EPISODE 10: Exploring Death As An Ally with David Bedrick
In this episode of the About Death podcast, we discuss the physical and somatic experiences of dying, the meditative practice of 'being dead,' and its applications to trauma, abuse, and chronic emotional issues. David shares personal anecdotes about the deaths of his cherished mentors and his journey towards embracing death as a profound aspect of life. The episode delves into the philosophical and spiritual dimensions of death, grief, and experiencing life's final moments with compassion and acceptance. Trigger warning: mention of suicide and addiction
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Hi friends, this is your host, master coach and teacher Sarah Yost. You are listening to the About Death podcast, the show about living life on your own terms. Stick around if you want way more of what you want with way less anxiety.
Wow, you guys, this conversation with David Bedrick is really something. We not only talk about the actual physical activity of dying and what that means for those of us still here, but also what's it like to have the somatic felt experience of being dead in a sweet, alive kind of way. This is a different take on meditating on your death, on going deep into your experience.
This is a sweet, compassionate, fully awake approach to working with different corners of your insides. And I am honored to have had this conversation and to share it with you. Enjoy. Uh, my name is David Bedrick and in my current life, I'm a teacher of, uh, what I call unshaming that has a whole host of applications to learning about the way people actually are as opposed to what they, and we want to be, try to be from trauma and abuse to all kinds of feeling issues.
So I have a school. Santa Fe Institute for shame based studies where I teach, um, facilitators, therapists, and coaches, and then some individual development programs. Thank you for more. I can say more about my story or the credentialing stuff. What's best to say? Tell me why death? Why are you doing a masterclass on death?
How does that fit in? There's a couple of reasons. The, the momentary impetus came because, um, a little more than a year ago, a woman who was a very dear teacher of mine. And I met with like a couple of times a month, she was a kind of, I call her an elder. That sort of guided me and, uh, and she died. Not totally unexpectedly, but, but it wasn't predicted.
That was significant for me. And then about a month ago, um, another teacher of mine, Arnie Mende, who I've been meeting with half a dozen times or so, a year for 34 years, and he died and that was unexpected. So, that's the sort of momentary, uh, thing that got me thinking about that. But in my own inner practice, I kind of, I don't know if that's a meditative practice, but in a kind, in a way, uh, in the last years, my main practice is on, uh, allowing myself to, uh, become more dead.
I think that's a funny thing to say, um, but to imagine I'm dead and experience what, what Somatically what that would be like. That's a strange thing. People might not understand what I mean. We could say more about that, but that's a central practice of mine. Um, I've also worked with dying people, worked in a hospice for a while and, um, worked with suicidal clients.
So the topic is near and dear in those ways. Right. Yeah. Talk more about what it's like to,
uh, how do you say it to, to practice being dead? Yeah. It's a strange thing to, to talk about because in the living world, I'm gonna call that I'm putting quotes around that in the normal conventional ideas of, uh, of living, there is no obvious dead experience. Right? It's like, then the experience stops. Um, so, and then that's a theological question.
We could say, does that really true? Does death end everything? Does it end consciousness? And, and, uh, I have thoughts about that, but those are not the most important things because people differ as we should about the topic. But here's what I do know that I can, if I'm working with somebody who let's say is hopeless, I have, I've worked on my chronic symptoms for years, and they're not going away, or some other difficulty.
Or I've been lonely, and my relationship, like, never seems to get better. Or I've been depressed for a long time, and nothing is helping. And that, if that person talks to me in a way that's like, Sarah, well, I don't know. I'm just hopeless. I don't, is there anything I can do about it? People can't see my body, but there's a, uh, an energy that's going down.
And a lot of times our friends and various therapeutic communities want to lift that person. We want to anti depress, anti something, find energy, take a supplement. There's a zillion supplements that will give you energy. And some of those are good. Get to sleep earlier. Did you think not of drinking coffee at night?
So whatever. There are things you can do to lift. But those always go counter to one impulse, one direction you can see in the uh, which is to go, uh, is to go all the way, right? And sometimes when people are given that experience, uh, something profound happens. And when I give them that experience, I don't say, imagine that you can let go because people only go so far.
They say, let go, they get relaxed. But if you say to a person, I wonder what it's like to be dead, the person will look at me like, I have no idea. Let's say most, I don't know. And I'd say, let's imagine things go away. Food goes away. What would you be relieved of? I no longer have to worry about making money.
That would be important to me because I grew up thinking I had to make money. Right? So, Not having to do that, ah, right? And not having to deal with whatever, the politics and wars on the earth. So when people start imagining those things would go away, and then if I guide them carefully, drop out, be, go even further than letting go, just be dead.
You're not here anymore. And if I just say some words, it's sort of, It's almost like a hypnotic suggestion. You're not here anymore. I'm sort of saying things like that. People start dropping into a state where they're not resting because resting is a conscious state. Ah, finally, I'm getting rest. I'm aware of that.
The dead state loses the sense of consciousness. I'm no longer thinking or something. And if you keep people there for a little while, only minutes, and you ask a person, is anything happening? Are you floating? Are you just in the dark? Are you seeing something? And people have experiences that are not part of their normal living experience.
Not just radical meaning, well, I was high or whatever, or I cursed, or I fell in love, but something else happens. And that state is really profound. It's a spiritual connection that people make with something that's not of the conventional world. Yeah. Not sure if that helps enough, but that's the, Yeah.
After, um, after, after my mom died, I went through what I imagine is really, really common, which is, um, one thing that I did is I became obsessed with near death experiences. I felt like that, that is what my mom experienced. That's how I imagined her experience of, of entering into a new dimension. Yeah. And I, I believed that well before she died and, and then became, you know, obsessed and.
You know, really fixated on it for a while. And, um, and then my experience was that I just wanted that is like, I didn't, I wasn't suicidal. Like I wasn't I didn't have any plans or urge or, you know, I wasn't going to do anything with this life. In fact, I was kind of pissed that I had to stay. And I'm not, I'm not quite sure what I'm articulating here, but, but your practice could have been really.
really helpful because what I did was I, I just, um, I think I, I had extra suffering because I wanted that and didn't, didn't know really how to touch it and also didn't know how to like it here. Yeah, yeah, so it can be easier to like it here for some of us Many people have the experience of not only wanting to be here meaning on this planet now that could have specifics I don't want to be in this family.
I don't want to be in this body anymore because it's Symptoms are unbearable or I don't want to be in relationships, but I don't know how to get out So but and that's important psychologically Let me help you leave a relationship if it's violent and all those kinds of things are really important and empowering But there's also something if you ask a person who says I don't only want to be here to stay with that You don't want to be here.
Just allow yourself to not want to be here, but I really have to Whatever, do these activities. I know, but let's imagine you don't have to just for 10 minutes, then we can go back to normal life. Um, people have profound experiences, especially if you ask them things like, at least on the earth, where would you go if you give them enough time to say they don't want to be here?
Where would you go? They, they sometimes will go to a different place on the earth. They go to an ocean, they'll go to a mountain, they go to grandma's house if grandma was lovely or something like that. So that, and then if you. So ask the person about that. What's it like at the ocean? What's it like at grandma's house?
The person will start feeling, they'll have experiences. Their body, their soma will have, will start to feel a little bit or a lot like grandma's house, right? You start smelling grandma's pies or you're having this great spacious sense of walking in the mountains. So you can help people make contact with that.
And those states can be psychological, but there also can be spiritual because it's, I don't want to be here. And the person needs contact with something else. In a way, Sarah, a profound but clear part of this is, in a way, it's anti colonization. Now, people wouldn't talk about death that way, but you could say, if I live a life like most people are, there are rules.
I'm a man. I should act like a man. I should go make money to support my partner. Maybe that's good. I more or less do that. Um, I should get things done today. I should be productive. And I should act like a person who is not too weird. It was relatively normal. You can say, now what is normal? Normal is a norm, right?
It looks more like, like certain kinds of people. It doesn't look like saying I'm in pain every day. It doesn't look like screaming and yelling and being in anger. It doesn't look like being semi comatose and walking or whatever. It doesn't look like being on the street talking about the end of the world.
It doesn't look like. more extreme, more diverse places, and almost never in capitalistic cultures, which is most of the planet, outside of maybe indigenous cultures, it doesn't look like being productive. So in a sense, this dropping out is a revolutionary impulse. From one way of thinking about it, like, I don't want to be part of all this.
What's a job? Right? What do you mean I'm supposed to be this way? I'm not, I'm non binary. I don't fit these things. I don't live in this, in this normalized world. And do you find that other people's deaths trigger that? It can. Um, It really can. There are, there are, in my, I witnessed a few different aspects of grief.
Now, of course, there's like Elizabeth Kluger Ross and would have denial and, and bargaining and all the way to acceptance. Um, so that's, that's as useful for some people. But I find people deal with grief of loss in a few different ways. One is people get what we conventionally call grief, sad, missing of the person.
I have a hole in my life, in my heart, that where the other person filled. So that's a, a sadness that people have. When that comes up, people often need help to go deeper, go ahead all the way into that sadness. What's it like to have a hole in your heart and feeling that deeply enough and making sound is so helpful.
Sound meaning, uh, uh, uh. And the reason why that sound is I can see your face because then I'm expressing my ears hear it and you hear it. If I say I'm really grieving that could you could empathize because you have your own grief, but if I make genuine sounds, it will impact other people, and I will feel seen and known for that sadness, which alone I don't, even when people go to places to, uh, to grieve, often people aren't making sound that other person can hear.
Mm hmm. Yeah. So that's another thing people don't, That's more common, uh, the sadness. What's less common, um, is I've lost something. What is it you lost? I lost my teacher Arnie recently. What was Arnie like? Incredibly free spirit, love the ocean, etc. So I grieve that. And then the next question would be, Is there a part of me that would love to be more Arnie like?
There already is, but I'm not free to be. It's in me. And in that way, the grief says, don't only lose it, find it, find some of it. Don't let go, only go of the people you lost, Sarah. See if some of those qualities live in you and cultivate them. So there's a real loss. I'm not saying it's all inside. There's no human beings.
Yes, there's human beings and animals that people lost and trees and, and things like that. But the, the, the deepest thing that I have found is. If people can go into being a little bit more dead, as I'm saying, let go of their normal consciousness, they might feel contact with those people. You know, that's a spiritual question.
I'm shyer than some people I know would say, Yes, you can make contact with those people. I'm more shy about saying this is what's true and this is not true. But I do know people have experiences. Um, of being closer. If I'm more dead, maybe I'm, I'm putting quotes around that, right? It's a weird thing. Then maybe I'm not only in a, only in a different place.
Yeah. That's a rad, more radical idea. Yeah. What do you, what comes up for you? You were talking about your own experience and I passed over that and I'm sorry about that. And, and I heard you speaking with feeling about your own. It was your mother. Yeah, your mom. Say something more about that. I didn't want to lose that.
I'm sorry. I got. Oh, thank you. That's okay. I didn't feel, um, missed in any way. Um, yeah. What'd your mom die of, if you want to say? My mom fell down the stairs, um, while talking to me.
And she, like, broke her neck or something? Uh, she hit her head. You hit her head? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, thank you. That is powerful. It's powerful because it's sudden and also that it's a moment of interaction. You're, you're with each other in the moment. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot there. Wow. If we weren't doing a podcast, I would take two or three minutes to just be quiet and just let myself be with what you're saying.
Cause because I'm not quite fully. I hear it and my own feeling life wants to get there, you know, which would take me a moment because it's, I haven't heard that particular kind of story. If she said, oh, she died of cancer, I kind of have a little sense of that, you know, but there's a kind of a violent moment, um, to that particular ending of a life.
Yeah, it was. It was. And it was. Yeah, it was really violent. And it was, um, it was so disorienting. And I've spoken about this on the podcast before early on, there was a moment. So she felt it, she fell into the basement. And I think I know when she left, it felt like a felt like a decision we made together.
Oh, you have to stay And her body lived for a few more days, but, um, it was a really powerful experience for me. And one of the things that I am, I'm so proud of is the way that I spoke to her and treated her is The way that I speak to and treat myself that that all of the relationship that I've built with myself with my internal experience that I treated her with that compassion and and that that was my.
my default is something I'm incredibly proud of. I mean, while she was not, before she was full, her body fully left or, or after? Um, really like before the paramedics came. So I just, um, I treated her the way that, that I treat my own terror, which is, I didn't lie to her. And I said that help was on its way and that I was here and that I had her and.
You know, I didn't lie and say she was going to be okay. And I didn't, um, I just said that, that I was there and and did everything I could to let her know that she was, um, seen and heard and held. Touching. That's beautiful. Yeah. Thanks for doing that. Was her death part of the impetus for the podcast or were you already?
Yeah, I was already pretty interested in death, but it wasn't a part of my, um, work yet. I figured it would be next in my next decade or something, my next iteration. Interesting. Um, so. But it, it has become, this podcast has been one of my, um, one of my favorite things. I love the conversations that I've had with, with people.
Then I would say, these words might not be right for you, and change them, or say, that's not exactly me, but then I think, oh, I'm talking to a person for whom death is a kind of an ally, meaning a thing, an energy, an experience that exists. You will learn from death as your teacher or something. I'm not trying to make it all mice and bypass.
Isn't that lovely? I'm just saying, but it's become a thing that you're having a relationship with that guides you, that brings out your voice in the world that impacts your relationship with yourself and other people and who you meet. That's what I mean by ally. Yeah, it really has been. And then two weeks after my mom died, my brother was diagnosed with leukemia.
And so he's been, he's, he was a guest on this podcast. And so he's been living with the, you know, near constant, well, just the question of whether he would continue to live or not. And, um, so also watching that. And then, um, at the same time, my partner's mom died, um, four months after she got sick the same week and my brother did.
And so there's been a whole lot of. A whole lot of that and yeah, so death really isn't in my, in my language, again, an ally, something you meet with many times in a short period of time in your life that you have to then relate to. Yeah. Yeah. What is death? What is death? I was going to say teachings. I'm not sure if that's the best word, but what's that's teachings.
If you're, you're more intimate with this thing than some, this thing called death. What does death teach?
Well, it strips away everything it's, I mean, which has made it difficult. That's part of why it's been difficult, I think, to stay alive is, you know, nothing really seems that important. Nothing really seems that important. And Just most of the, I mean, I haven't worried much about what people think, or I haven't lived a very conventional life for some time, but you know, there's still lots of those layers.
And what I know, and I guess what I, what I have known, why I've liked death for a long time is, you know, there's something really holy that happens in that transition. Yeah. Um, So I, so I've worked with, with, with, uh, real death, but then also spiritual death. You know, a lot of the people that I work with and a lot of my experience has been in dark nights of the soul, you know, times when, when everything fell apart and you're just face to face with, with that disorienting darkness.
Yeah, that's right. A spiritual or psychological or spiritual death. Yeah,
it's profound to have that perspective, again, because the wellness community, can I call it wellness community, or the healing community, including allopathic, but also if you wrote. on Instagram, something about something about something that could hurt you that you could die from. You would start getting like every five minutes ads for something that would try to get you to go the other way.
I understand that, right? Here's the, here's all the, here's all the things you can do and the supplements you can take to not have that experience. But then, but then it goes against. the experiences that you're having or your mother having, or I'm 68, I'm having more and more, my body's doing things that look like 68.
And then if I wrote that, something about that down, people would, I would get things about, you know, stop aging now. Somebody sent me a thing. I'm like, I don't think so. You know, you know what they mean, but you know, yes, I should be healthy and I should eat whatever fiber and, and eat less, whatever. Sugar is bad and whatever it's going to be, but then there's also kind of, but, but everything goes that way.
It's not like those are not a good ideas, but nothing is saying, Oh, you're aging. Whoa. Process. Yeah. Like my neck is, it has more wrinkles and saggy skin than it used to. And if I wrote that, if I wrote that down, then they would say, and I get more balding on the top of my head. And then wrote that down, I would get hair club for a man or anti wrinkle cream.
Or they, Oh, you're so beautiful. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let me just cover up anything uncomfortable around that. Right. Okay. Cool. But if I look at my neck, which I've done a few times, uh, when I started noticing this more, the skin is not as taut as it was when I was 50 or 40 even, 50, 50, 40 or 50 even.
And I see like, I see like veins and something that looks more like a tree bark to me. And then I'm like, oh, so then if I don't, if I'm not attached to the living part of it, I was living, I wanted to be taught, and I, maybe I should have more liquids, and whatever, and all the things I could do, I should put some creams or something on my neck, or various different things, great, do that.
But then if I sought to see the tree in my neck, then I think, Oh, maybe I'm becoming a little bit more like a tree. What would that be? Not so moved by the wind, standing by even when stuff shitty is happening and not getting too moved by the daily, by the New York Times and what it says every day or the, well, who's, who's in politics and who's not, which is important.
Well, what kind of wars are going on, which is usually important. But then a part of me, doesn't have the lifetime of a person, but has a lifetime of a tree, you could say. And I need some of that. And then I'm finding over the years, I've become more like that. And I like that person. And my students like that person.
I'm not saying I say I'm a tree, but the things that they're liking about me, are not disconnected. They're connected to that tree, that aging process, that looks different than I was younger. When I was younger, I tried to make things happen. I got on my white horse, you have tried six things, you haven't gotten the answer, I have the answer, I'm smart.
And that's great, and I should try to have the answer and be smart, right? But at this point, when people say, I've tried six things, I haven't gotten the answer, I say, oh. I wonder if there's going to be an answer that you're looking for, right? So the tree says that. The younger David would have tried to find an answer.
The answer meaning this will, this will take away your difficulty, is what I mean by the answer. But the older me is like, hmm, I wonder if, if that person doesn't only overcome all their trauma, then what? Mm hmm. You know? Then does trauma become an ally like death is for you? Do they start teaching about it?
Do they go deep into their ancestry? Do they connect it to ancestors in ways? Do they understand some of the dynamics on the planet, the way people who haven't studied trauma because they haven't had to, because their life is not disrupted, right? Are they writing novels? Are they talking to one person?
Are they suffering alone and build community? Do they love differently? Those are also rich questions that aren't about getting rid of something. Which is the living, right? If we're living, quote unquote, we want to get rid of anything that's difficult. Take away my headaches, take away my fragility that's happening in my body as I get aging, take that away so that I can live, right?
As opposed to dying, meaning again, not talking about literal dying, letting go of certain things as you're saying, be more detached about life. Right. Yeah. Right. I have a question. Yeah. You're welcome. A little, a little bit separate. So, uh, so I'm not a mandatory reporter. And so often people will come to me to talk about their thoughts of wanting to die.
Yeah. And what I see is tons of shame around that impulse and it almost police state that you will be reported and watched and monitored and have to sign things. And, um, people don't, people won't go to their therapist with that impulse because of that response. And there's so much fear. And so I'd like, I'd like to talk to you about that, but then also ultimately, My belief is that it's your body and it's your choice and all of this hand wringing that we have about people wanting to take their life.
I understand there's um, There's a period where maybe we want to, to intervene or help people stay alive, uh, until they can maybe make a awake decision.
Ultimately, I feel like you can do whatever the fuck you want with your body and it's not really a tragedy. And, um, you know, that's not a, that's not a, um, popular position. And so I'd like to just hear what you have to say about that. It's an incredible topic, an incredible topic and not spoken about enough.
Consciously. And there's a lot of ideas and assumptions that are not terribly useful. Again, if we think of, I, for some reason, I'm wanting to call it a colonized view with this. You should be alive. You shouldn't take your life. It's not a bad idea, right? And if my wife said she was thinking of dying, I would say, do you know how important you are to me?
And et cetera. I wouldn't be like, okay, that's a good deal. I'm not. You and I are both saying we're not taking that lightly or thinking a person that's having a bad month that, you know, maybe that's not the best decision and all kinds of reasons, um, to do that. And so I'm always thinking. about that when I work with somebody who presents some level of suicidality.
I'm always wanting to know if there are people in their lives to whom they matter to and to let them know they matter to me if they do even a little bit to make the personal connection because mattering is really important. Personal mattering, not you're a great person, but personal mattering is important.
So So that's just an established thing. And then if someone was, yeah, there would be a mandatory, I thought someone was like, they actually might take their life literally. And it's not just, we're not at the thinking, dreaming, imagining stage. That's a different, thing ethically. So that's a whole topic that you're bringing up.
We're going to put aside for the moment. Um, but it's worth thinking about what do you have to get people to do and, and make statements and are they planning in specific tasks and are they on the way to a specific, uh, plan for taking their life? So those are, those are issues that have to be addressed, not to dismiss those.
But I find a few things. One is, If I ask a person about the taking of their life, and let's say some people would say, there are things that are not okay and they're going on too long and I can't stand it. If you get step back a little bit from the, oh my gosh, like, don't let that happen. There's a kind of an empowerment in there.
The empowerment is what you're suggesting, Sarah. I may decide that this is the end for me. Now, I've worked with some people who have been really ill for a long time. And they're not getting better. And, and, and, you know, it's not going to happen. And maybe they won't live, let's say an extreme example, I'm thinking of a person who probably wouldn't have lived more than a few more months.
For her, there was a certain, I'm going to get to make this decision as a final empowerment. And for her life, she wasn't very empowered in her life. So, there was a certain power, um, in that. The second thing is, it's really common for, um, folks to think, Oh, I understand your life must be so hard. But that's not the only reason people take their lives.
Many people, in the vein of what we're talking about, many people say, I want something to end. It's not just the hard things. I'm wanting certain patterns to end, certain experiences to end, that I don't know how to end any other way. I once worked with somebody, I won't tell enough details for anybody to, it was, first of all, it was 30 years ago, but I won't tell enough details to identify the person because as many people I've worked with has similar.
The person said, um, that they were thinking of taking their life and I asked them, uh, how they were, this is a little provocative. So for the audience, if you need to be warned about a triggering, if this, please care for yourself. Um, And I asked him if he had a plan. He said he did. And I asked him about that plan and it had to do with he didn't live in his parents home and it had to do with taking his life in his parents home.
And that's a radical decision. He's not saying I'm going to take a pill and go to sleep or whatever, jump off a bridge or whatever I'm going to do. That's a relational, that's relational, right? I want to do it near you and I want you to find my body, right? So that's not just, oh, his life is bad. That's a statement.
All suicide statement, a specific statement. Um, so I thought that's a pretty intense thing, a violence for the parents to have to deal with, right? Also. Right. Um. And was that his point? Yes, that's part of the point. Yeah. And I asked him, what else would you do that your parents would be really upset about?
Because I'm thinking, you know, and he had various things. He, one of them was to get a tattoo, kind of religious. And the other was, um, uh, he was a straight male and the other one was to, uh, uh, date some woman that he met. That doesn't sound like, like, you know, like, Oh my gosh, you know, like those were huge and such a violation of his family values.
He wanted to make a break. Yes. From a life. Many people want to make a break of a life. I want to not be traumatized by the family I grew up in. I want to be a different person and I can't seem to get out of this thing. So then I'm thinking of death. That's a fierce action to say, I need to stop something.
So with that person, then, uh, instead of thinking about why you want to die, it becomes very important to locate what part of you would end your life. Yeah. Because suicide has two parts. If you think about it this way, a part that's going to get killed. Good. I'm not going to be here anymore. I can't wait to not be here anymore and be in the world that I'm in.
But to take a life is not easy. Even soldiers often can't pull the trigger when they're shot at. It's hard to take a life, including one's own. So that means there's a certain capacity to take a life. Right. That's a fierce capacity to end something. And that means a person has the capacity to end something.
That is like, I can stop things and that person may need touch with that. Okay, I'm going to do something. I'm going to pull the trigger but not take my own life. I'm going to get the tattoo. Right. Which requires almost a deadliness in the person. Somebody else might say, what's the big deal about a tattoo?
You'd have to know the culture that that person lives in. It may be that far out and have that big a consequence to their community, to their religious world. The consequence may be so big. That they could not, never do that, or never leave a partner. I could never get a divorce and leave my partner. That would be the worst thing that I could ever do for my family, my community.
I'd be excommunicated. So that could be, I could start thinking of ending my life because I need to end something and it's so forbidden that I can't do it. Right. So then, then you have to think of the person who would end the life. Can they cut from the religious organization? Can they make that deadliness?
That's too hard, but maybe they need help with that. In that case, they need to be more deadly. Right. So that their life can take the next step outside of the conditions. Isn't that radical? But that's, but that's truly not just rare.
Um, contemplating suicide is a, is a really hopeful activity, and you've just articulated why. And, and partly if you have the ability to end a life, if you have the ability to end your own life, first of all, you're able to think about something better. You're able to think about you're trying to solve a problem, you're looking at a, a capacity.
A capacity to end a life. That's really, that's really powerful. And there is a lot of hope. A lot of hope just in that contemplation. Yes, because if you live in a world that is, that says hope is the good thing and it can be to some people and some moments, it's really good, but sometimes it's not the best only.
Like if we were hopeless around the planet, being hopeful, we should do whatever we can and try to affect climate change, wake people up, find technologies that will take the, take the carbons out of the airs and all kinds of good things we should do. Great. But if we sat and said, we're hopeless, there's nothing we can do about it.
I kind of wonder where people would go and what they would imagine. It would be not. one versus the other. But, and I think that's a worthy exploration and it's not, it's relatively forbidden. It's not around. It's not an activist saying, let's, they're saying this is not going to make it. And they're wanting to, it's a confrontation, but I'm saying, what happens if we can't, what do you do next?
What happens now? Just like you might say, I'm going to die or somebody you love is dying. That can be a detachment that we might need. We might need some detachment because the living mind of everybody, we got to make this better, may not be able to do it. So maybe we need, now I'm going to use my crazy language, maybe we need people who are a little bit more dead so they're not so invested in something.
I don't know in what. Right. But I know that happens around big violences. I think it's really important around, um, I'm thinking about the Middle East at the moment and there's other places on the planet where there's great violence, uh, to groups of people. I think we need, I'm so shy to say this, I usually don't say these things in public.
I think we need more contact with the dead and being dead because one of the things that's being created by these awful things is a lot of dying. Right. I'm not saying that's good. I would, if I could stop those things, I would stop, you know, and I try to be an activist at times. I wrote a whole book on activism, but if war is creating dead people, and it is, maybe I need to be a little bit more dead.
Maybe I would see things differently. I'm a Jewish person. I get very, yeah. worked up about what's happening in the Middle East, caring about Jewish people, caring about Israel, upset about Israel's treatment. But part of that is being channeled through this Jewish identity that has all this difficulty and trauma that I'm wrestling with to try to look plainly and clearly at that scene.
Maybe for a little more dead, that I would be freer to see the scene. Maybe people would be like my brothers and sisters regardless. I don't know, but I think we need, I do know those are, those are real things. Um, you know, I can talk more about that, but the whole problem of things are dying, um, and being a little more dead, I got to tell you this thing that came up that my, my teacher, Arnie, who died, um, he just reminded me that when I asked him many years ago, uh, When I was teaching and dealing with getting criticism, I still get criticism, uh, from students and it was really hard on me and, um, and I said to him, uh, to, I said to him, what do you do about all the criticism and he said two things.
He said one. If you try to get a bulletproof vest, meaning able to defend yourself only, defend yourself sometimes for sure, he said, then people will shoot at you bigger because you're not being impacted, right? If I say, Sarah, and it's a sent truth and you can not going to take it in, then I'm going to use a bigger weapon or a group will use a bigger weapon, right?
Because like, I got to get through to her. She's not, doesn't seem to matter. And he said, so I suggest you getting shot full of holes. And then it'll be easier on you once you've taken a lot of those chrisms many times. Then when people fire their verbal guns, right, then the bullet will pass through and it won't matter too much.
And he was implying being a little more dead, right? Like, yes. Um, but then I asked him, uh, uh, my 10 years later, similar questions about teaching. I said, people have these different opinions about what I do. And he said to me, Oh, I never asked living people and living students what they think of my workshops.
I said, what do you mean? And his wife, Amy, was there and she said, he goes out onto the porch and he asks the dead people, how did it go? Do you think I was doing a good job? And Arnie says, well, you have to ask the living people have all their shit, you know, he said, so they don't really know. Don't tell anybody that, right?
I care about my students. But I loved his perspective of, you know, dead people have a much better perspective. They're not so wrapped up in, you know, you're an authority or this or that, or I didn't get what I need, you know. Makes me laugh. That's exactly what I love about death, is all that shit is shit.
shed, you know, what you, what I keep hearing as you're talking is a real deep acceptance, you know, a lot of the fixing that our industry does is based on the assumption that what's happening is wrong and it's not wrong. And, and when you're talking about being dead, I just keep hearing like a deeper and deeper and deeper acceptance.
of what is. It really is. Yeah. And then from, you know, the, the way that I teach is that's, that's the most important part of, of a transformation that however we, we transform our experience, it has to happen on a basis of compassionate acceptance. Yeah. Can we deal with what is even for a moment, even for a moment.
I'm thinking of, of, uh, teaching my students, the ones who are learning my, my brand of skills with, um, and, um, they'll say, what do we do about, uh, people who have an addiction? I'll say, what's the person addicted to? And they'll say, uh, cocaine. And then I say, ask them what it's like to put a needle in their arm, if that's what they're doing and shoot cocaine into that.
Don't encourage it. Be sober when you ask. Sober means, oh cool! Sober, that's not sober. Sober means that's serious. You know you could die with a little mistake. Your life matters, so it has to be framed. But then what's it like? And the reason why I'm saying that Sarah, connected to what, the acceptance. How about if we start with what, accepting you're having an experience.
Not saying you should do it or not. This is what you're doing. Oh, you're eating ice cream. What flavor ice cream? What does it taste like? Why would you ask that? Because I'm starting with what is, and what is, is ice cream at night or in the morning and whatever, and getting fat or whatever they're doing.
Let's start there. Otherwise we enter the therapeutic world, we enter with You have a problem, and I'm going to help you fix it. Right. And very rarely do people even know what those problems are. People say, I procrastinate. And almost no one ever says to that person, I know, because I work with people, and I ask them the fundamental question, which is, what do you do when you're procrastinating?
Are you playing video games? Are you sleeping? Are you writing to your friends? Are you making Instagram reels? Are you eating brownies, you know? Are you watching Netflix, you know? I don't know. And like, why would you ask that? Because I'm starting with what is, and how come people are saying procrastination?
Here's a procrastination program. Well, my procrastination theory is this, without knowing the fact that you play Instagram reels, and I walk on the beach, and, and sometimes I read poetry, you know, those are very different things. People to accept. There's a poet, there's a beach walker, and there's an Instagram reeler, right?
I have all those live inside me. You know, so, and And what I'm doing, I'm doing for certain reasons that we're unaware of. I've just labeled all of that experience procrastination, even though it's a huge range of experience. How did we get there? To not say, what do you really like? That's something that I get very fired up about.
I could get a lot more fired up than I am now about how little we ask people what it's like. That's why I ask people, what would it be like to be dead? And they say, I don't know. I said, let's see if we can find out. I gotta tell you a story if I can, unless you want to say something first. Oh, tell me the story.
I was working with a woman who, um, who had, uh, um, cancer. She was very far along. It looked like she would probably pass in the next months, but maybe not. There's always like, maybe there's something we can, maybe it won't happen. But she had been sick for a while. And, and, um, and, uh, I asked her, um, could she imagine dying?
And could she imagine being dead? And she said, I don't want to imagine being dead. And I said, why? She said, I'm afraid nothing will be there. It'll just be empty. Like there's nothing. There's no love. There's no something. There's no trees. There's no connection. It's there anymore. There's nothing. It's just empty.
And I said, let's explore nothing. Accepting what is. She was laying down. She was always laying down. She wasn't well. I said, close your eyes. And imagine everything goes away, being dead, and there's nothing there, nothing. And she said, maybe there's no love there. And she started crying. And I said, what if there's no love there?
Just following her. And at that moment, Forrest, her dog, came running from the other room, jumped up on the bed, snuggled up next to her. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah. And I said, Forrest is here. She says, Forrest is the greatest love I've ever experienced.
Is Farris going to be there? Is the love that Farris, she has related to in Farris, when Farris dies is, I don't know. I trust people's experience. I know those happened. People can make different things of it. I make something of it. I think there's a Farris love. The dog, the love she shared with that dog. I believe that's going to be there because it was there.
Yes. But somebody else could say that, you know, can interpret that differently, and then people should be free to. But it was meaningful, and an amazing thing. You could say, well, Farris just was feeling her. But Farris was feeling her, didn't, was in another room up until that moment. Is there love? Is there love?
And then Farris answers. Yes. In the, in the real life. I would tell that story, if I wrote the poem, if I made the video, if I made the film, I'd make that and then people will be moved and they'll be somatically, viscerally be moved by Forrest. Yes. And then their mind will say, what if this, what if that, and I'm like, but what did you experience?
Well, what about this? I'm like, we can, we can have a theology discussion and I like theology, theological discussions, but what did you experience? It touched your heart, didn't it? Yeah. Let's just know that. And then we can go on. Um, but first. Don't override what your heart felt. Right. Right. What does that mean?
It means your heart got moved by something. It resonates with something inside of you. I'm not trying to prove anything to you.
That was amazing. What you offer is so, is so welcome. And it seems like a really tough sell. You're like, yeah, how about we quit trying to fix all of it? How about a deeper experience of it? Yeah, yeah. this exploration of death and this conversation feels so full of life. Yeah. That's the, that's, that's it.
The full of life, a kind of a life.
Yeah. Maybe the life more meant for us. Yeah, he's over time over time when you probably know when children are really young death is not that meaningful to them for five years old usually Children aren't if a child is dying at that age. They're not thinking. Oh my gosh I won't be able to have more ice cream and grow up.
They're not having that Mostly not having that thought. So they're not usually freaked out. They usually just take on the parental experiences. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, my child, my child. And then the child responds to those emotions. Um, but they're not really having that experience. But then at a certain point, in many people's life, there's like, I want agency.
I want to do something. I want to fall in love. I want to say fuck you to someone. I want to, I a job. I want to whatever, protest, right? I want to lead my family. There's a kind of like, I feel a sense of agency in life to do certain things, to make certain things happen, to have a certain amount of control.
And I don't mean that in a bad way. I want to work life and make it bend a little bit to my way. Um, and people need that for a while unless death is. Haunting them through chronic symptoms or people around them or, or near death experiences. In other words, death comes in. But as people move through life, if they're developing, many people don't, aren't interested in personal development, and they just hang on to that.
I'm gonna, I'm losing that until, I didn't let the fight losing that agency for the rest of my life. Then they just fight that. But if people are developing, then the nighttime dreams show that the life turns. It turns away from birth, which means what caused living, looking at your birth, looking to the past says, what happened?
Why am I like this? Right. I get an infection because I walked through that garden the other day. I got some kind of weird. Bug bites on me. Am I getting COVID because I was exposed to something? Am I feeling this way because? Am I traumatized because of what my father did? Looking to the past, oh, that's really important.
But if you follow the nighttime dreams and indigenous communities also, life turns from facing the past and the causes. Fixes are almost always cause based. This caused that. If I eat ice cream, I get headaches. If I stop eating ice cream, I won't get headaches. Great. And then life turns towards death. That means towards the future.
Uh, the Latin is teleos. Teleology is future looking. What am I becoming? Now I'm traumatized. If I look at my past, I want to be able to heal from my father's violence. If I look at the future, And I think, whoa, that's a big experience. What am I, what am I making out of that? Who's David becoming given he had that experience?
Who are you becoming given that you've had so many death experiences? Right. So victim to those experiences. Oh, I'm sorry that happened. But you're not only, you're also saying I'm going to build a life. And podcasts and teachings out of that, I'm going to move in that direction, right? That's a movement away from the past, right?
Right. Yeah. I appreciate you saying that because, because also my, my, my teaching has become very, a lot of people that come to me have done a lot of work in their past and, and by the time they come to me, it's, there's a time to stop. There's a time when, when that intelligence is important. But people begin to believe that they have to find every cause and they have to, they have to heal everything in the past and at some point, it's, it's time to look forward at some point now, what this is, this occurred, this is a part of you now, now what are we going to do?
What are we going to create? And death itself, then you can think of death as a healing, meaning if you think of certain difficulties going away, let's imagine that death makes certain symptoms go away. Sure. Remember being in a supervision group and, um, and, uh, A person said, I have a client who's dying and I'm thinking of Arnie, he was doing the facilitating of the supervising of the various therapists.
And he said, what are you working on with your client? And the therapist said, uh, well, they had, they were, uh, an alcoholic most of their life and we're working on, uh, alcoholism and trying to cut down on the drinks. And Arnie laughed and he said, it's alcohol is going to end soon. You know, don't try to help the person with their alcohol drinking, let them drink if they want to drink.
And the therapist said, what should I do? Talk to them about dying and death and what do you think is going to happen? You know, anyway, I'm laughing because it's like, it's kind of obvious from one perspective, but the therapeutic mind is like, we should work on your alcoholism before you die. Alcohol is going to stop, right?
That will stop. We'll take care of that problem. Well, Nat assumes that, that the person is an alcoholic and not much else. And so you have to fix the alcoholism, but, but they're a live person who has the experience of drinking a lot. Thank you. Yeah. And also that I'm thinking about, um, I'm looking out my window into the blue sky and the mountains and then I hear things that's how I dream or something, but, um, uh, I had a really good friend named Marcus, he died of AIDS probably more than 25 years ago now.
And, um, I'm remembering some of his teachings at that time when people had, um, it's touching me to think about him because he was so dear to me. And, um, and then if I were in my own free space, I weren't thinking about the public, I'd say, Marcus is here because that's how I experienced it. And Marcus reminds me that, uh, at that time.
When people, uh, um, had AIDS, they were very likely to not, to die. That means they weren't going to, as likely to, there weren't so many meds around that can keep a person alive for a long time. And um, and I was asking Marcus, like, what was the most difficult part? And he said, people look at me, um, Like as if I have a skull and crossbones on my forehead.
They're like, and the only thing they talk to me about is age. Oh, and they look at me and they see a person dying and that's all they see, you know, and he was amazing character. And he was like, I can't stand that anymore. It's like, you know, like ask me something else about, you know, who I am. You look at me as all you see is death, death, death, death, death.
And, and, um, your life at the very end. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe after we don't quite, So what do we do? What are your, what's your experience with which I'm sorry, say with which my experience. Oh, I see. Yeah. Something cut out there. So I was, yeah. What do you do? What's your experience of those people who have passed or have died?
Is your sense that they're in your heart or that you connect with them? Or how do you, what's that? What's your relationship with your mother? Like, if I were to be, that's the question that comes to my mind. What's it? How's it? What's it like? How has it changed? It has, it has changed. I like her better dead.
Um, and I liked her pretty well alive, but, um, just some of my perceptions and some of my annoyances fell away when she died. It's not that she was elevated to some great queen or something, but I just, um, you know, I was able to see what a good job she did with me. I always knew how much she loved me. And then.
It's been since she's gone that I've really appreciated what a good job she did. So, so I like her more now and I appreciate her more now and, um, I taught, I do talk to her. Um, but, but when I call for it, when I talk to her, it's still with a deep longing of a child. I have it.
I'm not able to, she, it's been almost a year and she has become more than just the accident, but not a whole lot more. She's still pretty, it's still, it's still pretty dominated by the accident and by her death and by the tasks that I have to do to clean up. And so, so my experience of other people who have died is almost more multifaceted maybe.
So, so now my relationship with my mom is like a, Like a child longing and then sometimes like, like an adult and a mother appreciating. Yeah, yeah. It accesses the child in you. Oh yeah. Listening to the child, the child longing and maybe other parts of the child also just as a thought. See if there's, because the child's longing may have other child, there may be other qualities to the child that you're accessing.
I don't know that, um, it's just a thought when sometimes when people access the child through something that's been violent in their lives, violent meaning something so sudden and as potent as that, um, and sometimes people stay with only that, the agonizing experiences and don't notice that the child has it.
Has a whole world about them. Don't know about your experience. But longing itself, longing is a, is quite a profound doorway. Yeah, to walk through. I'm thinking of, uh, do you know Rumi's poetry at all? He has a poem that, I don't know, I call it Love Dogs, but I don't know if there's a title. Maybe that, maybe Coleman Box, the translator, used that term.
I don't know if you heard this poem. But it's a story. It's a poem that has a story in it, and the story is, um, uh, someone is Praying to Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, you know, singing praise for Allah all day long. And somebody comes over and says, well, you're praising Allah all the time, have you ever gotten a response?
And the person thinks, uh, I don't know. And the person gets depressed, right? And the poem has the description of that. And then he's like, gives up praising. And then some spirit comes to him and says, how come you stopped praising? And the person says, well, I didn't think I was getting a response. And he says, Oh, the longing is the response.
He says, Do you know those dogs that will want to be with that person, uh, no matter what? You know, and even if the person's not there, they'll howl forever and, you know, and just wait by the graves and, you know, they'll do, you know, those dogs and the person says, yes. And he says, those are love dogs. He says, give your life to be one of those.
Give your life to be a howling dog without its person. Whoa, that's not how we usually think about that, right? Wow. He says that's a spiritual state of being, not the satisfaction of longing, but the praising and longing itself. Isn't that right? Give your life to be one of those dogs. A love dog. There has to be that experience entwined with addiction.
The addiction is so much a longing for an experience and a substance, there's so much longing. So much longing for something. The person has to build their life around the longing. Finding it through the substance, that we should do our best with as healers and as people who have addictions. By the way, everybody has addictions, you know, they just, some people just have it too, like working hard or making money or pleasing another person or whatever.
Those are also deadly by the way. But um, um, but um, yeah, but the longing. For something I would call a kind of home. Home means to you. Home could mean passionate. Home could be rest. Home could be whatever. Uh, sobbing. Some people feel at home when they start crying. So, but people have a profound longing for something called home.
Yeah. So the longing itself. is a really profound state if you don't try to get rid of it. But there's more details too. More things about longing, right? And the mother. You're talking about the child and then the mother. Yeah. Anyway, I'm thinking of different poems now, but I don't want to take us in too many different directions.
Poetry saves me when I don't know what to do. When I don't know how to deal with things, poetry is one of the things that saves me. Because it doesn't have answers, you know.
My current favorite poet is Andrea Gibson. Tell me, do you know something of her work or a few lines that stick with you? No, I don't know lines that stick with me. Do you know, she's the Poet Laureate of Colorado and she's living with pretty significant cancer. And she is just one of the most luminous minds.
You'll, you'll like her poetry, I think. Okay. I'll have to, I'm going to go look. I may have seen something, but the name is not triggering a, uh, I have a book or I've sat reading here and yeah. Tell us what happens for three hours during your death masterclass. What happens for three hours? It's a mystery, you know, in part of the mystery.
Um, um, I tell stories as a start because stories help us enter enter, uh, different ways of understanding, um, ideas that are not conventional, dying stories of people or suicidal stories, um, stories of people that I've worked with, um, et cetera. And, um, and then I help people with two central experiences.
One is, what's it like to be dead? And I've guided people enough in the last 35 years to know how to help most people access a state. I'm going to call it a dead state, but a state that's not just a letting go, resting, easing state, but a state that is a little bit deeper. Then that, and then people have experiences that are, um, give them access to some of the things that you're trying to have access to, or you have access to, or I do at times, right?
Something, some kind of acceptance, but then also awful. And often there's aspects of the way people experience that. Some people fly, some people float, some people dissolve into earth, and there's a different ways of accessing. So they may have the acceptance come out of that, but dissolving into the earth may feel differently than a person who's melting into water, who's floating, who's flying, or who's in pure darkness, becoming vast darkness, becoming vast.
So those are different experiences that people have that provide that kind of acceptance you're talking about, but from a different pathway. Um, so. That's one thing. It's really helpful if people are becoming hopeless around certain things. So you can actually become all the way hopeless and then see what, if you die, is there something that reincarnates psychologically, uh, in your life on a new way.
And then I, um, help people with, uh, the deadliness, the forces that could kill you. Illness, war, a heart attack, whatever you're imagining could happen. Somebody could hurt you on the street or something could happen. People have, uh, ideas. About what might take their life and those, the energy of those things has a certain capacity in it, like the capacity we were talking about in the suicidality, the capacity to take a life and people sometimes need that deadliness.
I can, deadliness, I don't mean hurting a person, meaning I can end this. I can stop the whole thing. I can walk away from my practice and my teaching, even though I've spent years developing that and stop it. And that takes something really fierce. Um, it can happen through the letting go, but sometimes people need a kind of a deadly energy to make a profound change.
And that could happen maybe two or three times in a lifetime. Not usually, you can still use it little bits, but sometimes people need that two or three times in a lifetime. Not usually very more to say this life needs the end now. You know, it's, it's good and bad. I'm not putting it all down. It's like, good.
I was a great person, but I also care took 20 people, but I had some beautiful things, but that person it's time for them to stop. And these are the things that, and I have to have a certain thing. I'm going to end those, not just one thing, but I'm going to end the way of living. itself. Um, some people get very tired for long periods of time.
And if they speak to me about being tired, uh, a lot over a period of time, then tiredness also has in it, not just needing to rest. People say, well, we need more rest then. Yes. But when people speak about needing, being tired a lot, people need to go further with that tiredness and that tiredness doesn't want to only rest.
It wants to not, it wants to stop the things that are so tiring, the tiring life. Which is not just again, I'm not resting enough, it's a life that has certain patterns and woven together ways of living are no longer serving. Those are the two main things. I always spend 30, 40 minutes working with people live whenever I teach.
So you've probably seen that that's, that's my main source of teaching, uh, is to say now you can bring up anything about any of these issues and I'll work with you so that people can watch and get experiences. I mean, Oh wow. That's what you're talking about. Are you at the shame clinic or something like, or.
Yeah, I did. I took the same class that you did with, with Simone's soul and yeah, and I'll be in your death class this week. Oh, good. Oh, good. Okay. So you'll, you'll, you'll be part of it. You'll get to hear more stories and more poems. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. A pleasure talking to you, Sarah. Wow. What a awesome, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep Human being you are and that allyship with death that you're building relationship with and having it take you Into your voice and the things you're studying and getting to know and the places you go with that.
It's a beautiful story Painful, I understand the violence. I don't understand that but I understand there's things that are really have violence to them and But also, the beauty of it makes it clean, there's no, there's no bullshit around it that I couldn't really have created a better. I mean it's all you know it's one of the it's awful to say and it's, she had a good death.
Yeah. And it becomes an inheritance. The, the path is part of the inheritance that her life made, not, she's not thinking that necessarily, whatever, I understand, but it does become part of the inheritance is now you have this part of your path. Take it, take it where you can take that and, and, um, yeah, I love that you're able to say that also.
And not only if I said when I, when my mom died, um, that was more recent. One more reason my father died quite a while ago, but if I said something to people, they were like, Oh, you know, this and that, I'm so sorry. And Nolan says, you know, and it's like, it's not only that way it lives in me, it has many dimensions to it.
And part of it was a relief that, uh, from her pain, part of it was the end of certain dynamics that we had that stopped, which we were both glad about and, and all kinds of things and time for life to move on and many different things that were happening that were not only. for you, David, you know, um, it's not the only story.
I'm glad you're telling more to the story. Thanks for being a part of it. I really appreciate you. Yeah, you too.
Thank you so much for listening. Please help me get this podcast into the hands of more people who can benefit. You can help by forwarding it to someone you know would thank you and by going to iTunes and leaving an excellent review. See you next time.
ABOUT DAVID BEDRICK
David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He grew up in a family marked by violence. While his father’s brutality was physical and verbal, his mother’s denial and gaslighting had its own covert power. This formative context introduced David early to the etiology of shame and instilled an urge to unshame.
Professionally, he was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies where he trains therapists, coaches and healers and offers workshops for individuals to further their own personal development.
David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change. His new book is You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women’s Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption.
His upcoming book, The Unshaming Way, will be published by North Atlantic books in 2024.
Connect with David:
Death, Deadliness & Renewal Class: https://www.davidbedrick.com/death-deadliness-renewal
Website: https://www.davidbedrick.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david.bedrick/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DBedrick
Timestamps And Topics
00:00 Introduction to the About Death Podcast
01:16 David Bedrick's Journey and Insights
02:58 Exploring the Concept of Practicing Death
07:43 Personal Reflections on Death and Grief
10:45 The Role of Death in Personal Transformation
27:01 Contemplating Suicide and Empowerment
36:06 The Power of Hope and Hopelessness
37:12 Exploring Detachment and Death
39:00 Criticism and the Perspective of the Dead
41:14 Acceptance and Transformation
42:10 Understanding Addiction and Procrastination
45:03 Facing Death and Finding Love
59:22 The Role of Longing in Life and Addiction
01:02:28 Death as a Path to Transformation
01:07:21 Concluding Thoughts and Reflections
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