April 17, 2005
Taking Death as My Teacher
by Mari Ziolkowski
Between the age of twenty-eight and thirty, I was faced with the fact that death did not only happen to old people -- people my grandparents age. It could happen to me.
I was in a plane that got struck by lightning, and knew fear for the first time. I narrowly avoided a head on collision, and knew fear again. Two friends my age died -- one violently and one of a sexually transmitted disease.
I found no solace in the belief of resurrection, of being reborn. What I knew was fear. What I was scared of was 'ending,' and not knowing what would happen -- where I would go. Fear of not having time to do what I felt I needed to do here. Of not having my life mean anything. Of not having learned how to love. I couldn't understand the significance of being taken so young, of not having a chance to really 'be' in the world, to really learn how to live, to be able to leave one's mark. The tailspin began. I began the search for a spirituality that could help me deal with what I was seeing and what I was feeling. That meant going within, and reclaiming parts of myself. That meant seeking community. That meant "feeling the fear and doing it anyway."
As I liked to travel, I continued to fly. But not without fear and trepidation every time. Every journey I took confronted me with my fear of death. Each time I flew I was forced to take death as my teacher. I was forced to deal with the panic and fear when the flight got too bumpy, or passed into clouds that reminded me of the thunderstorm in which we had been struck by lightning.
Each time I chose to be sexual, chose to live my beliefs and challenge the dominant paradigm of how sexual a woman 'should be,' I in some way felt I was taking my life in my hands. To consciously choose to be sexual in the age of AIDS meant taking death as my teacher in another area of my life. Conditioned in my early years to expect punishment if I broke the rules, I chose to not let this fear control me, or control what I felt was part of my path -- understanding the freedom of sexuality. To journey, I had to confront death. To liberate myself I had to confront death. To continue to understand oppression I had to face death.
After journeying to several places in Central America, I knew I wished to live in Guatemala. Learning Spanish, learning about the culture, and understanding how people there lived with the specter of the death squads -- of being tortured and killed if they stood up, or were even associated with, people who were involved in human rights, were part of my quest. I had for some time been fascinated with the stories of King, Gandhi, and Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero who stood up for the oppressed at the risk of their own lives, and felt that the Guatemalans had something to teach me about such courage. But I also knew that if I got involved, I risked the same fate. My compromise was to dialogue with my Spanish teachers each week, after building rapport, about the human rights issue. Almost all of them who felt safe enough to talk relayed stories about themselves, or someone in their families who had been disappeared or killed.
How these people continued living in such an atmosphere of fear and death? Clearly, for my own reasons, I wanted to know…. What I found on my journey was that the Guatemalans used all the strategies that humans used in any difficult situation: denial, repression, addiction, depression, humor, faith, confrontation, love. They used all of these to access the courage to live. As I confronted my own fears of death, I summoned up love. All I could do, not knowing when or how it would happen, was to truly love myself, to be present for myself in the most loving way I could. That, regardless of what may be, or not be on the other side, was what I could do in each moment for myself. That is what I brought home with me from Guatemala.
It was when I returned that I had occasion to see a movie called Thunderheart. It was a movie I was to see over and over again. In it, a part Native-American FBI agent from Washington D.C. is sent to a Lakota reservation to help investigate a homocide. He comes in overly aggressive, identifying with the oppressor. Then he starts to realize things are not as they seem. He starts having visions of Wounded Knee (a massacre of Native Americans in the late 1800's), and going into altered states as he interacts with the Native people in his investigation. The medicine man tells him that 'Thunderheart' has returned to save his people. The young agent starts to realize that there is a confrontation going on between the Traditionals and the tribal council over land rights. Slowly it dawns on him that the senior FBI agent may be involved in the string of homocides himself. In the end, he gets proof, and is about to flee when he remembers something the medicine man told him. "Go to the stronghold." Knowing there will be no escape this way, he leaves the only road out of the reservation anyway and cuts across land to the 'stronghold.' There, he is cornered by the senior FBI agent, and is asked what he wants in exchange for the proof. He drops his gun and turns his back, ready to face death rather than be an accomplice to injustice. As he walks toward the cliff expecting his death any second, the camera breaks to the top of the cliffs, where all of the old men, women and children are standing with rifles.
Together with the power of calling in loving energy, I have held this snapshot in my mind on many an airplane trip, during many emotional wrestling matches with the fear of death in the middle of the night. The phrase on which I meditate to accompany it is a Native American saying: "today is a good day to die." In this way I call forth my courage in the face of fear. . In this way I remind myself that we all must come to this place sometime. In this way I remind myself that there is another way of viewing death. In this way I remind myself not to stop living because I have discovered fear of dying. In this way I remind myself that there are those who face down death in order to really live.
A few years later, when Princess Diana was killed in a car accident after claiming her independence from the English monarchy, and JFK Jr. was killed in a plane crash -- I mourned their loss at such early ages (my age), and the loss of their promise to the world. I didn't understand why I was so emotional about people I didn't even know. But they were symbolic of youth and beauty cut down in its prime -- without having time to move into their greatness. If it could happen to them, it could happen to me. Promise unfulfilled. What was the purpose in this? Once again, I was confronted with what seemed to me senseless death.
In this way and for all these reasons, I have taken death as a teacher. It is no coincidence that Kali, the Hindu Goddess of creation and destruction, the Tantric goddess that faces down death in the cremation grounds, has come to me in altered states. It is no coincidence the message I received in a recent meditation was to "honor my death every day." It is no coincidence that I experienced a shamanic dismemberment in a drum journey. And that, as in the past, I am drawn to books about life after death, about the bardo (after-death state), about men and women that have the courage to truly live in the face of death. I came into the study of alternative spiritual traditions speaking against the shamanic path of death and dismemberment as a way towards psychic integration. Little did I know I was already on the journey myself….
And, little by little through these processes, death is losing its sting…. For example, since the encounter with Kali, images of skulls have occasionally come to me in meditation and my response has been -- oh, there you are, death. I know you. This is amazing. Such as this would have scared me not long ago. A transformational process seems to be at work. The fierce images I drew in mandala form &endash; the ones that so unnerved me at the beginning of my altered state work -- have given me a new framework for understanding death symbolism. As well as does the goddess of birth, death and regeneration. I am coming to not just know intellectually, but feel deep inside, death as a natural cycle, as a part of the earth's processes, as something that claims us all in the end….
Memories from twelve years on the Texas-Mexico border come back to me -- how beautiful the Mexican cemeteries were (how well cared for), the custom of taking favorite food and drink and having a picnic with the deceased ancestors on the Day of the Dead. I remember journeying to Guanajuato, Mexico and seeing the display of the 'mumias' (mummies). Seeing all the skeleton art in the local curio shops, I remember thinking -- this is macabre! How can the Mexican culture be so comfortable with death? Also, I remember the beautiful sugar skull that an Aztec friend of mine brought me one year. And not to be forgotten are the beautifully decorated crucifixes that loved ones would plant at the scene of a fatal accident. The ongoing connection of this culture with the world of the dead, the world of the ancestors, speaks to me now.
The fact that I was willing to let my head be bitten off by an extraterrestrial being with an alligator head in a recent shamanic journey -- that I allowed myself to be dismembered -- is amazing. And the following dream scene I would have previously avoided like the plague: I realize that a friend is so angry she wants to kill me. I say, o.k., bring it on (the fight), and feel I am capable of killing her. When the opportunity presents itself, I decided no -- I will let her kill me instead. When she came up to me with her weapon, I was expecting death, but she too decided not to kill. How strange -- accepting death, and then not dying. Similar to the near-death experiences of many I have read about. Is that what was happening to me on a dream state level?
The second part of the dream included the following: standing on a dock, looking for my lost cat, I see that it is about to get eaten by a shark. As the shark comes towards us, my brother throws me in the water. I knew I would be eaten, but at the last moment I evaded the shark with magic. What was interesting was that when I woke up I thought -- well, maybe I should have allowed the shark to eat me in the dream to see what happened. This type of response would never have occurred to me before the encounters with the dark goddess and recent drum journeys. Something is clearly shifting, changing and rearranging itself in my psyche.
Where will all this lead? What is it preparing me for? The death of my own fear? Death of all that no longer serves? The death of someone close to me? My own physical death? Well, yes. If I am lucky the former. And being human, and mortal, eventually the latter. Time will tell….
PostScript: Since writing this piece, 9/11 has taken place. As have the illness and death of my father. A dear friend of fifteen years stands on the brink of crossing over. Several people close to me have been diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses. Five extended family members have died, two young and three advanced in years. The confrontation with death has come very close. On a literal, emotional, collective and archetypal level, I have been forced to stare it in the face. Clearly I was being prepared.
However, when a loved one departs, the real mystery presents itself. One day we are here, the next day we are not. Making meaning in the vacuum of their presence becomes the task. Psychic mediums who communicate with those who have crossed over say 'we do not die.' That we go on learning in another form, on another level, and we return again and again and again to the earth plane. On a core level, I find myself relaxing into this truth. I find myself relaxing into my own mortality. Or immortality, as the case may be. The journey, as they say, continues….
Bibliography
Edinger, Edward (1994) Anatomy of the Psyche, Chicago: Open Court
Grof, Stanislav (2000) Healing Potential of Non-Ordinary States (Class slide
Presentation) San Francisco, California Institute of Integral Studies
Jeffers, Susan (1987) Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, New York: Fawcett Columbine
Metzner, Ralph (1998) The Unfolding Self, Novato, California: Origin Press
Morrison, Jim and the Doors (1960's Record Album) Break on Through to the Other Side
ThunderHeart (1990's) Movie
Mari is the Assistant Editor at Awakened Woman. She holds a PhD in Women's Spirituality from CIIS, San Francisco.