Around this time four years ago I traveled to Galicia in northwest Spain where I was invited to give a talk on Death and Dying in the town of Lugo. I was received by a warm and absorbed audience of over a hundred people. Given the display of interest and open disposition towards the theme, I gave another talk in the city of Coruña soon after. Subsequently, I began imparting workshops, first in presence and, during Covid lockdowns, also online.
I have experience in helping people transition from the realms of the living to the realms of the dead. However, I don’t consider myself an expert on this theme. As my writings on this substack space might indicate, I am more of a generalist, and consistently so. Yet I have had a close relationship with death and dying. I have also been well trained. What began for me as a clairvoyant inclination, spontaneous and atavistic in kind, was later chiselled through the guidance of a demanding and competent teacher, to become self-knowledge. Part of this training included touching the contours and walking the pathways of that mystery we call death. Notice the verbs: the core of my learning was essentially and consistently phenomenological.
I find Autumn to be a prime season to appreciate the phenomena of death and dying. This is the time when Persephone goes under, returning to Hades, before her re-emergence in Spring. The myth of Persephone, Queen of the underworld, is alive and tangible in the interstices of the world I live in. Every year the age-old story becomes alive again. I hear it and sometimes see it too, through my mind’s eye. It was no surprise therefore when, four years ago, I felt the presence of many dead souls closer than usual. And I became convinced that it was important to act, namely to enhance human awareness about the connections between life and death. Shortly after, I received the invitation to give the talk in Galicia.
Since then, there has a been a rising tide of interest on the theme of death and dying. Death Cafés are now common in many countries, books about the theme sell out, and we even have festivals that cover all manner of topics associated with death and dying. This phenomena brings me reassurance and relief. I feel that no true and significant cultural change is possible in the western world without revising its precepts, prejudices and blockages around death.
A mature relationship to death grants us a fullness of life in a non-trivial way, being a necessary condition for regeneration and metamorphosis. Recently I read Jonathan Rowson’s incisive words suggesting that as citizens of these liminal times, we are called upon to be undertakers who offer dignified death and gratitude for all that must end.
“The institutions and norms that served us well in a stable climate will not be adequate in a world of regular wildfires, flooded homes and nuclear hurricanes. And the ways of knowing and relating and valuing that served us well before the internet will not fit a world where artificial intelligence and robotics reshape the economy and synthetic biology and gene editing change the very idea of life. We have no choice but to let the patterns that are clearly not working to die well”.
If this wisdom is to emerge collectively, first and foremost it needs to be honed individually in our own lives.
Coming events
Next month I will be involved in a number of events around death and dying. On the eve of All-Saints-day, I will attend and support a public occasion organised by a Galician association, Vivir para un Buen Morir. Then, I will travel to the UK where I will conduct a weekend retreat: Death, the Great Journey.
My intention for that weekend is to enhance participants’ sense of meaningfulness regarding death and dying through exploring the relation between ideas and experiences. On the theoretical side we will be charting maps of meaning that have evolved from our own western wisdom traditions. We will engage with these traditions through poetry, myth and storytelling, and also infuse new life to old philosophical considerations by owning them with our minds and hearts, with curiosity and wonder.
On the side of praxis I will introduce practices that are designed to encourage participants to experience, first hand, inner states of silence, stillness and deep relaxation. These practices can open doors of perception to subtle layers of reality that the noise of our ordinary mental consciousness and belief systems push aside. The quality of our awareness and the quality of our presence in supporting the departure of loved ones—as well as for our own journey—rests in our capacity to navigate our own inner space serenely.
The overall purpose of this retreat is for us to find new narratives and new maps that do not shy away from or deny the mystery and potency of death, whilst also developing our own discernment as travellers of the Great Journey. If you want to join, book here.
The final event in my public itinerary this November will be an interactive talk about death and dying as part of the extensive line-up in the online festival Lifting the Lid. Check it out.
For the time being and before all the travelling begins, I am enjoying observing the landscape around me, and how the external vital signs of nature turn inwards to regenerate. The wine harvest is past, the corn has been collected, and the last autumn crops have been gathered in. November is coming, the gates are closing behind Persephone, who descends again into the underworld to reclaim her throne as Queen of the Dead.
The theme of rivers separating the realms of the living and the dead exists in many cultures in the world. The land I now live in is graced by the river Lima. Interestingly, when the Roman army came to conquer this territory, the soldiers halted on the bank of the Lima and refused to cross, believing they had reached the river Lethe. Their leader forded the river alone to demonstrate this was just an ordinary river and that their fears were unfounded. Reason overtook belief for its own purposes. But the soul of the river remained quite intact, keeping its essence unto itself, like a riddle. A riddle that Novalis understood when he said, "The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.”
Thank you for your encouragement. Fortunately there seems to be a cultural momentum to this theme. It makes one wonder: what can a different and more enlightened culture of death and dying look like?
Thanks for this beautiful texto. And also for your effort to spread the message.!.