Danse Macabre. N. Thomas Johnson-Medland
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encounter these shadows in the land between waking and sleeping. We encounter the deeper mysteries in the lingering awareness that lacks domination by control: in the land of words and images, impressions and hunches. We can see and hear these things when we loosen our grip just a little bit. This ties dreaming to our wakefulness; dreaming is a part of the process of bringing forth that which is within to save us.
She was genuinely scared. She had no idea what to do. She remembered that I had told her if she had questions about what was happening, or needed help, that she should ask me. I would be honored and glad to help.
I felt into my heart to find out where we were; where she was. There had been a clear and deep-sapphire blue tunnel in front of us—as I felt around for impressions. From the center of the tunnel came a rich and scintillating gold light. It was so rich and dense; it looked like flowing or churning liquid gold. I knew this place well. It was the place people go to in meditation. I had been there before. It was then I realized that meditation builds a bridge to transformation.
The inner journey is a mirror of the outer. Meditation is tied to death. Meditation is tied to surrendering into the letting go that is death.
I told her about what I saw and told her that it was a good sign. It was the sign of peace and the unitive experience—good will and harmony. I told her people had sought this vision of God for thousands of years. Mystics strove to find this place. She had arrived at the Divine source and would be able to go on ahead. She had found the Pearl of Great Price.
She said she was scared. I told her how I had been at this place hundreds of times and it was a good place. This place was exactly where she needed to be. I assured her that the beauty of everything she saw around her was an important thing for her to focus on and concentrate on. She could trust this place.
She said she trusted me, and she would just look at the beauty of it all. I told her to go into the tunnel and enjoy her time there, that there would be friends for her to see. She left and went on her way. She trusted what we saw together, and that my having been there before was enough. She not only brought forth what was within, but she then entered into it.
When she was gone, the smell that had filled the room slowly disappeared as well. The smell was the distinct odor of dying, of household cleaners used to rid the home of the smell of death, and of cigarette smoke that had filled her home her last few months of life. It was in both the dream and in my waking nostrils. It faded after a few minutes of being awake.
It was gone. When I got to work that morning, I found out she had died in the early morning hours. I already knew that.
She must have been lonely, needed some more help—on the other side, or getting there—or been missed deeply. Two weeks after her death, her mother died—unexpectedly. I like to believe she took the journey for her daughter; she longed to go it together. Perhaps the reason the parents did not want to speak to the daughter about death was because the mother had sensed her own imminent demise. Who can say?
* * *
Sometimes when you feel the numbing presence of death it is one of Death’s spirits or angels coming to lure you onto the path. They don’t have any ability to bring you onto the path; they just randomly attempt to catch unsuspecting and weak victims. They hope you lose your focus just enough to steer off the road, or slip with the chainsaw. They hope they can surprise you into dying. Every close call you have had where you emerge knowing you almost died is a clear example. It may be that the minions have a bonus program for bringing in new members. If you have a sudden and traumatic end, they get a toaster or a sandwich grill. Who can say?
I was no fool. I wasn’t going that morning—that morning that I felt Death’s presence. I was not going to follow Him or them into my own death. But, I would certainly walk with them and find out who was getting ready to take the path. I would put on my socks and go off with Death to minister among the dying.
* * *
Working with the dying is like being in the underworld. It is all misty and hazy and you are not sure about what you are seeing or hearing. But, you learn to work with a deeper sense—intuition and discernment. You learn to listen for things, feel for things, look, taste, and touch for things with a more hyper-extended sense of understanding.
Like in dreams and dreamtime things in the luminal and liminal world of the dying are very metaphoric and operate on a vast array of planes of meaning and action. One thing means more than one thing. This is always an important distinction when applying therapeutic skill toward interpreting a life lived.
This same sort of dreamtime or dreamlike living occurs in leaping poetry. The connections made between disparate ideas, concepts, and objects in this kind of poetry are not only metaphoric, but able to span the full range of the synapses in the brain. Things may not immediately make sense in proximity to each other, but then, all of the sudden, the link is illuminated and we have an “ah ha moment” that makes everything liminal and luminal at once. It is dreamy.
Things that do not seem to be connected, related, or meaningful together become so because of the awakening moment. End-of-life has a lot of these awakening moments. These same sort of things happen quite frequently in meditative or contemplative states and experiences. We are opened to a much wider field of interpretation and awareness. We can see how one thing may be related to, similar to , or connected to another in this arena of “larger meaning”. This gives it an underworld or subconscious feel.
People in the end-stage-of-life, and to an extent the people immediately around them, are forced into seeing through the looking glass with a bit more intensity than every other day in life. The best we can do to describe it is to compare it to those really serious conversations, thoughts, and pacts that come about in the evening as the sun is setting. You know those serious conversations that happen around the fire, or heart to heart, or over a glass of wine. Everything else in life—except that moment—is meaningless. This conversation bears the weight of our whole worth and of the whole world.
Things are so different in this liminal and luminal space that often the morning after one of these serious and clarifying moments, people tend to down play how vital those conversations, thoughts, or pacts were. They may even deny that they said this or that. You know what I am talking about. That is how it is all of the time in the lives of people edging closer to death. Everything is vital and means something. More of life leans into the liminal and luminal as death approaches.
* * *
I know this language sounds silly to you. But, play along; the journey we shall take will bridge the gap between your fear and your living. Hold the words and let them ring aloud a bit. Find out where the words belong and where you are in relation to them.
Without these impressions, you will hold the images below the luminal life and keep them at bay for ever. That will kill you. Let these tales become the solid matter in the field of your echolocation. They will give resonance to your soundings.
Someday—generally sooner than we hope—Death will come for you. Can you honestly say that at this moment now you feel ready to make the transition? Is everything in your life in order and up to date? Have you mended everything that is torn? Have you added everything you were here to add? If not, dance with me among the stories of Death and dying and find some flowers to hold onto for beauty and sustenance against the change.
* * *
Who was there that morning—the morning I was putting on my socks—I do not know. I do know that one of the Death squad was there. I could feel them: heavy and lingering like that fog. They wanted something. I had no idea what it was. I could feel they wanted something.
I had put my socks on inside out. I had to take them off and turn them “right side out” (the lumps of loose string facing thread in) and put them back on. This focus; this “little-extra-to-get-it-right” time with my socks gave me the chance to step out of the routine and feel him there. He was close: very, very close. Small acts of routine behavior are often the bridges into contemplative space. Somehow the repetitive nature of routine enables us to step off the bridge and into the Stream-of Life. Routine can plunge us into the underworld—the world of “that which is within”.
Routine