May 5, 2025 • 53 mins
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What meaning do you assign to death, and how does that shape your emotional response to mortality? This profound question forms the heart of our exploration into the psychology of how we process death and the unconscious programming that determines our relationship with life's most inevitable experience.
Drawing from personal stories—including my father's recent passing and his remarkable choice to determine his own death date through medical assistance in dying—we examine how our minds create frameworks for understanding mortality. As hypnotists, we recognize that our emotional reactions don't come from death itself, but from the meaning we attach to it—what we believe it says about us and our place in the world.
The conversation reveals stark contrasts in how we experience death. While some have attended dozens of funerals throughout their lives, developing nuanced perspectives on mortality, others have minimal exposure, leaving them unprepared when loss inevitably arrives. These varying levels of engagement with death create vastly different mental frameworks and emotional responses.
We challenge Western medicine's approach to death as "the enemy" that must be fought at all costs, sometimes keeping people alive well past when they might naturally "expire." This raises profound questions about quality versus quantity of life, and when allowing death might be the more compassionate choice.
By examining our "death program"—our collection of beliefs, emotions, and responses around mortality—we can determine whether our current mental framework serves us well or creates unnecessary suffering. This self-examination isn't about inviting tragedy but understanding our emotional landscape around an inevitable aspect of human existence.
Have you considered what death means about you? Perhaps it's time to look more deeply at your own programming around mortality. Join us for this thoughtful exploration of life's most universal experience, and discover how bringing death out of the shadows might actually help us live more fully.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I think that you know , it's one of those insights of
hypnosis where things don'treally affect us unless we can
see a connection to ourselvesright.
There's an event that happensand then there's an emotion that
comes out of the meaning ofthat event, and the meaning is
(00:31):
really a function of ourconnection to the event.
So I think that part of theprocess of understanding why do
I think what I think about death, why do I have the emotions
that I have about death, canreally be impacted by who was
(00:54):
this person that died and whatwas their relationship to me and
their death.
What does it mean for me?
What does it mean about me?
What does it mean for me?
What does it mean about me?
And I think, when we trace ourexperiences of death backwards
that way, there was a death andhow did it in any way impact me
(01:20):
or relate to me, and then thatmeaning will stimulate an
emotion.
Welcome to Coffee with Hilaryand Les.
We are a couple of hypnotistswho have created a podcast about
freeing our minds from oldideas, old thoughts and old
(01:41):
habits, those old things thatinterfere with our ability to
make fresh, new choices.
It's time for us all to createthe life of our dreams, okay we
are on the line.
On the line.
Again, again, we start andstart and stop and stop.
We're not at the lake today, no, no lake today, no weather
(02:05):
report, although it's beautiful.
We're in at the lake today no,no lake today, no weather report
, although it's beautiful, we'rein the office trying to move
this gruesome conversation aboutdeath along.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Gruesome.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Death.
It's become my fixation.
We're coming to the end ofApril and April has been a month
in which there was my fatherdied and we did a funeral, and
people from across the countrycame to town for his funeral and
(02:38):
many of them had never reallyhad much of a close experience
of death before Nieces andnephews.
It's a relatively new thing forthem.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
And you've had like a ton of death experience.
Like growing up you had likethe wagons.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I never killed anybody.
Horse-drawn buggies that tookbodies, didn't you have to like?
Now you're being harsh person,have to like lay in the living
room for a week or somethingjust to make sure they were gone
.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Here we are laughing at death.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Oh fuck, oh my gosh.
Am I allowed to say that?
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I might even leave that in the mix Just to provoke
people.
We're talking about aninteresting topic.
Anyway, I've really enjoyedwell, I enjoy when we have
podcasts where we sort of diginto a topic and we just slowly,
(03:53):
bit by bit, sort of examine ashypnotists where our thoughts
come from, where do our feelingsget generated, how does all of
that really come about.
And you know, the mind in everykind of experience you can
imagine, collects thoseexperiences and files those
(04:18):
experiences away, reallyinterconnected, based on the
emotion that each of thoseexperiences has contained for
them.
And I think that we as humanbeings all around the world,
with different views on death,we all collect experiences of
(04:41):
death.
And, yes, I come from a bigfamily.
That uh came from a big familyand so I had like a dozen aunts
and uncles.
I had, um, you know, a fewdozen cousins and um dozen
(05:04):
cousins, and we did the samething.
We're a big family and we allhad a whole bunch of kids.
My dad had 20 grandkids and soit was.
It's just a lot of people, andwhen there's a lot of people,
there's a lot of experiences,and one of those experiences
I've been through a lot is theexperience of death.
(05:25):
My dad is the second last ofhis generation, so we have one
more aunt, the Energizer Bunnywe call her.
She's like 97.
She just keeps on going.
She's got a very simplephilosophy in life, and it's's
just beautiful is that she's gotthings to do today, so she
(05:47):
might as well get up and goabout doing them.
And she's very social and she'sshe's very engaged in other
people, and that's justbeautiful and that just gives
her a reason to get up every dayand keep on going.
But she's the last one of thatgeneration.
Right the last one of thatgeneration Right.
And with that means that sincethe time I was 12, I've been
(06:18):
going to funerals, and my motherbeing the second youngest of
her family and my father beingthe youngest in his family, it
meant that I had lots of olderaunts and uncles and lots of
older cousins, and so for me,I've had a lot of experiences of
funerals and deaths and withthat, also outside the family,
(06:39):
you know friends and them havingtheir own family members that
pass on.
That were, you know, friends tome, close to me.
So I can say that I've been tojust way too many funerals
really, and I have tons ofexperience of death and that has
given me the opportunity toreally think about death and
(07:03):
really think about what it meansand, most importantly, what it
means to me now.
I think your experience ofdeath is interesting because
it's generational what do youmean by that?
well, not a lot of people cansay that they knew their
great-grandmother.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Really.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, really.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, my great-great-grandmother died
just a couple months after I wasborn, and then my
great-grandmother died a coupleyears ago.
She was 97, I, I think aroundthere and, yeah, I, I mean, this
(07:55):
funeral for your dad wasprobably my second funeral that
I had been to in 40 years.
So you know, so you've beenavoiding them.
No, I don't avoid them.
I just have such a small familythat, um and um, we don't have
(08:15):
funerals in the way that, um, Idon't know is normal.
I don't know like, when mygrandma, my great-grandmother,
died a couple years ago, therewasn't a funeral really.
It was, you know, she had ashesdone and they were given to her
(08:36):
son and they were put in theground next to her parents and
spread around a little bit, butthere wasn't like a funeral in
that sense.
And, knowing my nana and knowingmy mom and you know I can't
(09:02):
even see them having funerals wejust wouldn't have funerals in
the same sense of, you know,lots of people gathering and
stuff like that and my dad'sside.
We haven't really had anydeaths that I can really
(09:24):
remember in that way.
So it's, yeah, it's, it's beeninteresting.
So, of course, at your dad'sfuneral, I'm checking in with
your sisters.
Am I doing this right?
Am I wearing the right thing?
Am I right?
Because I don't want to be, Iwant to do it right, right.
There's a word that I can'tquite latch on to right now, but
(09:49):
yeah, I just hadn't had thatexperience in that way to know
what was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Well, and that's, you know, funerals and the things
we go through after death, andthat really shapes, I think, a
lot of times what we think ofdeath.
I think that, you know, it'sone of those insights of
hypnosis where things don'treally affect us unless we can
(10:21):
see a connection to ourselvesRight us, unless we can see a
connection to ourselves right.
There's an event that happensand then there's an emotion that
comes out of the meaning ofthat event and the meaning is
really a function of ourconnection to the event.
So I think that part of theprocess of understanding why do
(10:47):
I think what I think about death, why do I have the emotions
that I have about death, canreally be impacted by who was
this person that died and whatwas their relationship to me and
their death, what does it meanfor me, what does it mean about
(11:08):
me?
And I think, when we trace ourexperiences of death backwards
that way, there was a death andhow did it in any way impact me
or relate to me, and then thatmeaning will stimulate an
(11:31):
emotion.
So you know it's, it's uh,there are deaths going on every
day.
Um, thousands and thousands ofpeople are going to die every
single day.
Most of them we won't even hearabout.
Sometimes the way people dieimpacts the way we think about
(11:54):
death.
Right, that you know.
When somebody dies, you know wehave wars going on around the
world.
When people die in war, it'sfunny how we think of their
death differently if they're asoldier than if they were a
civilian.
Right, it changes the way wethink about their death because
(12:19):
it has a different meaning,right, and the meaning is what
really determines our emotionalreaction to it.
When we hear about, you know,um, war, when we hear about, uh,
like, tragedies, events like mymind keeps going back to the
(12:40):
tsunami that took place so manyyears ago on Boxing Day in in
Bali and Indonesia and and theimpact it had on a lot of people
emotionally, because it waskind of like out of nowhere and
people spent some time thinkingabout what it would be like to
be, one minute, you know,enjoying a lovely day on the
(13:03):
beach and then the next minute,to be overwhelmed by a tsunami
that is going to kill.
I think the number was like100,000 people that's hardly a
number we can even fathom rightand have this event that goes
(13:28):
through.
You know, just you know, a fewyears past covet, and we were
literally counting the deaths,paying attention every day to
how many people died, and theway that was happening changed
the way we saw their deaths.
The meaning we put on theirdeaths.
We put on their deaths and soyou know it's.
(13:49):
It's, I think, just to see thatsimple relationship between the
meaning we put on somebody'sdeath and the emotions that
evokes and how that shapes ourviews of death.
Right, and these things come atus often by surprise, right,
(14:11):
seldom do people say I'm gonnadie on Tuesday, which is exactly
what my dad did, but we'll talkabout that later but most of
the time it's Somebody died.
Now, when somebody's really sickand they take months till they
finally pass, right, we look atthat differently.
(14:33):
We say, oh, it wasn't deathrelief.
Right, it's that meaning thatwe put on it that shapes it.
And there's so many differentmeanings, anyway, is what I'm
driving at.
There are so many differentmeanings we can put on people's
(14:54):
death and that will shape ourbeliefs about death and that,
like any other experience,accumulates in our subconscious
mind and over years and years,if we experience more and more
(15:18):
people passing under wide andvarying circumstances, we start
to have a broader and broaderinterpretation of what death is.
It's almost circumstantiallydriven.
(15:40):
It's the situation of the deaththat we care more about than
the actual death itself that'sinteresting.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, I'm having a hard time with this topic, Not
that I'm not like a sad hardtime or scared hard time, but I
guess I'm having an interestingtime wrapping my mind around.
I guess sort of an interestingtime pulling myself away from my
(16:13):
own meanings and views andlooking at it from a perspective
of change or, you know, ofthinking of how do I think about
this differently?
Or what kind of meaning?
Yeah, I don't know.
(16:35):
Well, you know, A little turnedaround.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Part of the reason I want to talk about it is that
you know I can drop this bigtopic and say we're going to
talk about death and there'sgoing to be all kinds of
reactions, and those reactionsto that are really a function of
what your past experience withdeath is.
And then, knowing that there arepeople that you love that die.
There are people that you knowthat die.
(16:57):
There are people that die incircumstances where you can kind
of expect that they're going todie, and there are people who
die in circumstances that arecompletely surprising and catch
you off guard, who die incircumstances that are
completely surprising and catchyou off guard, and each of these
contributes in a way to yourprogram around death, and I just
think it's really valuable toexamine that in yourself and say
(17:20):
geez, how do I feel about deathand what are my experiences of
death?
Right, and you know like, forme, you know, being young, the
first deaths were all cancer andheart attacks mm-hmm right.
(17:43):
They were all cancer and heartattacks and they were all
relatives.
There are people that I knewand I loved but I didn't live.
I loved but I didn't live withthem, and because I didn't live
with them I didn't have thatsame kind of personal meaning.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
And then one day I go to school and I find out that
this guy, that Bruce, he tookhis own life.
And I'm like 15, 16 years old,and I had never experienced that
(18:19):
before and there were, I thinkthere was as many emotions of
curiosity and being just caughtso off guard by it.
Right, because it didn't matchany of my past experiences of
death and I'm still only ateenager, and I think it's
(18:41):
really important to realize thatwhen you're young, you just
don't see death the same way aswhen you're old.
You just can't it, just itisn't attached to you in any way
.
When you're young, if you thinkabout death at all, it's like
so far in the future.
Right, like this is not a topicI need to be concerned about.
(19:01):
Right, right now I'm trying todecide what I want to study in
college.
Right, I'm not going to bethinking about my death, so it
has not a lot of personalrelevance to you, right, and
then spin to the other end ofthe timeline, right, and I have
just recently lost two of mybuddies from law school who were
(19:27):
the same age as me and passedon and although I'd heard of
other people that I practicedlaw with that passed on, these
guys I knew I lived with theseguys, we were, we were friends
the whole of our lives and thatand that was completely
different.
(19:47):
Because now it's very relevantto me, Right, Because now it's
people I know, Now it's people Ilove experiencing a tragic
event an earthquake or a tsunamior a fire or a flood or any
(20:11):
number of ways you know ofvolcano that people find
themselves in these tragediesand we hear that you know 23
people passed, or we hear thatyou know 180 people passed.
These aren't really relevant tous personally, and so it's
really easy to hear about deaththat way and not be terribly
(20:35):
concerned with it.
It's just something we hearabout every day.
If you were to ask, pretendyou're asking the people
listening a question, but ask methe people listening a question
but ask me well, I think thefirst question that I, that
we've already talked a bit about, is you know what is your
(20:56):
experience of death and what areyour, what are your past
engagements with it, it?
But then I'd ask you know, whatdoes death mean to you, about
you?
Right, that's the magic thing,right?
(21:18):
When we're talking ashypnotists, we talk about events
and their meaning and theemotions that they generate.
And the meaning we put on themis often so unconnected to
ourselves that they generatevirtually no emotion.
And it's when events that weconnect to ourselves, we say
(21:41):
this event means something aboutme.
That's when big emotions aregenerated.
That's when emotional reactionstake place.
That's when big emotions aregenerated.
That's when emotional reactionstake place.
That's when we can experiencetrauma, when the emotion is so
intense it's beyond our copingability, right?
So now take this idea of death.
(22:02):
And we've been passive about it, we've been calm about it.
We just talk about other peopledying, we talk about the fact
that you know, this is alltriggered by me, having watched
my father die.
But what does death mean to you, about you?
And how does that createemotion within you?
(22:24):
Look at your own emotions now,asking yourself what will it
mean when I die?
Speaker 3 (22:36):
what will it mean to myself when I die?
Sure start there as if I knowafterwards what it meant.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I thought just using your own emotional impact, Like
if you take that questionseriously right what kind of
emotions does it create in you?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Well, if I'm answering your question properly
, um, I think about how it'sit's affected me over the years.
Um, now I see it as not notcalming or anything, but a
(23:29):
little more peaceful than I usedto see it.
In my 20s we had someone closedie and I had panic attacks.
Afterwards I had to go seesomebody to help with those.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Did you see the connection to yourself?
Mm-hmm.
You want to share that?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yes, sure, so they.
There was a couple connections.
They died very quickly.
They had cancer and basicallythey had a little bit of back
pain and then went to the doctor, tylenol, strong Tylenol, and
(24:26):
then it just wouldn't go away.
And then I can't remember howlong later but they were
diagnosed with cancer and then amonth later they were dead.
So this to me at that age I meanat any age, I'm sure it is a
big thing, but that terrified methat someone healthy, that I
(24:48):
thought of as healthy, couldjust go that quickly.
And I was scared.
I was scared of, you know,cancer.
After that.
I was, I was, yeah, I wentthrough a lot of emotions.
(25:14):
So for me, I was scared of myown health, I was scared.
You know, if I'm relating it tome, there was parts of me that
was now scared of like well, seehow fast that could happen,
like that could happen to you,isn't that scary?
You know all the fears andstuff like that.
(25:38):
Then there was a part of me thatthis was kind of the beginning,
I suppose, of my spiritualjourney in a sense, was I went
for the panic attacks I went, ofmy spiritual journey in a sense
was I went for the panicattacks.
I went to a spiritualpsychologist or anyway, and my
(25:59):
fear was this is kind of silly,but my fear was how do you get
out of the body?
Isn't that interesting?
Like how, how do you, how doesyour spirit, soul, release from
the body?
And uh, I guess part of mypanic attacks were thinking
(26:22):
about that and feeling like Iwas trapped.
And so that was one of my firstspiritual experience.
I had an out-of-body experiencewhen she helped me go through a
meditation and I popped out ofmy body and was up above looking
down and I was like, oh, thatwas easy and I, oh, my God, I
(26:45):
came back out of that experienceand just was like crying so bad
nonstop.
She wanted to keep working withme to like train me and stuff,
and I just never went back.
I was terrified Not terrified,but like it was such a jarring
experience that I just didn'tknow what to do with it at 21,.
You know.
(27:05):
So, yeah, and that, yeah,that's sort of how that death
made me feel about myself inthat time.
You know if I'm relating it tomyself.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Well, I think that's the point right.
Yeah, see some kind ofconnection to ourselves and we
have some some fear or someconcern or some resentment or
some anger about the idea.
(27:42):
You know, we, we, we aresurrounded by death every day.
Yeah, literally millions ofpeople die in the world every
day.
It's a very common experienceand it's 100% natural, because
if you're born, you're going todie.
It's just a fact.
Up to this point it'sinarguable.
(28:05):
There are no eternal bodies onthe planet.
Some have lived a long time,but it's an inevitable truth
about our physical existence.
But how we interpret it and howwe view it changes how we feel
(28:25):
about it and how it relates tous.
You come to the table with anatural spiritual inclination to
see a human being as somethingmore than a physical body.
On the flip side, there's peopleout there who see that a body
is just a body and there'snothing more.
And there's nothing after death.
And there was nothing beforedeath or before birth, and
there's nothing after death.
(28:47):
And there's this little blip oftime in the eternity of time,
the billions and billions ofyears that the planets existed,
and that's going to impact themcompletely differently.
You know somebody who and thisis my point those of us who have
(29:07):
a comfortable set of beliefsabout death interpret death as
it relates to ourselvesdifferently than those who
haven't really considered thetopic, who maybe haven't
(29:28):
experienced death in terms offamily and loved ones and
friends, maybe haven'texperienced, you know, long,
terminal illness, have, ofcourse, read stories and heard
about people dying, but thereisn't something for them to
(29:49):
relate to and there isn'tsomething for them to view
themselves, and so they have noreason to engage the development
of a mindset around death sowhat do you think is the product
of that?
Speaker 3 (30:05):
do you?
Does someone like that ignoredeath?
Like you know, just go throughlife and are they ignoring death
?
Speaker 1 (30:14):
well.
I've known people, I've metpeople in my life who, if you
bring up the topic of death,they want you to just shut up.
I don't want to think about it,I don't want to care about it,
I don't want to spend any timedwelling on it.
Right?
There are other people who I'vemet who are maybe a little I
don't know, maybe they'retwisted like me.
(30:34):
They want to talk about it.
Let's talk about this.
This is not talked about enough.
We don't get comfortable withdeath.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Especially in the Western world.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Well, and I'm going to say with Western medicine,
one of the things that Idiscovered through this process
with my dad is that there is,you know, at one with my dad is
that there is.
You know, at one point my dadwas very clear that he didn't
see his life and the way he wasliving as having a lot of value.
He was I don't want to breachhis privacy but his body was not
(31:08):
under his control anymore.
He couldn't walk.
He couldn't walk, he couldn'tthink clearly all the time.
He couldn't control getting tothe bathroom and those kinds of
things that were really hard onhim.
He wasn't able.
(31:28):
His eyes were going, hishearing was going.
He couldn't follow the TVbecause he had to turn it up
till it was like the top volume.
He couldn't read much anymorebecause his eyes just.
We got the big print books andthings and that helped, but it
was just really hard to read.
(31:49):
And reading was his thing, hiswhole life.
He loved to to read.
So he was reaching a pointwhere his life wasn't having any
value.
In his interpretation, you know, he would say things like I
don't know why I'm still alive,I don't know why I I have to go
through this um, and so he wasquite happy to sign the do not
(32:12):
resuscitate order that if Istart to go, don't bring me back
.
But he was in the hospital inthe end because he fell and
broke his hip, which just addedto the frustration and the pain
and the questioning that he wasgoing through and the
(32:33):
questioning that he was goingthrough, and he was at the
hospital and the whole medicalsystem is trying to keep you
alive.
I've got friends in the medicalsystem who say death is the
enemy.
Right Anything to stay alive,and I'm not sure that that's
healthy, I'm not sure thatthat's natural, that that's
(32:58):
normal.
Death is a natural process.
So at what point do you letpeople die?
And at what point in thehospital my dad was going and
(33:18):
the nurses didn't know what elseto do except treat him and
bring him back.
And you know, modern medicinekeeps us alive a long time after
we would normally, let's say,naturally expire, expire.
(33:40):
So you know, to see that, tosee that our system is sees
death as the enemy, will notallow death when it appears to
be possibly an appropriate um,an appropriate time and um, we
are embedded in that system.
So this, to me, was interestingthings to think about,
interesting things to talk about, especially with medical
(34:01):
professionals who aren't evenreally wired to think that death
is okay.
And we did get to meet medicalprofessionals that did think
that way and we met lots ofmedical professionals that
wouldn't even consider the idea,and so, again, you know these
(34:22):
are life experiences, I mean Idon't know what it's like to be
a nurse in a hospital, a doctorin a hospital, surrounded by
people who are in the process ofdying or have experienced
things that could kill them,right, and they've been trained
(34:42):
right.
Their ideas are deeply ingrainedand I find this fascinating.
I find the spectrum of people'sthoughts and beliefs about
death to be fascinating, but, asa hypnotist, I always go back.
What was the program that ledyou there?
(35:03):
What were the series ofexperiences that you've had
surrounding death that havebrought you to your place, of
the way you interpret death whenyou can be comfortable with
with it, if at all, and when youcan't be comfortable with it,
if at all?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
yeah, just so.
Yeah, we're not.
We're not trying to convinceanybody of anything, we're just
sort of asking thought-provokingquestions about the mind.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
I believe and this is where we left it last time I
believe that we have a program,that every one of us has a set
of mental thoughts, a set ofbeliefs, a set of emotional
responses to these ideas, andthat they come from our past
experience and they're oftenhanded down generationally.
(36:01):
You know, the way mom and dadthought about death is the way
their children think about death, and moms and dads who protect
their kids from death and don'tlet them go to funerals versus
moms and dads who say, yeah,kids from death and don't let
them go to funerals, versus momsand dads who say, yeah, of
course you're coming to thefunerals, because this is just
part of life and this is whatyou're going to go through.
(36:22):
You're part of a family, you'repart of a circle of friends and
loved ones and you're justgoing to experience, over time,
these funerals, these deaths,these losses.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
I don't even know, honestly, what my family did or
how they thought.
I couldn't tell you what my dadthought, what my mom thought,
not at the time anyway, like notwhat they thought at the time,
because there were no, that Iknow, of funerals to go to.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Because there were no , that I know, of funerals to go
to.
I know what it would be like tobe in a family where that
discussion was open and wasn'ttriggered by family members
passing on, triggered by, youknow.
Here we are watching the newsreport on the train derailment
where seven people died Right.
Well, what does that mean?
(37:16):
What does it mean for them?
What does that mean for me?
If it doesn't mean anythingabout me, usually I can just
ignore it and I don't have anemotional response and I just
find this stuff really, reallyfascinating.
And so for me I would say, youknow, that's the next question.
If the first question is thatwe asked in the first podcast is
(37:39):
well, what are your experiencesof death and what are your
experiences of learning aboutdeath?
And start to get an awarenessof what your thoughts are about
death and start to, in myopinion, become aware of how
that has become a program insideyou, that, how that is a belief
(38:01):
system that you have assembledbased on your experiences, and
then to take that, the next step.
Well, what can death mean aboutme?
How does death relate to me?
What about my death?
What about my loved ones dying?
(38:24):
Death is no longer a strangerDeath is now part of my life.
Because, for me, death is verymuch part of my life because
I've yeah, I've been tocountless funerals.
I've literally it's, it's gottabe.
Well over a hundred people thatI've known and loved have died,
(38:47):
and I've probably been to atleast 60 or 70 funerals in my
life and I've probably been apallbearer 20 to 30 times at
funerals, and so I have thissort of I don't know.
I have a body of experience andthose experiences have forced
(39:09):
me to examine the idea.
Right?
So if you examine the idea, howdoes death relate to me and how
does death relate to those Ilove, and you start to become
aware of, okay, these are myexperiences of death and this is
maybe my collection of beliefsabout death.
(39:31):
Now it's, does that serve me?
Right?
This is a program and whateffort have I put into
understanding death?
What effort have I put into theexperience of death?
Understanding, understandingthat, because there's a whole
(39:53):
world out there that we you andI have personally gone out of
our way to experience, which hasshaped us, and people will say
it's shaped us spiritually.
So if we just take that wordspirit and just say spirit is
everything that isn't physical,right.
(40:13):
Spirit is everything that youcan be aware of, that you can
embrace, that you can use foryour own peacefulness.
Spirit is that whole world thatcan't necessarily be subject to
scientific proof, right?
(40:38):
I believe that when people taketime to examine death, they are
forced to face that which wemight call spiritual.
But I think it's a progressionand I and for me, you know, um,
(40:58):
my desire in doing this podcastis, in part, um you know,
catharsis for myself, a processof talking and thinking this
stuff out loud.
Um, that's the selfish part.
The unselfish part is anawareness that there will be,
and there are, people who sufferas a result of the idea of
(41:21):
death.
There are people who sufferbecause they haven't really
spent any time understandingwhat death means to them.
There are people who willsuffer when they get surprised
by the death of people that theylove, and that there are many
people that are listening, Ibelieve, that have been
(41:45):
diagnosed with illness and beentold you might die, and they've
had to face that questiondirectly about themselves, the
fears, the angers, theresentments, the confusions, a
whole world of emotion, and Ithink that everyone can be
(42:10):
served by taking the time tolearn more about death and
sharing each other's experiencesof death and saying, well, what
does that mean and what doesthat mean about me and what kind
of emotions am I feeling andwhat does that mean about my
(42:33):
interpretation of this idea?
And I think there's a lot ofvalue in that because the cold
hard fact is it's coming for allof us.
Hillary and Les offer bothin-person and online hypnosis
(42:56):
services for clients all aroundthe world.
If that interests you, pleasevisit our website,
wwwsomhypnosiscom and sign upfor a free consultation or send
us an email at info atpsalmhypnosiscom.
It's coming for all of us andit's coming for everyone that
(43:19):
you love.
You know.
I think one of the best things Idid through this process of my
dad's you know, process ofdemise, process of passing was I
was just really open with mykids.
I did my best to talk to themabout it and they went out of
(43:43):
their way to talk to me aboutwhat was going on for me.
And I needed to be really openwith that, because what they
were watching is inevitablytheir future experience Me
watching the end of my dad andthey will have to experience the
end of me and knowing, as ahypnotist, how all of these
(44:05):
ideas are shaped by ourexperiences and by the emotions
we attach to them.
I saw it as very important forme to be gentle but forthcoming
with my kids about what I wasgoing through and what my dad
(44:29):
was going through gone throughand what my dad was going
through and what it meant to himto die and what it meant to me
for him to die.
Yeah, I think there's a lot ofvalue in putting your mind to it
before you have to.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
And what's you know and you know'll just finish by
by throwing this out therebecause it's, you know, bringing
us to the next podcast thatwe'll do in a couple of days.
You know, I want to beforthcoming by saying my dad
reached a point where he choseto die.
He picked the date, he got adoctor that would help him and
(45:11):
we call that medical assistancein dying, or made here in
Ontario and he said enough'senough, I can't take this
anymore.
And so we actually had anappointment and we could all
myself and my five sisters, wecould be there and attend to him
(45:33):
on his last day, and that'sjust completely different
experience.
Yeah, because it's one thingfor somebody to call me and say,
hey, les dad's dead.
It's another thing to say, hey,les dad's going to go on April
2nd.
It's at four o'clock, we're'reall gonna get there about 11 am
(45:58):
anyway.
I don't think it has to be adowner, but I think it's really
worth examining our own programsyeah so what does death mean
about you?
What does the death of those youlove mean about you?
And in examining what it meansabout you, you start to get an
(46:19):
idea of your emotions.
And when you start to get anidea of your emotions, then you
start to get some insight intoyour program.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
Yeah, I think it's a great topic for anyone listening
.
I know Les is talking a lot andI'm not, but that's just
because I'm just really thinkingabout it.
I'm struggling with it a littlebit, but I'm going to give it
some thought and I'll beprobably more talkative next
time.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Just fire up some of your reactions right now from
all my yapping.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
I think that it was interesting going through
watching your dad go through theprocess.
I think it brought up a lot forme that I didn't know was there
when he first chose to go onApril 2nd.
(47:15):
It brought up some of those oldemotions of fears and things
about myself, you know, myfuture and I.
(47:39):
It was sort of, for me at least, it was a calling to to really
get back into my spirituality.
So, you know, I dove into thatfor a bit.
I felt better, I felt okay, I'mokay now and then it was an
interesting process.
You know, seeing you go throughwhat you were going through,
(48:02):
what the family was goingthrough, each individually
Afterwards, my own grieving thatI didn't realize or recognize
was going to happen.
Um, and to your point abouttalking about it before uh, in,
(48:24):
you know different ways.
Um, some people say yeah, let'stalk about this, and some
people say no and they turn a,turn away from it.
What I learned in in I always,a lot of the time I go back to
my hospice training, volunteertraining, and think about how
(48:50):
they told us lots of familieswill not, um, will not look at
this, will, they'll be scared tolook at it.
Um, uh, part of bereavementtraining.
I learned I didn't do it yet,but bereavement training is
helping the family like get tothe point of way before the
(49:14):
death, because it's not justafter the death that stuff, it's
before the death is helping thefamily go through writing who's
, you know who's in charge ofstuff that's happening and if
something was to happen andnobody wants to think about it.
(49:34):
But what then ends up happeningis something catastrophic and
everybody's running around infear now because nobody knows
what to do.
So to have it all laid outbeforehand, even though it's
(50:02):
scary for a lot of people, is,yeah, it's a good thing to do.
It's funny I think about just aside note, thinking about wills
and I think, oh, maybe I shoulddrop a will.
But I have this likesuperstition and I I'm sure it's
gotta be across the board thatif I drop a will then that means
like I don't have much longerleft.
It's a weird superstition.
(50:26):
Um, so I you know I avoid doingthat because because I don't
want that.
But that's just a superstition,it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Yeah, to me it's just , you know that that, um,
insightful awareness of your ownprogram, wow, that's the way I
think about that, is it?
That's the way I feel about theprocess of writing a will.
That's the way I feel aboutdeath, Right, I'm, you know,
just being aware of the processof writing a will.
That's the way I feel aboutdeath.
Right, I'm, you know, justbeing aware of your own emotions
(50:55):
as it relates.
I think it's a good beginning.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Yeah, yeah, I do, in the next podcast, want you to
touch on if I'll bring thesenotes.
But if you're open to it,touching on this idea, I'm going
to botch it if I try to say it.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
But this idea of what is better, guilt or resentment
after the fact, yeah, it's a bigidea, talked about it with some
friends After the fact yeah,it's a big idea, talked with it
with some friends.
Yeah, I think that you knowpart of the goal here is to lay
(51:40):
it out in sequence and have thelisteners say Okay, I'll do a
little bit of homework, I'll doa little bit of thinking about
this, I'll look at where myprogram comes from.
I'll look a little bit ofthinking about this.
I'll look at where my programcomes from.
I'll look at my experience,I'll look at how this relates to
me and how I feel about theidea.
What if I lost my best friend?
What if I lost my mother or myfather?
(52:02):
What if I lost my child?
What if I lost somebody reallyclose to me?
And I don't think that'sinviting those things to happen.
I think that that is anawareness of your own emotional
experience and program as itrelates to death.
(52:26):
And it's until you know whatyour program is, you don't
really know if you like it oryou don't like it.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
And, if you don't like it, I want to talk about in
a podcast the things you can doto open yourself up to a whole
bunch of ideas, because I reallybelieve that we celebrate birth
and we avoid death.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
And I think they're both worth celebrating.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
Okay, I'm done for now.
Speaker 3 (52:59):
Good job, I'm done.
I'm done All right, we'll seeyou later, thank you.
I think that you know , it's one of those insights of
hypnosis where things don'treally affect us unless we can
see a connection to ourselvesright.
There's an event that happensand then there's an emotion that
comes out of the meaning ofthat event, and the meaning is
(00:31):
really a function of ourconnection to the event.
So I think that part of theprocess of understanding why do
I think what I think about death, why do I have the emotions
that I have about death, canreally be impacted by who was
(00:54):
this person that died and whatwas their relationship to me and
their death.
What does it mean for me?
What does it mean about me?
What does it mean for me?
What does it mean about me?
And I think, when we trace ourexperiences of death backwards
that way, there was a death andhow did it in any way impact me
(01:20):
or relate to me, and then thatmeaning will stimulate an
emotion.
Welcome to Coffee with Hilaryand Les.
We are a couple of hypnotistswho have created a podcast about
freeing our minds from oldideas, old thoughts and old
(01:41):
habits, those old things thatinterfere with our ability to
make fresh, new choices.
It's time for us all to createthe life of our dreams, okay we
are on the line.
On the line.
Again, again, we start andstart and stop and stop.
We're not at the lake today, no, no lake today, no weather
(02:05):
report, although it's beautiful.
We're in at the lake today no,no lake today, no weather report
, although it's beautiful, we'rein the office trying to move
this gruesome conversation aboutdeath along.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Gruesome.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Death.
It's become my fixation.
We're coming to the end ofApril and April has been a month
in which there was my fatherdied and we did a funeral, and
people from across the countrycame to town for his funeral and
(02:38):
many of them had never reallyhad much of a close experience
of death before Nieces andnephews.
It's a relatively new thing forthem.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
And you've had like a ton of death experience.
Like growing up you had likethe wagons.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I never killed anybody.
Horse-drawn buggies that tookbodies, didn't you have to like?
Now you're being harsh person,have to like lay in the living
room for a week or somethingjust to make sure they were gone
.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Here we are laughing at death.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Oh fuck, oh my gosh.
Am I allowed to say that?
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I might even leave that in the mix Just to provoke
people.
We're talking about aninteresting topic.
Anyway, I've really enjoyedwell, I enjoy when we have
podcasts where we sort of diginto a topic and we just slowly,
(03:53):
bit by bit, sort of examine ashypnotists where our thoughts
come from, where do our feelingsget generated, how does all of
that really come about.
And you know, the mind in everykind of experience you can
imagine, collects thoseexperiences and files those
(04:18):
experiences away, reallyinterconnected, based on the
emotion that each of thoseexperiences has contained for
them.
And I think that we as humanbeings all around the world,
with different views on death,we all collect experiences of
(04:41):
death.
And, yes, I come from a bigfamily.
That uh came from a big familyand so I had like a dozen aunts
and uncles.
I had, um, you know, a fewdozen cousins and um dozen
(05:04):
cousins, and we did the samething.
We're a big family and we allhad a whole bunch of kids.
My dad had 20 grandkids and soit was.
It's just a lot of people, andwhen there's a lot of people,
there's a lot of experiences,and one of those experiences
I've been through a lot is theexperience of death.
(05:25):
My dad is the second last ofhis generation, so we have one
more aunt, the Energizer Bunnywe call her.
She's like 97.
She just keeps on going.
She's got a very simplephilosophy in life, and it's's
just beautiful is that she's gotthings to do today, so she
(05:47):
might as well get up and goabout doing them.
And she's very social and she'sshe's very engaged in other
people, and that's justbeautiful and that just gives
her a reason to get up every dayand keep on going.
But she's the last one of thatgeneration.
Right the last one of thatgeneration Right.
And with that means that sincethe time I was 12, I've been
(06:18):
going to funerals, and my motherbeing the second youngest of
her family and my father beingthe youngest in his family, it
meant that I had lots of olderaunts and uncles and lots of
older cousins, and so for me,I've had a lot of experiences of
funerals and deaths and withthat, also outside the family,
(06:39):
you know friends and them havingtheir own family members that
pass on.
That were, you know, friends tome, close to me.
So I can say that I've been tojust way too many funerals
really, and I have tons ofexperience of death and that has
given me the opportunity toreally think about death and
(07:03):
really think about what it meansand, most importantly, what it
means to me now.
I think your experience ofdeath is interesting because
it's generational what do youmean by that?
well, not a lot of people cansay that they knew their
great-grandmother.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Really.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, really.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, my great-great-grandmother died
just a couple months after I wasborn, and then my
great-grandmother died a coupleyears ago.
She was 97, I, I think aroundthere and, yeah, I, I mean, this
(07:55):
funeral for your dad wasprobably my second funeral that
I had been to in 40 years.
So you know, so you've beenavoiding them.
No, I don't avoid them.
I just have such a small familythat, um and um, we don't have
(08:15):
funerals in the way that, um, Idon't know is normal.
I don't know like, when mygrandma, my great-grandmother,
died a couple years ago, therewasn't a funeral really.
It was, you know, she had ashesdone and they were given to her
(08:36):
son and they were put in theground next to her parents and
spread around a little bit, butthere wasn't like a funeral in
that sense.
And, knowing my nana and knowingmy mom and you know I can't
(09:02):
even see them having funerals wejust wouldn't have funerals in
the same sense of, you know,lots of people gathering and
stuff like that and my dad'sside.
We haven't really had anydeaths that I can really
(09:24):
remember in that way.
So it's, yeah, it's, it's beeninteresting.
So, of course, at your dad'sfuneral, I'm checking in with
your sisters.
Am I doing this right?
Am I wearing the right thing?
Am I right?
Because I don't want to be, Iwant to do it right, right.
There's a word that I can'tquite latch on to right now, but
(09:49):
yeah, I just hadn't had thatexperience in that way to know
what was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Well, and that's, you know, funerals and the things
we go through after death, andthat really shapes, I think, a
lot of times what we think ofdeath.
I think that, you know, it'sone of those insights of
hypnosis where things don'treally affect us unless we can
(10:21):
see a connection to ourselvesRight us, unless we can see a
connection to ourselves right.
There's an event that happensand then there's an emotion that
comes out of the meaning ofthat event and the meaning is
really a function of ourconnection to the event.
So I think that part of theprocess of understanding why do
(10:47):
I think what I think about death, why do I have the emotions
that I have about death, canreally be impacted by who was
this person that died and whatwas their relationship to me and
their death, what does it meanfor me, what does it mean about
(11:08):
me?
And I think, when we trace ourexperiences of death backwards
that way, there was a death andhow did it in any way impact me
or relate to me, and then thatmeaning will stimulate an
(11:31):
emotion.
So you know it's, it's uh,there are deaths going on every
day.
Um, thousands and thousands ofpeople are going to die every
single day.
Most of them we won't even hearabout.
Sometimes the way people dieimpacts the way we think about
(11:54):
death.
Right, that you know.
When somebody dies, you know wehave wars going on around the
world.
When people die in war, it'sfunny how we think of their
death differently if they're asoldier than if they were a
civilian.
Right, it changes the way wethink about their death because
(12:19):
it has a different meaning,right, and the meaning is what
really determines our emotionalreaction to it.
When we hear about, you know,um, war, when we hear about, uh,
like, tragedies, events like mymind keeps going back to the
(12:40):
tsunami that took place so manyyears ago on Boxing Day in in
Bali and Indonesia and and theimpact it had on a lot of people
emotionally, because it waskind of like out of nowhere and
people spent some time thinkingabout what it would be like to
be, one minute, you know,enjoying a lovely day on the
(13:03):
beach and then the next minute,to be overwhelmed by a tsunami
that is going to kill.
I think the number was like100,000 people that's hardly a
number we can even fathom rightand have this event that goes
(13:28):
through.
You know, just you know, a fewyears past covet, and we were
literally counting the deaths,paying attention every day to
how many people died, and theway that was happening changed
the way we saw their deaths.
The meaning we put on theirdeaths.
We put on their deaths and soyou know it's.
(13:49):
It's, I think, just to see thatsimple relationship between the
meaning we put on somebody'sdeath and the emotions that
evokes and how that shapes ourviews of death.
Right, and these things come atus often by surprise, right,
(14:11):
seldom do people say I'm gonnadie on Tuesday, which is exactly
what my dad did, but we'll talkabout that later but most of
the time it's Somebody died.
Now, when somebody's really sickand they take months till they
finally pass, right, we look atthat differently.
(14:33):
We say, oh, it wasn't deathrelief.
Right, it's that meaning thatwe put on it that shapes it.
And there's so many differentmeanings, anyway, is what I'm
driving at.
There are so many differentmeanings we can put on people's
(14:54):
death and that will shape ourbeliefs about death and that,
like any other experience,accumulates in our subconscious
mind and over years and years,if we experience more and more
(15:18):
people passing under wide andvarying circumstances, we start
to have a broader and broaderinterpretation of what death is.
It's almost circumstantiallydriven.
(15:40):
It's the situation of the deaththat we care more about than
the actual death itself that'sinteresting.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, I'm having a hard time with this topic, Not
that I'm not like a sad hardtime or scared hard time, but I
guess I'm having an interestingtime wrapping my mind around.
I guess sort of an interestingtime pulling myself away from my
(16:13):
own meanings and views andlooking at it from a perspective
of change or, you know, ofthinking of how do I think about
this differently?
Or what kind of meaning?
Yeah, I don't know.
(16:35):
Well, you know, A little turnedaround.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Part of the reason I want to talk about it is that
you know I can drop this bigtopic and say we're going to
talk about death and there'sgoing to be all kinds of
reactions, and those reactionsto that are really a function of
what your past experience withdeath is.
And then, knowing that there arepeople that you love that die.
There are people that you knowthat die.
(16:57):
There are people that die incircumstances where you can kind
of expect that they're going todie, and there are people who
die in circumstances that arecompletely surprising and catch
you off guard, who die incircumstances that are
completely surprising and catchyou off guard, and each of these
contributes in a way to yourprogram around death, and I just
think it's really valuable toexamine that in yourself and say
(17:20):
geez, how do I feel about deathand what are my experiences of
death?
Right, and you know like, forme, you know, being young, the
first deaths were all cancer andheart attacks mm-hmm right.
(17:43):
They were all cancer and heartattacks and they were all
relatives.
There are people that I knewand I loved but I didn't live.
I loved but I didn't live withthem, and because I didn't live
with them I didn't have thatsame kind of personal meaning.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
And then one day I go to school and I find out that
this guy, that Bruce, he tookhis own life.
And I'm like 15, 16 years old,and I had never experienced that
(18:19):
before and there were, I thinkthere was as many emotions of
curiosity and being just caughtso off guard by it.
Right, because it didn't matchany of my past experiences of
death and I'm still only ateenager, and I think it's
(18:41):
really important to realize thatwhen you're young, you just
don't see death the same way aswhen you're old.
You just can't it, just itisn't attached to you in any way
.
When you're young, if you thinkabout death at all, it's like
so far in the future.
Right, like this is not a topicI need to be concerned about.
(19:01):
Right, right now I'm trying todecide what I want to study in
college.
Right, I'm not going to bethinking about my death, so it
has not a lot of personalrelevance to you, right, and
then spin to the other end ofthe timeline, right, and I have
just recently lost two of mybuddies from law school who were
(19:27):
the same age as me and passedon and although I'd heard of
other people that I practicedlaw with that passed on, these
guys I knew I lived with theseguys, we were, we were friends
the whole of our lives and thatand that was completely
different.
(19:47):
Because now it's very relevantto me, Right, Because now it's
people I know, Now it's people Ilove experiencing a tragic
event an earthquake or a tsunamior a fire or a flood or any
(20:11):
number of ways you know ofvolcano that people find
themselves in these tragediesand we hear that you know 23
people passed, or we hear thatyou know 180 people passed.
These aren't really relevant tous personally, and so it's
really easy to hear about deaththat way and not be terribly
(20:35):
concerned with it.
It's just something we hearabout every day.
If you were to ask, pretendyou're asking the people
listening a question, but ask methe people listening a question
but ask me well, I think thefirst question that I, that
we've already talked a bit about, is you know what is your
(20:56):
experience of death and what areyour, what are your past
engagements with it, it?
But then I'd ask you know, whatdoes death mean to you, about
you?
Right, that's the magic thing,right?
(21:18):
When we're talking ashypnotists, we talk about events
and their meaning and theemotions that they generate.
And the meaning we put on themis often so unconnected to
ourselves that they generatevirtually no emotion.
And it's when events that weconnect to ourselves, we say
(21:41):
this event means something aboutme.
That's when big emotions aregenerated.
That's when emotional reactionstake place.
That's when big emotions aregenerated.
That's when emotional reactionstake place.
That's when we can experiencetrauma, when the emotion is so
intense it's beyond our copingability, right?
So now take this idea of death.
(22:02):
And we've been passive about it, we've been calm about it.
We just talk about other peopledying, we talk about the fact
that you know, this is alltriggered by me, having watched
my father die.
But what does death mean to you, about you?
And how does that createemotion within you?
(22:24):
Look at your own emotions now,asking yourself what will it
mean when I die?
Speaker 3 (22:36):
what will it mean to myself when I die?
Sure start there as if I knowafterwards what it meant.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I thought just using your own emotional impact, Like
if you take that questionseriously right what kind of
emotions does it create in you?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Well, if I'm answering your question properly
, um, I think about how it'sit's affected me over the years.
Um, now I see it as not notcalming or anything, but a
(23:29):
little more peaceful than I usedto see it.
In my 20s we had someone closedie and I had panic attacks.
Afterwards I had to go seesomebody to help with those.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Did you see the connection to yourself?
Mm-hmm.
You want to share that?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yes, sure, so they.
There was a couple connections.
They died very quickly.
They had cancer and basicallythey had a little bit of back
pain and then went to the doctor, tylenol, strong Tylenol, and
(24:26):
then it just wouldn't go away.
And then I can't remember howlong later but they were
diagnosed with cancer and then amonth later they were dead.
So this to me at that age I meanat any age, I'm sure it is a
big thing, but that terrified methat someone healthy, that I
(24:48):
thought of as healthy, couldjust go that quickly.
And I was scared.
I was scared of, you know,cancer.
After that.
I was, I was, yeah, I wentthrough a lot of emotions.
(25:14):
So for me, I was scared of myown health, I was scared.
You know, if I'm relating it tome, there was parts of me that
was now scared of like well, seehow fast that could happen,
like that could happen to you,isn't that scary?
You know all the fears andstuff like that.
(25:38):
Then there was a part of me thatthis was kind of the beginning,
I suppose, of my spiritualjourney in a sense, was I went
for the panic attacks I went, ofmy spiritual journey in a sense
was I went for the panicattacks.
I went to a spiritualpsychologist or anyway, and my
(25:59):
fear was this is kind of silly,but my fear was how do you get
out of the body?
Isn't that interesting?
Like how, how do you, how doesyour spirit, soul, release from
the body?
And uh, I guess part of mypanic attacks were thinking
(26:22):
about that and feeling like Iwas trapped.
And so that was one of my firstspiritual experience.
I had an out-of-body experiencewhen she helped me go through a
meditation and I popped out ofmy body and was up above looking
down and I was like, oh, thatwas easy and I, oh, my God, I
(26:45):
came back out of that experienceand just was like crying so bad
nonstop.
She wanted to keep working withme to like train me and stuff,
and I just never went back.
I was terrified Not terrified,but like it was such a jarring
experience that I just didn'tknow what to do with it at 21,.
You know.
(27:05):
So, yeah, and that, yeah,that's sort of how that death
made me feel about myself inthat time.
You know if I'm relating it tomyself.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Well, I think that's the point right.
Yeah, see some kind ofconnection to ourselves and we
have some some fear or someconcern or some resentment or
some anger about the idea.
(27:42):
You know, we, we, we aresurrounded by death every day.
Yeah, literally millions ofpeople die in the world every
day.
It's a very common experienceand it's 100% natural, because
if you're born, you're going todie.
It's just a fact.
Up to this point it'sinarguable.
(28:05):
There are no eternal bodies onthe planet.
Some have lived a long time,but it's an inevitable truth
about our physical existence.
But how we interpret it and howwe view it changes how we feel
(28:25):
about it and how it relates tous.
You come to the table with anatural spiritual inclination to
see a human being as somethingmore than a physical body.
On the flip side, there's peopleout there who see that a body
is just a body and there'snothing more.
And there's nothing after death.
And there was nothing beforedeath or before birth, and
there's nothing after death.
(28:47):
And there's this little blip oftime in the eternity of time,
the billions and billions ofyears that the planets existed,
and that's going to impact themcompletely differently.
You know somebody who and thisis my point those of us who have
(29:07):
a comfortable set of beliefsabout death interpret death as
it relates to ourselvesdifferently than those who
haven't really considered thetopic, who maybe haven't
(29:28):
experienced death in terms offamily and loved ones and
friends, maybe haven'texperienced, you know, long,
terminal illness, have, ofcourse, read stories and heard
about people dying, but thereisn't something for them to
(29:49):
relate to and there isn'tsomething for them to view
themselves, and so they have noreason to engage the development
of a mindset around death sowhat do you think is the product
of that?
Speaker 3 (30:05):
do you?
Does someone like that ignoredeath?
Like you know, just go throughlife and are they ignoring death
?
Speaker 1 (30:14):
well.
I've known people, I've metpeople in my life who, if you
bring up the topic of death,they want you to just shut up.
I don't want to think about it,I don't want to care about it,
I don't want to spend any timedwelling on it.
Right?
There are other people who I'vemet who are maybe a little I
don't know, maybe they'retwisted like me.
(30:34):
They want to talk about it.
Let's talk about this.
This is not talked about enough.
We don't get comfortable withdeath.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Especially in the Western world.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Well, and I'm going to say with Western medicine,
one of the things that Idiscovered through this process
with my dad is that there is,you know, at one with my dad is
that there is.
You know, at one point my dadwas very clear that he didn't
see his life and the way he wasliving as having a lot of value.
He was I don't want to breachhis privacy but his body was not
(31:08):
under his control anymore.
He couldn't walk.
He couldn't walk, he couldn'tthink clearly all the time.
He couldn't control getting tothe bathroom and those kinds of
things that were really hard onhim.
He wasn't able.
(31:28):
His eyes were going, hishearing was going.
He couldn't follow the TVbecause he had to turn it up
till it was like the top volume.
He couldn't read much anymorebecause his eyes just.
We got the big print books andthings and that helped, but it
was just really hard to read.
(31:49):
And reading was his thing, hiswhole life.
He loved to to read.
So he was reaching a pointwhere his life wasn't having any
value.
In his interpretation, you know, he would say things like I
don't know why I'm still alive,I don't know why I I have to go
through this um, and so he wasquite happy to sign the do not
(32:12):
resuscitate order that if Istart to go, don't bring me back
.
But he was in the hospital inthe end because he fell and
broke his hip, which just addedto the frustration and the pain
and the questioning that he wasgoing through and the
(32:33):
questioning that he was goingthrough, and he was at the
hospital and the whole medicalsystem is trying to keep you
alive.
I've got friends in the medicalsystem who say death is the
enemy.
Right Anything to stay alive,and I'm not sure that that's
healthy, I'm not sure thatthat's natural, that that's
(32:58):
normal.
Death is a natural process.
So at what point do you letpeople die?
And at what point in thehospital my dad was going and
(33:18):
the nurses didn't know what elseto do except treat him and
bring him back.
And you know, modern medicinekeeps us alive a long time after
we would normally, let's say,naturally expire, expire.
(33:40):
So you know, to see that, tosee that our system is sees
death as the enemy, will notallow death when it appears to
be possibly an appropriate um,an appropriate time and um, we
are embedded in that system.
So this, to me, was interestingthings to think about,
interesting things to talk about, especially with medical
(34:01):
professionals who aren't evenreally wired to think that death
is okay.
And we did get to meet medicalprofessionals that did think
that way and we met lots ofmedical professionals that
wouldn't even consider the idea,and so, again, you know these
(34:22):
are life experiences, I mean Idon't know what it's like to be
a nurse in a hospital, a doctorin a hospital, surrounded by
people who are in the process ofdying or have experienced
things that could kill them,right, and they've been trained
(34:42):
right.
Their ideas are deeply ingrainedand I find this fascinating.
I find the spectrum of people'sthoughts and beliefs about
death to be fascinating, but, asa hypnotist, I always go back.
What was the program that ledyou there?
(35:03):
What were the series ofexperiences that you've had
surrounding death that havebrought you to your place, of
the way you interpret death whenyou can be comfortable with
with it, if at all, and when youcan't be comfortable with it,
if at all?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
yeah, just so.
Yeah, we're not.
We're not trying to convinceanybody of anything, we're just
sort of asking thought-provokingquestions about the mind.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
I believe and this is where we left it last time I
believe that we have a program,that every one of us has a set
of mental thoughts, a set ofbeliefs, a set of emotional
responses to these ideas, andthat they come from our past
experience and they're oftenhanded down generationally.
(36:01):
You know, the way mom and dadthought about death is the way
their children think about death, and moms and dads who protect
their kids from death and don'tlet them go to funerals versus
moms and dads who say, yeah,kids from death and don't let
them go to funerals, versus momsand dads who say, yeah, of
course you're coming to thefunerals, because this is just
part of life and this is whatyou're going to go through.
(36:22):
You're part of a family, you'repart of a circle of friends and
loved ones and you're justgoing to experience, over time,
these funerals, these deaths,these losses.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
I don't even know, honestly, what my family did or
how they thought.
I couldn't tell you what my dadthought, what my mom thought,
not at the time anyway, like notwhat they thought at the time,
because there were no, that Iknow, of funerals to go to.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Because there were no , that I know, of funerals to go
to.
I know what it would be like tobe in a family where that
discussion was open and wasn'ttriggered by family members
passing on, triggered by, youknow.
Here we are watching the newsreport on the train derailment
where seven people died Right.
Well, what does that mean?
(37:16):
What does it mean for them?
What does that mean for me?
If it doesn't mean anythingabout me, usually I can just
ignore it and I don't have anemotional response and I just
find this stuff really, reallyfascinating.
And so for me I would say, youknow, that's the next question.
If the first question is thatwe asked in the first podcast is
(37:39):
well, what are your experiencesof death and what are your
experiences of learning aboutdeath?
And start to get an awarenessof what your thoughts are about
death and start to, in myopinion, become aware of how
that has become a program insideyou, that, how that is a belief
(38:01):
system that you have assembledbased on your experiences, and
then to take that, the next step.
Well, what can death mean aboutme?
How does death relate to me?
What about my death?
What about my loved ones dying?
(38:24):
Death is no longer a strangerDeath is now part of my life.
Because, for me, death is verymuch part of my life because
I've yeah, I've been tocountless funerals.
I've literally it's, it's gottabe.
Well over a hundred people thatI've known and loved have died,
(38:47):
and I've probably been to atleast 60 or 70 funerals in my
life and I've probably been apallbearer 20 to 30 times at
funerals, and so I have thissort of I don't know.
I have a body of experience andthose experiences have forced
(39:09):
me to examine the idea.
Right?
So if you examine the idea, howdoes death relate to me and how
does death relate to those Ilove, and you start to become
aware of, okay, these are myexperiences of death and this is
maybe my collection of beliefsabout death.
(39:31):
Now it's, does that serve me?
Right?
This is a program and whateffort have I put into
understanding death?
What effort have I put into theexperience of death?
Understanding, understandingthat, because there's a whole
(39:53):
world out there that we you andI have personally gone out of
our way to experience, which hasshaped us, and people will say
it's shaped us spiritually.
So if we just take that wordspirit and just say spirit is
everything that isn't physical,right.
(40:13):
Spirit is everything that youcan be aware of, that you can
embrace, that you can use foryour own peacefulness.
Spirit is that whole world thatcan't necessarily be subject to
scientific proof, right?
(40:38):
I believe that when people taketime to examine death, they are
forced to face that which wemight call spiritual.
But I think it's a progressionand I and for me, you know, um,
(40:58):
my desire in doing this podcastis, in part, um you know,
catharsis for myself, a processof talking and thinking this
stuff out loud.
Um, that's the selfish part.
The unselfish part is anawareness that there will be,
and there are, people who sufferas a result of the idea of
(41:21):
death.
There are people who sufferbecause they haven't really
spent any time understandingwhat death means to them.
There are people who willsuffer when they get surprised
by the death of people that theylove, and that there are many
people that are listening, Ibelieve, that have been
(41:45):
diagnosed with illness and beentold you might die, and they've
had to face that questiondirectly about themselves, the
fears, the angers, theresentments, the confusions, a
whole world of emotion, and Ithink that everyone can be
(42:10):
served by taking the time tolearn more about death and
sharing each other's experiencesof death and saying, well, what
does that mean and what doesthat mean about me and what kind
of emotions am I feeling andwhat does that mean about my
(42:33):
interpretation of this idea?
And I think there's a lot ofvalue in that because the cold
hard fact is it's coming for allof us.
Hillary and Les offer bothin-person and online hypnosis
(42:56):
services for clients all aroundthe world.
If that interests you, pleasevisit our website,
wwwsomhypnosiscom and sign upfor a free consultation or send
us an email at info atpsalmhypnosiscom.
It's coming for all of us andit's coming for everyone that
(43:19):
you love.
You know.
I think one of the best things Idid through this process of my
dad's you know, process ofdemise, process of passing was I
was just really open with mykids.
I did my best to talk to themabout it and they went out of
(43:43):
their way to talk to me aboutwhat was going on for me.
And I needed to be really openwith that, because what they
were watching is inevitablytheir future experience Me
watching the end of my dad andthey will have to experience the
end of me and knowing, as ahypnotist, how all of these
(44:05):
ideas are shaped by ourexperiences and by the emotions
we attach to them.
I saw it as very important forme to be gentle but forthcoming
with my kids about what I wasgoing through and what my dad
(44:29):
was going through gone throughand what my dad was going
through and what it meant to himto die and what it meant to me
for him to die.
Yeah, I think there's a lot ofvalue in putting your mind to it
before you have to.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
And what's you know and you know'll just finish by
by throwing this out therebecause it's, you know, bringing
us to the next podcast thatwe'll do in a couple of days.
You know, I want to beforthcoming by saying my dad
reached a point where he choseto die.
He picked the date, he got adoctor that would help him and
(45:11):
we call that medical assistancein dying, or made here in
Ontario and he said enough'senough, I can't take this
anymore.
And so we actually had anappointment and we could all
myself and my five sisters, wecould be there and attend to him
(45:33):
on his last day, and that'sjust completely different
experience.
Yeah, because it's one thingfor somebody to call me and say,
hey, les dad's dead.
It's another thing to say, hey,les dad's going to go on April
2nd.
It's at four o'clock, we're'reall gonna get there about 11 am
(45:58):
anyway.
I don't think it has to be adowner, but I think it's really
worth examining our own programsyeah so what does death mean
about you?
What does the death of those youlove mean about you?
And in examining what it meansabout you, you start to get an
(46:19):
idea of your emotions.
And when you start to get anidea of your emotions, then you
start to get some insight intoyour program.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
Yeah, I think it's a great topic for anyone listening
.
I know Les is talking a lot andI'm not, but that's just
because I'm just really thinkingabout it.
I'm struggling with it a littlebit, but I'm going to give it
some thought and I'll beprobably more talkative next
time.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Just fire up some of your reactions right now from
all my yapping.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
I think that it was interesting going through
watching your dad go through theprocess.
I think it brought up a lot forme that I didn't know was there
when he first chose to go onApril 2nd.
(47:15):
It brought up some of those oldemotions of fears and things
about myself, you know, myfuture and I.
(47:39):
It was sort of, for me at least, it was a calling to to really
get back into my spirituality.
So, you know, I dove into thatfor a bit.
I felt better, I felt okay, I'mokay now and then it was an
interesting process.
You know, seeing you go throughwhat you were going through,
(48:02):
what the family was goingthrough, each individually
Afterwards, my own grieving thatI didn't realize or recognize
was going to happen.
Um, and to your point abouttalking about it before uh, in,
(48:24):
you know different ways.
Um, some people say yeah, let'stalk about this, and some
people say no and they turn a,turn away from it.
What I learned in in I always,a lot of the time I go back to
my hospice training, volunteertraining, and think about how
(48:50):
they told us lots of familieswill not, um, will not look at
this, will, they'll be scared tolook at it.
Um, uh, part of bereavementtraining.
I learned I didn't do it yet,but bereavement training is
helping the family like get tothe point of way before the
(49:14):
death, because it's not justafter the death that stuff, it's
before the death is helping thefamily go through writing who's
, you know who's in charge ofstuff that's happening and if
something was to happen andnobody wants to think about it.
(49:34):
But what then ends up happeningis something catastrophic and
everybody's running around infear now because nobody knows
what to do.
So to have it all laid outbeforehand, even though it's
(50:02):
scary for a lot of people, is,yeah, it's a good thing to do.
It's funny I think about just aside note, thinking about wills
and I think, oh, maybe I shoulddrop a will.
But I have this likesuperstition and I I'm sure it's
gotta be across the board thatif I drop a will then that means
like I don't have much longerleft.
It's a weird superstition.
(50:26):
Um, so I you know I avoid doingthat because because I don't
want that.
But that's just a superstition,it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Yeah, to me it's just , you know that that, um,
insightful awareness of your ownprogram, wow, that's the way I
think about that, is it?
That's the way I feel about theprocess of writing a will.
That's the way I feel aboutdeath, Right, I'm, you know,
just being aware of the processof writing a will.
That's the way I feel aboutdeath.
Right, I'm, you know, justbeing aware of your own emotions
(50:55):
as it relates.
I think it's a good beginning.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Yeah, yeah, I do, in the next podcast, want you to
touch on if I'll bring thesenotes.
But if you're open to it,touching on this idea, I'm going
to botch it if I try to say it.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
But this idea of what is better, guilt or resentment
after the fact, yeah, it's a bigidea, talked about it with some
friends After the fact yeah,it's a big idea, talked with it
with some friends.
Yeah, I think that you knowpart of the goal here is to lay
(51:40):
it out in sequence and have thelisteners say Okay, I'll do a
little bit of homework, I'll doa little bit of thinking about
this, I'll look at where myprogram comes from.
I'll look a little bit ofthinking about this.
I'll look at where my programcomes from.
I'll look at my experience,I'll look at how this relates to
me and how I feel about theidea.
What if I lost my best friend?
What if I lost my mother or myfather?
(52:02):
What if I lost my child?
What if I lost somebody reallyclose to me?
And I don't think that'sinviting those things to happen.
I think that that is anawareness of your own emotional
experience and program as itrelates to death.
(52:26):
And it's until you know whatyour program is, you don't
really know if you like it oryou don't like it.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
And, if you don't like it, I want to talk about in
a podcast the things you can doto open yourself up to a whole
bunch of ideas, because I reallybelieve that we celebrate birth
and we avoid death.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
And I think they're both worth celebrating.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
Okay, I'm done for now.
Speaker 3 (52:59):
Good job, I'm done.
I'm done All right, we'll seeyou later, thank you.
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