Don't Die Till You're Dead!©
Living & Dying Core Energetically
by Pam Chubbuck, Ph.D.
We stand on the shoulders of the great men who created Bioenergetics and Core Energetics. Alexander
Lowen lived it and said it – “Don't wait till you're dead to
live”. John Pierrakos lived fully and, I'm told by one who saw,
passed away with a smile on his face.
How
do we deal with death in Core Energetics?
Our
Mask Self, our ego, believes in death and is terrified to let go.
Our HS, Core Self, does not believe in death. Our Core, the most
connected and expansive part of us knows that life goes on in some
form and bodily death is not the end of the essence of us that some
call soul.
"Death comes to each of us eventually...
the challenge is - don't die before you're dead!" ~ Pam Chubbuck
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Does
Comfort with Living = Comfort with Dying?
We
all touch death in some way throughout life. As human beings we are
touched by death often throughout our lives. I have observed that
those of us who are most afraid of fully living are most afraid of
dying. As therapists we work with people as they often suffer through
divorce, illness, kids growing up and not needing them in the same
way any more, life's many changes including someone dying, and
perhaps our client dying. But are we comfortable? Are we prepared to
help others and ourselves – live? Die?
Birth
and Death
I
am comfortable with how we come into and how we leave this world.
Birth and death are simply opposite ends of what I experience as the
circle, the flow. I am grateful for the experiences I have had to
create this comfort. As a child I held life as reverent, crying at
the death of butterflies and mice and learning that all forms of life
passed from one stage to another.
How we are taught, and what we experience in our formative years determines how we feel about, and respond to, all things in life, including the dying process and death.
Karl, a middle aged, new client, who had never been in therapy before, recently told me his wife was very angry because when her father died, Karl wanted to go to Starbucks and get coffee - before they went to his mother-in-laws home.
"I was wrong," he said. I knew his parents were still living so I asked him if his grandparents had died and he said his grandfather - his father's father.
" How did your father handle that I asked?"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
" I mean what did your father do, say, express - when his father died?"
" Nothing.."
I encouraged more.
Dad and I carried his body out and we loaded it into the hearse - and then we went for breakfast.
Did you talk about your grandfather at breakfast?
No.
Ever?
No.
"Well Karl, then you were not wrong, you were never taught how to respond to death any other way than your father taught you."
Karl was astounded at this realization. And was relieved that he was not required to automatically know; but was taught and taught badly.
My
mother was not comfortable with death and not comfortable with her
body. Too much life force scared her. A good, attractive, gifted and
intelligent woman, who was a cherished, almost 60 year long partner
with my dad, told me once, “if I am ever sick (by sick she meant
the dreaded c word) I don't want you to tell me – I don't want to
know.” Stunned into silence for a few moments before I could
reply, I said, “I don't agree to do that.”
“Why
not?” she asked with fear in her voice. “Because Mom, you will
not be the only person involved in that process. We will all be
impacted should that ever happen, and it is not fair for you to ask
us to not talk with you about it.” In order to respond to her that
clearly I had to have multiple years of good Bioenergetics and Core
Energetics therapy under my belt!
I
thank my mother for showing me that dark area so I became aware that I had to shine some
light into that dark. I knew I wanted to live without fear, and to be
able to do that I must study life, death, my body and finally the
bodies of many others in my career as a Core Energetics therapist and
trainer.
Thankfully
my father, earthy, wise, the son of a dairy farmer, was comfortable with his body and life's movement. I learned by planting and
harvesting vegetables with Dad, watching calves and kittens being
born, and sometimes burying some creature that had died. Dad began
talking to me about death philosophically, when I was an older
teenager. Later we had many discussions about death and dying
including how he wanted to leave the world. He was intellectually
distrustful of organized religion, but was one of the most spiritual
people I have known and to this day I consider him one of my greatest
teachers. Dad exited this world with great consciousness, ease and
love at age 88.
Four years earlier my mom had died quickly, as she would have
wished, had she been able to express it, without having to be
conscious of her dying process.
I
was a midwife for many years before I became a psychotherapist.
Working as a counselor/educator in neonatology, at Georgetown
University Hospital, with my good friend, the brilliant
neonatologist, Dr. David Abramson, I saw and assisted in both the
entering and exiting of small new lives. Helping parents cope with
the illness and often the death of their baby was a profound and
humbling experience for me. These experiences became my masters
thesis on counseling parents of profoundly physically compromised
newborns. All this experience worked to prepare me for the work of
helping adults as they passed through serious and deeply emotional
life events, as a Core Energetics Therapist.
My First Experience with Death
of a Client
I
was still a young therapist when one of my clients, I'll call Judy,
was diagnosed with liver cancer. My academic training did
not prepare me for this but my experience as a midwife had. Sit in
reverence for the human being, her spirit, and the life process she
is traversing. The rest? Thankfully Judy was to teach me more in her
short illness than I could have learned by reading volumes or
attending multiple graduate level courses.
Judy
was a spiritual woman of 55 years, a mother, wife, and part of a
group of spiritual seekers. Her devoted family sustained her and was
with her to the end.
I
began seeing Judy at her home and continued for some weeks as her
body became weaker. What could I do but encourage Judy to live as
fully as possible until she took her last breath. Judy made a choice
to live her dying process.
Before
what was to become our last visit while conscious, long after Judy
had lost all her hair and decided to go bald instead of wearing a
wig, Judy requested live lobster. After she opened the crawly bag I
handed her, she jumped delightedly out of bed, carried it downstairs
to the kitchen to steam so she could watch it turn the red. I was
later told it was the last food she ate.
Judy's
spiritual body seemed to grow brighter as she planned her own
funeral, and helped her friends plan a party to celebrate her life
which she wanted to and did attend.
On
the morning of the planned party I received a call from her best
friend, Susan, who said, “Late last night Judy went into a
non-responsive state, do you think we should go ahead with the
party?”
“ Yes!
I replied, 'she planned it and she knows exactly what she is doing
from another realm.” Our group gathered downstairs as Judy lay
upstairs in a coma. We talked together about Judy and shared our
feelings about life and death. We ate. We cried. Later we huddled
around her bed and sang the songs she had requested. I experienced
great peace. We said our good byes.
As
I was going to sleep that night I saw and felt Judy soar across my
minds-eye sky – she was smiling joyously. I felt her expansive -
wholly out of her body. I looked at the clock. 11:10 PM.
The
next morning I received a call from Susan, telling me that Judy had
died the night before. After we had all gone, she told me, immediate
family sat quietly with her for several hours when suddenly Judy
opened her eyes, sat up, looked at her husband and daughters, and
said, clear as a bell, “I love you, I love you all”, reclined
back and gently passed from this world.
" What time?" I asked.
"11:10".
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(Read More in the next issue of Core South News. And to the right, read Pam's poem on Living & Dying)
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David Berceli, PhD, 
