If You Don't Know How To Live, You Don't Know How To Die

Death is something most of us don't want to or think about. But maybe it's because we're not approaching it in the right way. In his book Preparing to Die: Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom From the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition, Andrew Holecek invites us to think about death a little bit differently. "On the most elevated levels, there's no difference between how we want to live and how we want to die," Holocek said in a recent episode of Leading With Genuine Care, adding "If you don't know how to live, then you don't know how to prepare for death either." 

Holecek explained that the enlightened, or awakened, ones in the world don't make a distinction between living and dying. Many of the spiritual masters understand that death is just another phase of life. How do the masters get to the point of embracing death as merely another phase of life? By practicing meditation and awareness. 

A dental surgeon by trade, Holecek has been studying meditation and the wisdom traditions for much of his life. In 1998, he began a three-year retreat at Söpa Chöling in Nova Scotia, which was founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, also the founder of Shambhala Buddhism. Attendees go to the retreat for one year, then return again a year later, and repeat the cycle. This encourages students to learn how to apply the practices and principles to their daily lives. This approach "allows you to practice a form of death and rebirth, for everything must be released before each phase is entered, and then reconstituted upon return."

Holecek developed the idea for his first book, The Power and the Pain: Transforming Spiritual Hardship into Joy, in the last year of his retreat. He has since published several other books on dying, meditation, and dream yoga. He also speaks and teaches on these topics. His teachings draw on Buddhism, but he stresses that all wisdom traditions have something to offer and often teach the same things in different ways. 

Lucid Dreaming 

Holecek believes so much in the power of dreaming that he's written three books on what he calls dream yoga and lucid dreaming. Like meditation, he teaches that lucid dreaming can show us how to be more fully awake. The dream is "a magical dimension," he explains. It is where "reality is partially de-reified" and therefore can reveal new perspectives on what we see as "real." Many cultures are multi-phasic, meaning that they believe reality is derived from various phases of being awake and asleep, not just from the state of awakeness.

Lucid dreaming is the act of becoming conscious when in a dream state, so that the "conscious mind can face the unconscious mind directly." In becoming more conscious through dreaming, we can become more in tune with what lies beneath the surface of our lives. The practice of lucid dreaming, says Holecek, "can accelerate your psycho-spiritual development." 

In teaching dream yoga, Holecek encourages his students to set intentions before sleep. One way of doing this is repeating an intention over and over throughout the day, and especially close to bedtime. This will tell the brain where to go when doing the work of dreaming.  He cites the poet Rumi, who said when dreaming, you can "flow down and down in always /widening rings of being." 

Holecek believes dream states point to untapped human potential, pointing to the work of Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep, who wrote, "It is entirely possible that lucid dreamers represent the next iteration in home sapiens evolution." Holecek believes that predictive dreams are real, citing examples from other writers as well as his own experience with a dream that predicted an illness. "Space time are constructs," he says, adding, "Quite literally these dreams can save your life." 

Holecek offers training and support in learning more about lucid dreaming in his online community Night Club, as well as in retreats he offers several times a year. 

Reverse Meditation 

Another topic Holecek has written on is reverse meditation. In Reverse Meditation: How To Use Your Pain and Most Difficult Emotions as the Doorway to Inner Freedom, he explains how sitting down and facing pain can be a path to transformation. While meditation is usually thought of as a path to tranquility, this goal "sedates; it doesn't liberate." As in lucid dreaming, Holecek encourages the practice of reverse meditation as a way to become more conscious and aware, and to ultimately live a deeper, more profound life. Drawn from Buddhism, reverse meditation is so called because it "reverses our relationship to unwanted experiences. Instead of running away from them, which actually only makes them worse, we're given a skill set to actually go into them and therefore transform obstacle into opportunity." In turning and facing what's real, we will come out the other side more fully conscious and awake.

Holecek offers reverse meditation as a practice that can help with both physical and emotional suffering, noting that he believes in integrating both Western and Eastern healing traditions. He used these practices when he had kidney stones, a condition most people experience as very painful. Through the practice of reverse meditation, "you can deconstruct suffering back into pain and you can actually deconstruct pain . . [there's] nothing more than intense raw sensory awareness."

Pain and suffering, Holecek explains, is brought on by contraction.  Fear, anger, and pain as well as distraction are "intense super-contractors." The practice of becoming present and more aware can help reduce contraction and encourage expansion instead, leading to acceptance. 

Reverse meditation is a route to getting out of our comfort zones. The more time we spend in our comfort zones, the smaller our world becomes. Once we see the way the ego constructs barriers that block acceptance, true seeing, and transformation, we can expand beyond it. Once we see this, "we have a choice. . . . We can choose to deconstruct." These practices can help people grow and break free of their comfort zone to, ultimately, transformation and insight. 

Another example of how we become contracted is through triggering language. Some words trigger us because we imbue them with power, when they are "fundamentally neutral." Holecek says, "words have power because we give them that power." He points out that speaking certain words will be offensive in our culture, but if spoken in a different culture with a different language, the words will lose their power. Further, if you repeat a word enough times, it loses its meaning and charge. This is another way we can deconstruct the world in order to experience transformation. 

The Final Stage  

In teaching others to meditate, Holecek takes them through the phases of turning into the body and the breath, which then "create the canvas" for tuning into the mind. However, sitting and meditating is not the goal; interacting with the world and making contributions to it is. Therefore, the final stage is action; we need to be of benefit to others and the planet. He calls this "translational spirituality."

In addition to his work teaching meditation and lucid dreaming, Holecek has also founded Global Dental Relief, which provides dental care to people in developing countries. Putting into action spiritual principles of compassion and awareness is the final stage; whatever else comes out of it, "it's irrelevant." 

The conversation with Andrew Holecek continues on the Leading With Genuine Care podcast, where we talk about lucid dreaming, death, and meeting the Dalai Lama. Connect with me on Twitter and LinkedIn and keep up with my company imageOne. Check out my website or some of my other work here.