Experiencing the Finality of Death
Topics:
“Experiencing the Finality of Death”
“Advice on Grieving”
“Transitioning in Sleep as Unnerving”
“Self-Awareness and the Fairness of Life”
“Difference Between an Issue and Trauma”
Tuesday, June 17, 2025 (Private/Phone)
Participants: Mary (Michael) and Jared (Twen)
ELIAS: Good afternoon!
JARED: Good afternoon, Elias.
ELIAS: (Laughs) And what shall we discuss this day?
JARED: Well, we are… We have been continuing, over the last several sessions—
ELIAS: Yes.
JARED: — on the subject of trauma.
ELIAS: Yes.
JARED: And I want to first mention, we briefly mentioned it or certainly Lyla mentioned it briefly at a previous session, I had a dear friend of mine die about a month ago. And I was best man – his name was Mike – I was best man at his wedding and he was in my wedding party, for my marriage with Lyla. And he got sick and died within just a couple of months, and it was pancreatic/liver cancer, that sort of thing. We also found out that two other… Well, we had two other people involved in our wedding party and we’ve recently found out that all three of them have died, between the ages of sixty-one and sixty-four, from two years ago to just two months ago.
And I have to admit, it kind of affected me more than I expected it would. Here I’m the one who hasn’t always been in the best of health and heavy and whatnot, overweight, better in recent years but for a good portion of my adult life I was grossly obese. And then here two of these three people that were in my wedding, where two of the three were pretty healthy people, pretty healthy in their lifestyle and their diet. One not so much, but all three have gone on and it’s sort of recognized that the people of my earlier years that I was closest to are gone. And it’s not that it reminded me of my own mortality, it wasn’t that. But it was sort of that I was alone a little bit, that these people that had shared my life in my youth before I had met my wife were all gone. And I’m the last one to survive and it’s… It’s not any type of guilt or survivor’s guilt or anything like that. It’s just a recognition that people I was close to, I’m the last one and I’m a bit sad about it.
ELIAS: That is very understandable. And I would say that you might be experiencing some element of loneliness also, that these are people that you were close to and it’s more a realization through experience of what you think of the finality of death. That it’s something that you don’t come back from and that when you are still in physical focus and you have experienced people close to you that have died, the experience of that is different than simply thinking about it or talking about it. Because it’s something that you’re reminded of the absence of those individuals. And I would definitely say that it’s a matter of giving yourself permission to grieve.
JARED: Thank you, Elias. I think what… You make an excellent point, that there’s a loneliness about it. There’s a finality about it. And I’m doing fine, but I just noticed it’s not like other things where I… at least in my mind, I’ve dealt with it. Maybe I haven’t always, but in this case I just… It lingers a bit, and that’s unusual for me.
ELIAS: This is part of grieving, and I would say that there’s no such thing as rushing grieving.
Now, I would say that you can turn it off, but that’s not very beneficial because eventually it will return. And in that, my best suggestions and advice in relation to grieving are: one, let yourself feel what you feel. Don’t try to push it away. The more you let yourself feel whatever you feel – and it doesn’t matter what you feel, because your feelings likely at times will change – but in that, the more you allow yourself to feel whatever you feel, the more quickly you will process through grieving.
I would also say that it’s something that is helpful to talk about. And whatever you choose to talk about at any given time is acceptable. You might be talking about your feelings. You might be talking about reminiscing of experiences that you had previously. You might be talking about their families. It doesn’t matter. Whatever comes to you and whatever you’re thinking about in relation to them, it’s significant to talk about also and share because that creates a very different energy than just thinking, and because you use both hemispheres of your brain when you’re speaking and you only use one hemisphere of your brain when you’re thinking. Because thinking doesn’t come from your brain, your brain simply processes it and signals your neurological system in relation to it.
Now, in this, you process more efficiently if you talk about it. I would also say that how you know that you are moving close to the completion of the grieving process is that the grieving process has a specific goal, if you will, which is to move you beyond that very strong expression of separation and to also move you beyond the finality of death. And how that happens is eventually after you have expressed enough of your own sadness and your own expression of separation, you begin to move in a direction of acceptance.
And what that looks like is, you can visit places that you have engaged interaction with those people at and not feel sad. You can talk about them and not feel lost. You can move in sentimental directions and not feel torn that they’re not with you any longer. You move to a point in which there is a genuine recognition, a genuine knowing inwardly, that that energy continues, that individual continues, and that you can access that energy if you choose to. That’s a big part of the grieving process, is that you think and feel that you can’t access that individual any longer, that there’s a barrier between you. Which there is, which is separation. But that barrier is not one that is constructed of cement or bricks, it’s actually very thin. And in that, I would say it’s more likened to cellophane than it would be to cement.
In this, eventually you begin to recognize that and you don’t feel so lonely. You don’t feel sad, because that individual hasn’t left you or been taken away from you. And that’s a big piece also, is that regardless of how an individual dies, with the exception of dying in their sleep which people think is the ideal method of dying – although I would beg to disagree with them – but in that, regardless of how an individual dies, the people that are still in physical focus have a tendency to feel that that person was taken away from them by whatever means it was that they died. Whether it’s a dis-ease, whether it’s what you think of as an accident, or whether it’s something such as an attack, it doesn’t matter what it is. There’s always something, or almost always something, that you can blame and that you can express is the culprit that took that person away from you, or took that being away from you. It doesn’t have to be a person.
In this, I would say that it’s a matter of recognizing that nothing took them away from you, first of all, and that realization – which is difficult – that they chose that, that they chose that direction. And that has no personal implications at all, because people don’t choose to die to avoid other people. They may choose to commit suicide in relation to that, but that’s not a natural death. In that, whatever method an individual has for dying other than suicide, is what could be termed as all being natural because they’re all choices.
But they don’t have anything to do with anyone else except themself. And in that, what it is about themself they aren’t even entirely objectively aware of at that moment of choosing death, instead of choosing to continue in physical focus. In that, all they are aware of objectively is that they’re drawn to one direction or the other, but not for any significant reason other than curiosity. What they don’t realize, until after they remember their death once they’ve blinked into non-physical, is that if they are drawn to move in the direction of non-physical, if they’re drawn to death, the reason that they’re drawn to that is because they’ve completed their value fulfillment. If they’re drawn to remaining in physical focus, it’s because they haven’t completed their value fulfillment. But as I said, they don’t know that objectively when they choose to disengage or not. They know it later. All they know is that they’re drawn in one direction or another, and that the draw isn’t tremendously strong. It’s almost neutral. It’s simply a matter of curiosity.
JARED: Fascinating, Elias. In a couple of very brief comments, I’m actually in the process of writing an email to his children, to my friend Mike’s children.
ELIAS: Ah.
JARED: And it’s as much therapeutic for me as it hopefully will be for them, where I talk about his impact on my life. And you know we really, when we were teenagers, were somewhat inseparable. And then life came along and he got married and started having children, and you know we still remained very close friends but there was a period of time where we were nearly inseparable as teenaged youth. And I’m, in the grieving process, I’m telling his children what he meant to me, as a friend and as a person. And I find that is helping. I find that’s helping, just going through that process.
ELIAS: Excellent.
JARED: And this is completely an aside, Elias, but you had mentioned that there is this feeling that the ideal is to transition in your sleep and yet you made the comment you would not necessarily agree with that. (Laughs)
ELIAS: Correct.
JARED: Is there any reason you said that? Or any… I guess from what you just said, there wouldn’t be a preferred method, would there, for transitioning.
ELIAS: At the moment, no. But I would say that the reason that I made that comment about it not necessarily being a preferred method is that initially it’s somewhat confusing to the individual because they’re sleeping and therefore they’re (pause) not waking up. Therefore they blink into non-physical with the perception that they’re still sleeping, and it creates somewhat of a confusion for a brief amount of time because they have that perception that they’re still sleeping, that they’re dreaming but they can’t wake up from the dream. Therefore that can be somewhat unnerving.
JARED: I see. I guess—
ELIAS: I would say that people think that it is a preferred method of disengaging because there’s no pain, but there are many different methods of disengaging in which an individual wouldn’t feel pain. And that in itself is a choice. A person could be dying from a terminal dis-ease and never feel a moment of pain, depending on what they create.
JARED: I see. I think that’s… You know, perhaps there’s an undertone of the fact that… that there was some suffering. My friend Mike literally was diagnosed, he started feeling off in the end of January and he was gone by May. He was gone by May. And to see him in his bed and to see him suffering and in some amount of pain – I mean, they did give him some medicine, but it’s just that, just to see that, it wasn’t… you know, I was there for him, not for me, right? Well, I went for me to say good-bye of course, but you know, just to see someone when we make this pilgrimage and they’re wasting away and they’re dying. And he was in some pain, not a dramatic amount of pain, but he was in some pain. (Pause) And that’s, you know, sort of coming back to me. I remember my mother taught me, “Jared, life is not fair.” And this is a good segue into my mother. Life is not fair and we cannot expect life to treat us fairly, like my friends being, taking good care of themselves and yet dying at a relatively young age from a cancer.
So that’s a, perhaps a good segue into the influence of my parents—
ELIAS: Yes.
JARED: — continuing.
ELIAS: And they do have a significant influence in relation to how you relate to some of these subjects such as death. And I would disagree with your mother. I understand that this is a very common expression, to express that life isn’t fair, but that also depends on your perception. It depends on your awareness. The more self-awareness you have, the more you see that if you want to look at it from the perspective of “fair,” life would be fair because it’s all about your choices and your choosing. If you are less self-aware, then life is all about what happens to you rather than what choices you’re making. And in that capacity, then it’s not fair, because you have no control over what happens to you.
And in that, I would say that yes, your parents do have a significant influence in relation to in association with certain subjects, and death is a big one. There are some individuals that think about death and welcome it because of their religious influences. Whether they believe in the doctrines of a particular church or not, their parents have and therefore that influences them to trust that when they die, they will go to heaven – unless they are judging themselves tremendously, and then they worry that they won’t go to heaven.
But in this, what would you say about your mother in this influence?
JARED: Well, one of the first things you said after I mentioned that was for people who are self-aware, and I’m so grateful that we found you, Elias. Because it would be very easy to be a bitter person, because some things in our lives haven’t worked out, such as our horse business in California. It would be very easy to blame others or say it isn’t fair. And then you realize you’ve created everything, that you’ve manifested everything. And so, I look at my mother’s influence as being that was the extent of her knowledge at the time.
ELIAS: Correct.
JARED: And she wanted to prepare me for life’s disappointments and that you can do everything quote-unquote “right” and still be disappointed, because it’s not fair to you. But I would say it’s… Thank you for asking me that question, Elias. Jean, Lyla, feels that I have not addressed the influence of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations on my thinking. So if I may, Elias, could I just take two minutes and explain to you how I’m evolving in the view of my childhood and evolving in the influence, to try to answer your question in this regard?
ELIAS: Yes.
JARED: Well, I was raised in what you would call a “wasp” family, a white, anglo-saxon Protestant. There was not a lot of immediate religious influence. My mother took us to church until I think we were in sixth grade and after that we were on our own. But her grandfather and my father’s father were both ministers. They were both Protestant ministers, one Episcopalian on my father’s side, one Presbyterian on my mother’s side. And we were not what you would call… We perhaps had a little more money than most of the other people on the street that I grew up on. It wasn’t a clearly defined neighborhood of upper class or lower class or middle class. It was a street that had a little bit of all. And we had more money than most and my parents valued education, so they always paid for private schools. They always paid for top quality education. But when it came to their personal lives, like driving a car, I don’t… I think my mother bought one new car in her life, and that was when she was in her sixties and it was a low-end Hyundai. In other words, she wasn’t treating herself. Normally she would just get used cars. And so there was this emphasis on education. There was an emphasis to not bring attention to yourself, sort of like if you brought attention to yourself, that’s being selfish. In other words, that undercurrent—
ELIAS: Ah, yes.
JARED: — that you were considerate of others.
ELIAS: Yes.
JARED: And you’re not going to be selfish. So I looked at my life and I think that… I think for years and years, I looked at my childhood as a good one and I still do. But I also see (chuckles) that the wasp mindset is not to stick out, not to strive above. And I think I look now at sort of the flip side of not deserving, right? “We want you to be educated. We want you to pursue those activities in life that you want to pursue. You have our support. But you don’t need to be a big businessman. You don’t need to be a big Elon Musk. Don’t bring attention to yourself. Always be aware of impropriety. Always be aware of how others (chuckles) perceive you.” Which of course would be something that I’m less concerned about today, but this is the environment in which I grew up. I would say it was loving and supportive, but yet it had this sort of suppression.
If you look at Jean, if you look at Lyla as a beautiful, multi-colored bird flapping her wings, proud of who she is, proud of the peacock, I was sort of trained… Well, that was beat out of her, right? By her parents. So to say. So to say. And with me, it was, “Look nice, be aware of what others think of you but don’t be selfish, don’t want too much,” for lack of a better word. I’m starting to realize that there’s some trauma there as well.
ELIAS: Mm… I wouldn’t necessarily term it to be trauma, but definitely something that has created issues. That it’s (pause)… It’s a matter of recognizing that trauma creates certain types of reactions that are automatic and repeated, that there is such a strong association with trauma. It has to do with fear. And in that, there’s always a reaction in relation to that fear that is associated with trauma. Issues can be associated with fear, but not all issues. And in that, issues many times do include reactiveness but again, not always. And with an issue, you can override something.
Such as (pause)… Such as our conversation about death. In that, you could have certain associations with death because of the influence of your parents, and it may create an issue for you. But in that, depending upon the situation or the circumstances, if the subject of death were presented and it was something that was touching on the association that you have with death. Let us say, in being more specific, that you have an issue with death with children, that children should not die. And in that, let’s say that you are in a situation and perhaps a friend of yours has a child that dies from some situation. Let’s say they die of a dis-ease. In that, you might be engaging interactions with your friend, but you can override that strong association that you have that children should not die, in order to be able to engage with your friend and not be upsetting or distressing to them. That doesn’t necessarily change your perception of death, but this is the difference between an issue and a trauma.
Now, let’s say that you have a trauma about children and death because you have a sibling that was killed when they were young.
Now; that is likely going to create a trauma. And in that, you’re not likely going to be able to override that in a situation with someone else. Let us say that your friend then also has a child that was killed. It doesn’t change your opinion. It doesn’t change your perception, but in that you likely won’t be able to override your reaction to the subject. Therefore it’s likely that you will either say something that you’ll be or other people will deem to be inappropriate or you’ll have a reaction that’s more intense and you won’t be able to control it.
Do you understand?
JARED: I do.
ELIAS: Therefore what I would say is that some of these things are not necessarily trauma that you have, in relation to your parents. We discussed what trauma your father had influenced in your life and that was trauma. And in that, I’d say that your mother definitely has had influence, but I’d say that her influence, if it were in a direction of something negative, it was more influencing to create issues rather than an actual trauma.
JARED: Fascinating. Fascinating, Elias.
ELIAS: Now, this is important information for you because with issues you can move through those easier than moving through trauma. I would say that you don’t have to move in a direction of trauma exercises to address to issues. But it is something that is different from trauma in addressing to it because with trauma you don’t have to remember every single detail of trauma. Your subjective awareness will address to it, and you don’t have to be objectively aware of all of that action. Whereas with issues, you do have to look at those and you have to make choices to let them go. You have to be able to look at your associations with issues and be able to see why you have certain associations, but then to be able to evaluate with yourself and express to yourself whether that’s actually true or not, or whether you actually even agree with your own opinion. Many times people have opinions about different subjects and they don’t ever question them, and they don’t question whether they agree with them or not. They simply are what they are. And in that, with an issue it’s a matter of being able to look at that, to be able to evaluate that, and to be able to move in a direction of making different choices. That’s what you do in relation to trauma when you’re addressing to the influences of trauma after you’ve already addressed to the trauma itself.
JARED: Ah.
ELIAS: You have to do that step with an issue.
JARED: Excellent clarification. And I think the word you used, Elias – and maybe this is too simplistic – but with an issue, you can choose to quote-unquote “override it.”
ELIAS: Yes. And you can do that intentionally. That’s not always something you can do with trauma.
JARED: I understand, Elias. It’s very well said. Very well said. And I like how you made the distinction of my father and my mother, with my father sort of the pure trauma side and with my mother the helping, so to say, or creating some issues but not necessarily the full-blown trauma.
ELIAS: Correct.
[The timer for the end of the session rings]
JARED: Okay, Elias. Can you say au revoir?
ELIAS: I certainly can, my friend. I express tremendous love to you and your partner, and great encouragement to both of you. And I would say go forth calmly and confidently this evening, as you engage the panel in relation to the dentist. But I would also be tremendously, tremendously encouraging of each of you in your endeavors.
In tremendous friendship as always, au revoir.
JARED: Au revoir. Good-bye.
(Elias departs after 46 minutes)
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