Kathleen Dowling Singh has been seen by some as the “new Kubler-Ross” (back of book jacket). Elizabeth Kubler Ross was the Swiss-American psychiatrist who developed the prominent stage theory of grief, namely that people pass through five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, despair, and acceptance. This model of grief has shaped our understanding of grief for decades. Based on Singh’s research and training in transpersonal psychology and the various spiritual traditions along with many years of ministering in the terminal illness context, she has observed that the dying process has many of the “special conditions” that are found in the contemplative traditions of the various religions. These special conditions lead dying people to experience what Singh calls the Nearing Death Experience. Singh outlines her thesis and research in her book, "The Grace in Dying" (HarpersCollins, 1998). I have found Singh’s observations quite helpful in my work as a psychospiritual therapist with palliative clients. Let me share how Singh understands the spiritual transformation process that occurs within the dying journey. Understanding the Human Spiritual Flaw Behind Spiritual Transformation Within Singh’s framework, we are not born with this human flaw that sets up our spiritual transformation journey. Rather it is a flaw within the human psyche that develops naturally as we pass through the human development stages of infancy, childhood, teenager and adulthood. Singh understands this flaw as the egoic self that forms during these years and causes us to feel very separate from others and Reality/God. The development of this egoic flaw involves 4 key stages of formation or what Singh labels as dualisms. These four dualisms could be seen to Christians as the 4 steps or "falls" that lead to the ultimate formation of the human fallen nature. 1. The First Fall The first stage of egoic development happens in the first or second year of life. As babies, we experience reality as one with us. There is no sense of me and the other and thus no sense of mother or father, or cat or blanket. As babies, we experience everything as part of us and our experience. However, slowly but surely, our infant souls begin to notice in our experience that there is a “me” and there is an “other” that is separate from me. Singh calls this first dualism “the Grand Canyon of dualisms, the virtual unbridgeable chasm between self and non-self” (31). The truth is that the original experience of oneness with all reality including mother/parent is still there but due to this dualistic split, we, as young children, begin to experience life less and less in this unitive way. This is the first step toward the formation of our human fallen nature. 2. The Second Fall With the rise of this first dualism, physical, emotional, and psychic structures begin to form between us and others, between subject and object. With this arising of space in reality, we become aware of time. “As soon as the self begins to live in space, it lives in and experiences time. Within this matrix of time emerges the conscious distinction between past, present, and future” (31). We now mentally and physically begin to structure our experience into past, present, and future. No longer do we experience the oneness of the present moment which merges past, present, and future into one. With this divided awareness comes the emergence of another dualism, that of life and death, that of existence and non-existence, that of physical reality and non-physical or spiritual reality. Singh notes that this second dualism, or the second step in the fallen process of humanity, “sets the stage for humanity’s fear of death” (31) and “this by the age of two” (32). 3. The Third Fall Now that our egoic self sees itself as separate from reality, it begins to manage our reality, both externally and internally, by acting on anything that it objectifies. We begin to manage our experience of Reality by seeking positive objects/experiences and avoiding problematic objects/experiences. “With the emerging recognition of self versus non-self, the needs and desires for flowing, intermingling love begin to be felt as vulnerabilities,” (33) and thus potentially dangerous. To manage all of these vulnerabilities and feelings that arise from them, our sense of self moves from being centred in our whole body to our head, the centre of our thinking mind. This leads to the third dualism, the mind-body split, the third step in the process of human fallenness, which allows us to cut ourselves off from our experience of the Present Moment through thinking about and managing our experiences of life. When we think about our experiences of life, we no longer directly feel them. Because of our egoic self is now identified with our thinking mind, we are further alienated from the experience of Reality experienced in the Present Moment. 4. The Fourth Fall With our mental egoic self now in place, our ego begins to develop an ideal self image of who we are and want to be. This sets the stage for the fourth and final dualism, that last step involved in forming our human fallen nature. We seek out and embrace any experiences that supports this growing sense of ideal self image. All of our mental chatter are signs of our egoic self seeking to manage our experience in certain ways. Any experiences that don’t fit this ideal self image, our egoic self quickly splits off, represses and buries within our unconscious. What I have described is Singh’s fourth dualism within human development, “in Jung’s terms, the persona, our acceptable self image, and the shadow, all those parts of ourselves that we disown” (37). These four dualisms that Singh highlights are the four major levels of egoic development that every human passes through during their childhood developmental years. If people have experienced much trauma during these childhood years, which many people do, then my sense is that these traumatic experiences add extra fire to our egoic development. As a result, our egoic structures are often more rigid and controlling than normal for they must contain and manage the added powerful emotions and energies that come from these painful moments. Realizing Our Tragic or Flawed State Singh claims that we don’t often see our tragic or flawed state until we get a terminal illness (90). Even then, It takes us awhile to realize this flawed state for “death is the ultimate threat to ego. The mental ego cannot even conceive of its own nullity” (53). Singh claims that this “fear of death is grounded in a strong sense of the “I”, an attachment to a finite and separate self” (57). When our mental ego collides with the reality of terminal illness, Singh notes that “hope is almost always the first powerful dynamic to come to the forefront” (95). To our ego, ‘hope typically signifies one thing: the continuance of self” (95). However, this hope gets broken over and over during a terminal illness until finally hope is “seen for what it is: a clinging to a wish for something other than what is. When hope evaporates, we are left with the here and now” (96). While the physical dying process is usually quite peaceful, Singh asserts that “the suffering of the mental ego prior to entering the dying process is enormous. It is the suffering of the dismantling of the structure, the identity, the beliefs, the hopes, the dreams, the cherished memories, the fancied ‘proofs’ of the self” (104). Many of us in the Western world have an ideal self-image that is all about being in control and avoiding negative experiences such as powerlessness, sadness, anger/hatred, weakness, despair, etc. So when we find themselves on the palliative journey that causes us to lose control of our life and forces us to experience many of these unacceptable feelings, no wonder our mental ego hates this suffering. However, Singh continues, “living with terminal illness is living in a crucible of transformation” (105), a place where one is held in place, to endure, and experience the present moment (105), which will include much suffering at first. “The mental ego hates to be held, to be pinned down, to be unable to run away from the ‘this-is-what-is’ nature of reality. The mental ego loves an escape clause” (106). But there is no escape with terminal illness. Instead, when we finally come to grips to the fact that we have a terminal illness and that we are going to die, that is when we realize our “tragic state,” when we “recognize with honesty that we live our lives in a dispossessed state, far from our home in the Ground of Being” (90). Once accepting our tragic or fallen state, the experience of our palliative illness can provide the container from which “radical psychic deconstruction” can happen followed by a “regenerative process of psychospiritual reconstruction” (106). Within the Christian context, this would be described as the experience of the crucifixion, the dying of the egoic self, and the resurrection, the re-emergence of our essential self or Divine nature. The Path of Return Singh calls this transformation journey “the Path of Return” which involves healing each of the four dualisms that led to the formation of our egoic self: the ideal/shadow dualism, the mind/body dualism, the life/death dualism and finally the foundational self/no-self dualism. She sees this pathway as the journey “from tragedy to grace. Although this transformation appears to occur more easily for some <dying> people than for others, this seems to be a universal process” (87). Normally, when we think of spiritual transformation, our minds conjure up images of religious people like monks and nuns intentionally doing spiritual practices like meditation, prayer and rituals that facilitate the dying of our egoic self. These spiritual practices create the special conditions necessary for personal spiritual transformation to happen. What I find interesting in Singh’s research is how she see death as also creating the “special conditions” necessary for spiritual transformation. She writes, “death has always and unmistakably imposed a set of ‘special conditions’ that are transformative in nature. Dying is the enabling energy for an awesome and profound jump in level of consciousness. Recognizing this, the path of meditation has intuitively sought to replicate many of the special conditions of the dying process, so as to accelerate the realization of our inherent potential and inherited destiny” (124). So what are the special conditions that death brings that leads to spiritual transformation? Singh has deciphered nine special conditions. Lets look briefly at each one. a. The Practice of Focusing on the Present Moment In meditation, we sit with our experience and simply notice it without thinking about it, managing it, and or doing anything with it. Eventually, with continued and sustained practice of meditation, “the First Dualism, the dualism of self and other, is healed” as we slowly discover again our experience of oneness with all reality (119). Terminal illness, Singh claims, demands the same thing of us as meditation. It “takes away anything that in the past or the future we might have, it brings to an end our ability to do, throwing into chaos our ability to think in our accustomed and familiar ways, and forcing us to <simply> be” (126). The reality of our death pushes us to experience the present moment for that is all we got. b. The Practice of Withdrawal and Retreat Many religious traditions stress the importance of the practice of withdrawal from the busyness of life and all our attachments. “Withdrawal allows us,” Singh notes, “to step out of membership in the biosocial bands of our culture and, in doing so, <we> begin to have a more direct and present-centred, less mediated experience of reality. The world of consensual reality begins to de-realize” (131). Something similar happens in dying, Singh has observed. “The aloneness of dying pierces many an illusion held consensually. A profound process of simplification occurs. Old values lose their appeal, their urgency. Nothing in the world of appearances attracts as it used to” (132). The fourth dualism between the ideal self and shadow self, and all the attachments and aversions connected to this dualism, begin to dissolve. Relationships also change. “Parties, gatherings, sports, hobbies, focus on careers, former activities that gave meaning in the world gradually cease” (132). As one gets closer to dying, we slowly stop seeing acquaintances and neighbours, then friends and family members from the outer circle, and in the end, only the inner circle of close family are left at the time of death (132). “This period of withdrawal, of ‘dying to the world’...is a period that precedes and helps to precipitate the lifting of primal repression and the subsequent inpouring of the power of the Ground of Being” (132). c. The Mind-Body Merge Singh notes that “terminal illness amplifies body awareness” (134). In these overwhelming processes of the body that occur in death as well as birth, our purely mental ego is engulfed (134). “We become conscious of ourselves organismically; that is to say we begin to experience our existence” (134). Through the many pains and symptoms caused by medical treatments, illness, and the dying process, we become very aware of our bodies and what our bodies are experiencing. No longer do people experience themselves as only a mind separate from their bodies; mind and body slowly become reunified. With the healing of this Third Dualism between mind and body comes “major explosions of deeply repressed memories and powerful feelings. Primal regression erodes and the self is infused with the Power of the Ground of Being” (138). This results, Singh notes, in “the sense of self, larger now, yielding to Spirit, beginning to reinhabit the body” (138). d. The Practice of Humility Humility and the practice of ordinariness is another special condition that wisdom traditions use to work at transforming the “ideal self image” so that we can regain our authentic human nature of oneness with all. Singh notes that “humility is forced upon us by the helpless and uncontrollable aspects of the dying process...No exception will be made for our specialness, our extraordinariness. Death is completely humbling” (140) thus healing further the Fourth Dualism between our ideal self image and our shadow. e. The Practice of Silence Vows of silence are often made by nuns and monks as another special condition to nurture their inner life. Singh highlights that “with the weakening of the entire mind and body as we enter the dying process, silence increasingly ensues...Silence allows the slowing and eventually the cessation of internal dialogue that maintains the structure of the mental ego” (143). As these ego-based thoughts stop, the various dualisms weaken for there is less mental activity happening to support them. f. The Practice of Mindful Breathing Mindful breathing is another spiritual practice used by the various Wisdom tradition to encourage spiritual transformation. Furthermore, breath is often seen by the many religious tradition as life itself or as Spirit (146-147). When a person is actively dying, Singh notes that “the only sound that can be heard in that silence is the slow breathing in and breathing out...The dying person, participating in Divine Life, is simply breathing the breath” (146). Many family members or close friends spend time in vigil as they mindfully wait and watch their dying loved one breathe their final breaths. Singh concludes that “breath, the act of breathing, is one of the points of intersection between the world of form and the world of the formless” (148), that spacious empty place from which all dualisms arise. g. Images, Visions, and Archetypes Singh has observed that images, visions and archetypes are as apparent in the dying process as they are in meditation and religions traditions. As people approach death, she notes that our focus shifts from aspects of our “self” and our more worldly identity based on logic, rationality and repression from our egoic mind, and becomes more directed toward the “deeper and more interior functioning” of our soul (151). From here arise “images of alienation, death, resurrection, purgation, angels, demons, liberation and forms of Deity” (150). Singh claims that such “transpersonal archetypes are images of such power that they can, gently or urgently, break apart the resistance of normal egoic consciousness and allow a growing intensity in the infusion of the power of the Ground of Being” (149). As a result, the different dualisms within our egoic self begin to dissolve. h. The Practice of Surrender Surrender is a key aspect of various religious traditions where we practice surrendering to some understanding/experience of Reality/God and the spiritual practices that nurture this oneness. The opposite to surrender is resistance. Resistance, Singh observes, is “the refusal to accept what is” (156), that is, we create a boundary between ourselves and what we are rejecting. In contrast, “surrender is the end of the boundaries delineating what I will and will not accept.” It is the end of resistance, which is at the very heart of the separate sense of self. “It is the end of two, and the opening into One” (156), the transformation of the First Dualism that formed the foundation of our egoic self. Singh has discovered that during the process of dying, “surrender, at first, is completely entangled with the concepts and accompanying feelings of hope and despair and giving up and fighting and pleading and dying” (157). Eventually, after many attempts of false surrender where we try to surrender in ways that allow us to stay in control, we get to the place of true surrender, where we stop resisting and accept what is happening to us, that we are dying. i. The Practice of Self Inquiry
“Who am I” is a question people often ask themselves as they do intentional spiritual work within their religious traditions or spiritual work schools. In asking this question repetitively throughout our spiritual pilgrimage, we notice how our sense of “I” changes and deepens becoming less dependent on our external activities (work, hobbies, relationships, achievements, etc.) or personal attachments (possessions, status, self images, beliefs, etc.) and more shaped by who we discover ourselves becoming. Singh has noticed the same self inquiry process happening for people who are traveling the dying journey. At first, our answers to who we are are based on our mental ego identity projects that includes all our accomplishments and beliefs from our past, but what happens when we, in our dying process, realize that we are no longer this? (161). A similar struggle arises when we look forward and our mental ego realizes that there is no future, no one to become. So who are we really? This “not-knowing” Singh highlights is the “beginner’s mind”, “the open space in which wisdom can arise” (161), that place where we begin to explore who we really are beyond the mental dualisms that formed during our earlier years of life. The Nearing Death Experience As people slowly physically die and travel along this journey of spiritual transformation, Singh has observed that people eventually experience what she calls a “Nearing Death Experience.” “The Nearing Death Experience is an apparently universal process marked primarily by the dissolution of the body and the separate sense of self and the ascendancy of spirit” (7). Singh has found that these Nearing Death Experiences “can occur anywhere from several weeks to several days, even hours or minutes, before death” (7). She has also discovered that a Nearing Death Experience “is characterized by certain subtle signals or ‘qualities’ ...that indicate the dying person has entered a significant and transforming field of experience” (7). These signals include a “quality of relaxation” (7), a “quality of withdrawal” (7), a “quality of radiance” (8), a “quality of interiority” (8) , a “quality of silence” (8), a “quality of sacred” (9), a “quality of transcendence” (9), a “quality of knowing” (10), a “quality of intensity” (10), a “quality of merging” (11), and a “quality of experienced perfection” (11). These qualities, Singh claims, are “not ordinarily known to or experienced by our separate sense of self. They are the qualities of grace”, qualities of an expanded state of consciousness, qualities that suggest Spirit is their source (11). Questions to Ponder:
with reality or nature or others? b. When do you notice the life-death dualism at work? When do you experience life as totally in the present moment, when past, present, and future disappear, when life and death disappear? c. When do you notice the mind-body dualism at work, where you find yourselves operating and managing life from your thinking mind? When do you experience your mind and body as one, when your mind becomes a servant (simply observing and naming, but not managing) to your soul? d. When do you notice the “ideal self” and shadow dualism at work? When have you experienced yourself as just as you are without any judgement and thus no ideal or shadow side present? 2. Singh has noticed that the dying process creates the “special conditions” for spiritual transformation to happen. What other aspects of life cause you to experience these special conditions (focus on present moment, withdraw/retreat, mind/body merge, humility, silience, mindful breathing, images/visions/archetypes, surrender/acceptance, self inquiry)? Gord Alton MDiv RP CASC Supervisor-Educator
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