the portal beyond this realm.

The Portal of Transformation

To work with death consciously is to work with transformation.
It invites quantum leaps and opens the door to going beyond.

Understanding death is the ultimate forgiveness.
And forgiveness is the ultimate freedom.

Death is the thread, the path, the portal to a higher intelligence.

The Death Community

I’ve always struggled with a sense of belonging.
In my search for my tribe, I have immersed myself in many worlds.

Each world gifted me a piece of myself back and returned me to wholeness.

The death community, I found, is one of the most wholesome,
non-judgmental, and ego-less places.

The people who work with and contemplate death have a kindness and compassion
that is the closest to unconditional love I have found in any community.

Around death, such deep healing occurs.
Grief cracks through the psyche of each individual,
humbling and right-sizing them to carry the deep role of the death doula.

And what an initiation that is.

Integration and Embodiment

I often find, after each immersion, there is a period of time for integration and growth.
It happens before I begin to teach, guide, and use the tools I was blessed to receive.

I believe we become the medicine.
Integration is the transmission through our being of what we’ve absorbed.

Yet it needs to undergo a deeply embodied, lived experience.

We must face the parts of us that want to be experienced into being—
the parts that have been exiled and now seek integration.

Often, in a training, we initiate.
But we don’t become the full medicine until years later,
when we’ve lived the teachings into being.

I don’t see myself as a master of anything in this lifetime.
I am like a curious child, immersing myself in many things.

I’m an alchemist playing at life.
And in that experiment, I have learned a thing or two.

A Guide Walking With You

As a guide, I am walking with you,
safely navigating you through the territory I have walked.

I can help you navigate certain places within your psyche.
I do not claim to know what’s beyond.

But I have faced many fears around death,
and together we can face some more.

We can liberate ourselves from the limitations of what we know
and open our beings to all that is emerging and living through us.

With death as a portal, we can awaken within the dream
and begin to live our lives and our destinies without delay.

The Great Paradox

The fear of death is the fear of separation.
And the irony is that death is the opposite of separation.
It is the uniter.

In death, there is no fear, no separation—
only merging back into the vastness of nothingness and everything.

Death is not an end, but the birthing place.

Nothing can be taken from you that is meant for you.

Everything that you seek is seeking you.

Death unites us with a vaster consciousness
that is here to return us to the wholeness.

We must die to be reborn.
The death is here to crack us open—
to dissolve the delusion and reveal the eternal love that we are.

Nothing that is anchored and made in love can ever end.
Love never dies. Anything else is false mythology.

One Year Left to Live

What we perceive as an ending is, in fact, a process of renewal.
It is a practice to bring death—and thus aliveness—into your life.

It is an invitation to embrace the freedom of the unknown.

Now imagine this:
You knew (or maybe you were given a diagnosis),
that you have one year left to live.

Just imagine.

Take some breaths.
Beyond the fear, the panic, and the negative thoughts,
allow yourself to travel into this year.

What would your priorities be? (journal prompt)
What would you do with your time? (journal prompt)
How would you start and finish each day, knowing they are limited? (journal prompt)

Begin Now

So don’t wait. Start now.

Start with your priorities.
Start with how you would start and finish each day.

Begin to live as if you are going to die—because, guess what? That is inevitable.
But when it will happen is unknown. So you better start living.

When you bring death close, you start to live.
Life is precious. Don’t waste it.

Blessings,
Danu x