Dying Meditation

Part of the Year to Live practice--a large part, it seems--is a meditation on dying. Essentially, you are supposed to become aware of your body (OK), the field of consciousness (OK...), and then slowly...breath by breath...come closer to "death".

Then you take one breath--your last--and let it out. Let it go. Give up the body, all attachments to this life, and "die".

It sounds simple, even easy. How hard could it be to imagine your death? I mean, it's not "real", so what's the big deal?

True. Except that our subconsicous (and to a degree, our conscious) minds can't tell the difference between an intensely imagined and visualized experience and a "real" one. That distinction is made by consciousness itself. If your conscious mind is focused completely on manufacturing an experience...that's real enough your subconscious.

That's one of the reasons why visualization works so well in sports--if an athlete can visualize an outcome in detail--the more the better--they will almost always perform better. In fact, you can do the same thing with almost any skill--playing piano, giving a speech/sales presentation, etc. I've done it hundreds of times in dozens of different contexts.

To be clear, I'm not talking about day dreaming or normal "that would be nice" thinking, but a clear, focused meditation on a process and a desired outcome. If you want to learn more, the book "Psycho Cybernetics" by Maxwell Maltz is the best source; pretty much all sports psychology and related fields grew out of his work.

Anyway, back to the topic: the meditation on death and dying. Did I mention it was scary as hell and I'd been avoiding it for days?

But like most things in life, the fear is worse than the expereince itself. As I got closer to that last breath, I became very focused on each and every part of that process--the air drawing in at the nose, cooling the nasal passages and throat, filling the lungs, expanding the rib cage and belly, and the sensation of it leaving--the relaxation of the muscles of the stomach and the diaphragm, the contraction of the rib cage and the the slow emptying of the lungs, the warmed air passed out of the lungs, up the throat, and out of the nose again.

Each part of it one moment, perfect, eternal, rising and falling away, no two quite the same.

There was an intense feeling of presence, peace, and acceptance. And then fear, worry, contraction, holding...

"I can't do this. It's too much. Too big."

"This is stupid. Why am I doing this?"

"Ok, this is what you're thinking about in the seconds before death? How annoying the person three seats down and to the left is with their sniffling and coughing?"

And so on. And then back to the breath.

So much more intense than my typical breathing meditation. So much more awareness, more presence, more internal quiet.