Body, Brain, Mind and Consciousness

Many people have asked me why I became a Death Doula. Part of the answer lies in my lifelong curiosity about the nature of existence. I have spent basically my entire life wondering about our bodies and how – in the grand human culture – we have linked our bodies to our brains, minds, consciousness and spirit. Sure, the brain is sitting in the body. What about the mind? Is the mind in the brain? Is consciousness a “light” or the spark that keeps the body animated? Who am I? What is the “I am” that says “I am sad.” or “I am at peace”?

Do people at the end of life have all this figured out? Spoiler – most don’t!

At least once a day I will have a client with an existential question, a great piece of wisdom, or even just an opinion on what life is all about. Being a Death Doula means being in the classroom of life. What follows is a bit of a ramble of the concepts and ideas that ignited my curiosity. Hopefully it gets me closer to answering the question of why I became a Death Doula.

*Please note that I do not gain in any way from sharing the embedded links to books or videos in this blog. I include them only to help you find them if you are intrigued and want to learn more.

A Short History of Curiosity

As a toddler I remember feeling so uncomfortable about being here. Even at that young age, I felt out of place. Nothing was familiar. My mother told me that when I was little, I would ask to be sent back”. She didn’t know where to send me back to, but I had a sense that it wasn’t in this physical plane, here on earth. Even as a toddler I wanted to go to a place that my body and my mind could not take me, but where there was a conscious awareness of a “Me”. Physically, I was a kid growing up in Oshawa, Ontario. Consciously, I was somewhere else.

When I was five years old, I could read at a university level. I remember that for my fifth birthday, my father gave me a book about a new anthropological fossil discovery that shook our understanding of evolution. That fossil was named “Lucy”. I devoured the book. I wondered how Lucy saw the world, and what she thought about. Was she a conscious being like us? In babies, there is a milestone that health professionals look for: Can the baby look in a mirror and recognize itself? Did Lucy know she was Lucy? The book was all about her bones, her fossils. By examining the smallest bone fragments of her cranium scientists concluded that her brain was small. We could examine Lucy’s fossils, but we couldn’t examine who she was, or how she saw the world. That part of her story was not told in her physical body. Where was the rest of her?

In the early eighties I noticed a book on my father’s bookshelf. It was Journeys Out of the Body by Robert Munroe. In it, Munroe recounts how he accidentally found himself bumping up against the ceiling in his bedroom, looking down at a body, and figuring out it was his own, sleeping body he was looking at. After his initial shock and fear wore off, he spent a lifetime repeating the Out-of-Body (OBE) experience, and teaching others how to do the same. He talked about his thoughts, about thinking, while having an OBE. He was aware of his body on the bed, and he was aware of this “separate” Robert, thinking. His brain was in his body. Where was the thinking coming from? In OBEs there is a separation of body and consciousness, but it isn’t death. How interesting!

Almost Dying

While not an OBE, a Near-Death Experience (NDE) that I had when I was eighteen years old convinced me beyond a reasonable doubt that we are not just a mind, housed in a brain, within a body. In my NDE, I was aware that I was no longer breathing. The intense pain from a physical assault I was experiencing melted away, and I was in a very dark yet indescribably loving and peaceful place. In those moments I remember thinking (without my BRAIN getting oxygen) that everything was OK. Everything was always OK and would always be OK, and that there was only love. My sense of self was…different. I wasn’t “Laura” any more, but I did have thoughts, I sensed I was “conscious” and most markedly, non-physical. To this day, that experience is a foundation in my work as a death doula. I no longer fear death. My absolute certainty in a consciousness beyond life allows me to bring a certain amount of peace and tranquility to clients. If they ask me if I am afraid, I say, “No, I’m not.” This opens up a possibility that maybe they don’t have to be afraid either. Maybe this is why I became a Death Doula, to share the idea that there is nothing to fear, and to bring people comfort about that.

In my late twenties I became an ordained Buddhist nun. As a nun I experienced many moments of “non-duality”. In deep states of meditation I discovered another way of dropping the “personality” of Laura that wasn’t precipitated by physical death. I was in a state of “no mind”, but I was conscious. I didn’t know where my body ended and the meditation cushion began. I couldn’t discern if I felt a breeze, or I WAS the breeze. While thoughts never stopped (they really don’t), I was able to exist in a space between thoughts. I was a consciousness observing a mind. Who was I? Was I any “thing”?  Michael A. Singer talks about this in his book, “The Surrender Experiment” and how it is state that – once experienced – one wants to return to.

I spent many weekends in Toronto’s Zen Buddhist Temple, engaged in meditation. One time, I was sitting on my meditation cushion, thinking about how I could find a very elusive book that was purportedly in the temple library. It was said that the Zen Master tested us on the contents of the book – but no one had ever seen the book! I was starting to panic. I sat in silence on my cushion, trying to figure out in my mind where to look for the book, when suddenly Muwe, one of the monks who lived in the temple, walked silently in front of me, and dropped the book in my lap! 

Another time, I was trying to memorize a very long chant. I was practising over and over in my head, but I kept getting stuck on the 7th line of the chant. Just as I was reciting the 6th line in my head, Muwe walked by and sang the 7th line out loud – getting me back on track! 

What allowed Muwe and I to communicate without our voices? I can’t imagine it had anything to do with our brains. Were our “minds” communicating? Or was it something bigger and deeper? Because I have had the experience of communicating with Muwe telepathically, I feel like I can also communicate to some degree with my clients, when they are no longer physically able to communicate. The work of a Death Doula requires careful attention to not only the physical, but the energetic.

Consciousness

Consciousness is defined as, “The state or quality of sentience or awareness of internal or external existence.” I think the key word here is “awareness”. Most of us go through our daily lives without awareness. We become caught up in things without realizing it – scrolling our phones, unaware of time passing. Or working at a desk, unaware of the discomfort of the waistband on our pants, or that someone in the cubicle beside us may be in distress. For the most part, we are on autopilot.

I love my clients with dementia because they have a conscious awareness of “now”. They are completely engaged in being aware of each moment, without attachment to what just happened, or what is coming next. Being with my dementia clients compels me to practice my own state of awareness – to be with them just in that moment. My dementia clients are wonderful zen masters.

If you are curious about exploring consciousness, I recommend the book, “Thoughts Without a Thinker” by Mark Epstein, Eckhart Tolle is another author that helps us understand consciousness in plain language.

How Does All This Influence My Work?

My curiosity and my experiences have led me far from any fear of death, and infinitely curious about the nature of existence. As a Death Doula I am present and paying attention to both the soul and the body. It’s sacred work, and it is always an honour to accompany someone through the transition from life to death. When a body is doing the intense work of dying, it sometimes feels as though there is an energetic letting go – a gentle sigh of the spirit. This is only my personal take on things, but I think that often the soul – consciousness – leaves the body before the body breathes a final time. At some point, someone isn’t breathing anymore, there is just a body, being breathed. I remember my NDE, and I think that this is the point where all the pain and discomfort goes away.

During vigil I say a prayer of gratitude for the body and the vessel it has been. Our bodies are so amazing. During a natural death, the body knows exactly what to do. It powers down in a particular order, it releases any pretense and it just IS. Breath in, breath out, the clock winds down and finally stops – every last bit of energy used up. The consciousness has joyfully freed itself from all constraints and joined Source. Like a drop of rain falling into the ocean, we all go back to Source.

I became a Death Doula, because for my entire life I have wanted to understand what “”life” is. There is no better classroom than the passage from life to death. We can’t understand dark without light. We can’t understand cold without hot. We can’t understand life, without death. I will conclude with a quote from Anil Seth from his book, “Being You: A New Science of Consciousness“

“At the end of this story, when life in the first person reaches its conclusion, perhaps it’s not so bad if a little mystery remains.” – Anil Seth