Visualizing our own death

For those that have been following the #earthconversepodcast, or the work of Earth Converse, you will know that I am publishing future visualizations, and offering the transcripts here.

All part of the Earth Converse invitation to you, to commit to a daily conscious practice of visualizing the futures you want to serve. A chance to exercise your potential and responsibility of co-creating the future you want, for yourself, each other and the earth that is our home.

Our death

This visualization focuses on our own death.  Maybe not something you want to think about let alone visualize but as wise man Ray Hillis quoted on the #earthconversepodcast, our death is the most important fact of our life.  It is going to happen.  Or as The Onion newspaper once announced, ‘World Death Rate is Holding Steady at 100 Percent’.

To contemplate our death is an empowering and liberating act of kindness, to ourselves, each other and the earth that is our home. And I personally am very grateful for the living and dying practices of rites of passage organization School of Lost Borders, and particularly the work of co-founder Meredith Little. And my guides Ray Hillis, Emerald North and Scott Deily. As well as Bill Plotkin from Animas Valley, in helping me to engage with dying, as a way of coming into the fullness of living.  To embrace the paradox of living and dying, intention and surrender, being and doing.

I offer this earthconverse visualization to honour the teachings of nature and such wise kin, and all lives and deaths past, present and future.

Listen here 

Meditation starts at 2:34

Visualization

So let’s take some moments to visualize our own death.

I invite you to get comfortable, perhaps lying down, perhaps with pillows and blankets if you wish to get cosy, on the earth, on the floor. And close your eyes if that feels right.

Maybe take a few long, deep breaths.

Notice your life-giving breath and the sacredness of it as you contemplate taking your last.

Visualize your ideal way to meet your own death. 

Where you are?

Who are you with?

What is happening?

How are you?

Feel into your courage

Your grace

Your dignity

And tranquility

The peace you have made with your own life. And mortality.

The satisfaction of having put things in order so as not to burden your loved ones you leave.

The shadow work and conversations you’ve had, to mourn, heal, honor relationships, and show your love.

The rituals you made to honor the sacredness of your time on earth.

How you honored your life.   

What you learnt and shared.

How you loved.  

Others, the World.

Yourself.

The forgiveness you gave and received.  

The reverence for life you hold. 

And how you will become that good ancestor, having help healed your ancestral wounds.

How your sleep every night, the daily practice of a little death, has helped you prepare for the ultimate surrender.

How each day has been an invitation into living and dying, of resetting and renewing.

And stepping into mystery.

Visualize your own earth burial, sky burial, fire burial and/or water burial.

Feel the sacred elements within you, of which you are made, and of which you will return.

Home in the earth, the sky, the breeze and the trees.

Autumn brings the fallen leaves and also the harvest.

Today the sun came up, tonight it will set.

Right now, you can breathe in because you can breathe out.

Breathing deeply into your own death, is to breath even more deeply into your own life.

Visualizing your own death, will help you open to the gifts and lessons each day offers, for how you can gracefully embrace the cycles of living and rebirth. 

Coming back to your senses, open your eyes and resolve to honor the cycles of life, in service, of yourself, others and the earth that is our home.