The Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Resources

THIS PAGE WILL BE COMPLETE WITH ALL THE RESOURCES AVAILABLE VERY SOON.

Some are part of the experiential programme modules and will be sent to you when you join.  Others may be purchased separately. If you would like to be informed when they are ready please leave your name in the contact box at the bottom of the page.

In our current state of global upheaval we live with a pervasive state of loss which encompasses the loss of nature, of any sense of stability, and sometimes of hope itself. We are in an epidemic of unprocessed grief which is undermining our health, our communities and our ability to act creatively to bring about positive change.

The Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Resources is a collection of written and audio learning materials intended to stimulate healing and inquiry into:

• What it means to grieve well and why this is so important for personal and collective well-being and for the planet;
• The challenges to grieving well and the consequences of not doing so:
• How bringing death, dying, grief and loss out of the shadows – where fear, avoidance, isolation and shame gather – brings relief from isolation and the possibility to move forward on more solid ground to live fully;
• The essential skills and simple practices for transforming grief and loss.

Each series comprises a collection of conversations with diverse healing practitioners, accompanied by an exploration of themes and skills.

They are designed to support Inquiry, Exploration and Discovery and to touch, move and encourage you to connect more fully with your own experience and authentic truth. They ask the question:

How May We Transform Grief and Loss into Wholeness and Creative Power through the Practice of Sitting with Death and Choosing Life?

DEEP DISCOVERY CONVERSATIONS – Community Conversations for a New Era

As consciousness shifts one individual, one organization and one community at a time, a new culture of collaboration is emerging all over the planet, in many different contexts. This big, exciting and frequently daunting challenge stretches us in every way and is certainly not a task in which any of us can succeed alone. A new culture grows and spreads cell by cell. When we meet in aligned, intentional groups, for the good of the whole, we can become a bigger, healthier, stronger, more influential organism which inspires, uplifts, challenges and awakens consciousness, sending ripples out into all our relationships.

Our ability to learn together, to share our gifts and to consciously co-create, is essential for the optimum unfolding of humanity’s next stage of evolution. Forums in which everyone is encouraged to speak with an authentic voice and to explore the meaning of our experience of living together at this crucial turning point in our planetary existence, can transform despair or frustration into excitement and inspired action, and provide a refreshing and potentially evolutionary step forward for everyone involved.

  Introduction

The INTRODUCTION accompanies the two INTRODUCTORY RITE OF PASSAGE sessions and offers:

Two Inquiry and Practice Sessions which you can use for your individual practice, including:

A Guidebook For Your Transformational Journey

A GUIDEBOOK FOR YOUR TRANSFORMATIONAL JOURNEY accompanies THE 8 WEEK FOUNDATION COURSE

It include resources and inquiry questions to help you explore:

Series 1: The Essential Skills for Grieving Well

THE ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR GRIEVING WELL accompanies a 3 month programme of the same name.

It includes:

Some Basic Understandings of Grief as an Evolutionary Healing Process

Finding Your Way Through the Grieving Process

Trauma, Shock and Building Resiliency

Combining the Simplicity of Presence with the Joy of Being an Explorer

Forgiveness as a Daily Practice

Practicing Self-Nurture Through Difficult Times

Concluding Reflections on the Grieving Process

Series 2: Transforming Loss

TRANSFORMING LOSS accompanies The Essential Skills for Grieving Well 3 month course

It includes:

How Living with a Long-term Illness Can Become a Path of Awakening

Ageing or Sage-ing: Join the Adventure of Life-long Learning

Facing a Life-threatening Disease with Trust

When the Unbearable Pain of Losing Your Child Can Enrich Your Soul

How Do You Recover from the Trauma of a Suicide in the Family?

Healing from Estrangement When Your Adult Children Reject You

Series 3: Death and the Soul Journey

DEATH AND THE SOUL JOURNEY accompanies The Essential Skills for Grieving Well 3 month course

It includes:

The Soul Journey as a Process of Quest, Courage and Redemption

Conscious Evolution as a Healing Process

Awakening Through the Soul Journey

Spiritual Practice as a Path of Constant Dying

Dying and Soul Choices

The Soul Journey and the Creative Process

Series 4: Grieving for Our World

GRIEVING FOR OUR WORLD is the resource for the 3-month course Transforming Grief For Our World into Sacred Activism

It includes recorded conversations with 14 practitioners; personal stories and reflections, meditations, practices and questions for inquiry to support you to explore:

Healing separation and deepening our relationship with Sacred Nature.

A Personal/Transpersonal History of Grieving for Our World.

How Facing into Disruption Can Empower Your Passion for Life.

Finding  the  Gifts in  Disruption and Adversity Through Coronavirus and Lockdown

Practices to Transform Our Grief For the World

Series 5: Choosing Life

CHOOSING LIFE are the resources for the 3-month Choosing Life Programme

They include:

Conversations with  21 Practitioners.

Guiding Principles for the Practice of Sitting with Death and Choosing Life

There will be a separate workbook containing the Practices

Sitting with Death and Choosing Life 

What My Brother Taught Me About Grief

What My Brother Taught Me About Grief is a story of transformation. It’s very personal and at the same time a story for our time, as much about choosing life as it is about grief and as much about creative freedom as it is about death. Rose Diamond tells how the deaths of her closest friend, and then six months later her only brother, threw her into deep grief in which everything she valued seemed to be stripped away. She tells how she moved through emptiness and despair, in a process she calls “bottoming out”.  And then slowly, and with conscious intent every step of the way, made her ascent back into a new chapter of fully embodied, joyful life. It’s also the story of her brother, David, who broke through the stagnation caused by a lifetime’s low self esteem and creative disempowerment to claim his dream. Rose reveals untold riches within the apparent tragedy of death and loss, and discovers how death, as well as being a heartbreak, can also be a victory.

Portrait of a Gentle Man

Soulful Living, Conscious Dying

Three months ago, my dearest Soul Friend, Woods Elliott, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Since then we have both, in our own ways, been in a process of making friends with the non-negotiable reality of dying and death. At first, we thought, perhaps he would have another six months or a year – time enough to complete a creative project we started years ago; time for me to visit him once more, and for him to harvest some of the sublime psycho-spiritual experiences he valued all his life, which we called magnificent moments of being. But very quickly it became clear he would be lucky to live another few months, perhaps even weeks, and so the process of conscious dying quickened. …