As I work within the Hospice and Palliative Care environment, I see many people wrestling with the conflict between the desire to live and the desire to die. Often these desires within our culture are judged in opposite ways; the desire to live is good and the desire to die is bad. I have found it interesting to learn that Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, believed that humans had two opposing sets of instincts, the life instinct and the death instinct. The life instinct included the survival, pleasure, and sex drives, often captured by Freud in the term Eros (Verywellmind, par. 3). In contrast, he “maintained that life instincts were opposed by the self-destructive death instincts, known as Thanatos” (Verywellmind, par. 5). In this blog, I want to re-interpret Freud’s life/death instinct framework in a way that shows the relevance of the death instinct within the process of spiritual transformation and palliative care. Freud is well known for saying the provocative quote, “The goal of all life is death” (Verywellmind, par. 8). He believed that people typically channeled their death instincts outwardly through acts of aggression or inwardly through acts of self harm or suicide (Verywellmind, par. 8-9). In support of his theory, "Freud noted that people who experience a traumatic event would often re-enact that experience. From this, he concluded that people hold an unconscious desire to die but that the life instincts largely temper this wish” (Verywellmind, par. 10). I want to propose another way to interpret what Freud labeled the death instinct, one that fits with the evidence that Freud provided for the death instinct, but one that resonates with the teachings of the Christian tradition and the Diamond Approach, both spiritual frameworks that I have come to value in my life. It is clear that Freud was talking about physical death when he explained the death instinct. Freud believed that this death instinct was an internal desire that all people were born with. However, there is another way to understand this death instinct beyond physical death, namely spiritual death. Through this spiritual death lens, the death instinct takes on a new profound meaning. Seen through this framework, the death instinct is actually an expression of our life instinct. To understand the death instinct within this new framework, we have to understand the spiritual dying process. Within the Christian tradition, there are many Bible verses that talk about the importance of “dying to the self.” Here are four core scriptures that teach this important practice of spiritual dying.
All of these Christian scriptures talk about spiritual dying in different ways, through crucifying ourselves with Christ, through denying ourselves and taking up the cross daily, through dying to ourselves, and through emptying ourselves. As Christians, this spiritual dying process makes total theological sense for we often struggle with our fallen or sinful nature in our lives as taught by our Christian tradition. To be free of this pain and struggle caused by our fallen self through spiritual death would be a wonderful gift to discover and experience in life. Where the challenge comes is that the Christian tradition does not have a clear psychological understanding of how experientially this spiritual dying or transformational process happens. To understand this spiritual dying process better, I have turned to the Diamond Approach, a psychospiritual framework that I have been studying and using for my own spiritual transformation journey for 14 plus years now. Within the Diamond Approach, the experience of spiritual dying involves dying to all the dynamics of our egoic self within our human soul. These ego dynamics include our mental chatter, our emotional management strategies, our coping skills, our relationship patterns, our compulsions and attachments, all our historical preconditionings from our past. This process of spiritual transformation is an intentional ongoing journey happening over many years involving numerous moments of egoic deaths when through mental insights and emotional surrendering experiences, psychic structures within our mind, heart, will, and body dissolve or become digested and thus disappear. With each egoic death that happens, our soul relaxes and settles a little bit more. . When we have experienced many of these egoic dying moments, we begin to have moments of mental peace and inner stillness, moments when all mental and ego activities cease. At first, we experience these moments as expressions of Being or God’s spirit entering our lives. We see ourselves as fallen human beings who are having God’s experiences, and we are thankful to God for these restful and restorative experiences. But, as these moments of peace and inner internal calmness become more frequent and deepen, a shift in identity occurs within us. Instead of being identified with our fallen egoic self, we realize that during these moments of inner silence, we are now experiencing our True or Divine Nature. This is who I am. That shift in identity is profound for now we have a longing to follow the spiritual journey that involves dying over and over again to this fallen egoic self that we have taken ourselves to be for years.. There are many levels of dying to the egoic self, and each level of spiritual dying involves letting go of a certain ego identity. Our ego identities are often attached to our possessions, our relationships, our beliefs and self images, our thoughts, emotions, actions, and longings, our physical bodies, and in the end, our sense of self awareness and consciousness. As we learn to hold our attachments loosely and allow ourselves to rest more deeply into our Divine nature where we feel we are part of God, there will be eventually times when we will settle into what the Diamond Approach calls the Death Space. This Death Space is a space that every person experiences in their physical dying process, but we can also experience this Death Space ahead of time as we spiritually die to our ego’s attachment to our physical body. Almaas, cofounder of the Diamond Approach, describes this process of descending into the Death Space in this way: "Attachment to the body then is not just attachment to the physical body, but also to what the physical body means to you, all the pleasures and the comforts and the safety you believe it gives you. There is nothing wrong with these things, it’s the attachment to them that creates the misunderstanding that is experienced as frustration and hell. I’m not saying you shouldn’t want all these pleasures, that’s not the point. The point is, the attachments to them will inevitably cause suffering. Becoming free from this attachment has to do with becoming free from the attachment to pleasure, all kinds of pleasure. It is the loss of attachment to physicality, to your body from the inside. It’s not a matter of image here, but of direct sensation, direct feeling. This identification is very intimate; it is something you’ve lived with all your life, and you always believe it’s you. Ultimately, it gives you comfort. When you see this identification for what it is, it also will dissolve, because it isn’t any more real than your driver’s license identity. This realization in turn brings in a new space, a new awareness of the void, what we call “death space.” At this point a person experiences what is called death. It is what happens when somebody dies physically; they actually disconnect from the body. Death is a deep dark black emptiness; of course, this death space can be experienced in life. You don’t have to physically die; all that is required is to lose the physical attachment to the body, and the death space will be there. You will know what death is, you will know that you are not the body, and then the identification with the body will be lost" (Diamond Heart Book Two, pg. 55). This Death Space is what our soul longs to experience, especially when we are experiencing profound suffering in our lives. Our soul wants to be free of all internal suffering. It wants to experience this profound peace and inner calmness that can only arise when all mental and emotional egoic activity stops. This profound peace found in the spiritual death of our egoic self is the essence of the death instinct, as I have come to understand it. Most things Freud taught about the death instinct are still true, but I believe that instead of seeking physical death, our soul is seeking spiritual death. For example, people act out their death instinct through aggression hoping to remove the person in their life who is causing them stress and suffering. If people worked at transforming the ego structures tied to this person behind this stress and suffering, they would find that this death instinct would diminish. Freud interpreted the suicide impulse in the same light; physical death means end of personal suffering. If suicidal people were taught that their soul is seeking internal rest and peace rather than physical death, this would open the door to exploring the problematic ego structures that are causing the stress and overwhelmness and the suicide feelings so that more inner peace could finally be experienced. Finally, when clients re-enact past traumatic experiences, their soul is seeking to find resolution from that unresolved trauma so that they again can experience internal peace and stillness, that is spiritual death, not physical death as Freud theorized. Seen through the framework of spiritual death, Freud’s well-known quote makes total sense, “the goal of all life is death.” Understanding the death instinct as the soul’s longing for spiritual death highlights the importance of spiritual care during the palliative care journey. This is why when we know we are dying, we want to do a “therapeutic life review” with our spiritual care provider. Our soul is seeking to find ways to settle to a more peaceful state in the midst of our upcoming death. Part of this life review involves celebrating our accomplishments and treasuring our positive moments in life. But just as important, we frequently bring up painful moments from our past that we are not at peace with, whether it be harm that was done to us or harm we have caused others. Our soul is seeking ways to process these traumatic memories bonded up in our egoic self with the hope of understanding and finding meaning along with the possibility of healing through forgiveness, reconciliation, or letting go of the pain. As was noted earlier, there are many levels of dying to the egoic self within the spiritual dying process. What is different about this process when we are physically dying is that this spiritual dying process is no longer voluntary. It is forced upon us whether we want it or not. Through our physical dying journey, we are forced to release our attachments to possessions, relationships, control of our life, and in the end, our attachments to our physical bodies and everything we connect to our sense of ourselves, our thoughts, emotions, longings, memories, and consciousness. As you can imagine, this surrendering journey is hard and causes us many feelings of loss and grieve. And yet, without this spiritual dying, these attachments create even more immense suffering placing us in a painful paradox. On one side of this paradox, our egoic self is resisting surrender and death at every turn. At the same time, due to this immense suffering, our deeper soul has a profound longing to surrender and spiritually die, to be free of this distress. This is why it is crucial for the spiritual caregiver to help us practice the art of surrendering and spiritually dying over and over again. But what are we surrendering to? This is a key question for us, who are dying, for our egoic self does not believe in surrendering. I remember Wayne Dwyer, a popular spiritual writer, defining ego as the dynamic within us that “Edges God Out”. This makes total sense to me. Many of the powerful parts of our ego formed during those times in our life that were painful and traumatic, times when we experienced God as not being there for us. No wonder our egoic self does want us to surrender to the mystery of God for it imagines the same pain and trauma happening all over again. And yet, to not practice surrender in the dying journey leads to so much more pain and suffering for us who are dying. So how do we learn to surrender again? To heal this fear of spiritual dying, it is important that our spiritual caregiver works intentionally at helping us rediscover our faith in God or the Divine Mystery again. This involves inviting us to explore those deeper experiences in life when we experienced the sacred whether it be through our religious community, nature, family and friends, silence and spiritual practices, arts and music, etc. What makes these sacred experiences so special is that in those moments, we were experiencing a foretaste of heaven, times when we were no longer connected to our egoic self but connected to a deeper part of our soul, one that was united with the mystery of God. If we unpack these sacred times even more, we will discover that these special moments arose when we allowed ourselves to surrender to the present moment where we encounter God. As we re-experience these sacred times and have other divine moments, our trust in the mystery of God begins to heal, and heaven becomes more real and less fearful for us.
Questions to Ponder:
Gord Alton MDiv RP CASC Supervisor-Educator
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