The Original Afterlife Awareness Conference

Acceptance of Death and Reclaiming Traditional Wisdom

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With gratitude to Gary Wederspahn of Final Exit Network for contributing this article (Editor’s note: The following is by Gary Wederspahn, FEN board member and author of Intercultural Services: A Worldwide Guide and Sourcebook and many articles on cross-cultural communications and relations. Gary served as Peace Corps Director in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Ecuador. He has lived and […]

Suicide and The Bible

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Many thanks to Kevin Bradley of Final Exit Network for contributing this article. There is nothing in the Hebrew or Christian scriptures – which most Christians refer to as the Old Testament and New Testament – that explicitly says suicide is wrong. The biblical sources tell of seven people who had a hand in their […]

How We Learn About Death – Part 2

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How We Learn About Death – Part Two Excerpted from Embracing Death: A New Look at Grief, Gratitude and God By Terri Daniel   We’ve all heard the cliché, “nobody’s ever come back from death to tell us about it, so there’s no proof that the soul lives on.” But that’s not true. Countless people […]

How We Learn About Death – Part 1

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How We Learn About Death – Part 1 Excerpted from Embracing Death: A New Look at Grief, Gratitude and God by Terri Daniel   The way we perceive death is a choice. When my 10 year-old son Danny was diagnosed with a degenerative illness that would end his life sometime within the next 10 years, […]

Death Has Many Names

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This article is from the New York Times, Feb. 14, 2021 By George Yancy Photo Credit…Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times This month’s conversation in our series exploring religion and death is with Jacob Kehinde Olupona, a professor of African religious traditions at Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of “City of […]

Bereavement and Bad Theology: A Toxic Cocktail

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For those who are struggling with frightful and disempowering religious beliefs that complicate the grief process, this video from my presentation on Jan. 10, 2021 at The Conference for Death and Bereavement Studies will be helpful: https://youtu.be/LPygjhyOElg On a similar topic, please consider reading this article in the Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling: https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/GKSJEVZXUMFNI7QCNUZZ/full […]

Shame and Self-Loathing in the Name of God

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I recently discovered this excellent article on how Christianity — as it is understood, taught and practiced by most Christians — encourages shame and self-loathing. Many thanks to Neil Carter for his insight and wisdom on this topic. Here’s an excerpt: “In order to need a savior, you have to feel there is something you […]

Bereavement and the Buddhist Bardo

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I shared this article by Pema Khandro Rinpoche  in the January 2021 issue of our newsletter, The Afterlife Advocate, and want to also post it here, because it’s one of the best pieces on death and grief that I’ve ever seen: Breaking Open in the Bardo

What is Karma?

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By Terri Daniel and Danny Mandell Posted originally on Facebook,  Monday, January 2, 2012 . .       When the Tibetan Buddhists first brought their teachings to the west in the 1950s, the word “karma” came along with them, and within two decades the word became part of American pop culture. You could see it […]

The Ego’s Desire for Deathlessness

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The Ego’s Desire for Deathlessness I just watched a movie on Netflix called HOPE FROZEN, about a family in Thailand whose two year-old daughter died of brain cancer, and they have her cryogenically preserved. It makes a powerful statement about science vs. spirituality, family dynamics and complicated grief. I had a very strong emotional (and […]

There Are No “Stages” of Grief

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Can We Please Stop Talking About the “Stages of Grief?”  In my professional capacity as a pastoral counselor specializing in loss and grief, I hear from bereaved people almost daily about their struggles to find healing and peace after a profound loss.  For me, and for my most of my colleagues, it is endlessly frustrating […]

Near-Death Experiences are Culturally-Subjective

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Image source: http://encounters-with-jesus.org/category/buddha/ One of our Facebook group members recently wanted to share an article on our page about a woman who had a near-death experience in which she went through pearly gates and met God, who told her to go back to earth to proselytize about Christianity. The admins didn’t approve it as a […]

What Flowers Teach Us About Death

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Nasturtiums have been my favorite flower since I planted my first garden in 1975. They are colorful, beautiful, prolific and easy to grow, and they can make any landscape look like a fairy tale kingdom. But they are also fragile, and if the sun hits them too hard for too long, the flowers will wilt, […]

Why Celebrity Deaths Feel Like a Personal Loss

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This article originally appeared in Business Insider on Feb. 12, 2020 A grief educator explains why the death of a celebrity feels like a personal loss, and what we can learn from it AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu Imagine that you’re in a movie theater watching your favorite actors on the big screen, where they are […]

How to Support a Terminally Ill Person

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This Q&A was originally for an interview with healthcare website The Paper Gown  Q: If there were five rules for comforting someone who is terminally ill, what would they be? A. The role of chaplains and counselors who work with end-of-life is to help the patient and his/her family deal with the reality of their […]

I’m an End-of-Life Educator

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Originally published on Business Insider, Jan. 24, 2020 I’m a Death and Grief Educator. Here’s What I Teach, and Here’s What I’ve Learned   It’s not the kind of career you dream about as a kid. It’s not glamorous like an astronaut or a rock star, and it’s not easy to explain when someone asks […]

Bad Bereavement Advice: When Trying to Help Doesn’t Help

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As I travel around the country teaching workshops on loss and resilience, I meet hundreds of people — mostly bereaved parents — who have been suffering deeply for years and even decades, and are not moving forward in the healing process. For my doctoral research on complicated grief, I accumulated a lot of data on […]

Ram Dass April 6, 1931 – December 22, 2019

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Of all the spiritual teachers who inspired and guided me over the decades, Ram Dass was my number one. I rejoice that he has now left his body, and I am broadcasting endless messages of gratitude to his beautiful spirit for the gifts he’s given to me and to the world. In THIS VIDEO, he […]

Being Present with Grief

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I’d like to share this short video excerpt from our recent online mini-workshop. It offers a very useful and practical tool being present with grief and monitoring your mourning process: https://youtu.be/hZjlRG7Se5k  

A Magical Encounter in Utah

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I spent several days in Salt Lake City this month giving presentations and making friends with some extraordinary people. Everywhere you look there are mountains, and it is gorgeous!  The only thing I didn’t like about Utah was how difficult it was to buy a bottle of wine. I felt like a criminal going into […]

Grieving in Community

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When a community is devastated by a traumatic event, such as a mass shooting or natural disaster, in addition to individuals grieving their personal losses (death of loved ones, loss of a home), there is a communal loss experienced by all who have been touched by the event, directly or indirectly. Grieving in community is an […]

Mediums and the Grief Journey

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In 2014 I had the honor of attending a three-day “community grieving ritual” conducted by an African wisdom teacher named Sobonfu Some’.   Sobonfu taught us the importance of grieving in community. She showed us how to use ritual, symbolism, movement and singing to give grief a communal voice that rises up as a call to […]

How the Law of Attraction REALLY Works

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The pop spirituality interpretation of the Law of Attraction says that if we think only positive thoughts and say only positive words, we can avoid bad experiences and have everything our personality desires (health, love, security, wealth, etc). Conversely, if we think the “wrong” thoughts, we will emit “negative energy” and the universe will respond […]