Questions & Answers: Archive
****
Question: I can be sitting watching TV and out of nowhere the thought of me not being here one day comes to mind and I get this overwhelming feeling of hot burning inside, I end up repeating over and over again
"Don't think about it." "Don't think about it." "Don't think about it."
I am terrified beyond belief with the thought of knowing one day I'll be gone. Some of the fear is thinking that there is nothing after this life, that you just go 6 feet under and that's it.
How do I make myself not so afraid? K. P, Portage, IN
The Life Awareness Center: Dear K. P. You are experiencing what Pulitzer prize winner Earnest Becker describe in The Denial of Death as follows:
"The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - actively designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man."
I can fully identify with you as will many other visitors to this site. Your fear represents the third in ten classifications of common mortality fears. Number three is:
"The fear that there is nothing after death. We feel teased by life and feel cheated by death. We are fearful that this is all there is and even it is taken from us."
Dealing with the reality that we die is anything but easy, but unlike many who intentionally stay in denial, you are bravely asking the right question. How do you overcome your fear of dying?
For starters, observe your fears rather that try to drive them out of consciousness. Let me explain what I mean by telling you of an experience I had years ago attending a yoga and meditation class when I lived in Washington D.C.. The meditation leader played a game with us. He asked us to meditate for five minutes, but all the while we were NOT to think of the word "elephant." As hard as I tried, my mind kept repeatedly drifting back to the word "elephant." Try this and you will see what I mean. When our five minutes was up and it was OK to think of "elephant" all we wanted, I soon forgot entirely about the word.
When we try to repress fears, it works the same way. We give our fears energy by trying to dodge them, avoid them, deny them. If we give ourselves permission to stay with the fear a while, we will pass through it and the fears tend to dissipate. In this case, the idea is to watch your fear of dying almost as if you were a third person observer. Your thought process might go something like this.
"Oh, here comes another fear of death. Yes. I see it. I feel it. I take note of it without judgment. This is OK. It is just a thought and I am watching it, a fear. I can see and watch. It is OK."
In time you will be calmer about having such fears and they will begin to dissipate. This does not happen immediately, but over time. My experience is that these fears keep cycling back again and again. But over time when you allow yourself watch them in the manner suggested, you will feel calmer about them. The peaks and valleys between times of great fear and the times of calm acceptance will even out.
It helps too, to think about what death does for us. Why do we die at all? Space is too short here to say a lot about this, but consider that death is the engine that drives life. What would life be like if we didn't die, if we were immortal. The choices that define us would not matter, because with infinite time, we can have all choices. You could be a doctor and a lawyer and a bus drive and a movie producer and so on ad infinitum. We wouldn't need to set priorities, because as immortals, we could do everything. That may sound great at first, but in fact it would lead to total boredom. Think of your annual vacation. Why are the vacation days so precious? Because we only get a few of them to enjoy. Our awareness, our perception that our time is limited is what makes our time alive valuable. Ironically, mortality is what brings us meaning in the here and now. It helps nourish us and give us joy in the time we have right now instead of letting us dwell on the past or live dreaming of something better in the future.
Thank you for your excellent question. I know my answer, brief as it is, is not enough. But it offers a place to start to begin coming to terms with your fears. You can turn those fears into a source of personal energy rather than a source of paralysis. The process of working through them can help you value the time you do have more than ever. Please also read my answer below to R. Bridgeman as I believe it applies to your question as well.
****
Question: At what age do children first start to think about death? D. W., Providence, RI
The Life Awareness Center: In most Western cultures, there is a progressive awareness in a child that life is not a permanent condition. Usually the child starts to become aware sometime between 3- 5 years of age. That awareness progresses to a mature understanding usually by the time the child reaches age 9 or 10. The two most common experiences that start a child to become aware are the death of a relative or a parent's illness. Then it dawns on the child that his parents, heretofore thought of as immortal and invincible, are in fact mere mortals. Here's what the Pulitzer prize-winning authority Ernest Becker says on this subject:
"An increasing number of careful studies on how the actual fear of death develops in the child agree fairly well that the child has no knowledge of death until about the age 3 to 5. How could he? It is too abstract an idea, too removed from his experience. He lives in a world that is full of living, acting things, responding to him, amusing him, feeding him. He doesn't know what it means for life to disappear forever, nor theorize where it would go. Only gradually does he recognize that there is a thing called death that it takes some people away forever; very reluctantly he comes to admit that it sooner or later takes everyone away, but this gradual realization of the inevitability of death can take up until the 9th or 10th year." Ernest Becker, The Death of Denial
****
Question: It just seems morbid to me to think about death a lot. Why would anyone want to. Death happens when it happens, no? Why go out of our way to dwell on it? T. J., Las Vegas, N. V.
The Life Awareness Center: The goal is not to dwell on death "a lot". That would be an unhappy pastime. But an even more unhappy pastime is a life that tries to ignore or repress the reality of human mortality. Look at what happens if we go into denial about death: 1) We tend to devalue our time and act as if it is limitless. 2) We tend avoid introspection because our inner voice, our instinct, holds more than our character. It is also the center of our mortality awareness. If we avoid introspection, we define ourselves externally, through friends, authorities and by relying on fads and fashions. The healthier course of action is to look inward for important answers; to go to your core to "know thyself." When you do so, a mortality awareness develops automatically. It is part of the introspective process.
Rather than morbidly dwell on the fact that life ends, a healthier, better balanced approach is simply to give a little thought to that reality daily, almost the way you might say grace at a meal. You become mindful and thankful of the life you have had, and of the time you have remaining. Here's how the Dalai Lama might answer your question:
"...if you do not wait until the end for the knowledge that you will die to sink in, and you realistically assess your situation now, you will not be overwhelmed by superficial, temporary purposes. You will not neglect what matters in the long run. It is better to decide from the very beginning that you will die and investigate what is worthwhile. If you keep in mind how quickly this life disappears, you will value your time and do what is valuable." - Dalai Lama - Advice on Dying and Living a Better Life
|
Question:
I know I should not dwell on death but I have such a fear of it that I try to find ways to come to peace with dying. Is there any way that I can overcome the fear of death? I have tried many ways all to no avail. The obsession and fear literally ruin what life I have.
I would do anything just to bring the fear level down to what you might call a normal fear of death. I would so much appreciate your advice. One last thing are there people who can help you with this problem? Thank you. D. B., Springfield, IL.
The Life Awareness Center: Dear R. Bridgman: For starters, it may help to know you are not alone with your fears. In our culture, we are taught from the time we are young children that death is traumatic, awful and that it is much to be dreaded. Naturally we fear dying. We see death only as the end of all good things – the end of sensual pleasures and the end of our identity and personal consciousness. We also fear the loss of control and we fear the unknown.
Not all cultures condition people to feel this way. Many societies view death as organic, a natural transition that occurs quite comfortably in a sequence of life passages. The Mexicans have the Day of the Dead, a time of joyous celebration when a person passes. The Buddhists actually study and prepare for their time of death and many practitioners, when they come to their time to die, arrive in a peaceful state and quite ready for it. There is a charming story from Sushila Blackman’s Graceful Exits that suggests the comfort with which Zen masters faced their impending death. The Zen Master Taji came to his death with a wonderful lightheartedness.
Senior disciples assembled at his bedside as Zen Master Taji approached death. One of them, remembering the master was fond of a certain kind of cake, had spent half a day searching the pastry shops of Tokyo for this confection, which he now presented to him.
With a wan smile the dying master accepted a piece of the cake and slowly began munching it. As he grew weaker, his disciples inquired whether he had any final words for them.
“Yes,” the master replied.
The disciples leaned forward eagerly so as not to miss a word.
“Please tell us!”
“My, but this cake is delicious!”
And with that, he passed away. |
Of course most of us are not Zen masters. But, though it may not feel like it, you are on the right track because you are candidly and bravely facing your fears of dying and you want to work through them. That’s a critical first step, especially in society like ours that spends a lot of time and money to repress thoughts of growing old and dying.
While there is no magic that can wave away your fears of death, I’ve found that two things help start the process of diminishing fears. I have limited space here, but I will touch briefly on them for you.
The first is to begin to think about how death drives life and how it actually makes your life more precious. Without death, we would have endless time which would be about as exciting as a football game with unlimited quarters. The choices that now define us would not matter since, with infinite time, we can have everything and all our choices. It is the reality that our time is limited that makes us set priorities and define ourselves by the choices we make. Limited time, and the fact that we never know our death-date, causes us to constantly reassess how we want to use our time. It causes us to continually ask what we want to do with the precious time we have left.
Death does a lot more to enrich our life and it can be used to transform our psyche in many positive ways. This brief reply does not permit more detail about how that works except to say that the very act of thinking about how death impacts your life will help you dissipate your fear of dying. It is a start.
The second point is that you can work through your fears of death with the help of exercises and meditations. There is no time here for details. But the key to this is not to run from your fears, but rather to note them, to watch them without judgment, to feel them, and to go through them, In time they will decrease. My experience is that this process is a cyclical. The fears diminish, then return and you watch them again, and then they diminish and then they return. But over time the peaks and valleys between calm and fear level out and you will be more at peace with your mortality and even enriched by it. We work on this process at our workshop and the meditations and exercises I offer will also soon be in my book. They will also be posted at our web site where they are available to everyone without cost.
I wish I had more time and space to reply, but I will leave you with this thought. Each of us can turn our fear of dying around and harness its energy to create a more joyful life in the here and now. So your fear of death, while painful and perhaps "obsessive", can become a source of energy and lead you to greater joy in the present moment.
Thank you for your excellent question and I am happy to reply to all inquiries.
Michael Grossman
Director, The Life Awareness Center
****
Question: In what way does death alter our priorities? B. M., Omaha, NB
The Life Awareness Center: A close call with death can be a tremendously transformative experience. So can a reminder of our mortality that comes with the death of someone we are close to. Catastrophic historic events like 9/11 often have the same impact on us. These events have the power to shift our focus off of superficialities and to shift our focus powerfully within where we reconsider our priorities. I like to call what happens, the "Scrooge Effect". It's what happened to Ebenezer Scrooge after he encountered the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. They showed Scrooge his present priorities and showed him his deathbed. The experienced changed Scrooge from a dry, unhappy merchant into a joyful, generous family benefactor. Death has that power. It often makes life richer and we give a higher priority to emotional and spiritual experience and devalue material importance. Here is what Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has to say on the subject:
"We run after values that, at death, become zero. At the end of your life, nobody asked how many degrees you have, or how many mansions you built, or how many Rolls Royces you could afford. That's what dying patients teach you." Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying. |