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\u201cWell. . . if you were my wife,\u201d my young doctor began to answer my question. \u00a0Faced with a challenging decision, I had asked, \u201cIf you were me, what would you choose?\u201d \u00a0But he was not able even to imagine being me; the closest he could approximate was envisioning his wife as me.<\/span><\/p>\n This is not unusual. \u00a0Throughout my journey with chronic, serious illness I have had countless experiences of feeling just how different the people around me \u2013 doctors, nurses, friends, family members \u2013 may perceive themselves to be from me.<\/span><\/p>\n And my guess is that each of us has distanced ourselves in many ways from some of the people for whom we care. \u00a0We do this as End-of-Life workers, we do this as beloved family members, and we do this as close friends.<\/span><\/p>\n Often, the distinction between \u201cme\u201d and \u201cyou\u201d is absolutely necessary to maintain. \u00a0A nurse must measure my blood pressure and not her own. \u00a0My doctors perform tests and procedures on this body, not another. \u00a0\u00a0Furthermore, it is not helpful for us to assume we know what a dying person is encountering. \u00a0\u00a0No matter how similar our experiences may be to theirs, we are not encountering what they are in this very moment.<\/span><\/p>\n But one of the strongest \u2013 and most painful — dualities that we encounter as we are dying is the division between ourselves and those around us. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Dying is lonely. \u00a0With a terminal diagnosis, we often are distinguished as \u201cother\u201d and segregated from our families, communities, and cultures. \u00a0The immediate feeling I had upon receiving my first diagnosis was is one of being pushed outside — outside of my normal situation, outside of my social structure. This process of dying always seems to include separation from our communities, from our roles within our families, from our self-identity, from our good health, from our dreams for the future. \u00a0Each of these feels ripped out of our hands. \u00a0Particularly in a world where young, fit, and healthy seem to be the only acceptable ways to be, we can become immediate outsiders once we are labeled by our status as terminally ill. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Regardless of all the support systems we may have and the companions who walk alongside us during these death walks, we each ultimately must journey this path alone. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Likewise, our actual experience of aloneness can be particularly agonizing, whether that separation is physical, such as during the endless nights we may spend isolated in a hospital room, or emotional, as when ones we love distance themselves from us out of fear. \u00a0With each of my death journeys, this feeling of being ostracized, of being marked an outsider, is often more painful than are my physical symptoms.<\/span><\/p>\n During my second journey with dying, I felt more isolated than I have at any other time in my life. \u00a0On a communal level, part of what may have created some of the pain and anguish I experienced during this death walk was a lack of support. \u00a0Treated by my hometown obstetrician and gynecologist, I found myself repeatedly trying to explain my medical condition to them. \u00a0With no local specialized cardiologist in the field of adult congenital heart disease, I had no professionals in my life who understood the complexity of my experience. \u00a0So I often felt unheard, even by those responsible for my care. \u00a0In addition, I did not seek support from anyone in my personal life either. \u00a0Not wanting to burden them during this time when we were all celebrating the birth of my daughter, I hid from them the severity of my condition, which led to further feelings of isolation. \u00a0I feel quite certain that this period of self-induced seclusion significantly affected my experience during this dying process.<\/span><\/p>\n This sense of separation is actually vital to the process of dying consciously. \u00a0Awareness and comprehension of all the levels of separation involved in surrender are fundamental to the route of surrender. \u00a0When we begin each lifetime, there is a way that we are part of a system even before our birth. \u00a0We are born into community; indeed, community is something that most of us have before we have any sense of it. \u00a0It therefore becomes a significant background to who we are. \u00a0In order to release everything in this lifetime consciously, there must be some separation.<\/span><\/p>\n The distinctions created by physical form are real and significant. \u00a0And they are not the entire truth. \u00a0The bigger truth is that all life is connected in some beautiful, elemental way. \u00a0The extinction of one tiny form of insect can affect harvests throughout the world. \u00a0Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us that in a single piece of paper exists not only the tree from which is was made but the cloud that produced the rain and the sun that joined with that rain to help the tree to grow. \u00a0On a intimate, personal level, the air I breathe as I lie in my hospital bed flows into my doctor\u2019s \u00a0lungs and becomes part of her body. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For many of us who are dying, encounters of union become more frequent, strong, and poignant. . . at the same time as experiences of separation are acutely known and felt.<\/span><\/p>\n We can feel when those around us are open to us in ways that inspire union; and we become intensely aware that someone is keeping himself\/herself closed from experiencing union with us. \u00a0There is a big difference between someone who is truly there with us and those who distance themselves from us by maintaining lines of division. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And we can feel the separation. \u00a0When those taking care of us have opened to union \u2013 either through spiritual practice or just through the act of being a human and occasionally welcoming the unitive possibilities around them, it feels different to us.<\/span><\/p>\n All wisdom traditions talk about union, but how can we actually experience it? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This is not about establishing a connection through stories and information \u2013 through words at all. \u00a0Rather this union is something we experience when we open to the world around us. \u00a0We are walking at sunset, and suddenly that gaze into the horizon is a portal through which the horizon, the sunset, and our body all seem to disappear into a cohesive oneness. \u00a0We look into a baby\u2019s eyes or those of our beloved, and the lines between \u201cus\u201d and \u201cthem\u201d are erased. \u00a0The more we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to experiencing the union that is already here, the more accessible these experiences may become.<\/span><\/p>\n In order to be open to experiencing union with people who are dying, it is helpful to have done our own Illuminative and Purgative work (and to continue to do this work throughout our lifetimes). \u00a0Just as with Illuminative and Purgative work, Unitive practices do not make anything happen. \u00a0I can decide to experience oneness with the flower in my garden, sit in front of it for hours, and not encounter any sense of union at all. \u00a0With these practices, what we are doing, rather, is positioning ourselves so that we may be ready to receive the grace of union.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thewayofconsciousdeath.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/doctor-with-plastic-glove-holding-his-hand-at-distance-F0J48W.jpg\")
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