A NEW SEASON/aka SEASON 4: Death as Ally Pt. 1
Most of us have been taught, in a thousand subtle ways, to treat death as the enemy: the thing to outrun, outwit, or simply not think about. In this episode, I want to offer you something different, and something so fundamental to Shamanic (and most other wisdom tradition) practice.
This is the first of a two-part series on one of the most radical reorientations available to a human being: learning to work with death rather than against it — not as a morbid practice, but as one of the most life-affirming things you can do.
I open with a personal story. A few years ago, in the middle of the night, I woke to find my room full of beings, including my root teacher. And I asked them, in the dark, whether I was dying. What happened next changed the way I understand death, initiation, trauma, patterns, and the parts of ourselves that have to go in order for something true to emerge.
From there, we move into the cosmology: what Ernest Becker called our cultural denial of death, and what we lose by refusing to let it in. The difference between dying and killing. Grief as sacred duty. The Yaqui teaching of death as the activator of love. And what it means to live initiated rather than simply defended.
Part Two — the practice — picks up where this episode ends.
Come ready to go somewhere substantial, for we’re not here to f**k spiders, mate.