Amicus Mortis Posts

December 31, 2022 /

Photo by Lucas Dial on Unsplash

The biblical story of Noah’s Ark and the great global Flood recounted in Genesis 6-8, seems to find a reflection in the current clime of the flood of pestilence which has swept over us all.  COVID and its mutated variants have swirled around the globe for a second year with deadly impact, causing great suffering and taking countless lives in wave after engulfing wave.   Never have I been so personally confronted with my own mortality, nor so continually challenged to navigate unscathed through troubled and uncertain times.

If there is anything that the Year of 2022 has taught me, it is that life, or our existence, is fundamentally impermanent and that we need to create for ourselves our own metaphorical ‘ark’.  By this I suggest a body of spiritual truths and/or a spiritual doctrine to help us ride the waves of misrepresentation, false information, negativity and fantastical theories.  Reality has a spiritual foundation and COVID, in holding a mirror to our mortality, has highlighted how important it is to build something spiritually permanent for ourselves which will transcend this flood.

What is real?  What is true?  What body of doctrine can help us understand why we were born and what happens to us on the other side of death?

Discovering the answers to those questions is the journey the seeker after truth takes.  It requires courage, perseverance, unwavering effort, and a sense of discontentment.  Sometimes one finds others along the way, but my experience has been that the journey is for the most part a solitary one.  I’ve always found that it is in solitude that I can hear what I’m meant to hear, that I can see what I’m meant to see, and that gently, ever so gently, I find my way.

November 24, 2022 /

“To be a spectator of Reality is not enough. The awakened
subject is not merely to perceive transcendent life, but
to participate therein;  and for this, a drastic and
costly life-changing is required.”
Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, 1995, p. 195

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) was an English mystical poet, author and Christian theologian.  In the 1995 edition of her book, Mysticism she wrote that when the self begins to stir or to question its’ existence, “… a change occurs in the individual, a change whereby that self turns from the unreal world of sense in which it is normally immersed, first to apprehend, then to unite itself with Absolute Reality” (p. 174).

Because of the spiritual or other-worldly experiences which have populated my life since childhood (as they have the lives of others), I find a strong sense of resonance with Underhill’s words. In reflecting on those experiences which are as deeply etched in my mind as an adult as when I experienced them then, it seems to me that the self is the instrument through which the individual acquires a new understanding not only of the reality of its’ existence, but of the reality of life.

And if Underhill is correct, when the self stirs, when we know within ourselves (and in a way which cannot be denied or argued against) that our way of seeing and experiencing life is illusory, then it is one’s very existence which is challenged.  Suddenly everything is different, and those things which were once meaningful and fulfilling are now no longer so.  And this happens because they have been replaced with new meaning and a new way of being in the world.

Underhill  put it quite simply, stating “We see a sham world because we live a sham life.  We do not know ourselves …  hence attribute wrong values to [their] suggestions and declarations concerning our relation to the external world” (1995, p. 199).  Importantly, Underhill also highlights something else, which is that the mystical adventure, regardless of form, must begin with change of attitude.  This mental shift is crucial, especially because true self-change can only be initiated by the individual themselves.

How does this change in attitude come about?  What is it that compels one person to question and contemplate the nature of their existence while for another, the thought or impulse never arises?  Why is one person born with the flames of future burning questions already pressing upon them, while for others  such things manifest not?  Perhaps change in attitude has its birth in a sense of inner dissatisfaction, or perhaps it springs from the feeling that there is simply more to life, that ‘life’ has hidden depths which gently beckon to be known.  Then again, maybe the answer to the question of ‘why?’ isn’t important, maybe just the fact that we awake to the realisation is enough.

October 24, 2022 /

I attended a funeral recently, and as I listened to each of the eulogies and reflected on my own relationship with the lady who had died, I found my thoughts wandering to the accomplishments of my own life, not those of my embodied life but to those of my spiritual life.  I am well aware of the accomplishments of this life as I am of its disappointments and unfettered desires, but what about the accomplishments with regard to my next life and those entwined with my spiritual existence?  What can I lay claim to with regard to that?

When I entered the Work over forty years ago, I was taught that unceasing effort was required to understand the spiritual foundation of reality, and that this effort was directly linked to determining one’s spiritual destiny.  Grand words indeed, and while it has taken me a long time to understand the principles and techniques required, especially the kind of effort required, what I know now is that the fulcrum on which everything rests is one’s relationship with God.  One can possess a smart and clever mind, and dazzle in front of others with their knowledge, writing and speech of the Work and of cosmic laws, yet in the absence of a warm and loving relationship with the Divine as well, such individuals are at risk of being held captive by the coldness of their intellect.

Someone once asked me, “How do you love God?”  It’s a fair question, but how to answer it?  I know how I love the Divine, but in truth the answer to the question lies within the person asking it.  My response at the time was, “If you don’t know how to love God, ask God to show you how.”  I was met with a somewhat sardonic smile, and who knows whether or not they did ask or would even be bothered too.  It often seems to me that people in general want a ‘quick fix to enlightenment’ so to speak, and in the West in the 21st Century living in a modernist era of instant gratification and a throw-away society, additional challenges can assault the individual as we’re pulled in different directions by the demands of contemporary living.

But despite this it can be done, we can love the Divine with all our heart and soul, and with all that we are capable of, it just depends on the decision/s we make.   The Sufi’s say many things, but one of those is that right remembrance is the way to God, and herein lays a metaphorical pathway to the Divine.  To re-member something is to reclaim something, to bring something back which had hitherto been dismembered or taken apart, to make something whole again.  What is it that we are re-membering?  What are we reclaiming?  What are we bringing back to ourselves?  I would say in the first instance, that what we re-member is our relationship with the Divine, with God, and that then, spiritually, all things are possible.

September 28, 2022 /

I was in conversation with a friend recently when she used the term ‘death work’, which stayed in my mind for some time afterward and made me ponder something.   Most practitioners who choose to work in some capacity in the end of life would no doubt think about this from a professional stance, but what about our own individual and personal death work?  While we work with others, do we also work with ourselves?

How can we contextualise death work?  Is it possible to arrive at a broad and agreed understanding, or is it unique to the individual and determined by a myriad of factors, such as life experiences, world view, cultural and social experiences, and spiritual and religious experiences or lack thereof?   What does it mean to undertake our own death work? And, if we do, why?

I was told many, many years ago that when we die all we take with us is what we’ve made of ourselves, not wealth, not status, nothing, but that.  This implied that effort was required to make something of ourselves. How do we do this, and to what end?  What is it that we ‘make’?  And what kind of effort is required?

It seems to me that if we are going to change ourselves then we need to change how we think about ourselves and how we think about truth, meaning and value.  Furthermore, it also seems to me that what we are and what we believe ourselves to be are quite literally worlds apart.  Change of mind often begins with a new idea and can replace old and worn-out attitudes, this is important because an unchanged mind cannot have a vision of its’ higher possibilities.

For the most part Science takes a reductionist view of human destiny, rendering it lifeless and meaningless and sees no possibility of human survival after death, but this is where our responsibility for our death work comes to life.  This inner work is characterised by an ongoing struggle towards consciousness and integration, and to awakening consciously to the spiritual foundation of reality and to our greater cosmic purpose.

August 28, 2022 /

Nami, A. (2022). Forlorn, The Guardian

In September, the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS) are holding their annual conference.  I’m one of the presenters and I’m talking about the intersection of my own lived experience of ‘oneness’ which occurred when I was completing my research study for my PhD, which was a transpersonal study exploring adult bereavement and after-death contact experiences.  There were two reasons why I decided to present on this topic.

The first was to highlight the important role that transpersonal research can play in exploring human experiences which are deemed spiritual or ineffable, or which are concerned with what Rosmarie Anderson (who is a transpersonal psychologist and researcher) defines as being, “of ultimate value”.  The second was to highlight that what I deem to be spiritual experiences, in this case experiences of ‘oneness’, can occur randomly and without provocation, in everyday situations and often when you least expect, which is exactly what happened to me.

The etymology of the word transpersonal has its roots in two separate words of Latin origin; trans, meaning beyond, across or over, and personare, meaning a mask or façade which obscures or veils something behind it.  So when we’re talking about something which is transpersonal, we’re talking about an experience/event which takes us beyond appearances.  It does this because it acts as a portal which moves us beyond the physicality of ourselves and of the known and familiar material world in which we live.

When these events occur we experience a duality; we’re anchored to the material universe yet we experience something beyond it, something totally different because though non-material it is no less real to us at the time.  And when we experience ‘oneness’ this is what happens, we experience the reality of what has always been known to us while simultaneously experiencing another reality which like the material universe, is constantly present though largely unknown and not experienced by most people.  These events challenge the notion of reductionist and strictly empirical views of the universe and of the individual, and they do so because they reveal a spiritual dimension of existence as they do the spiritual foundation of reality.

One of the effects of using transpersonal research methodologies, is the potential transformation of the researcher.  This occurs because while the researcher learns about the topic of enquiry they also learn about themselves using such techniques as intuition, direct knowing, dreamwork, meditation, inner-reflection, self-examination and perhaps solitude, which are all themselves components of the transpersonal research process.  I used Heuristic inquiry which consists of 6 phases or stages each with their characteristics and approaches.  The process commences with what is termed Initial engagement before moving on to Immersion, then to Incubation, Illumination, Explication to the final stage, the Creative Synthesis, and it was at this final stage that I had my experience of oneness.

When we experience such an event, what is happening?  Are we suddenly roused from sleep such that  we feel a sense of profound connection with something beyond ourselves, with something which feels vaster than the material universe?  Do we feel and know with utter conviction that we are connected to everything in a way we’ve never known or experienced before, and that there is a divine and universal love binding everything together?

I believe that experiences of oneness are powerful spiritual events which can transform our understanding of reality, and which can reveal a powerful truth which nothing can distort.   And it seems to me also, that it  doesn’t matter in what circumstances we experience ‘oneness’, what matters is that we do and there’s the miracle, and there’s the gift of grace that comes with it.

 

July 17, 2022 /

 

As readers of this blog know, its origins lay in a PhD research study exploring after-death contact (ADC).  The study had its origin in my own lived experience of bereavement which unexpectedly provided the psychosocial and psychospiritual context for the returning deceased; initially my husband and then following his death, both my parents.  Although a number of international studies have reported ADC phenomena  in their findings, few recent studies at the time privileged ADC.  I wanted something different.  I wanted to conduct a study which was not only positioned within a uniquely Australian context but one which did privilege this aspect of adult bereavement.  These accounts are widely reported; what do they  suggest?  What are they inviting us to know?  How do they impact on how we understand not ‘who’ we are, but ‘what’ we are?  And what do they tell us about the transpersonal nature of reality and how we define ourselves not only as human beings but as spiritually organic self-evolving organisms, capable of dynamic psychospiritual transformations?

I didn’t envision that my doctoral work would privilege the transpersonal. The fact that it does is something entirely out of my control and absolutely contrary to the direction I had planned for myself.  It was my intention to further develop my current interest and work in health education policy and reform for Indigenous Australians.  Many years ago a friend told me that God laughs when we make plans.  I resented the statement then especially as I had my life all mapped out however, after now completing my doctoral research I have to agree with those words. Are our lives pre-destined?  I’ve often wondered about that.  Are seeds sewn into our internals at birth which grow into proclivities and drives which naturally propel us in a certain direction and to a certain life purpose irrespective of what it is that we think we should be doing?  I’ve often wondered about that too and I still don’t have the answer to those questions.

What I do know though is what life has taught me to know; that there is a loving wisdom that gently touches all of us like a whisper almost, and so unobtrusive is it that it is almost imperceptible amongst the din of internal noise created by our self-oriented external self-centred lives.   I don’t even know if ‘wisdom’ is the right word.  I think that’s how it manifests, but what it is is beyond the capacity of my mind to conceptualise or understand; I can only feel it moving softly through me.  It’s always been there, like a shaft of sunlight cutting momentarily through a shadowed forest glade.  I would feel it every so often in moments of solitude or communion, as I would the bliss and sense of connectedness that accompanied those internal states, but it is only now after much vastation that I have truly learnt to surrender to it, to let go, to trust in something that I know only wishes to bring me to my greatest spiritual happiness.  And this is precisely how, I believe, I found myself completing a PhD on bereavement and the returning deceased rather than one examining Indigenous health policy and reform.

April 23, 2022 /

 

Our experience of life, and living, is that it is punctuated with events which ultimately seem to teach us various life-lessons.  Some of these are gained from experiences of profound loss and grief, others from moments of joy, bliss and ecstasy.  Death, the final transition, and it’s meaning in our lives can be difficult to understand and to come to terms with.  Why are we born seemingly only to die?   Why do accidents, which frequently claim lives, happen?  Why are we afraid of dying, or, why do we not really think about it all that much?  What is our final destiny?  Do we go on, or do we cease to exist after physical death?

While there are many people who already have a relationship with the afterlife, there are many who do not and one of the reasons I write this blog is because I want to encourage people to not only reimagine or reframe their relationship with death, but to do that with the afterlife as well.   Belief and knowledge of the afterlife has been documented through history, is evidenced across cultures and religions, eastern and western, and has been debated over and wondered at by people around the globe.  Books have been written about it, artists, poets and musicians have been inspired by it, and movies, telemovies and documentaries have been produced about it.

There is a scene in the series, The Tudors, where King Henry at the end of his life wonders about death.  The scene was inspired by the work, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, in which the author Saint Bede recounts a story relating to King Edwin of Northumbria (AD 627).  The King was in discussion with his counsellors about whether to accept Christianity, which incorporates an afterlife, when one of his advisors makes mention of their ignorance of their final destination.

The advisor makes an allegorical statement, likening ‘life’ to a sparrow flying into a lighted hall at one end before flying out the end at the other.  While inside the sparrow is safe from winter’s tempest which rages outside, but after a short time the sparrow disappears, flying through the hall before “… passing from winter into winter again.  So this life of man appears for a little while”, he declared, “but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all”.

Yes, our life appears for a little while and it does feel at times that we are passing through it as though on our way to another destination, but of what is to follow we do know.  And the reason we know is because so many people, myself included, have had near-death experiences.  These events have taught them that physical death is the putting off of the physical body, which like a shell encloses us while we exist as embodied beings, while we live our life in the flesh.  When death occurs we do not cease to exist, we transform into something which doesn’t require a physical body any more.  But then what?  Ah, now that is the question.

 

January 26, 2022 /

 

When I was a young schoolgirl, my early education was gained by attending the local Catholic primary school where religious studies were mandatory, as was attending church on a regular basis. Having been baptised into the Roman Catholic faith, I remember attending church (for Sunday services and feast days), a foreign language spoken by the robed priest (which I learnt later was Latin), aromatic clouds of sweet-smelling incense (which instilled a life-long love for it), making my first Holy Communion and visiting the confessional (a requirement which I never quite understood).

I recall in particular an event which took place in class when our teacher, a nun, was explaining that when we die we go to heaven.  Because I thought a lot about death and the afterlife as a child, and because I wondered what we did when we got there, I asked her the following question, “What do we do in heaven?”  She looked at me with a startled expression on her face.  I could feel her bewilderment and fear as she stood there trying to answer my question.  And then I saw that she couldn’t answer the question because she didn’t know what the answer was.

As I sat in my chair waiting, she became more uncomfortable.  She couldn’t tell me, yet wasn’t she was supposed to know?  In my mind, as young as I was, I reasoned that she was a nun; she was meant to understand about God and heaven and all those things.  Heaven wasn’t just a place that people went to when they died, it was a place where other things happened too, and although I didn’t know what those things were, I felt the truth of it intuitively; I just knew.

I felt that I lived in a world that had come from a special place and if that place wasn’t heaven, I didn’t know what was. The shinning people came from that place, it was their home, and on some level I knew that that ‘place’ was my home too.  Was that heaven?  Is that what it was called?  These were the thoughts in my mind when I asked the question, because I knew, again intuitively, that when we died we did something, but I didn’t know what; we didn’t just disappear.  I needed to make sense of my other-worldly experiences and having my question answered would have helped me do that.  But the nun didn’t know, and I reasoned that if a nun couldn’t help me, who could?

Fifteen years later, my question was answered and I understood then why the nun didn’t know; she hadn’t been taught.

December 19, 2021 /

What is the soul in itself?  From an esoteric Christian perspective, soul growth and evolution is one of the driving aims of The Work and of work on oneself.  The soul is the function that enables an individual to move toward the Divine; as such, it is an activity, a principle within us.  The form of every individual is the pattern of the soul rendered material.  It is important to understand that the soul has two sets of force acting upon it, God or the Divine, and matter.

GOD   [Affirming]

       Soul (reconciles the two)

Matter   [Denying]

Matter is inert and non-living.  It resists all flexibility and all life and it expresses the energy of denial.  The soul is poised between this polarity (which is denying) and the Divine (which is affirming).  At every instance the soul is affected by the sheer inertia of matter.  To learn, the soul reconciles this two-fold thrust from creation.  The soul is an important creation between the Divine and the world, and unless it can move to depths and heights it will not grow or learn.  When it reconciles the polarity between the affirming and denying force, it helps make the world function as one whole process.

According to esoteric teachings the soul is formed of the things of love and wisdom given by God.  Life, love and wisdom flow in to sustain the pattern of the soul.  The soul also needs an instrument of knowing and is given the power to generate this instrument.  This instrument of knowing is a spiritual formation, the mind.  The mind is capable of knowing the action of life and the impact of wisdom.  It can feel the urge of the soul passing through it, something that becomes the individual’s natural drift.

The mind is an individual’s most important function because this is the part that looks up or down.  It is the mind that is the instrument of growth and transformation.  The destiny of the soul is wrapped up in the mind.  People often say that they ‘have a soul’.  This is an incorrect statement.  People should say, “I am a soul.”

November 29, 2021 /

It was as a child that I first realised I lived in the meeting place of two co-existing or overlapping realities.  One of these realities was solid and tangibly material; it was the world I lived in as a sentient, embodied human being and where I lived my life in the flesh in the material universe.  The other reality was characterised by non-ordinary, other-worldly or what could be termed spiritual phenomena.  Though these phenomena constantly intruded into my daily life, the place from which they came, that is their source, was always seemingly just out of reach.  Since first becoming aware of the duality of these realities, and despite always wanting to have a sense of permanence in at least one of them, I was only ever beset by shadows from both.

When I was twenty years of age that changed because I encountered a body of knowledge, some would say a doctrine, which led me to become a student of an esoteric Christian School, and how I lived in the world and how I understood reality was never the same again.  It was never the same again because I realised that while I believed I was alive, I was merely the recipient of life, and while I knew of the existence of another kind of reality, a non-ordinary or other-worldly reality, I did not understand its’ significance.

As a result of being a student in this School, it now feels that the past, the present and the future continually merge and blend into a unique and dynamic state of being which I experience as ‘now’.  In this state of being it appears that all events coalesce or merge into an ongoing experience of life.  There is no ‘past’ or ‘future’, there are only moments or events which appear to be measurable fragments of time yet framing those moments or perhaps giving them shape and structure, is something profoundly spiritually abiding.  From this abiding there comes an unveiling; tentative at first until gradually a perpetual revealing of the world as it turns on the axis of the universe becomes visible.  And at times, barely discernible, there’s a pulse, a rhythm almost, that seems to beat or throb in time with something that resides beyond the senses.