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Embracing the Darkness: A Journey of Death and Transformation

Oct 25, 2023

In this episode of the Living Out Love Podcast, we discuss the complex topic of death and transformation and how to navigate the dark night of the soul while maintaining love.

Using metaphors of a womb and rebirth, we explore the idea that death is not something to be feared but rather a necessary part of growth and change. With heartfelt support and spiritual insights, we invite you to embrace your journey of change and transformation, knowing there is always something beautiful waiting on the other side.

Join us as we delve into Khalil Gibran's writing on death and offer practical tools for navigating these times of transition with love, compassion, and resilience. Take a deep breath, allow yourself to feel all emotions, and know that you are not alone in this journey of life and death. We are here to hold space for you and support you with resources in the show notes. We are sending love and light to all who listen.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

-Embracing the darkness can lead to spiritual growth and renewal: The darkness, often associated with fear and grief, can also be seen as a womb for rebirth.

-Surrendering control can lead us to a deeper state of surrender: True surrender means letting go of everything we hold onto, even the negative aspects.

-Our beliefs about death can impact how we view darkness and transformation: If we see death as an expansion rather than something scary, we can approach difficult times with more resilience and trust.

-Transformation requires both death and rebirth: Just as a butterfly leaves its cocoon or a child leaves the womb, transformation involves letting go of our old selves to make room for something new.

-Death is not an end but a new beginning: Khalil Gibran's words remind us that death is not the end of our journey but rather a transition to something greater.

LINKS

Self-Care Tools

Kahlil Gibran Poem: Death

TRANSCRIPT

Death and the afterlife as a medium.

Amy Hageman  00:00

Hello love's Welcome back to the living out love Podcast. I'm just the title of it is hitting me because living out love and today we're talking all about death, which implies the opposite of living. But yeah, so we're talking all about that today. And I, I've been thinking about Jeff a lot lately. You know, in my personal life, I haven't known that many people that have died. I've lost grandparents, I've lost a friend here there have lost a child. But when I say that, it sounds like I've lost a lot of people. For my age, I really haven't. I haven't lost that many people. And as a medium though, I have heard all sorts of stories about death. Tragic and abrupt stories, violent stories, mysterious stories, I've heard stories about suicide, whether accidental or on purpose, you know, medical death, just all different types of ways that we leave this physical experience. And the interesting thing about being a medium and working with the term death is, you know, in our society, we consider death to be an ending. It's like the end of life is when that's when you die, that is what death is. That is a medium when I communicate with people, there their life is far from ended. And often, they are even doing activities that they longed to do while on earth.

Some souls are studying, they're being mentored, some souls have jobs, and they have roles that they need to perform for the greater good of all the souls that would be impacted by them doing that job. And, you know, honestly, sometimes I kind of wonder if I'm just making it all up like, am I am I just making this up that I'm saying this soul that has this job kind of working as a teacher with like, younger soul, like, I sometimes wonder if I'm making it up, but everything else that I will have told the client about what their loved one is telling me, will ring true. So it doesn't really make sense to not trust everything else that they're showing me. So I am inclined to believe that when we pass on our souls have just as much of a life as we do have now in our physical form. That is what they always tell me, that is what they show me. And I think many of us have been sold this idea that the afterlife if there is one, that it's this fairly, one dimensional, perhaps two dimensional experience that we pass on, we go to heaven, that we're with God and the angels and that it's just weird, completely enmeshed with love and energy, but it's this bland sort of experience, like all of a sudden, we're just one with love, and then we're enlightened. And then that's like the end, it's still sort of an ending of sorts, because it is like, well, now you're one with God. So that's the end.

Embracing death as a transformative experience. 

03:21

But I am over time, I'm changing my belief. And I'm believing that actually, it's the human experience that is less dimensional, then the, quote, after life experience, perhaps this three dimensional experience that we have, has is fewer dimensions than whatever is going on, when we leave our bodies. And I don't, you know, I don't know, we won't know until we get on the other side. But I'm really inclined to believe that the experience is more vast and more complex and more varied than ours, that we come down to this planet to have this physical experience, to learn these lessons, to have this type of matter, to forget that we're all connected. And that perhaps when we move on, it's a totally different experience, but it's still a vast, complex, dimensional experience. And so I've just been thinking about death and how we think of it in society versus how souls describe it coming through.

 

And I imagine kind of the paradox of clients coming to me wanting to know did they make the right decision regarding their loved ones passing? Was their loved one, you know, in a state of despair was their loved one scare like all of these really heavy questions about death and then their loved ones on the other side. Genuinely, you couldn't care less like it's over. And they're having this totally different experience now, and they're totally present in their life as it is now. And so I've just really been thinking about it because as a medium, I'm at the center of this contrast of how we've been conditioned to believe about death, and how souls come to me to talk about death. And so I really am wondering how can we understand death, not as an ending, but as a transition. Or perhaps as an ending, that is also a beginning. You know, in our human experience, someone's death is absolutely an ending for us, their friends, their work their home, you know, we will miss a souls physical presence. So it is an end, even though that souls going to go on to have this experience, there is a depth there, there is an ending there.

05:57

But it is also a beginning. For that soul, it's the beginning of them going and having whatever life looks like without this physical matter meet suit. And for us, it's a new beginning, okay? What does my life look like now that that person doesn't have a physical presence? This is a new beginning. And perhaps it starts as a sad beginning, but it is a new beginning, nonetheless. So I really am just inviting us all to embrace this idea that death is not an ending. And if it is an ending, inherit, and that ending is also a beginning, it's a transition. And so why does this matter? Why are we even talking about this? It matters because we are all going to die. And not just at the end of our physical lifetimes. But we all we all die all the time in our waking life. You will never again be who you were before you learned how to walk. If you're a person that's lost your virginity and you have you have had sex before, like you will never again be the person that does not know what sex is. And so that version of you is dead, you cannot go back to that you are now the person that knows how to walk that knows what sex is, you are now a person that has had these experiences that have changed you at a cellular or hormonal, muscular, low level. So we all have deaths, some of them are great, learning how to walk is great sex is great. Like those are great deaths, but they are deaths. And also things happen us circumstances happen us that we wouldn't choose, we lose jobs, we lose loved ones, and parts of us die with those losses.

So who we were before the losses before those events, is a different person than who we are after. So a part of us dies, even, even if it's just a partial part of us, even if it's not the laying down of our body, a part of us dies and a part of us is reborn, we have to become something or someone new. In order to adapt to what life has handed us. Someone who looks for unemployment and considers a new career, someone who creates a new family for themselves, someone who has more responsibility than they used to, like these are all examples of being reborn. And, you know, as I'm talking to you, I just have this image of birth, can you imagine what it's like to be squeezed out of a birth canal, or have your a c section baby to be kind of yanked from your womb, it's probably not the most gentle process for a lot of us all the time. Some births are gentle and loving, and that's wonderful. But these rebirths can feel violent and traumatic. And so can death. This process of transformation is essentially what we're talking about. And it can be intense, it can be dangerous. But there are always going to be deaths and rebirths within life. And so how we think about death is much more important than we would imagine. Because when these things happen, I'm thinking back to COVID lock down which I was going to talk about later in this podcast episode but when the COVID lockdown happens, it was very traumatic for me and at a very subconscious level at a physiological level.

Death, rebirth, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

10:02

There was a part of me that thought I was dying. And I knew that I was not I knew that, okay, my life has changed and I am adjusting. This is this is just what life looks like I knew I was having a traumatic response. But my physiological self thought I was dying. Because the world is I knew it was over. And so there was a great many parts of me that had to die, in order for me to become who I needed to become in that scenario. And so if death is scary, it adds a level of trauma and turmoil to what is already a very difficult situation. But if we can conceptualize death as being transformational, rather than an ending, as being difficult, rather than scary, and not always even as difficult, then we can allow these changes to happen with more ease and with more grace and compassion. And I want to just remind you, when I say like we are dying all the time, I mean it quite physically, our liver cells replace themselves every 300 to 500 days, our skeleton replaces itself every 10 years, because our cells have to die to give birth to new cells. So literally, in our bodies, we are dying all the time, so that we can create the new. And yes, some cells are dying all the time think sperm cells, they live like what three days, where some of the cells in our brain, we die with the same cells we were born with. So it's yes, some cells have a different lifespan than others. But there are parts of us dying at all times. We are very familiar with this process.

 

Intuitively in our bodies, we understand that parts of us have to die in order to create the new. And so what am I really talking about when I'm talking about death, and I'm saying we need to talk about death, and we need to understand death, I'm talking about dark nights of the soul. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about periods in our lives. That can feel excruciating. And often, you know, one reason why I equate death with dark nights of the soul, dark nights of the soul, we usually pair in our mind with something that happens to us quote that we didn't at a conscious level that we didn't choose. And very few of us choose our deaths. At least not consciously. And so we have the depth and dark nights of the soul have this theme in common where it feels like it's happening to us, especially at the egoic level. at a soul level, we may have some understanding that we are completely in alignment. But at a personality level, it can feel like I am a victim of this life, or I am a victim of this death perhaps. And I want to come back to the COVID lock down as being a dark night of the soul as being a death. Collectively, let's think of just a few things that happened. How many of us our lives completely changed our we lost our jobs or our jobs changed, how and where we did our jobs changed how we spent our time changed, how we saw our friends and family.

Embracing darkness as a catalyst for rebirth.

13:54

All of that changed. Many of us today are unrecognizable to who we were in March of 2020. Not all of us, but many of us are. And those of us who our circumstances look the same on the outside, we still carry with us the the impact of understanding that all that we used to take for granted can change like this. You know, especially here in the United States. There were very many of us that took many things for granted. Whether it was drinking water, whether it was food supply, like lots of our systematized infrastructure we just assumed would always be there. And so, having that all turned off like this. We all now collectively kind of carry that awareness with us. This sense of fragility or impermanence in the way we exist in the world, that it could change. And hopefully we can carry that knowledge, not with the sense of foreboding, or of it being dangerous, just with the sense of c'est la vie. And the COVID lock down, you know, wasn't a dark night of the soul for everybody was for me. But consider the rebirths that have happened since then. Labor unions are on the rise, what people are expecting and demanding from employers has changed. Where people choose to live has changed. What people want out of their homes has changed.

So there has been a rebirth of sorts. I mean, for me, I have an entirely new job. This business was, it wasn't it didn't happen within months of the COVID lock down. But this business living out loved was born out of my dark night of the soul that started during COVID continued long after that, but it started during COVID. And this was a rebirth for me. So again, why does this matter? Why am I talking about death and our definition of death? How we define death is how we experience death. So if our definition of death is scary, and death is scary, if our definition is loving, if it's a loving, Soul expanding transformation, then death is loving. Our definition is gentle than death is gentle, it matters because we are dying all of the time. Literally and figuratively. And it matters because in a literal sense, our loved ones will die. You are not going to outlive everybody that you love. And we will have to live with their death. And we will go into darkness. This dark night of the soul. And no matter how we define death, I personally do believe that death is a darkness.

The process of death is a darkness. It may not be scary. It may not be permanent. But I do believe it is darkness. Much like a dark night of the soul. Meaning we do not see for a period of time. There is a darkness there. There is a mystery there. But I love what Valerie core said Valerie core is a racial justice activist. She has a book I think it's called a revolutionary love. Valerie core gave a famous speech after the 2016 election. She's a racial justice activist. And at the time white supremacist were taking the stage and saying this was their time, white supremacy. This is our country and we take it back. And so obviously, as a racial justice activist, that would be a dark night. But she gave a speech and she said, What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb. She was suggesting that perhaps this rise of the white supremacy was not just the end of the country as we had believed it to be, but was also the beginning of what the country could be reborn into.

Death and rebirth through the lens of spirituality and personal growth. 

18:52

So perhaps, my darkness during the COVID lockdown was not just the darkness of the dyeing of all those parts of me that I was before. Believe me, I had a different job at which I excelled. I had a different wardrobe a different identity. And there was a darkness to letting all of that go. But it was also the darkness of the womb. That has created my Amy Hagerman dot love business, my living out love platform. The darkness can be both the tomb of what is dying and the womb of what is wanting to be reborn. And so I want you to be with that. What if the darkness you are in is not the darkness of death, but the darkness of preparing to be reborn. Can you hold space for oath.

And I encourage you all out there to get support, whether it's with me or with anybody else, in your darkness and in your rebirth. You know, as a mom with three very different labors, and just anybody that has ever seen or read or heard anything about childbirth, trust, that birth is beautiful, it's spiritual, it's sacred. It's also often messy, and surprising, it can be unpredictable. It's not always, but treat any death and rebirth and your life with sacred reverence. Appropriate for whatever it is. I think back to, I'm tearing up just thinking about it, I think back to the dark nights that I had at the beginning of COVID. And I think I wish I had allowed myself to grieve all that I was losing. Because I didn't allow the energy of that grief, I kept trying to suppress it, I kept trying to, quote, tough it out. I just carried the grief around with me, in the darkness in the womb of what was wanting to be reborn. If I had allowed myself to grieve, and I'm not judging myself, I did the best I could at the time. But if I could have been more present with my emotion, if I could have allowed that grief instead of just jumping to, but I'm okay and I got it and I can manage this.

There would have been more space in the womb, for compassion for imagination, for nurturing, you know, the womb has an umbilical cord, it has that Divine Source energy being pumped into you. So if you think of the darkness as a womb it has matter it has fluid, it has stuff in there with you. And so can you allow your womb? Is there space in there for the rebirth? In the darkness? Can you feel the grief, the fear, the shame, the whatever it is, that's in your dark night of the soul? Can you feel that stuff, so that that energy can dissipate. So that there is more room, in your womb, for divine source to feed you. With whatever it is that you most need. It might be energy, it might be rest, it might be compassion, it might be inspiration. You might you might be at a place where I was where I was just like, I do not care what you tell me to do God, I'm going to do it. Because I am out of ideas. I'm so out of ideas. You tell me what to do. And I swear I am going to do it. I literally was at a surrender point. There have been times in my life before where I thought I had surrendered where I thought I had no skin in the game. But then when I truly got to that point, there is nothing else like it. There's nothing else like it. And to get to that point, I had to be willing to let go of all that I was holding on to in the dark.

23:54

Sometimes we hold on to our grief, our fear our blame, we hold on to that stuff. Because we don't know what else is in the dark with us. And so we hold on to our connection to the past even though it's negative sometimes. But if we can release it we make room for whatever it is that Divine Source wants to give us. Energetically compassion renewal, a balm of fluid for us to just be in as we prepare for our rebirth who you are in the darkness is often directly related to what you believe about death. Death isn't an expansion And but there are many, many contractions before there is a rebirth. So I just leave all of these words with you all today just to be with and to think about in your life, where are you experiencing darkness. And if you are in the throes of the grief and the fear, I am not saying don't feel the fear, you shouldn't be feeling fear, of course not. Allow whatever is your process and the darkness but hold space, that the darkness is the womb of your rebirth. And the death is not so scary. It may be difficult, it may be dark, but it is not inherently scary. And we may not know what life is going to look like when we leave this darkness, whether it's the butterfly leaving the cocoon, whether it's the child leaving the womb, or whether it's the soul leaving the body. We may not know what it is that we are going to be reborn into. But we can trust that there will be something because we see it reflected all the time. When we connect with our souls on the other side, when babies come out of the womb when butterflies come out of the cocoon. When trees that have gone into winter bloom in the spring, we have so many examples of death and rebirth. So take heart, my loves just because it's hard doesn't mean it's scary. And just because it's scary doesn't mean it's wrong. Just know that I'm sending you all such fortitude, and holding space for all of your dark night of the soul death and rebirth experiences that I'm reminded I've been reading Khalil Gibran I've just we're at like 30 minutes, I'm just gonna read. Oh my gosh, just the very end of Khalil Gibran is writing on death.

27:40

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountaintop, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance. And I encourage you to read Khalil Gibran is writing on death read the whole thing. It's so beautiful, but I just want to leave you with those words. When the earth shall claim your limbs then you shall truly dance. As a dancer myself, I sometimes daydream about not being encumbered by my body about having a movement style that's not limited to what this body can do. And so there's a great part of my soul that resonates with that. So anyway, loves I will. I will just leave you with that. I hope this has been helpful my musings on death. And if you are going through any sort of transformation look in the show notes of this show. I have a giveaway for you some meditation and some a PDF of you know how to take care of yourself during times of change. And I'm sending so much divine love and resilience and connection. To all of you listening. Talk to you next week loves bye!

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