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The Grace of Death: Lifting Our Shadow
by Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

The path to the self at a soul level can be defined as a path which widens continuously until there is nothing left which is unacceptable. When we come to accept anything and everything about ourselves or others compassionately, we are close to being unified. This path of acceptance has been defined by many great world teachers. This was the lesson Jesus sought to teach in asking the crowd gathered to stone a prostitute to death when he said, "Whoever has not sinned, cast the first stone." He was asking those people to accept in themselves what they could not accept in that woman. We are continually asked everyday to accept in ourselves what we cannot accept in others. But we do not realize it. We simply continue to relegate what we find objectionable to our own shadows or assign those elements to others. By reversing the trend of resistance and rejection, we can open to the teachings of acceptance. Thich Nhat Hanh, in his poem Call Me By My True Names, expresses the concept of holding both the acceptable (joy) and the unacceptable (pain) at once to attain a state of wholeness.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,

so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Whether or not we are able to come to accept that which have sought to reject over the course of our lives, the psyche has a blanket acceptance contract-death. It engulfs us completely, wherever we are on our path toward integration and self-understanding.

Nonacceptance creates an energetic barrier between the unacceptable part of the self and the rest of our life energy. As these energetic blocks multiply, we become further and further separated from ourselves.

Death finds whatever we have relegated to the shadow and accepts it more fully than we are able to. Death opens its arms to everything. Yet, death is probably the most universally denied aspect of our life. What freedom we could have if we found death acceptable-if we could approach it as an integrated self with minimal resistance.

If we commit to embrace that which we once found untenable about ourselves, we can enter into death with as much resolved about our lives-and our death-as possible. If we do not have this opportunity to embrace every part of ourselves by the time we die, we have a lot to learn about the nature of grace and acceptance from death.

We can see in others what we often cannot see in ourselves except through the mirror of relationship. Inevitably, death interrupts our dance of relationship with others, but it need not interrupt the flow of understandings that arise out of that dance. When a loved one is dying or has died, our defenses to all the of the complicated aspects (usually, those aspects which we find unacceptable) in our relationship with that person are often shaken. If we are lucky, we are less able to keep in place all the unconscious agreements to keep hidden our lack of acceptance of each other.

We can look at the way our relationship with the dying person affects our ability to be honest with ourselves. It would be ideal if we had the courage to undertake this task without the finality of death highlighting the need to resolve unconscious issues held in relationship.

We do not willingly undertake this task of understanding for many reasons. Most of all, I think we fear being subjected to the intensification created by feeling the pain of our intolerance of ourselves.

The work I am describing can be undertaken whether the other person dies suddenly or they have had the luxury of coming to terms with death over time. With the encouragement of the presence of death, people who are intimate with one another may allow themselves to find the ways they may be living double lives with each other. One life of the relationship may exist where each party makes unconscious agreements about what to ignore; this is the level based on the interaction of the external, fabricated personalities. And one life is where the shadow elements remain nevertheless interact.

The struggle to die or let another die can be alleviated if the dissonance between these two levels of reality of relationship is resolved. The differences in the energetic patterns between the personality level and the shadow level of the relationship are easier to perceive in an altered state such as the death transition. Once perceived, they can be integrated to create a more unified, stable relationship.

Whoever is unable to make the shift can remain tethered to the hidden relationship even after a loved one dies. The manifestations of this tethering go beyond the dynamics of mourning. We can be aware of the survivor's torment when he reports nightmares or anxiety after the death of an intimate. But it may be more difficult to perceive the torment of the person who has died.

NIGHTMARES AND POSSESSION

I have found that when people have recurrent nightmares about a dead relative, they usually subside if they are given the opportunity to explore safely what is untenable in their relationship with that person (and thus in themselves). I have worked with people whose inability to accept aspects of the relationship with a deceased loved one has thrown them into altered states of consciousness. These states can include fainting or non-organically-based seizures which look like possession by spirits to observers. Again, by uncovering the unresolved aspects of the relationship between the "possessed" person and the dead person, the haunting can be resolved.

This dynamic becomes even more complex when it remains animated in the spirit of person who has lost a body to use as a field of integration. Again and again, I have seen these spirits, caught in the dance of intolerance attach themselves to people who are still alive. They do this in their desperation to manifest the supposedly untenable aspects of their relationship. Sometimes they choose the person with whom they had the relationship of intolerance. But just as often, they may choose someone who is dealing with similar energies in another relationship. It seems to be the vibration of the dynamic of intolerance which acts as a magnet between spirits which attach themselves and their hosts in this way.

When this happens, the "host" has symptoms such as loss of energy, lethargy, and/or the inability to concentrate or focus. He does not understand why he feels so disoriented. Many people will report that they "don't feel alone" or that "there is something which wants to come out." This may be difficult concept for a materially-oriented, scientific, logic-based mind to grasp, but the fact that de-possession relieves these symptoms tells me that this is an actual phenomenon which needs to be examined carefully without prejudice.

Death, by its nature, often forces us into acceptance of the loss of everything we have known. If we have no experience in trying to integrate and accept loss, the confrontation with death creates a situation where we can find ourselves in chaos. This chaos is due, in part, to the fact we are not even aware that we have been avoiding the task at hand.

One of the most consistent revelations throughout the process of unveiling the contents of the shadow in hypnotherapy is that there is, in fact, no net loss. When we finally surrender defenses and energy blocks we thought we could not survive without, we find ourselves exposed to the possibilities of an expanded sense of self, not to the terrors we had envisioned. It takes practice to allow defenses to drop gracefully. It takes practice in dropping defenses to feel ourselves caught again and again in the net of trust the expanded sense of self provides. If we have had firsthand experience in this process, by the time we are asked to drop our last defense to death, we may be able to allow our resistance to float gracefully away from us as we embrace the potentials of the self at a soul level.

If we have no experience with these small deaths of our defenses to the expanded reality of the self at a soul level, we are more vulnerable to the pain involved in not accepting loss. The pain of exposing the issues around loss can be too overwhelming to someone who has already entered into the struggle between the inevitability of dying and desire to live. But if the person can perceive the enormous benefits of opening to loss with as little resistance as possible, the dying process can become much less of a struggle.

THE DESIRE TO LIVE AS A MASK

This is because the desire to live, which is one side of the struggle in facing death, can often serve as a mask for the desire to resolve and understand what we have rejected all our lives before dying. This refusal is often based on the perceived loss of self, or control, or world view the acceptance of pain involves. We think we are keeping ourselves safe from our pain by ignoring it, but when death arrives, the force with which it flushes out the hiding places can be much more painful.

If one of the reasons we decide to incarnate is to make explicit as much of the self as possible, it is hard to die a "good death" if we are unwilling or unable to reveal all we have tried to avoid. During life, especially one lived within the confines of the extremely material culture of the west, we tend to indulge in every activity possible to keep us from this task of unmasking.

We rarely realize how the personality is constructed to deny the shadow. When we do pause and sense what we are doing in this regard, we feel insecure.

So death has a way of showing us the futility of our efforts to create a self which is divorced from whatever we have relegated to the shadow. This is true, no matter what we have placed in the shadow: be it a sense of unworthiness, of self-loathing, or whatever we find unacceptable. Death has the effect of bringing all of our justifications and "drivenness" to create a life free of the contents of the shadow to a halt.

My work with the dying through the Zen Hospice Project has helped me see how the dynamics I have described above either play out or remain in many different situations.

Many of the patients are in a lot of pain and receive morphine which kills the pain. This does not allow them many of the options pain-free people have in choosing how they spend their time. So even if they were to choose to undertake resolution in their relationships with themselves and others, the drugs often preclude such choices. Some who are not on heavy pain medication are agitated, but are reluctant to look into the root causes of their agitation.

The grace of death is still extended to them even if they have forgone the opportunities to understand themselves. As I sit in the room and watch their chests heave and their eyes roll, I feel very privileged to be there with them. This is because I have the opportunity of touching the utter acceptance death has of every person.

The grace of death lies partially in the fact that people are their most authentic selves as they are dying-with all of their pain and worry and fear. Often, at the very end, all of the masquerade of the false self is stripped away and there is just the breath and the spirit in the room. The utter acceptance of the entire individual, shadow and all, is death's greatest gift.

I remember Paul, whose body and face were horribly twisted as a result of a stroke. He spoke with difficulty and was always full of stories of how he was going to sue the guy who had "done this to me." His bitterness was almost illustrated in the contortions of his body. As he died, his limbs became limber and straight and long and smooth. As he died, his rejection of his life faded into death's acceptance of him. .

Life is so short. We must enter into every experience completely-including the experience of our pain, the pain of confronting what we bury. If we cannot face it in life with our faculties more available to us, our deaths can become nightmares, or worse-a moment of grace we are unable to receive.

If death truly is a passage from level of consciousness to another-just as birth is a passage into this level of consciousness-we must use our life to prepare as best we can for that transition. In the absence of any compelling force such as a death in our life, our unconscious agreements with others take on a life of their own.

The choices that people have to make when they are given a terminal diagnosis are wrenching. The shock of a sudden death is no less difficult. The loss of a loved one or the imminent loss of a loved one is one of the most difficult experiences many of us pass through. And it is just in that moment of the raw experience of pain that we have the easiest access to whatever pain we carry within ourselves. Watching the struggles of a loved one to preserve their personality mask is all the challenge we need to commit ourselves to acceptance, loss, and death. Sometimes we can rise to that challenge because the alternative is even more painful. If we can allow ourselves the kindness to explore our relationships with others and ourselves, we may be able to accept ourselves with the same grace that death grants us.

This article is by Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. who holds degrees and certificates in Cultural Anthropology, Comparative Religion, Transpersonal Psychology, Hypnotherapy and Transformational Healing. She has received master-level training in Shamanism, Reiki and other forms of energy medicine and has been a student of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism for over 20 years. She is the founder and developer of Depth Hypnosis, an altered state therapeutic model which has been adopted by many psychotherapeutic and spiritual counselors and the founding director of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream. She has an active hypnotherapy and shamanic counseling practice in San Francisco. For more information about the Depth Hypnosis, please contact Isa at isa@sacredstream.org or by phone at 415.333.1434.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this document should be construed as medical advice. For long-lasting relief, consult your doctor or health practitioner.