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Existential Review Part 8 NEGATION, FINITUDE, DEATH - Sasha Lessin,
Ph.D. (UCLA)
USE LIMITS TO MAKE LIFE MEANINGFUL; REFLECT ON NEGATION, FINITUDE,
DEATH by Sasha Lessin, Ph.D., sashalessinphd@... 808 244-4103
[Based on Koestenbaum, P., The New Image of the Person: The Theory
and Practice of Clinical Psychology, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1978.]
Now that you have familiarized yourself with the ideals in the first lessons, continue the exploration of the existential model of being
starting with Ideal 6.
USE LIMITS TO MAKE LIFE MEANINGFUL; REFLECT ON NEGATION, FINITUDE,
DEATH (Ideal 6)
Accept that your physical body will die and you move to live
with full vitality, individuality and commitment. Realize you and
others will die prompts you to make authentic, intimate, feelingful,
expressive contact. Knowing you'll die gives you timetables for the
tasks you've chosen to give meaning to your life. When you choose to
die you take responsibility for creating your individual, unique life
in the limited amount of time you have. This is the only opportunity
you have to fully savor this moment. Carpe diem.
Accept your bodymind death and the hierarchy of consciousness
and you can identify with broader regions of consciousness (such as a
humanitarian cause, transcendent art, an archetypical deity form or
unity consciousness).
Use Death to See Unfinished Communication and Tasks
[Based on Woolger, R., Other Lives, Other Selves, NY: Doubleday,
1987; Baldwin, W., Spirit Releasement Therapy, 2nd Edn., Human
Potential Foundation, 1993; Fisher, J., The Case for Reincarnation
NY: Bantam, 1985]
Have a partner, the reader, read you the cues in bold print
(not the small, regular print in square brackets []--read those
silently; they're instructions for your reader).
WHEN SOMEONE'S DIED
Lie down. close your eyes. Remember someone you knew who
died. Say that person's name. [= X. Use name given above for 'X]
Imagine X hears you now. Tell him/her what you Left unsaid.
Pretend you're X and reply.
Have a dialogue--switch back and forth role-playing you and x.
If you'd like X to forgive you, ask.
Be X and forgive.
Be you again. If there's something you held against X make
a gesture of forgiveness and forgive him/her aloud.
WHEN YOUR BELOVED DIES
Visualize your dearest living person. Tell me his or her
person's name [use for Y].
Make-believe Y has only a few hours of life left, hours to
spend with you.
Talk to Y as though she or he were here now for the last time
this life.
Imagine you're Y. What, in these circumstances, do you say.
What, as yourself again, do you want to add?
WHEN YOU'VE ONE WEEK TO LIVE
Imagine you have one week to live. Fantasize a final get-
together with the people and animals who mean most to you. Say their
names.
Tell all, some or one of them any unfinished feelings you
have.
Tell your angry feelings.
Say the withholds--secrets, desires you held back.
Tell the people at your last get-together what you appreciate
in them.
Tell them the loving feelings and physical impulses for them.
Fantasize and describe doing what you want your last week of
life.
WHEN YOU DIE
Imagine a way you--but nobody else you know--are dying.
Describe your death scene and what leads up to it in the present
tense, as though it happens as you tell it. Put your body in the
physical position it has as it dies. [Wait till your partner moves
into position]
Tell me who's present when you die. Describe the situation.
What would you do if you still could? How would that feel?
Say goodbye to each of the people you loved. Address each in
turn and say your final words to them.
Tell each of them any unfinished feelings you have for each of them.
Tell them withholds--secrets, desires you held back.
Say what you appreciate, your loving feelings and physical
impulses toward them.
Tell me what negative conclusions you draw from this life
that you're now completing.
What vengeful thoughts do you still have as you die?
What jealous thoughts do you have at your death scene? Say
what you failed at in this life. Relate your successes in this life.
What positive conclusions do you draw from this life you're
now exiting?
What grateful, forgiving and loving thoughts are you dying
with? Say your last thoughts aloud.
What're your last words?
What does the life you're exiting leave you feeling
emotionally?
What angry feelings do you have as you leave this life? What
resentments do you carry to your death?
If you want to let go of those thoughts, rather than carry
them to future lives, express those resentments to those involved
now.
Tell me any sad or hopeless emotions you have as you leave
this life. What are your regrets?
What bitter feelings do you have as you leave this life?
What fears do vou carry as you leave this life?
What pains or physical traumas do you experience as you die?
[This paragraph should be read to women only] If you have the
spirits of any babies in your abdomen, talk to them aloud and release
their spirits.
Express emotions stored in injured, abused or neglected parts
of your body before you die, so you don't take these feelings on to
future embodiments. If your wounds were perpetrated by another
person, express your feelings to him or her. If you injured or
abused yourself, just express the emotions of your hurt parts to me.
What're the last things you see? Tell me the last thing you
hear. Say the last things you touch, smell and taste.
Move and make sounds as you experience your death. Feel life
ebbing from you. [Allow several minutes, at least]
Imagine that you are laid out as you might be in a
coffin, urn, or other funerary receptacle. (Gently lay partner's
body into a position of a body in a coffin.)
You're going to go to your own funeral. [ Adapted from
Huxley, L. You Are Not The Target NY: Avon, 1963.]
See all the people who have come to your funeral. See them
all.
There may be someone whom you're surprised to see at your
funeral. See if there's someone like that. Say who.
Is there someone at your funeral who's glad you're dead?
Take a look. Tell me who."
Notice if someone at your funeral wishes he or she were dead
instead of you. Tell me.
See the flowers people sent to your funeral. See them all.
See and smell each bouquet separately.
Who sent you which flowers?
There's music at your funeral. Hear the music."
The people at your funeral come, one by one, to view your
remains and pay their-last respects to you.
The first'? person to view your earthly remains is someone
who you loved deeply when you were alive. Who is this person?
(the person's name) approaches your coffin (or
urn), you know what she (or he) is feeling and thinking.
Become (name.") As voice your feelings and
thoughts toward (partner's name).
Now you're quite dead, you cannot respond or reply to this
person whom you loved. But if you could reply, what would you say
at your funeral to this person you loved?"
If you were still able to move, how would you like to touch
this person?
And now that person moves on, and the next person comes up to
your coffin. This is a person who, when you were alive, loved you a
great deal. Become this person, view and express your thoughts and
feelings toward the deceased.
If you weren't dead, and you still had one last chance to
respond to this person who loved you, what would you do and how would
you move toward this person?
The next person to come up to your lifeless form is someone
who, in life, you had difficulty with. Who is this person?
Become this person and state your existence as you look at `s
remains.
Become yourself, dead, again. Reply to this person as you
might and move as you might if you weren't dead.
[Have your partner successively be confronted in her funerary
receptacle by each person of emotional importance to her present at
her imaginary funeral. For each have her successively become the
other and voice thoughts and feelings as the other views your
partner's remains. Your partner then becomes herself and responds as
she would were she not dead.]
Now that you're dead you can reflect on a decision you were
making in life and know clearly what you should have decided. Say
what you should have decided.
Your eulogy-is about to begin. Notice who rises to speak
about your life and its meaning. Who is this person and what do you
feel about his (or her) speaking at your funeral?
Become the eulogizer and summarize, moralize and review the
life of the deceased and the meaning of her existence.
Now become yourself, hearing your eulogy. Do you agree with
what the eulogizer is saying? Are there parts you disagree about?
Establish a dialogue between you and your eulogizer, shifting roles
where appropriate.
This is your last party. Speak to everyone there, tell them
all about yourself, your mistakes, suffering, love and longings. No
longer do you need to protect yourself. It's your last party; You
can explode, be miserable, pitiful, insignificant or despicable. At
your funeral you can be yourself.
Imagine your coffin is being covered (or your ashes are about
to be cast, etc.) The light is shut off from your corpse. Your
coffin is lowered into the ground. Then the handful, then shovels
full of earth cover you. The world as you knew it is distant.
Are any disembodied souls or demonic spirits attached to
you? If so, tell me what you know about them.
Let your body go through the throes of death. Exhale your
last breath, experience your last heartbeat. Tell me exactly what is
happening as you die.
Separate from your body and suffering. Feel relief and
peace.
See, from above, the people nearby. Try, but fail to talk to
and touch them. Realize you died.
Whoosh down a tunnel, then up toward the light. Let the
spirits of loved ones who already died extend their hands to guide
you and take you to the place of karmic review. Who reaches out to
guide you up toward the light?
Let your guides take you to the loving beings of Light, the
Karmic Guides or the Life-Review Committee. Let them show you, by
giving you direct experiences, the main events of your life and their
consequences for others. Say what you're seeing.
Witness and tell me about the love you gave and the love you
got. What did you need to learn from your life? What did you need to
experience that life?
At what, if any, point, did things go wrong?
What was the meaning of that life, taken as a whole?
What would you do differently, if you had it to do again?
What did you contribute to humanity, to the consciousness of
the cosmos.
Find in the spirit world, one-by-one, the spirits of those
you hurt, betrayed or abandoned. What do you have to say to each of
them? Identify with each of them in turn, and as them, reply.
If you failed in this life, communicate with the spirits of
those whom you let down. Let them forgive and comfort you. Tell me
what they say.
Can you forgive yourself?
Find in the spirit world, one-by-one, the spirits of people
who hurt, betrayed or abandoned-you. Let each of them, in turn, use
your voice and talk to you.
And, now that you're in the spirit world too, what do you
have to say to each of them?
Dialogue aloud with any disembodied spirits attached to you
from the life you just lived. Tell them to find their loved ones
here in the light and to leave you now.
Converse aloud with any demonic spirits attached to you from
the life you just lived. Tell them, "Look within and see that you,
too, are of the light. So go now to your appointed place in the
light."
Imagine that the Beings of Light have decided that your
tenure in the life you just reviewed shouldn't be over so soon, that
you're being sent back to complete missions. What're your
assignments?
If it was hard to forgive yourself for anything, let the
Karmic Guides assign you tasks to balance your karma. You need not
make up your karma with the same persons you hurt or failed. What
are your karma-balancing tasks?
Return to this world. Wiggle your toes. Open and close your
hands. Stretch. Swallow twice. Open your eyes; look at three things
you enjoy seeing. Listen for three sounds you enjoy. Say your name
and today's date.
* Relate on this site the exercises you did in this section
to the existential idea that appreciation and acceptance of death
vitalizes life.
Sasha Lessin, Ph.D.
Ph.D. (UCLA)
USE LIMITS TO MAKE LIFE MEANINGFUL; REFLECT ON NEGATION, FINITUDE,
DEATH by Sasha Lessin, Ph.D., sashalessinphd@... 808 244-4103
[Based on Koestenbaum, P., The New Image of the Person: The Theory
and Practice of Clinical Psychology, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1978.]
Now that you have familiarized yourself with the ideals in the first lessons, continue the exploration of the existential model of being
starting with Ideal 6.
USE LIMITS TO MAKE LIFE MEANINGFUL; REFLECT ON NEGATION, FINITUDE,
DEATH (Ideal 6)
Accept that your physical body will die and you move to live
with full vitality, individuality and commitment. Realize you and
others will die prompts you to make authentic, intimate, feelingful,
expressive contact. Knowing you'll die gives you timetables for the
tasks you've chosen to give meaning to your life. When you choose to
die you take responsibility for creating your individual, unique life
in the limited amount of time you have. This is the only opportunity
you have to fully savor this moment. Carpe diem.
Accept your bodymind death and the hierarchy of consciousness
and you can identify with broader regions of consciousness (such as a
humanitarian cause, transcendent art, an archetypical deity form or
unity consciousness).
Use Death to See Unfinished Communication and Tasks
[Based on Woolger, R., Other Lives, Other Selves, NY: Doubleday,
1987; Baldwin, W., Spirit Releasement Therapy, 2nd Edn., Human
Potential Foundation, 1993; Fisher, J., The Case for Reincarnation
NY: Bantam, 1985]
Have a partner, the reader, read you the cues in bold print
(not the small, regular print in square brackets []--read those
silently; they're instructions for your reader).
WHEN SOMEONE'S DIED
Lie down. close your eyes. Remember someone you knew who
died. Say that person's name. [= X. Use name given above for 'X]
Imagine X hears you now. Tell him/her what you Left unsaid.
Pretend you're X and reply.
Have a dialogue--switch back and forth role-playing you and x.
If you'd like X to forgive you, ask.
Be X and forgive.
Be you again. If there's something you held against X make
a gesture of forgiveness and forgive him/her aloud.
WHEN YOUR BELOVED DIES
Visualize your dearest living person. Tell me his or her
person's name [use for Y].
Make-believe Y has only a few hours of life left, hours to
spend with you.
Talk to Y as though she or he were here now for the last time
this life.
Imagine you're Y. What, in these circumstances, do you say.
What, as yourself again, do you want to add?
WHEN YOU'VE ONE WEEK TO LIVE
Imagine you have one week to live. Fantasize a final get-
together with the people and animals who mean most to you. Say their
names.
Tell all, some or one of them any unfinished feelings you
have.
Tell your angry feelings.
Say the withholds--secrets, desires you held back.
Tell the people at your last get-together what you appreciate
in them.
Tell them the loving feelings and physical impulses for them.
Fantasize and describe doing what you want your last week of
life.
WHEN YOU DIE
Imagine a way you--but nobody else you know--are dying.
Describe your death scene and what leads up to it in the present
tense, as though it happens as you tell it. Put your body in the
physical position it has as it dies. [Wait till your partner moves
into position]
Tell me who's present when you die. Describe the situation.
What would you do if you still could? How would that feel?
Say goodbye to each of the people you loved. Address each in
turn and say your final words to them.
Tell each of them any unfinished feelings you have for each of them.
Tell them withholds--secrets, desires you held back.
Say what you appreciate, your loving feelings and physical
impulses toward them.
Tell me what negative conclusions you draw from this life
that you're now completing.
What vengeful thoughts do you still have as you die?
What jealous thoughts do you have at your death scene? Say
what you failed at in this life. Relate your successes in this life.
What positive conclusions do you draw from this life you're
now exiting?
What grateful, forgiving and loving thoughts are you dying
with? Say your last thoughts aloud.
What're your last words?
What does the life you're exiting leave you feeling
emotionally?
What angry feelings do you have as you leave this life? What
resentments do you carry to your death?
If you want to let go of those thoughts, rather than carry
them to future lives, express those resentments to those involved
now.
Tell me any sad or hopeless emotions you have as you leave
this life. What are your regrets?
What bitter feelings do you have as you leave this life?
What fears do vou carry as you leave this life?
What pains or physical traumas do you experience as you die?
[This paragraph should be read to women only] If you have the
spirits of any babies in your abdomen, talk to them aloud and release
their spirits.
Express emotions stored in injured, abused or neglected parts
of your body before you die, so you don't take these feelings on to
future embodiments. If your wounds were perpetrated by another
person, express your feelings to him or her. If you injured or
abused yourself, just express the emotions of your hurt parts to me.
What're the last things you see? Tell me the last thing you
hear. Say the last things you touch, smell and taste.
Move and make sounds as you experience your death. Feel life
ebbing from you. [Allow several minutes, at least]
Imagine that you are laid out as you might be in a
coffin, urn, or other funerary receptacle. (Gently lay partner's
body into a position of a body in a coffin.)
You're going to go to your own funeral. [ Adapted from
Huxley, L. You Are Not The Target NY: Avon, 1963.]
See all the people who have come to your funeral. See them
all.
There may be someone whom you're surprised to see at your
funeral. See if there's someone like that. Say who.
Is there someone at your funeral who's glad you're dead?
Take a look. Tell me who."
Notice if someone at your funeral wishes he or she were dead
instead of you. Tell me.
See the flowers people sent to your funeral. See them all.
See and smell each bouquet separately.
Who sent you which flowers?
There's music at your funeral. Hear the music."
The people at your funeral come, one by one, to view your
remains and pay their-last respects to you.
The first'? person to view your earthly remains is someone
who you loved deeply when you were alive. Who is this person?
(the person's name) approaches your coffin (or
urn), you know what she (or he) is feeling and thinking.
Become (name.") As voice your feelings and
thoughts toward (partner's name).
Now you're quite dead, you cannot respond or reply to this
person whom you loved. But if you could reply, what would you say
at your funeral to this person you loved?"
If you were still able to move, how would you like to touch
this person?
And now that person moves on, and the next person comes up to
your coffin. This is a person who, when you were alive, loved you a
great deal. Become this person, view and express your thoughts and
feelings toward the deceased.
If you weren't dead, and you still had one last chance to
respond to this person who loved you, what would you do and how would
you move toward this person?
The next person to come up to your lifeless form is someone
who, in life, you had difficulty with. Who is this person?
Become this person and state your existence as you look at `s
remains.
Become yourself, dead, again. Reply to this person as you
might and move as you might if you weren't dead.
[Have your partner successively be confronted in her funerary
receptacle by each person of emotional importance to her present at
her imaginary funeral. For each have her successively become the
other and voice thoughts and feelings as the other views your
partner's remains. Your partner then becomes herself and responds as
she would were she not dead.]
Now that you're dead you can reflect on a decision you were
making in life and know clearly what you should have decided. Say
what you should have decided.
Your eulogy-is about to begin. Notice who rises to speak
about your life and its meaning. Who is this person and what do you
feel about his (or her) speaking at your funeral?
Become the eulogizer and summarize, moralize and review the
life of the deceased and the meaning of her existence.
Now become yourself, hearing your eulogy. Do you agree with
what the eulogizer is saying? Are there parts you disagree about?
Establish a dialogue between you and your eulogizer, shifting roles
where appropriate.
This is your last party. Speak to everyone there, tell them
all about yourself, your mistakes, suffering, love and longings. No
longer do you need to protect yourself. It's your last party; You
can explode, be miserable, pitiful, insignificant or despicable. At
your funeral you can be yourself.
Imagine your coffin is being covered (or your ashes are about
to be cast, etc.) The light is shut off from your corpse. Your
coffin is lowered into the ground. Then the handful, then shovels
full of earth cover you. The world as you knew it is distant.
Are any disembodied souls or demonic spirits attached to
you? If so, tell me what you know about them.
Let your body go through the throes of death. Exhale your
last breath, experience your last heartbeat. Tell me exactly what is
happening as you die.
Separate from your body and suffering. Feel relief and
peace.
See, from above, the people nearby. Try, but fail to talk to
and touch them. Realize you died.
Whoosh down a tunnel, then up toward the light. Let the
spirits of loved ones who already died extend their hands to guide
you and take you to the place of karmic review. Who reaches out to
guide you up toward the light?
Let your guides take you to the loving beings of Light, the
Karmic Guides or the Life-Review Committee. Let them show you, by
giving you direct experiences, the main events of your life and their
consequences for others. Say what you're seeing.
Witness and tell me about the love you gave and the love you
got. What did you need to learn from your life? What did you need to
experience that life?
At what, if any, point, did things go wrong?
What was the meaning of that life, taken as a whole?
What would you do differently, if you had it to do again?
What did you contribute to humanity, to the consciousness of
the cosmos.
Find in the spirit world, one-by-one, the spirits of those
you hurt, betrayed or abandoned. What do you have to say to each of
them? Identify with each of them in turn, and as them, reply.
If you failed in this life, communicate with the spirits of
those whom you let down. Let them forgive and comfort you. Tell me
what they say.
Can you forgive yourself?
Find in the spirit world, one-by-one, the spirits of people
who hurt, betrayed or abandoned-you. Let each of them, in turn, use
your voice and talk to you.
And, now that you're in the spirit world too, what do you
have to say to each of them?
Dialogue aloud with any disembodied spirits attached to you
from the life you just lived. Tell them to find their loved ones
here in the light and to leave you now.
Converse aloud with any demonic spirits attached to you from
the life you just lived. Tell them, "Look within and see that you,
too, are of the light. So go now to your appointed place in the
light."
Imagine that the Beings of Light have decided that your
tenure in the life you just reviewed shouldn't be over so soon, that
you're being sent back to complete missions. What're your
assignments?
If it was hard to forgive yourself for anything, let the
Karmic Guides assign you tasks to balance your karma. You need not
make up your karma with the same persons you hurt or failed. What
are your karma-balancing tasks?
Return to this world. Wiggle your toes. Open and close your
hands. Stretch. Swallow twice. Open your eyes; look at three things
you enjoy seeing. Listen for three sounds you enjoy. Say your name
and today's date.
* Relate on this site the exercises you did in this section
to the existential idea that appreciation and acceptance of death
vitalizes life.
Sasha Lessin, Ph.D.
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