Last month we looked at the naturalness of death, how death, when not sudden, follows a predictable pattern that leads to physical death. While this is the case, people often are quite resistant to joining this natural physical dying process. We often forget that physical death is an essential part of life, one that we will all experience. Despite this truth, people resist death at every turn, which makes the dying process often a more painful process. What would it look like for people to embrace the dying process and turn it into a meaningful time full of much richness, love, and grace? This is the task of spiritual care in the field of palliative care. The Distinction between the Physical Body and the Eternal Soul Below is a Biblical text that I read at many funeral or burial services. This is my paraphrase of these verses. These verses teach that the human person consists of two parts, the outer nature or physical body and the inner nature, which is commonly called the human soul. This two-part nature of humans found in religion is also found in psychology, the physical body and the psyche. The Body-Soul Merge I find in my spiritual care ministry in Palliative Care and Hospice that most people don’t experience themselves as a body and a soul. They experience themselves instead as simply one entity where their sense of body and soul collapse into one. This collapse between soul and body is not just prevalent within individual human experience. It is also evident within our culture where most people see the world and reality as simply a physical reality. Mainstream society has little space for believing that there are actually two dynamics at play within reality, a physical reality shaped by the rules of science and human will and a spiritual reality that is constantly interacting with and trying to transform physical reality toward certain values and experiences of life. With little sense of life beyond earthly life, it makes sense why our culture and the health professions reduce the soul/body system to just the physical body. With life being reduced to only physicality, no wonder death is viewed as the end of human life and thus an enemy to beat, or a failure when death happens. Suffering caused by the Body-Soul Merge When we see ourselves as only a physical body, death becomes quite scary for we believe death is the end of us. When this happens, people tend to follow one of two narratives in the dying process. Some people join the narrative of fear, “don’t let me die” or “don’t let them died.” They do everything possible to fight, avoid, or deny the dying process. I have had clients who only saw me once because when they discovered that I wanted to help them process and explore their experience of dying, they had no interest in seeing me again. However, since the reality of death is often denied, it means that all of the common experiences related to the dying process cannot be truly experienced, discussed and processed. Instead, life must be managed and everything connected to dying and death is bracketed out of their life. The focus becomes the next treatment and maintaining a façade that everything is OK and will work out well, until one day it doesn’t. Other people join the narrative of despair, “I am going to die” or “they are going to die.” People caught in this narrative often become lost in their grief and gloom. When people follow this path, every conversation around dying soon ends in a place of despair, and they are not able to work at many of the tasks that the dying process requires of them. As a result, family and friends around these people feel powerless in knowing how to discuss and process the many questions and experiences that arise in the dying process. Instead, the dying process often becomes heavily managed to protect those who quickly fall into despair and deep grief. When people join either of these two narratives, they can’t truly live and experience what life is trying to offer them in the present moment in the midst of the dying process. They see no blessings possible in the dying process, all because they see themselves or their loved one as only a physical body that dies. It is true that our physical body is wasting away, as the above Biblical text teaches. However, this scripture also teaches that, while this dying process is happening, something else can happen to us, namely that our inner or divine nature can be renewed each day. This inner nature is the soul part of us that passes through the transition of death and enters the afterlife. To experience our inner or divine nature, we must break this body-soul merge that most people follow as they live life. Not all experiences of life are tied to our physical body. Many in fact have their roots in our non-physical soul. Breaking our attachment to the Physical Body Within Theravadin Buddhism, it is very intentional in breaking this attachment to the body. As part of their formation, monks are usually sent to a cemetery for a full night to meditate on the decaying body of a deceased monk (Dass and Bush, 159). The purpose of this exercise is “to let go of the attachment to the concept of life being the body, so that during the dying process, instead of being filled with ‘I’m dying’ or “Don’t let me die’, the monks would be attentive to the moment as each part of the dying process unfolds” (159). In other words, the monk would be paying attention to each present moment in the dying process with the goal of noticing, contemplating, understanding and fully living each moment. This is the gift that Western people have when they enter palliative care. They are blessed with having time to do what the Buddhist monks do, to become attentive to the moment by moment unfolding that happens within the dying process. And as they do so, the merge between the body and soul begins to break down. They began to notice dynamics in their life experience that are not rooted in their body or by their human choices, dynamics that lead to the renewal of our human inner nature. What could some of these soul dynamics be? The Renewal of Our Inner Nature a. Compassion and Grief This past year I visited a man who had a long term terminal disease. During my second visit, I decided to ask him if he wished for me to end our time with a prayer. He said I could but that I could not pray to a deity. I explored what he meant by this and found that he was comfortable in praying to the Sacred Mystery and Source of Life. I prayed with him and when I finished, I found him sobbing. In exploring what he was experiencing, he said that he was experiencing a profound compassion toward himself around his illness and situation. He was totally embarrassed by his tears and I quickly got him some tissue so that his wife would not know he had been crying. Sadness and tears commonly arise when we begin to pay close attention to our experience of dying. This experience is commonly called grief where people finally give themselves permission to mourn the many losses connected to their failing health. That is often how grief is understood within our western world, as an emotional expression created by our body. In fact, this is what this man believed and expected until he had this experience which was so surprising to him. In this case, he felt compassion emerging from the depths of his soul and that this compassion was directed toward him. He was the recipient of this gift of Divine compassion; it was not a feeling that he or his body created. Divine Compassion is a gentle energy that softens our mind, heart, and will allowing ourselves to become more vulnerable. When we become more vulnerable, we allow tenderness, kindness, grace, and insight to arise within our soul in response to what we are experiencing, in this case, the many feelings this man was feeling in relation to his terminal illness. Without this softening and vulnerability, we remain oblivious to the subtle dynamics of our soul. b. Love, Connection, and Forgiveness Ram Dass, a prominent spiritual teacher of the late 20th century, taught that “grief is one of our greatest teachers. It cracks us open—that’s how the light gets in...it reveals the great healing power of love” (140). His friend Norman Fischer said that “loss wounds the heart, causing it to fall open. Love rushes into and out of this opening. Love that was probably there all along, but you didn’t notice because you were too busy with so many things that you couldn’t feel it. Love rushes in to the absence left by the loss. And that love brings inspired action. If we are able to give ourselves to the loss, to move toward it instead of away, our wounded heart becomes full” (141). When people move toward their grief rather than away from it, I find in my palliative care ministry that many words of love are expressed between the dying loved one and their family and friends, and vice versa. And with this greater desire to express love and experience connection and oneness, there is also a longing to work at reconciliation. People begin to talk about regrets, not being the mother or father they wish they were for their children, or the mistakes they made that had big impact on those they loved. Forgiveness becomes a prominent desire as end-of-life approaches. c. Addressing the Fear of the Unknown One question I always ask clients concerns fear: “As you contemplate your death, is there anything you fear?” I get two common answers. One involves the physical body and one surprisingly involves the soul. One fear revolves around the fear of the pain they may experience in the dying process, the fear of physical and emotional pain. With the improvements in pain control and anxiety management, the medical profession is getting better and better at reducing the risk of severe pain during the dying process. The other fear involves the fear of the unknown, the fear of what they will experience beyond physical death. This question is actually a soul question. It is interesting to note that those people who have had many soul experiences in this earthly world don’t wrestle in the same way with this fear of the unknown. It is because these people have learned to do what our Biblical scripture suggests, that is, “to focus our attention on what is unseen for what is seen is temporary, but what is invisible to our naked eyes, we experience as rich, deep, and eternal.” In having this focus, people notice many sacred or soul moments in their earthly life, moments that give them a taste of heaven on earth, a taste what the afterlife is like. This is one of the key tasks in my spiritual care ministry, helping people pay close attention to their life experience, especially the subtle aspects of their experience, that which is unseen and often invisible to our five senses. I get people to explore those moments where they felt truly alive, where they sensed they were part of something bigger than themselves, when they were awed by the wonder, beauty, or mystery of life, or when they realized a oneness with nature, a person or group, or with all reality. These are some of the sacred times that people experience in life, often unconsciously until they pause and contemplate the deeper aspects of life. This is why the spiritual practice of mindfulness/prayerfulness/contemplation are often encouraged in the field of palliative care. These practices help people learn what it means to walk by faith and not by sight, which is really important as we face death. When we die, our soul detaches from our visible physical body and transitions into an invisible but real spiritual world, one that we get hints of in this earthly world when we have a posture of faith and an openness to the subtle. d. Restoring Our Trust in Reality and the Source of Life As each of us approaches the end of life, we will be faced with the task of ultimately surrendering to the Source of Life and Reality. People who are identified and attached to their physical body will fight this surrender until the very end, until they can no longer keep their body from dying. However, as all Buddhists know, such attachment creates immense suffering. The greater the attachment, the greater the suffering. Knowing that there is a Sacred Mystery or God involved in life that we are surrendering to is not enough to remove our fear of the unknowingness surrounding death. Our fear goes deeper than that. In many cases, our fear is tied to our distrust in who and what God represents for us. There are very good reasons why many people no longer trust in the Sacred. People often raise the questions around why God allows suffering in this world. This field of theological inquiry is often called theodicy, the explanation of why a good and loving God permits evil to exist in our world. However, for many of these people, they are not looking for abstract answers for such questions for these questions are quite personal. No theological answer, regardless of how good it is, will take away the pain behind these questions. These people have experienced much personal trauma in their life often beginning in their family of origin and childhood years at school, and continuing in life through traumatic experiences in their adult years, like what is happening right now through this COVID pandemic. How can people trust God when they surrender into death when they believed God has failed them at key points in life, especially during those times when they were traumatized? It is here that the earlier Biblical text provides a clue to how the Sacred Mystery heals our trauma, renews our inner nature, and restores our trust. Apostle Paul writes, “the one who raised Jesus from the dead will also raise us from the dead, and bring us into God’s heavenly presence.” The word “dead” in this text could easily be replaced with world “trauma” for trauma deadens the soul. In his death, Jesus experienced the most intense trauma one could ever imagine, a time when Jesus felt totally abandoned by his closest friends, his religious community, his government, even God. But Jesus was not just a human body; he was also a human Being where his soul was connected to God. This divine-human connection means that this trauma that Jesus experienced was also experienced by God, that God felt profound traumatic pain that day just as Jesus did. And when Jesus realized this truth, that God was with him in his trauma, that he was not alone but God was with him, Jesus released his attachment to his painful body. This is one way of understanding Jesus' crying last words on the cross, "God, into your hands I entrust my spirit” (Luke 23:46). He then died and his soul transitioned into the heavenly afterlife. It is important for people to realize that just because they experienced trauma in their past does not mean that God abandoned them during those painful times. It was just that there was no one present who was receptive enough to the spiritual guidance God was providing to keep the trauma from happening. Since the Sacred Mystery can only work through the process of physical incarnation in our earthly world, that is, though the minds, hearts, wills and hands of people and dynamics of nature, there are limits to what Divine Reality can actually do in our world, despite what our Chrisitan theology might profess. In those cases, when nothing can be done, God suffers with us, and as we realize God feels our pain with us, just as God experienced Jesus' pain on the cross, our trauma begins to transform. So my goal as a spiritual care provider is to help people notice that God is with them in their dying process, that God understands and feels the struggle and pain they are going through, that they are not alone, and that God would never abandoned them. As they sense the Sacred Mystery with them, their distrust begins to melt and their heart that longs for this gracious connection of love to the Divine opens up. Now, they are in a place where they can truly surrender into death.
Questions to Ponder 1. When have you experienced yourself as more than your body? What are these moments like? How do these moments help you when you realize your body is groaning and wasting away? 2. Compassion, grief, sadness and tears are closely related. What is your relationship to tears and compassion? When have you experienced Divine Compassion in the midst of your grief? 3. I note how grief is what makes it possible for love to be expressed and shared in the midst of the dying process. How has grief made this sharing of love possible between you and your loved ones? 4. What spiritual practices make it possible for you to see beyond the visible to the subtle dynamics of life that are often full of meaning? What have you noticed through these times of attentiveness? 5. How have your experiences of trauma affected your trust in the Sacred Mystery? What has helped you with this broken trust? What would help you now heal this broken trust with the Divine? Gord Alton MDiv RP CASC Supervisor Educator Bibliography Dass, Ram and Bush, Mirabi. Walking Each Other Home. Boulder: Sounds True, 2018.
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