find its way to the divine. They are the ways humanity has created to strengthen the spiritual link between our mortal lives and the invisible and they help us to gather our courage at the edge of the void and fall into infinity.
CYCLES OF LIFE
The understanding of life as a cycle of transformation beginning at birth and proceeding through growth into death and back into rebirth reaches back to our most ancient ancestors. They understood that the seasonal cycles of the Earth, the moon and planets were a mirror of the human cycles of experience. Death was accepted as a part of the natural world, simply another transition on the wheel of life and a culmination of life’s journey from birth through childhood, puberty, marriage, parenthood into the menopause and old age.
The mysteries of paganism and shamanic principles encourage a holistic attitude toward the soul journey through the cycles of life and death. Life changes or transitions are celebrated as gateways of the soul’s transformation. While baptism, marriage and death are still celebrated as spiritual occasions in Western cultures, indigenous peoples still mark the transitions of puberty and menopause (elderhood) with initiation rituals. The word for certain Congo rites, Kombosi, also means ‘resurrection’, and these rites of passage are always concerned with death and rebirth, for they are about letting the old self die to make way for the new. The rituals themselves – which often push the initiates to the brink of death itself – are powerful ways of helping the psyche to accept, and celebrate, the transition from one state to another. For we cannot embrace the new unless we let go of the old.
Out of life comes death, and out of death, life,
Out of the young, the old,
and out of the old, the young,
Out of waking, sleep
and out of sleep, waking
The stream of creation and dissolution never stops.
Heraclitus
Birth and death are the most traumatic transitions on the wheel of life for they are the gateways between the physical and non-physical realms, bridges between the known and the unknown. Both are profound experiences which require us to let go into trust at a moment when we feel most vulnerable to forces beyond our control. We have to gather our courage and take a leap of faith. It is during these moments when we come into contact with our own mortality and learn most about the mysteries of the soul.
In all cultures birth is marked by a rite which places the child in context of family, culture and religion. Baptism welcomes a new soul to the Christian fold, while the Yoruba will call a priest to divine which ancestral soul has returned to the world. Birth is often considered more traumatic for the soul than dying for, after spending time in the beauty and light of the kingdom of the spirit, the soul has to get used to living in the harsh reality of the physical world, whilst the souls of the dead are leaving pain and limitation behind to be softened and comforted by spirit.
In the past many of the rites of death imitated those of birth and baptism. The body was often buried in a foetal position, as though it were waiting for rebirth, and water was trickled onto the head, as in baptism. Even today among peoples in West Africa the dead are buried upside-down in a womb-like chamber with an opening representing the birth canal.
Belief in the eternal regeneration of life means that death can more readily be accepted. In the West, where the reality of death is denied and repressed, it is almost always approached with fear and denial. And yet, when acceptance of death can be integrated as a part of our soul’s journey, then we can liberate ourselves from the fears which prevent us from really living our life to the full. Life itself is a series of little deaths. Every time we change, a part of us dies. Every loss we encounter, every love affair which does not work out or project which fails, is a moment of death which causes us to grieve before picking up the pieces and moving on.
For Buddhists the contemplation of death lies at the heart of life. Preparation for death begins with living a meaningful life built on love, compassion and truth, for these virtues will ensure a positive death experience and an auspicious rebirth. Faith in the spiritual side of life makes it easier to let go into death. Meditation, yoga, prayer or a simple innocent faith in God brings awareness of the life force which exists beyond, around and within the body but is not dependent on it. Gathering our spiritual resources brings peace of mind and eases physical or mental distress as the soul becomes a place to which we can retreat. It is this connection to our inner divine nature which enables us to approach death with less fear.
The fear of death is a universal response to the unknown but as we learn to trust in the universal laws of creation which show us that birth, growth, decay and death are the everlasting cycles of life which govern our existence on this Earth we can begin to trust that our journey will be a safe one, that, as the scholar and teacher Joseph Campbell wrote, ‘Out of the rocks of fallen wood and leaves, fresh sprouts arise, from which the lesson appears to have been that from death springs life and out of death, new birth.’
I want every human being not to be afraid of death, or of life; I want every human being to die at peace, and be surrounded by the wisest, clearest, and most tender care, and to find the ultimate happiness that can only come from an understanding of the nature of mind and of reality.
Soygal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
I have always found the actual moment of death to be blissful. Even people who have been terribly frightened of dying relax into death, which becomes something resembling euphoria. In my experience the moments of death and birth are the closest we come to deity.
Clare Proust
SOUL MIDWIFE
Claire Proust is a soul midwife who has also helped many souls cross the boundary between life and death. She compares the process to the labour pains of birth and as a soul midwife provides the practical, emotional and spiritual support for the dying and their families, helping them to face the forces of death with calmness, openness and strength.
As a former nurse, she found that almost all the deaths which she experienced in hospitals were deeply traumatic, thanks to the overwhelming fear of death which often results in unnecessary and invasive surgery and little compassionate preparation for the dying. For seven years she virtually single-handedly ran The Voyager Trust, which pioneered the provision of the holistic and noninvasive care for the dying and bereavement counselling for the families. She believes that the taboo around death in the West is so overwhelming that most people are paralysed by it and yet she found that with simple honesty and compassion most people are able to quite quickly overcome their fears of both their own dying and the deaths of those around them, becoming instead empowered by the experience.
Clare advocates that each person must be given the space and the time to die as they want to die. Each death is unique and, as with labour and birth, each person needs to be allowed to die in their own way.
She describes an incident in one hospital where she was working a night shift which almost restored her faith in the medical profession’s emotional ability to cope with death. An old man was gasping his last breaths. He had lung cancer and was confused and coughing phlegm. He kept calling out a woman’s name and became distressed when she did not appear. One of the doctors on the ward decided to take action. He climbed into bed with the old man and held him in his arms. The old man said, ‘Kiss me,’ and without hesitation, the doctor kissed him and continued to hold him until he died very peacefully. Some of the staff criticized the doctor’s behaviour, but for Clare it was a wonderful lesson in compassion and humility. ‘The world did not end when meaningful physical contact was made with a patient. What did happen was that a tired, ill, confused and sad person was soothed and died in love.’
THE GATEWAY
The old and the sick mostly die in the quiet just before dawn as the metabolic rhythm of the body reaches its lowest energy point. It is the darkest moment before dawn, the time of the greatest peace. In Sweden they call it the hour of the wolf.
The