What is Death?
and how we can connect to the Unconscious
Every person has some type of connection to death and the deceased.
Strangely enough, I was never scared of death for myself, but the thought of talking to the dead made me queasy. I was also secretly uneasy with the misery and suffering associated with death. All this made me feel shame, guilt, and embarrassment. Afraid that I’d be labeled as insensitive if my thoughts on death ever got discovered.
There’s a scene from one of my favorite books, where an elaborate funeral is being held for the main character’s grandfather, who was a prominent leader in his industry and had quite a following. He had died abruptly while in the Shaolin Temple, and so the funeral was being held there.
The main character, who I could really resonate with, asked the lead Buddhist monk, “My grandfather led a full life with no regrets, and died with no pain. Is it really necessary to hold such an elaborate funeral for him?”
“Oh,” the monk smiled at him, “We don’t hold funerals for the dead. We hold them for the living.”
This struck me in a way that made me sad for the living. Not for the dead. It’s like people feel sorry for themselves when they’ve lost someone. Not so much for the actual person who had died.
And this took me down the path of exploring why we experience profound grief when someone passed away. My mom used to say those who cried the hardest at funerals were the ones who were most filled with regret, because they had not spent the time nor given the attention to the deceased while that person was alive.
Then there’s the feeling of loneliness and eternal loss. Like we’ll never talk to them again, never meet them again (while we’re alive), and never get to hug them again.
But is this really true?
If you’ve followed Carl Jung’s work, it focuses quite a bit on the Unconscious and our shadows. What does this have to do with death, losing loved ones, and grief?
Everything.
In a previous article, the concept of soul fragments was introduced. Because we are all soul fragments of a mega-soul, accessing one soul fragment or a certain memory of a soul fragment is no different than any other one.
Which means, in plain terms, that we all have the ability to have conversations with the dead in the same way we do with the living. This is why I don’t subscribe to the belief that the dead are more important or should be put on a pedestal. If you’ve ever talked to them, as Miguel does quite often, they can be quirky, funny, moody, or have attitudes. And we can do energy work on them just as we can do energy work on the living. When we connect to everything at the soul level, there really is no distinction.
OK. I know it’s possible to have a conversation with the dead. But I can’t do it…so how do I start?
Let’s look at the popular iceberg analogy used in personal development circles, but with my personalized labels.
As is shown here, the Unconscious makes up the lion’s share of our Consciousness pie. Ask yourself this question: how connected are you to your Unconscious? Or even your Subconscious?
This is the same question I ask when someone says they want to develop their psychic abilities. Channeling, or connecting to, the dead, is a type of ability. Again, no fundamental difference.
The work you will need to do in all of these cases, to understand and clean out our Subconscious and Unconscious, is called Shadow Work. Imagine your abilities like diamonds stuck under layers of mud. The more you clean, the more they come out.
Consider this: why do children learn faster than adults? Especially when it comes to things like foreign languages? It’s because they have less mud in their systems, so they’re more open to receiving new gifts or uncovering their existing ones. This is no different.
Where to start with Shadow Work? We have some free resources in our Facebook group. Start with writing down your limiting beliefs in all aspects of your life where you feel held back, and removing them systematically.
So…let’s agree to stop complaining and feeling sorry for ourselves that we can no longer have a conversation with close ones who have passed on. That’s simply not true. It’s just a matter of putting in the work.
Because we live in the double Aquarian Age right now, everything will happen very fast. What took 20-30 years in the past, could take a few months now! But the work will still need to be done, consciously, on our end. So make a daily practice of it, even if for only 15-30 minutes.
The next issue with losing someone is not being able to touch them, or interact with them, in the physical again. Even if we could talk to them 24/7 through accessing the Unconscious, it’s not the same as holding them, smelling them, staring into their eyes, and admiring the little pimples on their skin. We can’t run our fingers through their hair again, or roll with them in the grass, or feel the warmth of their bodies next to us in bed. There is that very physical aspect of them which we miss, so dearly, in our cores.
To understand what’s going on in the cycle of birth and death, and how physicality and the Unconscious tie together, let’s look at this simple diagram:
The soul fragment is eternal. It takes different forms, and to understand the forms and which stage or phase it’s at in a particular moment, can bring us to a place of inner peace. When the fragment is traveling from the Conscious to the Unconscious, it sheds its physical form, and goes into our Unconscious. If we’re not aware of our Unconscious (most aren’t), we think we’ve lost them forever. When the fragment is traveling from the Unconscious to the Conscious, it takes on physical form, aka the process of Conception. We think babies are new, and in terms of physical bodies they are, but their soul fragments are old, just like ours.
Now let’s revisit the subject of physicality, and missing that touch.
I personally don’t believe soul fragments stay stagnant for a long time. There is something about this journey and being on the move that excites us. And in case anyone is wondering what’s the point of recycling over and over, consider what Jacques Tombazian said: our level of consciousness and development is maintained and carried over through lifetimes. It’s an accumulation. If we feel like we’re not very “enlightened,” it’s likely that we’ve had many lifetimes where very little personal growth occurred. So it feels stagnant. But also remember that during the last Piscean Age of ~2.1k years, things were collectively slow. The current Aquarian Age is much faster, so no more excuses on our ends.
Because soul fragments don’t stay put for long, if they’ve died and gone to the Unconscious, they will want to start their journey back to the Conscious soon. The people who we know have died, will likely have taken physical form again. They won’t look the same obviously, as an old man with sagging skin won’t feel the same as a newborn with puffy cheeks. But what I’ve seen is they tend to stay in the same family. For example, my daughter is my maternal grandmother reincarnated. This gives my mom, who misses her mom so much, the chance to interact with my daughter as closely, and in her case even more closely, than with her mother, who lived an ocean away. Source plans things so beautifully, if we would only choose to stop, listen, observe, and appreciate it.
If you don’t have a new child in your life, or in your family, and don’t really have the opportunity to interact with any of them, consider that soul fragments can also take the form of animals and pets. There is always a way to bring in that physical interaction, even if it’s not a carbon copy experience.
Finally, let’s consider why people die. Many times it’s because they have not taken proper care of their physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, ethereal…bodies. There is a lot of information and advice out there on taking proper care of our physical bodies through diet, exercise, massage, skin care, etc. The others? Less so.
Why is that? Because those pieces of advice, while they sound perfect on paper, don’t reach into the Unconscious. For example, take thinking positive thoughts. Everyone who’s ever interacted with a personal development or mindset coach knows this is important. But sometimes it feels out of our control. Like the negative thoughts just creep in. And makes us anxious and depressed. Then we feel shame for not following the wonderful advice of the experts. Like something’s wrong with us for not doing the obvious! For not loving ourselves enough. For not doing self-care properly.
All of this is simply not true. What’s happening is our negative thoughts, and many other nasty things, reside in our Unconscious. If we’re not reaching our Unconscious through shadow work, then we’re not removing them at the root. So is it any wonder they keep creeping back in and holding us back in life?
When we don’t take care of ourselves down to the Unconscious layers, our mind, spirit, and/or body go downhill. The body one is obvious. Most of us would not choose to keep our loved ones who are suffering in physical agony alive indefinitely. For our own reasons of being scared to be lonely. This is why we often hear the phrase, so-and-so was put out of their misery and is in a better place now.
The same applies to other types of agony on other planes. This is where it may be hard to accept at first. Take a young mother who was hit and killed by a drunk driver. The grief there is often insurmountable. So young. So much potential. Young children dependents. Happy person all around. Everything to live for.
But is all of the above really true? If you could talk to the dead, and you asked her soul fragment why she died, you might be surprised to hear the answer. If we believe everything is energy and frequency, then everything is connected, and there are no accidents. The so-called “accidents” are often negative manifestations. And why do those happen? In less severe cases that don’t involve death, it’s a wake-up call to start doing internal, or shadow work. It’s often those near-death, or out-of-body experiences, that jump start our spiritual awakenings.
In extreme cases, the soul fragment wants out of that body. Wants to have a fresh start. Because the person’s level of consciousness may not be so advanced, they wouldn’t even be aware of it consciously. Consciously, if you asked them if they wanted to die, they would say no way! Never! But again, if you could tap into the Unconscious, the answer might really surprise you. And if you look back at the iceberg image above, the Unconscious has a much bigger percentage of the pie than the Conscious. Guess who tends to win out in a dispute?
In conclusion: instead of getting upset at death itself and feel like it’s claimed your loved ones unfairly, and dwelling on that, how about working on yourself and your ability to connect to the dead (if you truly miss them)? And also be able to know when they’ve started their journeys again. Be a witness to the wonders of creation, and celebrate its eternal existence in the form of soul fragments.
The lesson here is: don’t suppress, ignore, and look down on your Unconscious. It’s very powerful, and if you take the time to connect to it and clean it out, you will receive infinite gifts in the form of effortless manifestation and psychic abilities.
I really love this article Rachel!
Great article!