There is a much-loved dream held by many people in our culture – the dream of dying in our sleep. This fantasy mainly arises out of fear of the pain and discomfort that may accompany the dying process. But do we really want to be asleep as we die? Those of us longing to die consciously do not want to miss this last occurrence of our lifetime.
It truly is possible to be conscious as we die, to be present to the entirety of our experience during our last moments in physical form. Rather than dying in a fog of fear or pretending as though death were not happening, we can open ourselves fully to the final event of our lifetimes. In fact, we can use our dying process itself to
become awake, to wake up to the life that is flowing through us even as that flowing ebbs and eventually ceases. Conscious death and dying invites us to maintain awareness about our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual realms as we surrender to everything we are experiencing and attempt to enter into deeper levels of awareness in every moment.
Awakening to death involves using all of our processes of dying, both physical death and each of the other deaths we experience in a lifetime, to become more awake and aware, to become more present to and in our lives. As we awaken to death, we use dying as a portal through which to approach each of our days. The Way of Conscious Death presents a holistic dialogue that examines conscious dying not merely as a concept but as a practice. It offers practical wisdom and support in all areas of death exploration and gathers together the multitude of riches we have available to us today in regard to conscious dying, so that we may both awaken to our deaths and awaken through our deaths.