Love After Death

Some Deaths Are Easier To Live Through Than Others

Art by Konstantin Bax

Note: this article was not written by ai.

Life is a mystery
Everyone must stand alone
I hear you call my name
And it feels like home

Approaching Death

Summer 2025: I’d felt a call for some time to approach death. Not my own physical death. I was quite healthy and expected at least four or five more vibrant decades ahead.

I sought another kind of death.

I hear the phrase egoic death quite a bit. It feels cliched in spiritual convos and I’m never quite sure what it means or what it would even feel like or be like. I’ve certainly had moments where I slipped beyond my current personality, floating alongside my body into what seemed a sort of peaceful, timeless awareness.

In those states I’ve been able to see my physical body and current personality from the third person, experiencing both annoyance and admiration for the human typing out these words. In that state I knew deeply that my physical body would one day die and my current personality would fade into oblivion and I found nothing but an endless peace in that experience.

But this was a different sort of experience I’d been having. One that created some anxiety for me. On multiple occasions I’d been deep in a meditative/contemplative state when I suddenly felt myself near the edge.

The edge of what?

I’m not exactly sure. But each time it felt like an event horizon, a point of no return. The experiences felt as if my entire personality structure, and I could see it in those moments as a structure, was about to give way to be swept into oblivion.

And in those moments an energy would rush in that could be interpreted as either fear or exhilaration, and I mostly felt fear. Images appearing in my mind that raised the question of who would look after my wife and daughter once I was gone?

And then the immediate question of “where exactly do you think you’ll be going?” would arise.

This back and forth within me would eventually pull me out of the space.

And each time this sort of experience occurred it left me more and more excited for where it all seemed to be leading. Only to find myself there once again a few weeks later to be like “oh, well, I was hoping maybe we could wait a little bit longer before I cross that threshold...?”

And once again I’d find myself standing there, right at the edge, confused. Because despite feeling as if I was at a jumping off point, there seemed to be nothing to do. Nowhere to jump. No action to take.

It’s as if I’d just been led up to that edge to take a look. To drive my curiosity and stir up questions deep inside.

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A Pause on Seeking

During this same period there were other changes occurring within me.

I was nearing the two-year mark of intense seeking across many traditions and feeling a certain exhaustion from it all. I found myself tiring of all the spiritual theorizing and esoteric explorations. On some days even the most mystical of conversations were suddenly annoying to me. I couldn’t stand to hear myself talk or even think about these topics any longer.

I forced myself to withdraw, stepping back when possible. Still holding space for friends when the opportunities arose, but doing my best to keep my own mouth shut as much as I could.

If I felt annoyed or agitated in a certain conversation I learned to assume it was my own system driving the friction and that it had nothing to do with the other person.

And then soon enough my joy that had turned to agitation seemed to transform once again into almost nothing. No strong feelings either way about anything. In some ways this was a relief, but also a bit of a bummer. There were suddenly no highs or lows. I spent my days watching events around me without much feeling associated with any of it.

And then this passed too, and I emerged into what felt like a quiet, peaceful space.

I still didn’t feel drawn back into seeking or studying much in the way of mystical topics. I’d done my relatively brief tours around the various world traditions and saw them as diverse paths doing their best to point humanity in the right direction. I felt confident that the path I was on, a path I could never quite see clearly, would carry me forward to where I needed to be in the right timing.

In the meantime my role was to remain open, be available, and wait.

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Inviting Death

Around the time I arrived at this equilibrium I was given the opportunity to meet Death.

I’ve capitalized her name because she deserves our respect. Our imaginations are fueled by our stories and beliefs that have left us with nothing but contempt for her.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

In addition to my experiences I relayed above, Death had been poking at the edges of my world in other ways. I knew a few folks receiving grim diagnoses with uncertain outlooks. These were middle aged people too young and too engaged in life to be this sick.

Another friend’s child has been playing cat-and-mouse with Death for the last few years. I too lived that experience many years ago with my wife and while lessons emerged from that experience that I’d never trade, I also wouldn’t wish such a time upon anyone, especially within our society and healthcare system that has such a poor relationship with Death.

Death is a scary thing.

But with all this study and talk of the mystical and with these odd moments arising time and again I suddenly had a focused intention: I wanted to experience Death.

And why not? Transformational coach Devin Martin, once gave me some of the best guidance I’ve ever received: Whether you’re in this world or another, always run towards the scary thing. Never away.

His advice checks out, and it’s worked every time.

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The Experience

I lowered my defenses. Palms open, I surrendered, exposing myself to whatever awaited, for I was in a safe place and had nothing to fear, certainly not on the other side.

It will be impossible to communicate what came next and so I won’t even try. I’ve had previous experiences where I’ve been ushered off to glorious temples or experienced what felt like past lives. I’ve even had interactions with majestic beings¹ I can barely relay without being reduced to tears. Those experiences are often concrete and seem to form around themes of whatever tradition or topic I’ve been studying recently.

This time was different. Maybe because, as I said above, I’d withdrawn from any specific tradition or framework of spiritual-sensemaking for the moment.

Whatever happened next, it came quickly. I can’t say I recall crossing a particular threshold or barrier, but it soon became clear I’d been allowed to pass beyond this world.²

And almost immediately I was laughing. Was that it? Really?

Was that all there was to Death? I laughed at the joke of so much worry and avoidance, all our denial and dread. Our bargaining and efforts to avoid her at all costs.

But she opens a door for us into a world that is beyond words.

Oh Death, forgive us, my dear, for we have misunderstood and dishonored you. Forgive us our disrespect. You, the consort of our most sacred transition, and we’ve painted you as a monster.

And this talk of laughter and gratitude regarding Death isn’t meant as flippant or dismissive; it’s because of what I was now experiencing. All I could see and feel.

I didn’t encounter Jesus or the Buddha or any of the great Divine Avatars. All I experienced was Love. Love in tangible form that could be seen and felt and experienced in ways beyond any normal comprehension. Love so abundant and beautiful and endless that I had a new understanding of what a barren and difficult world we currently inhabit.

A love wanting to break through into the Earth in a transformative flood.

And to be clear, what I was experiencing wasn’t Death, for Death is just the hem of a veil separating us from greater life. A life more abundant than I could’ve ever imagined.

And while I didn’t run into any of the gods this time I did run into a few of my pals.

I saw how the work that they’re doing within the earth, work that has called them away from societal norms and safe careers, is helping more of that love break through into the world.

I saw Allison Paradise and the life-changing work she does with children.

I saw River Kenna and the unconventional path he walks to remain true to himself and support others.

I saw another friend who’s stepped away from what society expects of him to do the Divine work of connecting people around the globe who want to see the birth of a different world, connecting the nodes, and I saw the sheer impact of his actions.

I saw the work my wife has done silently for years for family members and the generational shifts that will come from her labor.

I saw history moving slowly like a massive glacier, with countless human lives appearing and disappearing and reappearing again at various places on the ice. Each life appearing for a moment then vanishing. Appearing again and then vanishing. Over and over, billions of times.

I saw that only love will persist. All else will vanish.

Some people are working on what the world considers big things, but these big things matter very little. Others are struggling mightily to bring new things into the world, new things that will help anchor more love in the world, and the world doesn’t care.

Some of these folks are friends who can barely make rent each month.

But to see these individuals and their work from the other side was simply awe inspiring. To see energetically how their efforts and time were literally pulling more love into our world helped me clarify many things.

These old souls working tirelessly and without thanks, in service of Divine Love.

And Death, regardless of how she visits us, gives us a glimpse of the greater life that exists beyond our here and now, whether that be beyond our physical world, or simply beyond our current ways of being within this physical world.

Art bu Konstantin Bax

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Die Before You Die

The mystics have always been with us, before our great traditions, before the world religions, before the history you learned in school, before the names we currently use to label this indescribable thing we sometimes call God.

There have always been a handful of souls on Earth who’ve carried knowledge of the Divine Mystery with them. Some of this knowledge was preserved in symbol and scripture and temples. Much of it has been received in a steady stream of direct revelation through the centuries.

There have been books written in every century since Christ that hold a far higher consciousness than much of the Bible. There are titles released in 2024 containing far more truth than some books of the New Testament.

(That last paragraph will cost me a few subscribers, lol.)

I truly don’t mean to offend, but this space is dedicated to authenticity and truth, and our often naive ways of viewing what is considered holy or sacred could stand to experience their own deaths and rebirths.

Within the ancient mystical traditions existed the mandate of dying before one died. This tradition allowed the initiates to remember who they were, where they’d come from:

“I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven, but my race is of Heaven alone”

-Orphic Gold Tablets

Most people seem to pass through their entire lives with little thought or interest in what lies beyond the mundane. I sense we may be coming into a time where some of this is shifting, but historically most folks have given little thought to the Divine and our existence beyond this life other than what they’ve been taught to believe in a Sunday service. Any ideas of God they have remain cordoned within the safety of old books.

My view on the ancient mystery schools around the world and throughout time is these were populated by the same relatively small number of souls coming in and out of the Earth time and again, preserving and passing down truth of a higher order.

The Mysteries of the antique world appear to have been attempts — often by way of a merely magical initiation — to “open the immortal eyes of man inwards”: exalt his powers of perception until they could receive the messages of a higher degree of reality.

-Evelyn Underhill

Initiates of these schools were allowed to experience death, to see there was nothing to fear, and to ultimately bring them to a place that allowed them to remember.

They likely accomplished this in a few ways, but one of the methods used to enhance experience was through sacred structures.

Take the many impossible ancient structures located around the world that we may not even be able to build today. We’re all becoming familiar by now with the work of various researchers pointing to these megaliths as evidence that the ancient history taught in our schools isn’t quite right.

Freddy Silva does a nice job of tying the numerous ancient megalithic sites to mystical practices. Freddy points out that the combination of the earth energies at these sites, combined with the building materials used in construction, would serve to temporarily shift the tuning of the participant’s brain to such a degree that it resulted in mystical experiences, allowing the individual to understand and experience that life continues beyond the death of the physical body.

And literally tens of thousands of these ancient sites have now been identified, nearly all of them aligned not only with the specific astronomical and seasonal coordinates, but also with one another geographically, demonstrating a degree of order that outstrips our current materialist lens of ancient history.

Some of these sites appear quite simple; a few massive stones stacked atop one another or a humble chapel. Others are of course impossibly complex such as the megaliths of Central and South America or the pyramids of Egypt.

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A Death Inside the Great Pyramid

Not long ago I had an experience I feel to be one of my life’s greatest privileges. I spent about four hours inside the Great Pyramid in Egypt with some of my dearest friends.

I’ll tell that story in greater detail when the time is right, but for now I will share that while inside the King’s Chamber I spent time in the sarcophagus, a massive stone coffin that carries a very specific purpose:

“In the centre of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh there is an empty stone coffin. Egyptologists tell us that it was prepared for a Pharaoh who never occupied it. It has also been said that it was a measure for grain. It was neither of these things but the altar of the Chamber of Initiation. In it lay the candidate while his soul was sent out upon the journey of death and recalled, and this direct means constituted the supreme degree of the Mysteries. After that experience he never feared death again, he knew what it was.”

-Dion Fortune

In the lead up to our time in Egypt River Kenna’s wisdom rang in mind: “Never get into a sarcophagus unless you’re willing to die.”

But it was never a question for me, there was no way I was travelling half way around the world without getting into that thing.

So when my turn came to climb into that ancient coffin it suddenly became clear what I needed to do:

I asked my friends for a funeral.

Some of them wept deeply. Some of them celebrated. Some of them had mystical experiences far beyond what I even experienced in those immediate moments.

There’s more to this story, but what I’ll share now is the results of my time in the sarcophagus have been tangible. Some were almost immediate. Others are only now becoming apparent to me.

And what I would say is that River’s warning about ensuring we were ready for death was spot on, because in the weeks that followed I experienced a different form of death.

Once again not of a physical form, although I could definitely feel it in my body in ways that were highly uncomfortable. And even though the worst lasted only a few weeks, those were weeks that seemed without end, no up or down, no horizon.

But I’d lived through these deaths before and I had a sense of what awaited.

You see, I also had a second session inside the sarcophagus, and that second time I asked for a rebirth, and so I can only trust that’s a process that’s underway at the moment too.

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Back to Life, Back to Reality

The ancients who experienced these otherworldly states were often sworn to secrecy on the penalty of death if they shared it with the uninitiated. I believe this is because there was a time when sharing these experiences with the general public would’ve been counter productive.

Oh, you mean this is all just a dream we’re having about transmuting fear into love? Why should I go to work tomorrow? And if no one goes to work tomorrow then we have other problems that arise which will likely create an environment of greater fear.

Also having a deeper glimpse of these truths too early might actually lead to a stunting of soul-growth. Returning to our friend Devin Martin, he’s pointed out that just because you’ve had a transcendent experience doesn’t make you enlightened. Understanding with the mind is different from the knowing embodiment of the heart.

You can have a 100 mystical experiences and still be a jerk. Don’t be the guy walking around wearing mala beads and linen pants who everyone still thinks is an assh*le.

So how do we do this effectively? We each pursue higher consciousness. We send love. We do our shadow work. We come into presence. We notice our edges. We grow beyond an understanding of love as a concept applying to me and my tribe or religion or political party to experiencing love as a cosmic force that emanates from within the very heart of the Divine, available to all Creation, and then we cooperate with Reality to pull more of this cosmic love into the Earth.

And I totally get that the last sentence might sound like new agey mumbo jumbo until you experience it.

And once you experience it you begin to realize it’s something you can actually choose, something you can generate and emanate with life changing results.

Something that allows you, over time, to begin to see with the eyes of God, to feel from the heart of God, to love all of Creation, even if only briefly, as the Divine does.

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A Coming Collective Death?

Love is a big category and we seem to have forgotten it can include systems and ways of living that are largely absent in our current world. But many of us sense this will change and that more and more individuals will make that choice that they’ve had enough of our current way of being that’s not only drained the meaning from much of life, but is also literally killing people through deep disconnection across every area of life. Disconnection from their health, their presence, their focus, and their connections to one another and to the Divine.

But the birth of something new will likely require a moment of crisis far beyond what any of us have lived through before.

It will potentially require the death of our current ways of life. How will this happen?

I have a few ideas, but for now I’ll say that Death, if we can honor and accept her in all her forms, will reward us beyond our wildest imagination.

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The Path of Descent

Death is sometimes a necessary thing. At the same time it’s not something we should seek out. I’ve had times of sadness and disconnection in my life that sent me into very dark places; and perhaps if you ever find yourself in a situation like that take heart, for all the most interesting people I know have spent their time in hell, no exception.

“The depths to which the dark night goes, and the flavours of darkness you will have to face, are different for everyone. Whatever depths of awakening you are wanting to embody, you will need to feel and integrate the dark side of it.”

-Rosa Lewis

Pop-spirituality promises ascension, but stick with this path long enough and it descends.

And it descends.

And it descends.

And it may take you right into hell. And when you get there you might wish you’d never set off on this path in the first place.

It’s a process that can feel like it’s own sort of death, and certainly not a painless one. But it’s our time in the fire that purifies and burns away those things that no longer serve us, as painful as that may be. The fire humbles and prepares us for our next season to come.

And in the refining and preparing the pain will pass and we’ll emerge anew.

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Thank You, My Friend

Not long after the experience I describe at the top of this article I found myself looking at a photo of me and my daughter from many years ago. I pass this photo a dozen times a day and rarely give it a second look.

But now I was flooded with so much gratitude for both of them.

She’s been my greatest teacher and inspiration. And that guy next to her was in so much pain, despite the big smile on his face. He often felt so lost and so alone, even in the midst of being loved, wondering if he was wasting his life at a meaningless job, chasing meaningless things, in a world where each passing day felt as if a little more meaning was being drained.

Even then, all those years ago, he understood something was missing, even if he couldn’t quite place it.

But he was relentless. He never stopped pursuing what he suspected was hidden from the world. That there was something special, something tangible, something waiting to be discovered, if only he could continue on long enough to discover it.

He’s gone now, at least in that form. A death and rebirth of many years ago. But he never gave up. He knew there was something more. And because he hung in there all those years, the thing he’d spent so much time looking for was eventually revealed.

And I will always love him deeply for that.

And all my bones began to shake, my eyes flew open

No more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone

No more calling like a crow for a boy, for a body in the garden

No more dreaming like a girl, so in love with the wrong world

- F. Welch & P. Epworth

Art by Konstantine Bax

“Behold I make all things new.”

This article was written over many hours by a human, without ai, and my writing will always be free. The option of subscriptions is turned on for those who want to help me take this work even further through experience, research, and connection.

Can I support your mystical journey? If this writing resonates and you’d enjoy exploring this territory together please reach out. I work with individuals 1:1 as they explore and advance their own spiritual path, regardless of background or tradition.

1. Please see https://reorder.substack.com/p/my-favorite-joke-about-god

2. Many NDE survivors and Past-Life Regression patients report a total lack of pain at the time of death, explaining that Divine grace seems to allow the soul to exit the physical body moments before in what seems to be a highly coordinated and caring process.