In my dream, I am arriving late at an end-of-life doula training. My colleague is overworked and exhausted, and she is falling asleep at the podium. I am there to step in to teach. I tap her on her shoulder and she does not wake up. Willy, who died in May two years ago, is observing the scene from above, and makes a disapproving face. The person who gave me a ride there is not willing to wait for me to drive me back. This is making me uneasy. There are several people there who are not approving of the situation, while most people are expectant of whatever happens next. Willy then laughs, and implies that we better not get caught up in the small stuff of the human experience. There are no mistakes, and everything is a learning opportunity.

This awareness of the objective observer of this dream we call life has come up a number of times in the past several weeks: the me who is living through the human experience, and the me who is observing me living through the experience. Something that the awareness of death, and dreamwork, facilitates is this capacity to connect with that part of “me” that is greater than the “me” having the human experience.

Since 2014 I have yearly taken on the practice of A Year to Live, guided by the book with the same name, by Stephen Levine. The book invites us to contemplate life from the lens of having one year left to live, inspired by the explorations that tend to come as people near the end of life. During the fourth month of the year-long study, we begin the practice of waking up as if today were our last day on earth.

The practice of waking up as if today is my last day augments the awareness of that noting of the little me, and her human struggles. Every day that I do that practice, I get more clarity, or the lens clears more, I should say, so that I can be more aware of the two perspectives: the me who is living through an experience, and the me who is observing the experience. Eventually, through this practice I am able to discern and choose my response to experiences with more ease. While the little me struggles through circumstances and worries about outcomes, the observer me appreciates the humanness from a perspective of growth and evolution. Outcomes are secondary to what I am able to take away from the experience.

Utuado, PR

Often times, the little me is attached to comfort, to what is familiar, to the sensations of safety and belonging that the illusion of already knowing tend to elicit. Yet growth can only happen in what I do not already know, in daring to expose myself to the unfamiliar, in being willing to be uncomfortable.

—And this dream we call life inevitably takes us to what we do not already know, whether in ourselves or through what surrounds us, so we may learn something new.

This requires that my expectations be thrown off, that something in me or in my environment shifts unexpectedly. This is what pushes me beyond my confort zone and into my growing edges.

Resistance to the shifts, attachment to expectation, or to what is familiar, and any reaction to these shifts in general, comes from the little me, the human experience, the stories, the expectations, the concepts and ideas I have inherited, been given or handed down throughout this life experience.

Through the practice of living this day as if it were my last, my first question to myself becomes, where is the resistance coming from? The practice invites me to explore more deeply: what is it attempting to do for me? what is it trying to protect me from? what feelings and beliefs is it activating?

The answers to these questions are asking to be brought to light, into conscious awareness. Once things are in conscious awareness, they are known, and, as they are identified, they are easier to let go of. When I do not know them, they can overwhelm me, and that overwhelm feeds the resistance. Resistance is not letting die, or shift, what is already asking to die, or shift, what is in the process of dying, or shifting, or what has already died, or irrevocably changed.

Because I am practicing living this day as if it were my last, I must ask: what does this dying imply that some conditioned part of me is resisting? What does it ask of me or require of me? It helps me also to recognize the sense of resistance, its presence and persistence, as an invitation to collaborate with the shift or change or death, rather than as an abandonment from the familiar and the known, from how things were, that leaves me aimless and forced to go where I thought I was unwilling to go.

Centro Ceremonial Indigena Caguana, Utuado, PR

Living this day as if it were my last, it is my intention to remain receptive, open, surrendered, willing to tread uncharted territories, willing to discover what is left for me to tend to, become aware of, grow from.

We are conditioned to assume that everything is meant to stay the same, that we should stay the same, that our relationships should stay the same, and that what we must do is control and manipulate everything so that things, people, and we ourselves are exactly what we expect them to be, what we were told they should be, so we can then, after all this hard work—to change what is, from resistance to it—be “happy,” so we can relax and enjoy the ride of this dream we call life. And instead, we find ourselves exhausted and dissatisfied, and assuming something must be wrong with us, or them, or life itself.

This is, I think, the meaning of suffering: all the hardships that you face in life, all the tests and tribulations, all the nightmares and all the losses, are still viewed as curses by most people, as punishments . . . as something negative. If you would only know that nothing that comes to you is negative! All the trials and tribulations and the biggest losses that you ever experience, are gifts to you. Every hardship is an opportunity that you are given, an opportunity to grow. To grow is the sole purpse of existence on this planet Earth. You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden and somebody brings you gorgeous food on a silver platter. But you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses and still don’t put your head in the sand, but take the pain and learn to accept it, not as a curse of a punishment, but as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.

— Dr. Elisabeth Kübler Ross, The Tunel and the Light

We are not encouraged, or even clued in, to realize everything and everyone and every circumstance comes to meet a particular function to encourage our growth and evolution. Everything serves its function for as long as it is required, and everything has an expiration date. There will be a moment when that function is fulfilled, the expiration date has been met, and things need to change in order for us (and them) to grow and evolve. When we look closely, each person and circumstance throughout our life has served their function, and often, because we have been led to assume it to be this way and no other, we insist on sustaining what no longer has a function, because we have been conditioned to hold on to someone or something, because, otherwise, it would seem to imply that we have failed.

The important, most essential, thing is that with each “failure” it all becomes more clear: what our needs and wants are, and how they make sense to us, all of which is essential to nurture who we are becoming. Because we are not fixed or static, because in order to grow and evolve, we must shift and change; because this dream we call life is a constant process of becoming.

Utuado, PR

We have been conditioned to assume that our “work” and most ardent effort must be to identify and define our wants and needs, to then learn the “right” ways of articulating and asking the external world to meet them for us, and to become indignant when the world does not understand or is even interested in what we have to say or what we demand in order to set things straight, to make things right.

While it is essential that we get to know our needs and wants, it is also essential to know that we are here to make sure those needs are met despite the external world. There are ways to share our journey of wants and needs in safe, receptive, reciprocal spaces and people, and the safest, most receptive and reciprocal space, which requires our constant tending and care, regardless of external circumstances, is inside us.

This leads me to think about what it is that we take with us when we die. It is nothing more than the learning and growth, and the experiences that brought us there. It is, as Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross said, the internal and external opportunities to love and be loved that we took and the ones we missed.

So, can we love the part that is resistant, the part that knows what it wants and needs, the part that feels the need to state things, to demand things, the part that grieves the shifts? Can we love the internal and external agents that inspire the growth, despite discomfort? Can we love the discomfort, which indicates that growth is happening?