This site shares Life-affirming meditations
that heal misconceptions about Death.
Living beautifully and dying beautifully,
Embrace Death as Birth
into limitless Life Awareness.
The fear and the morbidness which the subject of death usually evokes,
and the unwillingness to face it with understanding,
are due to the emphasis which people lay upon the fact of the physical body,
and the facility with which they identify themselves with it;
it is based also upon an innate fear of loneliness,
and the loss of the familiar.
Yet the loneliness which eventuates after death,
when the man finds himself without a physical vehicle,
is as nothing compared to the loneliness of birth.
At birth, the soul finds itself in new surroundings,
and immersed in a body which is at first totally incompetent to take care of itself,
or to establish intelligent contact
with surrounding conditions for a long period of time.
Alice A. Bailey
A Treatise On White Magic
If you’re thinking a natural death is like a natural birth,
probably because the term “transitioning” is used in both,
it’s not.
A natural birth means the expectant mother
labors and births her child without any medications.
None.
But a natural death allows the dying person
to take medications that will ease their suffering.
The dying process isn’t necessarily always painful;
our bodies instinctively know how to stop living.
Penny Hawkins Smith
Influencing Death: Reframing Dying for Better Living
Most people would think of natural death in terms of dying from natural causes,
but in hospice there’s more to it than that.
I think to understand what a natural death is by hospice standards,
we first have to look at what an unnatural death is.
This is best explained through tales told to me by many nurses
who came to work in hospice after they grew weary
of seeing people dying in a most unnatural way—
patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) hooked up to machines,
with tubes jammed into every orifice of their bodies.
Or on the oncology floor, where patients were injected with lifesaving treatments
that promised them a cure or even just a little more time
but delivered misery and suffering.
Futile attempts at prolonging life
instead of allowing a person who’s dying to die.
A natural death means you get to die naturally,
without a gazillion things going on to try to keep you alive.
It’s allowing your body to shut down through a natural and normal dying process
that all life on Earth eventually must succumb to,
a process that involves specific stages, symptoms, and hallmark signs.
The earliest signs are eating less, sleeping more, and socially withdrawing.
Penny Hawkins Smith
Influencing Death: Reframing Dying for Better Living
My personal belief (from all that I have seen)
is that at the end of life,
as our physical body begins to diminish,
our spiritual body grows.
As this continues,
whether we lived in New York City or the far reaches of Siberia,
we eventually receive spiritual wisdom
that helps us make sense of everything that went on in our life.
Suzanne B. O'Brien
The Good Death: A Guide for Supporting Your Loved One through the End of Life
It has broken my heart more times than I can remember
to hear family members worry
about how they were going to pay their loved one’s hospital bill
or about how a family member took expensive or sentimental items
from the loved one’s home without consulting other survivors.
But this is what’s likely to happen
when we don’t do any financial planning
or designate who should get what.
When people do plan ahead,
they can save their family and loved ones needless emotional upheaval,
as well as thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars.
Without the legal documents in place,
settling an estate is a much more complicated matter,
and it can get very ugly between family members
as they fight over possessions.
I have seen this kind of infighting go on for months or even years,
as the grief becomes displaced by arguments over money.
Families can even turn on each other over a single item.
Planning ahead gives someone the peace of knowing
their wishes are clear for their money and personal items.
It gives those left behind the opportunity
for a healthy and harmonious experiencewith grief,
focusing on love rather than discord.
Suzanne B. O'Brien
The Good Death: A Guide for Supporting Your Loved One through the End of Life
(Please right-click links)
I’m excited to introduce you to Suzanne B. O’Brien RN—a former hospice and oncology nurse who has dedicated two decades to educating families and communities about caring for loved ones at the end of life. Inspired by her firsthand experiences, Suzanne has written an incredible new book that everyone should have in their home.
THE GOOD DEATH is your comprehensive guide for support, skills, and compassion during one of life’s most important journeys. This invaluable resource, releasing March 18th, 2025, aims to bring back the sacredness of end-of-life care and empower families with the guidance they need.
Here are some important insights about end-of-life care today:
A century ago, end-of-life care was a learned skill passed down through families. Today, this knowledge is nearly extinct—leaving patients and caregivers unprepared during this critical time. THE GOOD DEATH is here to change that.
This book has already been compared to What to Expect When You’re Expecting—but for the opposite end of life. It’s the essential guide every family needs.
During the launch celebration, you can unlock these exclusive perks:
BUY 1 BOOK and GET:
Claim Your LIVE Masterclass Ticket here
BUY 3 BOOKS and GET:
1.FREE Invite Only LIVE Virtual Launch Event and MASTERCLASS: GOOD DEATH, GOOD LIFE Be a part of The Good Death Movement and Community.
2. CONFIDENT CAREGIVER COURSE ($997 Value)
The Doulagivers Confident Caregiver Course is the entire award-winning world-renowned Doulagivers Certified End of Life Doula Program designed specifically for family caregivers of end of life patients. It is amazing!
This comprehensive program equips End of Life Caregivers with all the knowledge they need to compassionately guide their loved ones through the end of life journey. When you buy 3 books, we ask you to keep one and simply give two away so that people you love can have this empowering and often life changing information. This is our collective effort in changing the end of life to be better for every single person everywhere in the world.
What People are Saying About The Confident Caregiver Course:
“Having taken your Confident Caregiver course gave me the valuable information and confidence that guided me through the final 17 days of my best friend's life. I was honestly astonished that the information from the course (which I had taken last fall) helped me every single day, sometimes hour-by-hour, through that journey. Many blessings to you! “ Kateri S.
Claim Your Confident Caregiver Course here
"THE GOOD DEATH is an essential guide to every aspect of dying from hospice care to spiritual and real-world needs. It can also serve as an excellent manual for readers seeking bereavement/grief support."―LIBRARY JOURNAL
It’s time to restore the natural, sacred, and meaningful experience that death was meant to be. Together, we can reshape how families face this important part of life.
[Pre-Order THE GOOD DEATH Here] Click Here
Up until about a hundred years ago,
caring for the dying was a skill passed down through generations
from grandparents to their children and grandchildren.
Death was embraced by rituals that allowed loved ones and communities
to gather together and comfort each other toward the end.
When illness struck, people were historically cared for
in the comfort of their own homes.
They died surrounded by loved ones,
and their wakes were even held in the home.
People who came to the house to pay their respects
congregated in the “living room” before entering the parlor,
where the deceased was laid out for viewing.
This is why we all have a “living room” in our homes.
Suzanne B. O'Brien
The Good Death: A Guide for Supporting Your Loved One through the End of Life
(Please right-click links)
I’m excited to introduce you to Suzanne B. O’Brien RN—a former hospice and oncology nurse who has dedicated two decades to educating families and communities about caring for loved ones at the end of life. Inspired by her firsthand experiences, Suzanne has written an incredible new book that everyone should have in their home.
THE GOOD DEATH is your comprehensive guide for support, skills, and compassion during one of life’s most important journeys. This invaluable resource, releasing March 18th, 2025, aims to bring back the sacredness of end-of-life care and empower families with the guidance they need.
Here are some important insights about end-of-life care today:
A century ago, end-of-life care was a learned skill passed down through families. Today, this knowledge is nearly extinct—leaving patients and caregivers unprepared during this critical time. THE GOOD DEATH is here to change that.
This book has already been compared to What to Expect When You’re Expecting—but for the opposite end of life. It’s the essential guide every family needs.
During the launch celebration, you can unlock these exclusive perks:
BUY 1 BOOK and GET:
Claim Your LIVE Masterclass Ticket here
BUY 3 BOOKS and GET:
1.FREE Invite Only LIVE Virtual Launch Event and MASTERCLASS: GOOD DEATH, GOOD LIFE Be a part of The Good Death Movement and Community.
2. CONFIDENT CAREGIVER COURSE ($997 Value)
The Doulagivers Confident Caregiver Course is the entire award-winning world-renowned Doulagivers Certified End of Life Doula Program designed specifically for family caregivers of end of life patients. It is amazing!
This comprehensive program equips End of Life Caregivers with all the knowledge they need to compassionately guide their loved ones through the end of life journey. When you buy 3 books, we ask you to keep one and simply give two away so that people you love can have this empowering and often life changing information. This is our collective effort in changing the end of life to be better for every single person everywhere in the world.
What People are Saying About The Confident Caregiver Course:
“Having taken your Confident Caregiver course gave me the valuable information and confidence that guided me through the final 17 days of my best friend's life. I was honestly astonished that the information from the course (which I had taken last fall) helped me every single day, sometimes hour-by-hour, through that journey. Many blessings to you! “ Kateri S.
Claim Your Confident Caregiver Course here
"THE GOOD DEATH is an essential guide to every aspect of dying from hospice care to spiritual and real-world needs. It can also serve as an excellent manual for readers seeking bereavement/grief support."―LIBRARY JOURNAL
It’s time to restore the natural, sacred, and meaningful experience that death was meant to be. Together, we can reshape how families face this important part of life.
[Pre-Order THE GOOD DEATH Here] Click Here
The problem of death or the art of dying.
This is something which all seriously ill people must inevitably face,
and for which those in good health should prepare themselves,
through correct thinking and sane anticipation.
The morbid attitude of the majority of men to the subject of death,
and their refusal to consider it when in good health,
is something which must be altered and deliberately changed.
Alice A. Bailey
Esoteric Healing
The mind of man is so little developed that fear of the unknown,
terror of the unfamiliar, and attachment to form have brought about a situation
where one of the most beneficent occurrences
in the life cycle of an incarnating Son of God
is looked upon as something to be avoided
and postponed for as long a time as possible.
Death, if we could but realise it, is one of our most practised activities.
We have died many times, and shall die again and again.
Death is essentially a matter of consciousness.
We are conscious one moment on the physical plane,
and a moment later we have withdrawn onto another plane
and are actively conscious there.
Just as long as our consciousness is identified with the form aspect,
death will hold for us its ancient terror.
Just as soon as we know ourselves to be souls,
and find that we are capable of focussing our consciousness or sense of awareness
in any form or any plane at will,
or in any direction within the form of God,
we shall no longer know death.
Alice A. Bailey
Ponder On This
A death-blow is a life-blow to some
Who, till they died, did not alive become;
Who, had they lived, had died, but when
They died, vitality begun.
Emily Dickinson
Time and Eternity
Going to heaven!
I don't know when,
Pray do not ask me how, —
Indeed, I 'm too astonished
To think of answering you!
Going to heaven! —
How dim it sounds!
And yet it will be done
As sure as flocks go home at night
Unto the shepherd's arm!
Perhaps you 're going too!
Who knows?
If you should get there first,
Save just a little place for me
Close to the two I lost!
The smallest "robe" will fit me,
And just a bit of "crown;"
For you know we do not mind our dress
When we are going home.
I 'm glad I don't believe it,
For it would stop my breath,
And I 'd like to look a little more
At such a curious earth!
I am glad they did believe it
Whom I have never found
Since the mighty autumn afternoon
I left them in the ground.
Emily Dickinson
Time and Eternity
Let down the bars, O Death!
The tired flocks come in
Whose bleating ceases to repeat,
Whose wandering is done.
Thine is the stillest night,
Thine the securest fold;
Too near thou art for seeking thee,
Too tender to be told.
Emily Dickinson
Time and Eternity
What is death?
Surely, it is the complete cessation of everything that you have known.
If it is not the cessation of everything you have known,
it is not death.
If you know death already, then you have nothing to be frightened of.
But do you know death?
That is, can you while living put an end to this everlasting struggle
to find in the impermanent something that will continue?
Can you know the unknowable, that state which we call death, while living?
Can you put aside all the descriptions of what happens after death
which you have read in books, or which your unconscious desire for comfort dictates, and taste or experience that state, which must be extraordinary, now?
If that state can be experienced now,
then living and dying are the same.
Krishnamurti
As One Is:
To Free the Mind from All Conditioning
While we are living in our bodies, each one of us is, with respect to our own spirits,
in a community with other spirits even though we are unaware of it.
We are not visible as spirits in our spiritual communities
while we are living in the world,
because we are thinking on the physical level.
However, if our thinking is directed away from our bodies
we are sometimes visible in our communities
because we are then in the spirit.
When we are visible, it is easy to tell us from the spirits who live there
because we walk along deep in thought,
silent, without looking at others, as though we did not see them;
and the moment any spirit speaks to us,
we disappear.
Emanuel Swedenborg
Our Life after Death
So, can you and I while living,
conscious, active, with all our capacities, whatever they be,
know what death is?
And is death then different from living?
To most of us, living is a continuation of that which we think is permanent
. Our name, our family, our property,
the things in which we have a vested interest economically and spiritually,
the virtues that we have cultivated,
the things that we have acquired emotionally—
all of that we want to continue.
And the moment which we call death is a moment of the unknown;
therefore, we are frightened,
so we try to find a consolation, some kind of comfort;
we want to know if there is life after death, and a dozen other things.
Those are all irrelevant problems;
they are problems for the lazy,
for those who do not want to find out what death is while living.
Krishnamurti
As One Is: To Free the Mind from All Conditioning
Being able to raise the dead is a deep fascination for most people.
For them, that is the ultimate test of someone’s spiritual powers.
Most people are living like the dead anyway
because they are unconscious of many things within themselves.
If people are living unconsciously, it is as good as death.
So, in a way, the whole spiritual process is about raising the dead.
In that sense, raising the dead is my work,
but that is not what people are asking about.
They are very interested in knowing if I can make a corpse come alive again.
This is a very immature desire.
Sadhguru
Death; An Inside Story -
A Book for all Those who Shall die
There is the fact of death.
What am I to do? How do I approach it?
My approach to the fact is important,
not my fear, anxiety, memories,
whether there is reincarnation or not,
whether there is a continuity or not, and so on.
How do I approach this extraordinary fact?
I look at the fact and I think about the fact – that is what we do –
and my thinking is the result of my fears, remembrances,
hopes, despairs, loneliness.
That is the background from which I think.
Now, to look at the fact, can I die to the background?
To understand the fact, to live so that
the fact gives me the intensity, vitality, energy to go into it,
I must die to my background of fear,
hope, despair and remembrances.
Krishnamurti
I often like to think that our map of the world is wrong,
that where we have centered physics,
we should actually place literature
as the central metaphor that we want to work out from.
Because I think literature occupies the same relationship to life
that life occupies to death.
A book is life with one dimension pulled out of it.
And life is something that lacks a dimension which death will give it.
I imagine death to be a kind of release into the imagination
in the sense that for characters in a book,
what we experience is an unimaginable dimension of freedom.
Terence McKenna
The angel of death can teach
to live every day as if it is the last day of our lives ,
as if there may be no tomorrow .
We can begin each day by saying ,
“ I am awake , I see the sun .
I am going to give my gratitude to the sun and to everything and everyone ,
because I am still alive .
One more day to be myself . ”
That is the way I see life ,
that is what the angel of death taught me —
to be completely open ,
to know that there is nothing to be afraid of .
Don Miguel Rui
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
Because you know you are going to die,
you have theories about it, don’t you?
You believe in God, you believe in resurrection,
or in karma and reincarnation;
you say that you will be reborn here, or in another world.
Or you rationalize death, saying that death is inevitable,
it happens to everybody;
the tree withers away, nourishing the soil, and a new tree comes up.
Or else you are too occupied with your daily worries, anxieties,
jealousies, envies, with your competition and your wealth,
to think about death at all.
But it is in your mind;
consciously or unconsciously,
it is there.
Krishnamurti
As One Is:
To Free the Mind from All Conditioning
I do not know if you have ever been lonely:
when you suddenly realize that you have no relationship with anybody…
And this loneliness is a form of death.
As we said, there is dying not only when life comes to an end
but when there is no answer, there is no way out.
That is also a form of death:
being in the prison of your own self-centered activity, endlessly.
When you are caught in your own thoughts,
in your own agony, in your own superstitions,
in your deadly, daily routine of habit and thoughtlessness,
that is also death—not just the ending of the body.
Krishnamurti
What Are You Doing With Your Life?
it's better now, death is closer,
I no longer have to look for it,
no longer have to challenge
it, taunt it, play with it.
it's right here with me
like a pet cat or a wall
calendar.
I've had a good run.
I can toss it in without regret.
Charles Bukowski
thoughts on being 71
Death is not the biggest fear we have ;
our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive —
the risk to be alive and express what we really are .
Just being ourselves
is the biggest fear of humans .
Don Miguel Ruiz
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
The intent is for men to die,
as every man has to die,
at the demand of his own soul.
When man has reached a higher stage in evolution,
with deliberation and definite choice of time,
he will consciously withdraw from his physical body.
It will be left silent and empty of the soul;
devoid of light, yet sound and whole;
it will then disintegrate, under the natural process,
and its constituent atoms will pass back into the “pool of waiting units”,
until they are again required for the use of incarnating souls.
Alice A. Bailey
Esoteric Healing
Know life.
Only that can be known.
And knowing life, immortality will also be known.
Life is eternal.
It has no beginning and no end.
It manifests, it unmanifests.
It moves from one form to another form.
In our ignorance, these points of transition look like death.
But for one who knows,
death is nothing more than changing your house.
Osho
Love Letters to Life
For the average good citizen,
death is a continuance of the living process in his consciousness
and a carrying forward of the interests and tendencies of the life.
His consciousness and his sense of awareness are the same and unaltered.
He does not sense much difference, is well taken care of,
and oft is unaware that he has passed through the episode of death.
Alice A. Bailey
A Treatise on White Magic
No play can go on forever.
Individual focus cannot be intensely maintained indefinitely.
Neither can the vibrant, almost fanatical focus of the self
within the limitations of one field continue indefinitely.
By adulthood the trance, the intense focus, is most strongly upon him.
It is after this period that the trance little by little weakens its hold.
By the period you call old age the inner attention is already escaping.
The strong focus of psychic energy
needed to maintain the splendid physical image-organization is no longer given.
The conscious ego with which you are familiar cries out its bewilderment,
for has it not always sensed immortality?
Jane Robert
: The Early Sessions: Book 3 of The Seth Material
In a 2010 interview with the Guardian, Mr. Shepard said,
“there’s not a day goes by” that he doesn’t think about death.
“We’re all haunted by it in one way or another. And it’s the easiest thing in the world
to push it away, you just get a cappuccino.
But, yes, you’re haunted by it in a different way (as you get older).
I feel its presence.
I feel it in sleep, in dreams, in waking,” he said.
Erich Schwartzel
Wall Street Journal article on Sam Shepard’s death.
No one who has experienced death
ever mourns the death of anyone.
Neale Donald Walsch
The Complete Conversations with God
M: In your true state there are no words,
but you think yourself important and you embrace many words.
Poor human beings are caught between worldly life and spiritual life.
One in a million understands all this play of consciousness, transcends it.
Q: What is death?
M: Death is also a hearsay. Have you experienced death?
Having followed the course of spirituality,
you have come to the end of personality
and there is no more human being.
There is only impersonal consciousness.
In this realm of consciousness all that is going on is dynamic playfulness,
a process of functioning.
There is no differentiation in this process
as to a person, an entity, a community, a creed, a religion
. In the flash of your consciousness, all this play is going on.
The play will come to an end.
Nisargadatta Maharaj,
Consciousness and the Absolute:
The Final Talks of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
"This descending and ascension men call life, existence, and decease;
this We Who tread the Lighted Way call death, experience and life.
"Light which descends anchors itself upon the plane of temporary appearance.
Upon the plane of manifested life, the word goes forth:
Behold! A man is born. “
As life proceeds, the quality of light appears;
dim and murky it may be, or radiant, bright and shining.
Thus do the points of light within the Flame pass and repass;
they come and go.
This men call life; they call it true existence.
They thus delude themselves,
yet serve the purpose of their souls and fit into the greater Plan.
“And then a Word sounds forth.
The descended, radiating point of light ascends,
responsive to the dimly heard recalling note,
attracted to its emanating source.
This man calls death
and this the soul calls life.”
Alice A. Bailey
The Rays and the Initiations
The only reason the sun is ongoing,
while man dies,
is the sun never even contemplates death.
All it knows is to be.
Ramtha
The White Book
Death and birth are the biggest acts of creation
because these are the moments in the Eternal Life Cycle
when Essential Energy transmutes itself
to produce specific manifestations in the spiritual realm (at death)
or in the physical realm (at birth).
Neale Donald Walsch
Home with God
If we ponder deeply about earthly existence,
we find as its greatest riddle: birth and death.
The fact that beings can die
is the fundamental problem confronting humanity.
Death is something that occurs only on the earth.
In the higher worlds there is transformation, metamorphosis—
no death.
Rudolf Steiner
The Festivals and their Meaning II: Easter
Let the soul speak for itself,
and you will find that its song will ring forth clearly, strongly, and gloriously:
“There is no Death; there is no Death; there is no Death;
there is naught but Life, and that Life is Life Everlasting!”
Such is the song of the soul.
Listen for it in the Silence,
for there alone can its vibrations reach your eager ears.
It is the Song of Life ever denying Death.
There is no Death—
there is naught but Life Everlasting,
forever, and forever, and forever.
William Walker Atkinson
The Life Beyond Death
Death, as the human consciousness understands it,
pain and sorrow, loss and disaster,
are only such because man, as yet,
identifies himself with the life of the form
and not with the life and consciousness of the soul,
the solar angel. …
The moment a man identifies himself with his soul and not with his form,
then he understands the meaning of the Law of Sacrifice;
he is spontaneously governed by it;
and he is one who will, with deliberate intent, choose to die.
But there is no pain, no sorrow, and no real death involved.
Alice A. Bailey
Esoteric Psychology II
The mind of man is so little developed that fear of the unknown,
terror of the unfamiliar, and attachment to form
have brought about a situation
where one of the most beneficent occurrences
in the life cycle of an incarnating Son of God
is looked upon as something to be avoided and postponed
for as long a time as possible.
Death, if we could but realise it,
is one of our most practised activities.
We have died many times,
and shall die again and again.
Death is essentially a matter of consciousness.
We are conscious one moment on the physical plane,
and a moment later we have withdrawn onto another plane
and are actively conscious there.
Just as long as our consciousness is identified with the form aspect,
death will hold for us its ancient terror.
Just as soon as we know ourselves to be souls,
and find that we are capable
of focussing our consciousness or sense of awareness
in any form or any plane at will,
or in any direction within the form of God,
we shall no longer know death.
Alice A. Bailey
A Treatise on White Magic,
“The years go by,
as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself,
it’s later than you think”
—Guy Lombardo
“Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think)
Suzanne B. O’Brien, a former hospice nurse
and author of “The Good Death:
A Guide for Supporting Your Loved One Through the End of Life,”
told me that many dying patients look back with longing
on the more mundane parts of their routines,
like walking their dogs or making pancakes on a Saturday morning.
An easy way to remind yourself to be grateful for those everyday moments,
O’Brien added, is to try shifting your perspective:
“Instead of telling myself, ‘I have to go to the gym,’
I’ll say, ‘I get to go to the gym,’” O’Brien said.
“I stopped saying, ‘Oh, I have to go to the grocery store,’
and say, ‘I get to go to the grocery store.’”
excerpt from:
Jancee Dunn
3 Lessons for Living Well, From the Dying
NYT
to contact Suzanne
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.