Thank you for sharing this, Dennis. I’ve been able to glimpse a little in your thought process in the OU chat and resonate with so much. We have had similar paths.
For the record, I think we humans are resilient creatures. No one knows when their number is up, but everyone gets the call. Living well now, in the present moment, is the real connoisseur gift.
“What Dreams May Come” is one of my fave Robin Williams movies. I’ve seen it a dozen times.
I've lived a blessed life where death always happened far away from me. Of course over time it has knocked closer and closer but given I'm 41 years old I've lucked out. This post reminds me of a Robin Williams movie that was over the top but the imagery burned into my head in 'What Dreams My Come'. A landscape of a tree that as the movie progresses turns from color to black and white, parts of the landscape go dark.
I suffered from some anxiety starting in 2017 but I drink too much alcohol and coffee so have it coming. I think people could sense that in me and at a bed and breakfast we vacation at once a year the owner made it a point to talk to me and let me know death isn't something to be afraid of. On mu way to get vaccinated my Dad let me know that he isn't afraid of death and he brought it up in a way that sounds confrontation but it wasn't, it was on point, where he said I'm not afraid of death like you are. He was right. I was afraid.
I'm not as afraid of dying as I was but I'm not done yet is the issue. I got kids to raise and I still feel I have something important to do with my career. But I"ve had 41 years. And I'm beginning to come to grips that if it was time...I had a decent run. Lots of happy memories. Lots of love.
Another bad movie had Gandolfini talking to Julia roberts about how of the people he killed the people that knew love were more ready for it. Just rambling but hopefully somebody gets something out of this.
Death is a certainty, you will have to deal with it, I have to deal with it. Your grandparents, your parents, your wife and you. It is disturbing to read some commenter's comments on their take on death. It is not something to be admired, glorified or fetishized. Death is the separation of your soul (the 'you' inside your body) from your body. The 'you' inside your body is everlasting from when it was created. It will live forever somewhere. The question is where, not if. If you can't come to grips with the existence of a creator, you are blind and can't be expected to grasp that your decisions prior to death will determine where. Everyone thinks that their definition of a well lived life determines where. But it doesn't. It is the decision to recognize, understand and accept the creator on His terms that determines the where. I welcome discussion. BTW, I like this article and just found you today via the very moving an beautifully done SADS world linked by Josh Guetzkow/Jackanapes Junction substack. Happy to land here. Love
I agree that your energy lives on because energy can’t be created or destroyed. Not sure if the consciousness remains as something that identifies with a “you”. But it could be. Im open to the possibility. Abouy the part that requires the “faith” in a creator: I do believe In an intelligent design that can answer to the label of a “creator” just not sure if that creator is separate from the consciousness that is your energy and the energy of everyone and everything else. I didn’t find anyone fetishizing death but I do think that our philosophy on death can change to celebratory if it was a life well lived and if we now that lifting the veil of the beyond includes the fact that the soul is immortal and infinite. Let me know if any of that resonates with you. I love this topic and am constantly attracted to what resonates with me when people open up to talk about it.
So glad to engage. I'm a 62 year old widower, so I have my issues and one is lack of engagement with other critical thinkers (to use their phrase). I have much to say but not time tonight. Busy spreading SADS Mad World to everyone I can.
If you want to be a bad ass revolutionists just start excepting, talking about and celebrating death. The abduction of death is one of the more dangerous mind control games being played right now as I wrote about last year - https://natashaclarke.substack.com/p/when-we-abdicate-death
Aug 27, 2022·edited Aug 27, 2022Liked by Visceral Adventure
Excellent post! Really appreciated and enjoyed this. Very timely subject. I enjoyed Monica's piece on her husband's death as well - evocative and grounded at once.
I was pretty obsessed with death through my lates twenties and throughout most of my thirties. Not in a macabre way though. Rarely did I find anyone who wanted to engage the subject. (Talk about an invisible elephant in the invisible room.)
Deaths that come early, from a crazy out-of-the-blue illnesses or unexpected accidents or I don't know, a global democide break unspoken agreements and tend to unsettle. We can deal with older folks dying, we can deal with long-illness deaths but SADs and kids is challenging even to those of us who are friends with death. And life - even if like me you don't believe anyone ever really dies - is nonetheless precious and each person a unique expression that can never be replicated. Yes, the 'spirit' is infinite and eternal, but that particular form, no, that's temporary, so however positive we might be about death, it's still very sad.
What a clip -I don't remember last time I watched that - decades. So powerful. And I love that Turkish quote!
I’m super thrilled to be finding a community out here of folks whose weirdness parallels mine. 😂 I mean that lovingly, not making fun of it. One always feels like they’re weird in a society that isn’t quite normal.
In high school, I was obsessed with researching famous people’s last words. Also, I wish I knew where I stumbled into this quote, but I want to lay down some thoughts based on it and perhaps it might poke you in that direction too:
People have a deep-seated need to feel “symbolic immortality” which is “an inner sense of continuity with what has gone on before and what will go on after his/her own individual existence.”
“The sense of immortality may be expressed biologically, by living on through one’s sons and daughters and their sons and daughters; theologically, in the idea of a life after death or of other forms of spiritual conquest of death; creatively, or through “works” and influences persisting beyond biological death; through identification with nature, and with its infinite extension into time and space; or experientially, through a feeling-state — that of experiential transcendence — so intense that, at least temporarily, it eliminates time and death.”
Quote reminds me of something Ken Wilber called "immortality tokens"; the idea being when we don't come to conscious terms with our mortality, it will drive our behavior. So pursuit of lots of money, lots of success and status, perpetual young beautiful people on our arm (who will need replacing as they age) are tokens of immortality and a means of avoiding the inevitable. Something to it.
How many will be lured into the metaverse - where they can have their consciousness digitalized and they live forever - because they haven't integrated death?
I will look up Ken Wilbur although t he name sounds familiar, so possible I’ve run into his writings.
Yeah, I resonate with that. Another aspect of it is that the closer people get to the end of their earthly journeys, the more they feel a sense of not having control over their lives (literally as they come closer to death) so they try and assert some kind of holding the reigns. Not everybody. But most. It’s why I think old people turn into hoarders. If they just have it all, they have control over it?
I love talking about death. It's my favorite topic. Unfortunately I don't have anyone to talk to about it with (or about anything else either.) Death is with me 24/7. I feel its presence and I long for it. No one who is in denial about death is really alive, either. It's a paradox.
Yes, I can. Email me at annettecohen (at) proton.me, and give me an email address I can write to you at, and I'll give as long or short answer as you'd like. Or I can give you a short answer, and if you want to hear more you can tell me so, and I'll give you a longer answer.
I was looking at the name of your newsletter just now and it occurred to me "visceral adventure" might be another way of saying "incarnation." Is that what you had in mind when you chose the name?
Yes! One of the main meanings! I come from the world of theatre and I used Visceral Adventure when having live theatre and music and immersive events as a way to awaken the spirit and expand our aliveness. You are the only person who has ever put their finger right on it just like that.
Ok, I’m going to email you. Now I’m very intrigued.
I get now why I have been drawn to death and dying. Why I had to take the Death Doula course, why I had to take the bereavement facilitator course to talk about death and grief. Why I went to group workshops to cry as a group about the devastation we are doing to Earth and her creatures.
more of us need to learn and understand this. I have a very very difficult time coping with death. I would really love to learn where you go to have a death doula course.
Rosemary, I don’t know where you’re located, but I recommend going to a Death Cafe. Usually, FB has death cafe events in a city near you and I’ve even heard of online death cafes. It’s a conversation starter and I think it would benefit you before taking a death doula course. Which, I warn, be extremely cautious of because not all death doula certifications are created equal or come from a pure place.
NAAS is short for A New And Ancient Story- a book written by Charles Eisenstein (he has a Substack under his name) and he created a community forum on The Mighty Networks app. If you visit his website (charleseisenstein.com), you can find more eloquent resources and can ask to join the NAAS community through there. There is even sub groups that meet over zoom to have intimate conversations about death and elderhood. CE is one of my favourite thinkers and writers.
Please find some related references on the all-important topic of death or the fact that death is the constant message of life.
http://www.beezone.com/adi-da/death_message.html
http://www.easydeathbook.com/purpose.asp beautiful prose
http://www.aboutadidam.org/dying_death_and_beyond/index.html
http://deathanddyingwisdom.com
Thank you for sharing this, Dennis. I’ve been able to glimpse a little in your thought process in the OU chat and resonate with so much. We have had similar paths.
For the record, I think we humans are resilient creatures. No one knows when their number is up, but everyone gets the call. Living well now, in the present moment, is the real connoisseur gift.
“What Dreams May Come” is one of my fave Robin Williams movies. I’ve seen it a dozen times.
I've lived a blessed life where death always happened far away from me. Of course over time it has knocked closer and closer but given I'm 41 years old I've lucked out. This post reminds me of a Robin Williams movie that was over the top but the imagery burned into my head in 'What Dreams My Come'. A landscape of a tree that as the movie progresses turns from color to black and white, parts of the landscape go dark.
I suffered from some anxiety starting in 2017 but I drink too much alcohol and coffee so have it coming. I think people could sense that in me and at a bed and breakfast we vacation at once a year the owner made it a point to talk to me and let me know death isn't something to be afraid of. On mu way to get vaccinated my Dad let me know that he isn't afraid of death and he brought it up in a way that sounds confrontation but it wasn't, it was on point, where he said I'm not afraid of death like you are. He was right. I was afraid.
I'm not as afraid of dying as I was but I'm not done yet is the issue. I got kids to raise and I still feel I have something important to do with my career. But I"ve had 41 years. And I'm beginning to come to grips that if it was time...I had a decent run. Lots of happy memories. Lots of love.
Another bad movie had Gandolfini talking to Julia roberts about how of the people he killed the people that knew love were more ready for it. Just rambling but hopefully somebody gets something out of this.
Death is a certainty, you will have to deal with it, I have to deal with it. Your grandparents, your parents, your wife and you. It is disturbing to read some commenter's comments on their take on death. It is not something to be admired, glorified or fetishized. Death is the separation of your soul (the 'you' inside your body) from your body. The 'you' inside your body is everlasting from when it was created. It will live forever somewhere. The question is where, not if. If you can't come to grips with the existence of a creator, you are blind and can't be expected to grasp that your decisions prior to death will determine where. Everyone thinks that their definition of a well lived life determines where. But it doesn't. It is the decision to recognize, understand and accept the creator on His terms that determines the where. I welcome discussion. BTW, I like this article and just found you today via the very moving an beautifully done SADS world linked by Josh Guetzkow/Jackanapes Junction substack. Happy to land here. Love
Happy to have you! Big fan of Josh and his mind.
I agree that your energy lives on because energy can’t be created or destroyed. Not sure if the consciousness remains as something that identifies with a “you”. But it could be. Im open to the possibility. Abouy the part that requires the “faith” in a creator: I do believe In an intelligent design that can answer to the label of a “creator” just not sure if that creator is separate from the consciousness that is your energy and the energy of everyone and everything else. I didn’t find anyone fetishizing death but I do think that our philosophy on death can change to celebratory if it was a life well lived and if we now that lifting the veil of the beyond includes the fact that the soul is immortal and infinite. Let me know if any of that resonates with you. I love this topic and am constantly attracted to what resonates with me when people open up to talk about it.
Love, indeed. Love is the only answer.
So glad to engage. I'm a 62 year old widower, so I have my issues and one is lack of engagement with other critical thinkers (to use their phrase). I have much to say but not time tonight. Busy spreading SADS Mad World to everyone I can.
🙏 I wrote you an email. Feel free to drop a line in here or in there any time. Your insight is appreciated.
Hi Visceral, I'm a fiddler too, my favorite spot to play for a few years was a cemetery.
Wow. Anyone stick around to listen to you play?
I think most folk had already split the scene, but who knows. No bad comments were heard.
A lot of the problems we face today are due to the fear of death. We would benefit greatly (as a society and individuals) if we discussed it openly.
If you want to be a bad ass revolutionists just start excepting, talking about and celebrating death. The abduction of death is one of the more dangerous mind control games being played right now as I wrote about last year - https://natashaclarke.substack.com/p/when-we-abdicate-death
This was a lovely read, thank you for posting. I’m down to be this kind of revolutionist. Let’s talk about death more often!
Excellent post! Really appreciated and enjoyed this. Very timely subject. I enjoyed Monica's piece on her husband's death as well - evocative and grounded at once.
I was pretty obsessed with death through my lates twenties and throughout most of my thirties. Not in a macabre way though. Rarely did I find anyone who wanted to engage the subject. (Talk about an invisible elephant in the invisible room.)
Deaths that come early, from a crazy out-of-the-blue illnesses or unexpected accidents or I don't know, a global democide break unspoken agreements and tend to unsettle. We can deal with older folks dying, we can deal with long-illness deaths but SADs and kids is challenging even to those of us who are friends with death. And life - even if like me you don't believe anyone ever really dies - is nonetheless precious and each person a unique expression that can never be replicated. Yes, the 'spirit' is infinite and eternal, but that particular form, no, that's temporary, so however positive we might be about death, it's still very sad.
What a clip -I don't remember last time I watched that - decades. So powerful. And I love that Turkish quote!
Thanks for linking - I'm honored.😊
I’m super thrilled to be finding a community out here of folks whose weirdness parallels mine. 😂 I mean that lovingly, not making fun of it. One always feels like they’re weird in a society that isn’t quite normal.
In high school, I was obsessed with researching famous people’s last words. Also, I wish I knew where I stumbled into this quote, but I want to lay down some thoughts based on it and perhaps it might poke you in that direction too:
People have a deep-seated need to feel “symbolic immortality” which is “an inner sense of continuity with what has gone on before and what will go on after his/her own individual existence.”
“The sense of immortality may be expressed biologically, by living on through one’s sons and daughters and their sons and daughters; theologically, in the idea of a life after death or of other forms of spiritual conquest of death; creatively, or through “works” and influences persisting beyond biological death; through identification with nature, and with its infinite extension into time and space; or experientially, through a feeling-state — that of experiential transcendence — so intense that, at least temporarily, it eliminates time and death.”
Thanks for the kind words, Kathleen!
I knew what you meant! I feel the same.
Quote reminds me of something Ken Wilber called "immortality tokens"; the idea being when we don't come to conscious terms with our mortality, it will drive our behavior. So pursuit of lots of money, lots of success and status, perpetual young beautiful people on our arm (who will need replacing as they age) are tokens of immortality and a means of avoiding the inevitable. Something to it.
How many will be lured into the metaverse - where they can have their consciousness digitalized and they live forever - because they haven't integrated death?
Yikes. *Hope we don't have to find out.)
I will look up Ken Wilbur although t he name sounds familiar, so possible I’ve run into his writings.
Yeah, I resonate with that. Another aspect of it is that the closer people get to the end of their earthly journeys, the more they feel a sense of not having control over their lives (literally as they come closer to death) so they try and assert some kind of holding the reigns. Not everybody. But most. It’s why I think old people turn into hoarders. If they just have it all, they have control over it?
excellent piece. Generates a cascade of thoughts, I may attempt to put together and formulate my own bit of writing on this topic. Very well done.
Looking forward to reading your insight, Jen!
I love talking about death. It's my favorite topic. Unfortunately I don't have anyone to talk to about it with (or about anything else either.) Death is with me 24/7. I feel its presence and I long for it. No one who is in denial about death is really alive, either. It's a paradox.
Total paradox. I’m curious, when you say “I long for it”, can you tell me why?
Yes, I can. Email me at annettecohen (at) proton.me, and give me an email address I can write to you at, and I'll give as long or short answer as you'd like. Or I can give you a short answer, and if you want to hear more you can tell me so, and I'll give you a longer answer.
I was looking at the name of your newsletter just now and it occurred to me "visceral adventure" might be another way of saying "incarnation." Is that what you had in mind when you chose the name?
Yes! One of the main meanings! I come from the world of theatre and I used Visceral Adventure when having live theatre and music and immersive events as a way to awaken the spirit and expand our aliveness. You are the only person who has ever put their finger right on it just like that.
Ok, I’m going to email you. Now I’m very intrigued.
I get now why I have been drawn to death and dying. Why I had to take the Death Doula course, why I had to take the bereavement facilitator course to talk about death and grief. Why I went to group workshops to cry as a group about the devastation we are doing to Earth and her creatures.
more of us need to learn and understand this. I have a very very difficult time coping with death. I would really love to learn where you go to have a death doula course.
Rosemary, I don’t know where you’re located, but I recommend going to a Death Cafe. Usually, FB has death cafe events in a city near you and I’ve even heard of online death cafes. It’s a conversation starter and I think it would benefit you before taking a death doula course. Which, I warn, be extremely cautious of because not all death doula certifications are created equal or come from a pure place.
NAAS is short for A New And Ancient Story- a book written by Charles Eisenstein (he has a Substack under his name) and he created a community forum on The Mighty Networks app. If you visit his website (charleseisenstein.com), you can find more eloquent resources and can ask to join the NAAS community through there. There is even sub groups that meet over zoom to have intimate conversations about death and elderhood. CE is one of my favourite thinkers and writers.
I see you share your soul in the NAAS comments, Lisa! Grateful for your wisdom. 🙏
Where is NAAS?
We all need to share our Soul and Spirit, crack Humanity open wide!