How can we prepare to die?
"Proceeding as if dying is trauma is where the trauma comes in."
- Stephen Jenkinson
Preparing to die. Can we really? This project as a whole, as Doug described, was part of his preparing to die process. In the clips below, we talk about preparation—both the possibility, and impossibility. In some moments there are specific practices mentioned, but for the most part, what we explore is the curiosity and intention to bring death closer, and in so doing, live life fully—and therefore, to become intimate with ending.
June 22, 2018
0:00 - The practice of feeling
4:50 - Being grace, being the fight
8:47 - The reassuring unknowability
11:20 - The ingenious denial of death
14:17 - What happens when we allow death to change us?
19:20 - Suffering deeply, Love
24:35 - Dying is, isn't transformative
32:22 - Shifting between dying and living
June 29, 2018
0:20 - The aspiration of the ideal dier
2:00 - Allowing equanimity and despair in dying
4:40 - Being with the one who is dying
6:55 - Holding this dying together
8:30 - Disclaimer: our bias
July 13, 2018
0:40 - When is the time to fight?
2:04 - Fierceness
6:54 - Training to surrender
9:13 - Working with panic
11:55 - Death coaching
14:58 - A luxurious death
16:50 - This is a good time in my life
18:30 - These conversations don't require these conditions
20:37 - The calling to explore death
Questions to consider on your own
If dying is a skill, how might you develop it?
What has death already taught you?
How can you bring death closer to you? What do you experience?
How does experience change when you create more space between you and death?
What is it like to imagine that you are death?