After my stroke, in 2003, I
had a near death experience (NDE). My NDE was very unusual. So much so, that
I’ve not seen or heard anything like it. I want to write about it. To let
people know what I went through, and to excavate the experience; to see what
light it might shed upon the experience that is occurring globally today. I do
this with a queasy feeling in my gut, because of the uneasy self-revelation
such a course of action asks of me, and because of the level of heartache
involved in looking at the global scene. Having lived, and been wised up by the
experience of near death, I think this is essentially a hopeful inquiry, which
has to be painful, before it reveals something better.
I perched on death’s
threshold for a long time (nearly 4 years). During this long uncertain,
unknowing period, I lived (if you could call it that) as a terminal patient. My
planning horizon was never more than 24 hours. I was close enough to death that
I could go at anytime. I had no control, and could only exist in a very narrow
and tenuous way. I didn’t die. That is why almost no one (but me) sees this as
a NDE. I was close to death, but I didn’t cross over.
Like other NDE’s I had a great
shift in my perspective, but I find that the perspective rendered by this experience
is not of much interest to others. I didn’t die, and come back with reassuring
stories of the other side. I write about it now anyway, because I think that
dying in this way, becoming nearly extinct, and believing oneself done, is very
relevant to the global reality we find ourselves in.
Nearly dying taught me some
things, things that took awhile to sink in, things that have become so real
that I have been altered forever. Dying has had some very personal meaning for
me, but this tract is not really about that. Instead, what it is about, is how
living with the sure knowledge of my impending death, and losing functionality
on a regular basis, changed my consciousness, and is leading me to live quite differently.
My NDE has a lot of pertinence to the loss of life that is happening — with
accelerating impact — upon our biosphere.
Life, through mass
extinctions, and changes to our environment, is slowly being brought close to
the edge. Anxiety about what’s going to happen; is like the apprehension I felt
as I realized I was on an apparent terminal trajectory. Oh sure, almost
naturally, I began to savor life more as I was losing it, but so too did my
regrets clarify, and more importantly, to this way of seeing things, I
discovered that the life I led was not actually my own. My life was actually
Life’s life. By nearly dying I came to the realization that I was part of
Nature, part of the whole of existence.
I have tried all of the
practices designed to convey how intrinsically woven, we humans are, into the
natural environment. I was a naturalist, and one who meditated, did spiritual
practices, went on vision fasts, and became an eco-psychologist. I thought I
got it, but the truth of it didn’t come home to me, until I nearly died, and I was
forced by my own impending demise, to grasp that I was not only part of Life,
but that I am Life. Everything has changed as a consequence. Now I see the
vulnerability of Life on Earth differently. I don’t know if humanity will
persist, but I do sense that Life will, and that we humans are going to learn
as never before. The death of our species, and many others, will come. I don’t
know if it will be now, or later, but I think, based upon my experience that a
time of mass learning is here.
Death, I can tell you, has
very sobering affects. It brings one surely to what really matters. Life,
strangely, always benefits. The life of this planet, the thin blue biosphere
that so many of us treasure, will benefit too. Humanity needs, I think, to
vividly experience its part, not only in the whole, but as the whole. When Life
suffers, we suffer. This needs to be clear, and for me, I had to nearly die, to
really get that.
Dying was never really an
option for me, it was close —I learned that I am no longer mine — Life brought
this body back from the brink, but this living organism isn’t occupied in the
same way. This is the nature of my prayer now, that suffering will wise us all
up, that we may learn how to better occupy this place. Death may be favoring us
— the way the mystic’s say it is.
I am evidence that tragedy
can be instructive, that it can lead to new unseen possibilities. I don’t relish being stripped down, having no
sure way to orient, becoming only a quivering mass, but I do now know that Life
can, and does, work miracles even with its own dregs.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
For more pieces like this, go to www.elderssalon.blogspot.com
(2010 thru 2013) and http://www.elderssalon2.blogspot.com (2014 on)
To hear archived versions of our radio program Growing An Elder Culture go to www.elderculture.com
To read excerpts, or otherwise learn, about Embracing Life: Toward A Psychology of
Interdependence go to http://www.davidgoff.net
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