Death Cafe write-up: September 2019
It has been my experience that Death Café attendees come from diverse backgrounds and bring with them eclectic life experiences, and our September Death Café was no exception.
As we introduced ourselves, each sharing what had drawn us to attend, I was reminded again of the importance of the death café movement. I’ve been approached many times by professional and/or business people wanting to attend so they can advertise their services, promote their latest book or conduct research. Each request was declined, as the ethos of Death Café is to provide a community forum for death-related discussion to take place in a comfortable, non-clinical, non-judgemental space rather than a means to foster business or research opportunities.
And I was never more aware of that ethos as I was at our September Death Café, especially when people shared their experiences and reflections. One attendee was curious as to what Death Café was all about, having heard about it via word of mouth. Another talked about their experiences when doing energy healing work with a beloved brother who was dying, while another, interested in the afterlife came to explore her thoughts and feelings and to hear what others might have to say.
Although I have been facilitating Death Cafes since 2014, at every café I learn something new, and our September event was no different. DMT, or what is otherwise what known as ‘the spiritual molecule’ set my mind racing, and I made a mental note to conduct my own research. The ritual of Aoaska, conducted with a shaman, is designed to help people experience what death is like so they can get a deeper understanding, and clarity around, what happens when we die. The use of psychotropic plants, as an aid to intersecting with other realms of consciousness or reality was also discussed from the perspective that ‘reality’ isn’t always defined by what our senses, and the Sciences, dictate.
As I listened to the conversation I realised once again that people want to know about death, they want to know what happens at the moment their earthly life ceases. What happens next? Do we live on, and if so how? And if we do live on, what do we do? As embodied beings living an earthly existence we know what we have to do in life, we know how life unfolds, we know what our responsibilities and our routines are. But what happens after death, what do we do?
We also explored the phenomenon of premonitions, and I was astounded by the range that either attendees, or someone close to them, had experienced. What are these events inviting us to consider and what is their impact on the experient? If being forewarned of our impending death, do we then have time to put our proverbial house in order? Or, if on the other hand we’re spared death, for what reason, for what purpose? And if we suddenly ‘know’ that we’ll be seeing or hearing from someone, and then we do, what mechanism is at work? Do these events occur, as one attendee proposed, because we are all connected to one another by energy? Or do they occur because of the collective unconscious, again, something which connects all human beings at a fundamental non-material, dare I say, spiritual level?
While we all conjectured as to their cause, we could only speculate as to what the answers to our questions about the phenomena could be. And this is both the beauty and the simplicity of Death Café, which provides the perfect forum for this metaphysical exploration of death and dying.
