How facing death unlocks the profound secrets of really living - Lian Brook-Tyler

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Written By Lian Brook-Tyler

Episode 547, released 6th May 2026.

Wild Sovereign Soul co-founder and soul guide, Lian Brook-Tyler, explains what death has always been trying to teach us about the art of really living, drawing on three of her own encounters with death, including fifteen years of chronic pain and panic attacks, that ultimately changed everything.

This episode is Lian’s All The Everything show… her solo space where she dives deeply into a theme that is alive for her, which, if you know her, could be literally anything - explored through the lenses of science, spirituality and story - hence the name of the show!

It is created for those who feel called toward a soulful life shaped by meaning, depth, truth, and love… for those who feel unsatisfied with quick answers or surface level takes. This is a rich rabbit hole that Lian journeys through alongside you. She speaks from her own lived experience and unfolding process… while inviting you into your own as you listen.

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The LIVE making of All The Everything is recorded live on YouTube… to join Lian for the next one: Make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube channel, subscribed to our Moonly News email list and/or are a member of our Facebook group and we’ll let you know when the next one is happening.

In this episode, Lian shares the story of her own three encounters with death, a violent attack in her youth that left her braced against life for fifteen years, the sudden and complicated death of her father, and a shamanic burial initiation. She weaves through the science of near-death experiences, including findings from Dr. Pim van Lommel's eight-year longitudinal study and Raymond Moody's landmark research, which found that across cultures, ages, and belief systems, only two things consistently emerged as what truly mattered.

She also looks honestly at what modern culture has done by removing death from daily life, how a death-denying world dismantles genuine choice, and why sovereign living may not be possible until we stop trying to pretend we have more time than we do.

She closes with a simple daily practice, a few minutes each morning to ask what this day would mean if it were the last ordinary one.

Listen if you find yourself putting something important off until conditions feel more right, or if you know what your life is calling for but keep finding reasons not to move toward it yet.

We'd love to know what YOU think about this week's show. Let's carry on the conversation... please leave a comment below.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

  • Why the life review described consistently across near-death experience research points to only two things as mattering, and what that means for the choices available to you today

  • How a culture that removes death from daily life creates a sovereignty wound, and the way genuine self-directed choice depends on facing what we most want to avoid

  • What happens when you spend a night buried in the earth, facing the prospect of death, and the quality of aliveness that becomes available on the other side of it

Resources and stuff Lian spoke about:

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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan

Episode Transcript:

Please note: We are a small team and not able to check through the transcript our software provides. So you may find some words are out of place and a few sentences don’t make complete sense. If you do see something utterly ridiculous we’d love you to let us know so we can correct it. Please email any howlers with the time stamp to team@bemythical.com.

Lian (00:00)

What if the boundary between life and death is not a wall, but a lens? And what if looking through it could change everything on this side? Hello, my beautiful soul seekers. This episode is my all the everything show. It's my solo space where I dive deep into a theme that's particularly alive for me, which if you know me, could be literally anything. And…

We'll journey through it through the lenses of science, spirituality and story, hence the name of the show, All the Everything. So this month's theme is Death and What It Can Teach Us About Really Living. And this show is for those of you who are called to a soulful life of meaning, depth, truth and love, and who don't want quick answers or surface answers or just that kind of skimming.

This is a glorious rabbit hole that we journey down together. And I'll be talking from my own experience and process and the work I've done over the years. And I'm also inviting you into yours as we go. And so we'll explore the bigger picture, archetypal patterns and questions that arise. And I will be offering you those questions as inquiry with pauses to feel into the answers to reflect.

And then to take what we journey through today into your own life to see what difference that makes to your own lived experience. So if you haven't already, I would suggest getting a pen and paper because again, I will be inviting you to really engage and journey with this much more as an experience rather than just a podcast you're listening to. So that's my intention. Go get a pen and paper.

And if you've just arrived here, welcome. If you've come back, welcome home. And if you keep finding yourself here without subscribing, your soul clearly knows what it's doing. So honor the call, go ahead and subscribe. It's challenging to live in this crazy modern world. The wild, sovereign soul path is what we know will help. And so if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path and your heart longs for guidance, kinship and support,

Come join us in UNIO, the community for wild sovereign souls. UNIO is the living home for the wild sovereign soul path where together we reclaim our wildness, actualise our sovereignty and awaken our souls. You can discover more and walk with us by hopping over to wildsovereignsoul.com slash UNIO. I'm still getting used to saying our new name or you can click the link in the description.

And if you're called to go even deeper, come join us for the Wild Sovereign Soul Pilgrimage, the very first one, a three month immersive online group journey home to soul. We begin later in May. And depending on when you're listening or watching this, either the wait list is open or enrollment is open. So go along to wildsovereignsoul.com slash pilgrimage and either way you'll find the way to join us.

And now back to this week's episode. Let's dive in.

So I've noticed something over the years I have been in the work in quote marks, which I guess when I first began it, I wasn't even really probably aware of that term or the fact that I was doing the work. And yet there's been something that has been, I guess, bubbling below the surface that has been present for me. And then I… kept seeing it showing up over and over again with the people that we work with. And it's our collective relationship to death, but also how my own relationship with death has actually been, despite the fact I've had a great many teachers of all kinds, both human alive teachers and otherwise.

I have done all kinds of work journeyed through all kinds of different traditions and teachings and ancient technologies. I recognize that my greatest teacher has been death. And I'm going to share why that is and the different experiences I've had with death, each of which have shown me something different. But again, what I've really realised is In our modern culture, we have become so disconnected from death and that might seem like, well, does that really matter? Do we really need to kind of walk around with this morbid relationship to us ending, to life ending? And what I have consistently seen is, yes, it really does matter because this isn't just about death. It's about living. And by that I mean really living.

And so. My invitation as we journey through this episode is this question, and I'm going to be asking this over and over again in different ways throughout this episode. But the first thing I would like you to reflect upon is if you really knew, and when I say really know this, I mean like deep down all the way through your being in your body, not just this concept that this life, this life you're in right now with this particular body this particular name if it was finite and unrepeatable what would you stop tolerating what would you stop postponing what would you finally allow yourself to become.

So just take a moment and see what bubbles up for you. And sometimes these answers don't come in these like really nice conceptual way. Sometimes it's colors or ideas or images. So just take a moment to capture that. And again, I will be asking this in different ways as we journey because as we journey, I'm sure different things are going to become available for you. But again, this is what we're going to journey through together. If we have a felt sense, of the reality of death and how it can truly reorientate how we live. What might that provide? So let's dive in and we're to start with again, why this is a topic that is especially poignant for me. And some of someone about to share, you may have heard me share through a different lens before.

I'm probably going to be sharing things I've never shared publicly and certainly not kind of woven together through this idea of kind of my three deaths and maybe I'm like a cat and it will turn out I've got nine lives and therefore nine deaths. So the first one, actually back up just before I go into that to say, as much as I had a very wild and magical upbringing, I still seem to have taken in our cultural, modern cultural relationship to death. So by no means was I kind of swanning around being like, I'm all good with death. Quite the contrary.

And I recall one of my early boyfriends, his father had died when he was a teen. And there was a particular time he was telling me about this and I guess the experiences he had when he lost his father. And I remember having this such a strong realization that was something like, my gosh, when my father dies, it's like my life will be over. And it wasn't this kind of...

wasn't so much of like, I will literally die or, ⁓ woe is me, it will be so dramatic and awful. It was like, I just couldn't see past it. would have felt, it was almost like my father's death would also be my death. Interestingly, in some way that turned out to be true. Obviously not fully and wholly because here I am, I'm not a ghost. But I wonder now whether there was an inkling I had of the

the magnitude of my father's death on my life. Anyway, so I just want to give you that, that it wasn't like I was good with death, quite the contrary. And so this first experience of death I had was one in which… my, in fact it was that actual boyfriend I've just mentioned, we found ourselves in a very difficult situation where the pair of us were being attacked by a group of men.

And there were a number of really, How can I put this? Like moments, like scenes of that unfolding that were particularly, they still are so clear to me. And I'm not going to share the whole thing apart from anything. It's kind of not happy telling, it's quite gruesome and some of it's not relevant, but just to say it is definitely kind of one of the five big events of my life. And… During this happening, at some point, my then boyfriend was knocked unconscious. And so he was, you know, out cold and was being having kind of blows rained down upon him.

Coincidentally, this is such synchronicity, I can't actually believe it's almost like it was meant to happen, because probably it was. A week before that, he told me a story of something similar happening to a friend of his, and the person whose friend was with did what I then did in this thing that happened a week ago, and probably was what put the idea in my head. my then boyfriend,

was laying unconscious, being kicked in the head, in the body. And because of the story you told me, I had this idea of if I become like a human shield and lay on top of him with my arms around his head and my head kind of on his head, I can protect him. Because I had such a sense of, you know, no help is coming. He is going to die if I don't do this.

And so it wasn't even, I wouldn't say it sounds like a really courageous act. wasn't, it was quite logical really. It was almost like this is what needs to be done. And then of course, because I was then in the way of them being able to get to my boyfriend, the attention turned back to me. I had my top ripped off, I was groped and then I was also attacked. And the reason this was...

What I realise now somewhat of a death experience is There was a moment where I realised no one is coming. There is no help. No one's going to kind of like now lay on top of me like a kind of set of pancakes to protect me. I'm going to die here. And that was the last thought I remembered. Just I'm going to die here. And then I went. And then the next thing I remember was coming to, by which point there were police there, ambulance there, and I raised my head and realised like, I'm alive, but then thought I'd gone blind because I had a really deep cut and I've still got a scar now, thankfully not too deep. had a big cut on my eyebrow, my face was so covered in blood, I couldn't see.

Of course, you know, I had many injuries and, you know, in so many ways was very traumatised, but I was alive. And then again, without wanting to make this a really long story, I'm just trying to stick to the parts that are really relevant. What we then found out was the people who had done it had previously killed someone.

And so because we were then going through the prosecution process and I was needing to go through this series of identity parades, I was in such fear for my life that they would find out that I was identifying them, find out who I was and would come and, you know, then finish the job and kill us. And so we had like a panic alarm straight to the police in our house. And I spent months and months and months, in this state of just such fear and anger as well. had real anger, but kind of oscillating between anger and fear. Where because the experience I had, it wasn't a near death experience in the way that we're going to look at can happen. Because I actually, although my, at the time I thought I was going to die, clearly I wasn't as near to death as it seemed. And so I only experienced that terror of that lonely ending is hopeless, it's all over, this is how I'm going to die in this tragic scene. And then this fear of death that followed where there was a kind of very real seeming threat to my life afterwards. I'd created, I see now, this way of being where I was in fear, fear of dying, which my sense is because of this is why I then ended up with chronic facial pain and panic attacks. And I had those things for 15 years. And so for 15 years, I was in this, you know, underlying, I guess, bracing against death.

And I just want you take a moment to feel that, like how that feels, that tightness, that closing to life because of the fear of death. And I don't think everyone, of course, walks around with that level of bracing against death, but I feel as though mine was just an extreme of how many of us live where we don't really live because we have this underlying fear of death, which we're constantly bracing against.

My next experience with death was indeed the death of my father. And his, as you may have heard me say before, was a very sudden, tragic and complicated death. In short, he was knocked over by a car and There were mistakes made by the ambulance service, the police service, the driver who had hit him didn't make a statement. She was refusing to comment. kind of then went on and on and on with multiple post mortems. was weeks and weeks and weeks before we could even have a ceremony. There was an inquest a year later. So just to give you a taste of the complexity and shock and grief and horror and anger and confusion that my family and I were journeying with for that next year. And so in some ways that younger me that felt like my life will end when my father dies, there was some truth to that. I mean, it really was one of the most dramatic deaths that I've kind of heard of in normal modern culture. And yet, The day that I was told he died was also a day where I started to see this isn't all there is. Yes, this is the end of his life with this particular name and his, that particular relationship he has to say me and everyone else in his life. But I knew he was still here. I knew, I knew as, well as I know that the sky is blue and grass is green, I could feel his presence. I could feel his spirit. I could feel his energy. He hadn't gone anywhere. And at that point I was still back in the corporate world. was living a kind of, sort of like forced myself into this very like a muggle mainstream shape and life. And so I had at that point, no real understanding of what this could mean spiritually. I just knew it was true. And knowing that was true started to open me up to seeing all of these other things about life, about myself, about the cosmos. And so whilst I was at the same time dealing with all of the chaos and pain and ruptures, that kept on almost it was like rupture after rupture after rupture because of his death I was you know in that journey with it grieving and feeling all of that and at the same time I was being opened broken open to such beauty such love miracles it was just like the simplest things were as if like it was the first time I'd ever experienced them.

And it truly was that way that death showed me what it means to really live. Suddenly everything about life took on this completely different light. And talk about the word light. was, I shared this recently, I'd forgotten this, or it has been kind of present, but not something I've mentioned for some time. And I was, was guesting on another podcast recently and they asked me, about my father's death. I said, what I realised at some point that afternoon was it was like even the light had changed color, you know, that color of like magic hour. This was, you know, early in the afternoon. And yet it was like everything was magic hour because it was so beautiful and so golden. Even though I was sitting with my family all in shell shock, I was like, but it's all so beautiful. And so over the course of that year, that was unfolding and inviting me into more and more and more of seeing life that way. And then again, I've told you this story before, so I'm going to keep this part short, but it kind of feels like an important bookend. It was almost a year to the day that he died. I had this second opening where I saw the nature of reality through a different lens, really in short, the way that our own identity, our own ideas, our own concepts, our own thoughts create this limited view of the world. And in that moment, it was seeing that structure of thought, allowed it to soften in a moment, in that moment, it was like it just crumbled and it's not tall that he stayed crumbled. There's times where it's more compelling and times where it's softer. But it was life changing, not least the fact that those panic attacks and the chronic facial pain vanished. And there's a whole story behind everything I tried to deal with the chronic pain and failed.

And yet this, seeing this facet of how we create reality did what all of that, you know, medication, root canals and all the other things just couldn't. So again, that's the power that death can have on life. And then the last story, this is a shorter one. But, In some ways, it's the one that feels important to tell because unless by divine intervention, we have an encounter with death like I have had, we might not get the chance to experience what death can mean and can bring us. And so this is an example of ways that we can create something of this kind. And so this was several years ago in, I did a three year shamanic training. was very intense and initiatory. And in the second year, the, I guess the big initiation that everyone had been like part dreading and part kind of like weirdly looking forward to was the burial initiation where we would dig our own graves literally and then spend a night in them.

And it was actually incredible, an incredible ceremony where we were preparing for our deaths very consciously during that weekend and during the day of our burial. And in so many different ways, we're journeying with some of the things that I will be inviting you into in this episode, really facing what it might mean if this was our last day.

What would that tell us? What would we wish we'd done? What would our regrets be? Where are our relationships? And so we journeying with all of this idea of what it would mean to die today. And then as say, we'd also been digging our graves, which I can tell you, if you've never dug your own grave before or ever dug a grave, it is really hard work to the point where, funny enough, was watching, I don't know what we were watching. I was watching a scene. on some kind of film, I think it was, rather than a series, I think it was a film, with my children last week, and a character was digging a grave. And I said, gosh, that is really hard work. I said, I know. And then I said, you literally get blisters. And then shortly after the character did indeed have blisters. So I can tell you that that's accurate. You really do get blisters digging a grave.

We then, again, it was a great ceremony. We then went into our graves. And just in case you're curious, I don't want to give too much away because I think, you of course these things are meant to be hidden and secret for a reason, but just for the practically minded of you, I'll just kind of share roughly what the graves like. So it's dug a few feet deep underground and then...

you lay in it obviously and then you've collected sticks from the woods that get laid across so they're not touching you they're kind of over you with a gap of air between you and the sticks and then blankets are laid across that and then the earth from the grave is ⁓ poured over the top so you are literally underground albeit it's not kind of directly up the soil isn't well a few bits of soil obviously do get through.

That is actually the part that I found hardest and most kind of whoa, this is not an experience you ever think you're to have when you're laying there. And then the helpers are throwing the soil back on over the top of you. And the sound of that and the bits falling through and it going from light to dark. My goodness. Quite an experience. Anyway, The part that I really want to share with you is that it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my whole life. It was incredible.

I felt so, so held by Mother Earth in a way that I just cannot give words to really capture the feeling of it. It sounds like an idea, but it wasn't an idea. It was this visceral experience of being in her womb and so held and so loved and so safe and so nourished. It was just so beautiful. And then… And then of course, also journey with all kinds of things like what if an insect goes into my mouth and my gosh, I'm dying for the loo. And so there's like a whole bunch of things that come with it. But fast forwarding, because there's lots of other things I want to get into this with you. In the morning, of course, morning eventually does come and they clear off the soil and the blanket and the logs, and then help you out of your grave. And of course, it's a rebirth of sorts is coming into a new life, a new day, a new way of being. And my goodness, that morning, I don't know if I'd ever had a morning like it for my whole life before. It truly was like getting the second chance of life where everything looked just stunning. And of course we were in this beautiful environment in

these words in on the English land. And it was, you know, that just sort of dewy early morning, sort of dawn, sunrise, that sense of community, this feeling of all of us, you know, like, my goodness, we've come through this crazy initiation. But it really gave me this, again, this tangible taste of how precious and beautiful life is. It took again, kind of sort of dying again, to wake up to the gift of this life. And so these are the three experiences I've had with death. As I said, you may have seen in the post I wrote about this live, I've never had a kind of what's called a near death experience, but my experiences of coming near to death have shown me so much about what it means to truly live.

And these aren't things that I see as personal at all to me. These are ancient truths. are ways of understanding death and therefore life that's really a human birthright that cultures that were present through the vast majority of human history, like 95 % of human history, we knew this. We knew these truths. We journeyed in a way with life where we knew that it would end and not necessarily end to end, which is what we're going to look at in a moment, but certainly this life, this life as we know it will come to an end, which then changes how we live. But again, also what could be on the other side of that veil that's death that could also show us how to live?

how to live well, how to live fully. So we're going to have a look at some of those things now, but I would love to know just pausing, having heard what I've shared, what occurs to you? What stands out to you? What has it reminded you about your own relationship to death? Maybe experiences you've had with death of some kind.

So just take a moment to reflect on that and capture it.

So I'm just going to top up my oolong tea and then we're going to have a look at the science. As you might know, I am, as well as having this kind of fascination, curiosity for the sort of unseen realms, I'm also a massive science nerd. And so where we can also look at the science, I love to do so.

This is an interesting thing when it comes to near-death experiences, the science of death. There's actually quite a lot out there. We've got to focus specifically on near-death experiences.

Science of this kind is, as you can probably understand, anything outside of the realms of the material, the proven, the things that we can kind of measure through typical scientific laws, is like there is a higher burden of proof needed. And so what I'm going to share with you, you you feel free to hold as you want. You might be like, well, I would need more evidence. And yet,

I invite you to see even if, even if the one about to share isn't holy as it seems, even if there's just a snippet of truth, what would that show you?

Okay, so there's a few things I'm going to touch on, few studies, research that we're going to touch on here. So there was a study called the AWARE study done by Dr. Sam Parnia in 2014. And it was the largest prospective study of cardiac arrest survivors. And...

He found that approximately 40 % of resuscitated patients reported some awareness during clinical death. And so those particular points are important here. So clinical death means, it's probably obvious, but just in case it isn't, clinically, if someone was to take all of your vital readings that would normally indicate you are alive, none of those are present, you are dead.

And yet 40 % of those patients who died in quote marks did die and then were resuscitated. 40 % of them actually reported they had some level of awareness at the point they were considered dead. 2 % of them reported experiences consistent with near-death experiences, how these, sorry, near-death experience, I've just said the word experience twice, I realise I'm probably going do that several times, say the kinds of things that have been reported during near-death experiences, 2 % described they had those kinds of experiences. And this is known as a very rigorous study. Again, it's a field that's often prone to dismissal.

But the rigor of this has seemed to be something that's held up. And then there was also in 2001, a study done by, I may not pronounce his right, Dr. Pim van Lommel. I love that, Dr. Pim van Lommel. He's a Dutchman, as you probably can tell by his name. And out of 344 cardiac arrest survivors, So again, clinical death resuscitated 18 % reported near-death experiences. This is the interesting thing. Van Lommel tracked participants over eight years after that and found consistent lasting changes in the group that reported the near-death experience. So obviously there were some that didn't and there were 18 % that did. The ones that did reported a reduced fear of death an increased sense of purpose, deeper empathy, reduced materialism, heightened appreciation for ordinary life. The control group showed none of those changes.

So tells us something. And then lastly, and when I say lastly, it's not because this is the only three pieces of research out there. It's just the three that I'm talking about today. Raymond Moody, who I really hope he's still alive. He's born in 1944. So, you know, bless his heart. He's getting on now, but I would love to have him on the podcast. So if you're listening to this, pray for me that that happens. So he's a philosopher, psychiatrist and physician. And he authored the book. He's actually authored a whole series of books, but the first one was called Life After Life back in 1975. And so because that was so long ago, it was before we even had this term near-death experience. I'm guessing people had those experiences, but it certainly wasn't something that the average person knew about. This term near-death experience hadn't been created.

And so it's important to recognize that because it means that it wasn't the cultural water that people were swimming in where they had this like, these things happen in a near-death experience. Most people would not have known this. And yet, when he was interviewing these people, they were reporting very consistent experiences, some of which I'm going to share with you now.

So these are the things that he saw in and let me just remind myself if I've made a note of yes so he interviewed certainly for this book I think he probably went on and did far more 150 people resuscitated after clinical death and these are you know all kinds of cultures ages belief systems and all kinds of things and so his interview showed that we can see the same phenomena over and over over again in near-death experiences. It's like a set of things that can happen. Usually not all of them happen, but usually some of them happen. I think there's only maybe one or two that consistently happen. Does that make sense? it's like, there's, I think maybe 10 different things that can happen during a near-death experience.

and he saw them show up over and over and over again in the research he did. And so I'm going to talk about some of them here that feel most important. So people would experience this sense of separation from the body, like, moving up and out away from their physical form. And this could include watching themselves be resuscitated. They might report on really accurate details of, say for example, what the medical staff said, which was then later verified by those people. It might be things in the room that from their vantage point, often again, the perspective of the person who's died, let's say the soul, moves up and out. And so it has a different vantage point to a human being, certainly laying down on the bed or even just walking around.

And so they report seeing things that they could have only seen from that vantage point. There was one I recall, I don't know if it's in Raymond Moody's work or is a different thing I read a while back, but there was some kind of trainer that had been like, I was in a shoe trainer, sneaker, I think you call them in America, that had been thrown up on a high shelf that you literally couldn't see when you were in the room as a normal human being. But because of their vantage point, they could see reported and then it was found. So some really interesting things like that. So there is this consistent phenomena of having this sense of self that isn't housed exclusively in the body. There is also often this experience of an encounter with light and not like a necessarily a, you know, a brightness that you can see, although it might be that, but this sense of an intelligent, loving, non-judgmental presence. Something that is beyond what most of us would have experienced in this lifetime, so unconditionally loving. And they would just say things like, this is the most intimate experience of my life. I felt so loved, even though this being of light was present.

For the life review, which I'm going to talk about next, and often seeing things that weren't necessarily the best behavior, this being of light does not judge. It just is there, present, and completely loving. And then again, as I just mentioned, the life review is another common experience. And this is where… the person who has died is they in some way or other relive their life. And it's been described in many different ways. In fact, I've got a friend who had a near-death experience and he experienced a bit like a kind of like a sort of a series of images sort of flicking like past him. And so one way or another, there was this sense of like being in experiencing each of those experiences in this like crystal clear detail and feeling also what their actions felt like to others. And again, in completely different cultures, similar things were described. There was an accountant in New Jersey and an Amazonian elder that neither had heard of near-death experiences, but they felt, described the same experience of seeing their lives looking backwards, but not from a place of You know, this is what you've done wrong and I'm going to punish you by showing you this, but to show you this is what your life was. This is what really mattered. This is what you have to learn from this. And then the part that it really struck me is that only two things were seen to be important.

When we look back over our lives from this new vantage point and it's not achievement, it's not success, it's not status, it's not the accumulation of wealth, it's to love others and to learn. To love others and to learn.

So that's a question worth sitting with.

If you were to have a life review, if you were to look back even just on the last year of your life from that vantage point of those around you, from their perspective, those others that you are invited all the time to love, what would you discover? What would you see? And knowing that, what would you change before the moment of death actually arrives?

How are you doing? How would you feel right now if you had a life review?

Okay.

So we've looked at what might really be at play, what might really be possible after death. But of course, this is not the cultural water we are swimming in. In this crazy modern world, we have achieved something that is pretty much unprecedented in human history, a pretty much near total removal of death from daily life.

We walk around as though death can't really happen apart from again, this low level bracing against it in the way that I described happened to me after the attack. So we, shove away dying as if it's some kind of impolite thing. It happens only in hospitals. Once people have died, they are handled by professionals.

It's quite unusual in this day. think in, say, for example, in Ireland, I know there is a bit of a different culture around the dead in terms of having, for example, the body in the house. But certainly I wouldn't say that's particularly common in today's world. Certainly here in England, you often will never even see, unless you were present as during the person dying, you almost never will see their body.

Children are shielded from it. Like we talk about death in like whispers or metaphors or kind of make up little fairy tales around it. We are creating this culture where it's like we are trying to protect ourselves against something that could be again, our greatest teacher, our greatest liberator. And this is in many ways goes to the heart of our lack of sovereignty. This is a sovereignty wound because when we are removing the truth of death as best we can, of course, we can't really remove it. We're removing ourselves from the truth of death. That capacity for true choice, true self-directed choice dies with it. If we are trying to pretend there is no ending, no cost. This is going to go on forever more. We're not able to truly make those sovereign choices. We are making choices within a context that's not real because we can't face the reality. It comes at such a cost. so again, this way that we are in modern culture is a death denying culture.

And that is not how we got here. This is not what's typical in shamanic cultures, in any wisdom traditions. That conscious engagement with mortality is something again, that we evolved with, that is present for any kind of true, whether we want to call it personal growth or soul embodiment, we need to face death.

And certainly from my perspective, having some experience with shamanic cultures, most recently I spent a year learning from an indigenous Mongolian shaman.

And what I've seen over and over again in all of the different shamanic cultures, you know, one way or another had any experience with is a very different relationship with death, but also those who have died, those who have gone before us. The bit similar to, as I described when I lost my father, I knew he wasn't gone. He wasn't gone in the way that his body was gone from this life.

And that's what shamanic cultures, is really all of our true culture is where we all began. We had this sense of we are just standing on the shoulders of those who came before us, but they are not gone. They can still reach us and we can still reach them beyond death. And in knowing that changes our relationship to death.

It isn't a death denial like la la la la, it doesn't mean I'm never going to die, but it shows us something about what is true beyond this physical death.

There's something I'm not going to go deep into this part from anything. It's not something I'm deep enough into to really give a considered view of. But what I do know is the Tibetan Book of the Dead talks about this idea of how to die well, let's say.

in ways that really mirror those stages that we saw back in Rabin Moody's research, actually many different types of research or near-death experience. And the way that the invitation is to die without grasping toward what's pleasant or flee away from what's terrifying. And if we can die like that, we can also live like that. So the preparation for dying well is

actually also the practice of living consciously.

And then again, we can look at cultures across the world, even like, you know, slightly more modern. We look at, say for example, Greek and Roman cultures, which were capturing this kind of gnosis, this kind of wisdom in myth, looking at say the, about the myth of Persephone. She goes down into the underworld, into the, into, into death.

But recognises there is this, yes, there is a death, there is a falling away. She moves out of the world of light and life. Something changes. Something ⁓ is no longer possible, but new things become possible. And of course, she is then able to come back part of the year and journey back down another part of the year. And can you imagine if that was how you lived?

You know, we get a mini taste of it, for example, with the passing of seasons where we have this fresh appreciation for spring because we've known winter. We have a fresh appreciation of day because we have night. But imagine if you knew you were dying and then being reborn. Dying and then being reborn. How you would experience each rebirth very differently.

So.

going to ask you again.

Where in your life are you living as though there is more time than there is? And of course we never know how much time there is. Where in your life are you living as though there is more time than there is? What does that cost you in terms of genuine presence and choice?

And again, just allow what's there to arise, to arise. It doesn't need to be in this kind of clearly thought out sentence. Just capture what comes and then the invitation is to then work with that, dream into it, create from it. What would shift in how you hold your daily life if death were a living presence in it rather than an abstract fact you know about and try to forget?

So differently said, how would you live if you were aware all the time that death was also present?

And lastly, I'm going to offer you a practice to take into your lives after this episode. And it might be something that you choose to do for the rest of your life going forward every day. might be something you choose to do once. It might be something you choose to do for a week or a month. So you allow this to be something that's right for you, is alive for you.

And so we could call it the daily death. so find a moment every day. Morning works really well because of course you're coming into a new day and about to make choices all through that day. But if it's better for you, do it before you sleep. And first take some time, you know, it be five, 10 minutes to just land into your body, into the moment, into the space you're in.

feel that wild intelligence of your life in this world, in this lifetime.

And then ask yourself, if this were my last day.

What would it mean that it is this one?

So if this were my last ordinary day, so it's not that it's some dramatic, I've been given one day to live, but just say, for example, you had that knowing this is my last day. It's an ordinary day. It's not a kind of big crisis. It's just a day. If you knew that, what would it mean that this is that day? How would you show up? What would you choose? What wouldn't you choose? What would you look for?

And the idea isn't to kind of answer those questions and resolve it in the practice, just allow yourself to see what arises. And then of course, allow that to flow into your day, to accept death as teacher and allow it to guide how you're living.

I'm gonna finish with...

One more question.

If your soul has been waiting for something to happen before it could speak more fully, what is it waiting for? And do you want to keep making it wait?

And we have this sense often that, ⁓ when I don't know, I feel confident enough, I have enough money, my health is good enough. Then I'll be able to hear or act upon what my soul is showing me. What is that for you? And are you prepared to continue making it wait?

Okay, so as you heard me say earlier, if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path and your heart longs for guidance, kinship and support, come join us in UNIO, the community for wild sovereign souls. UNIO is a living home for the wild sovereign soul path where together we reclaim our wildness, actualise our sovereignty and awaken our souls. You can discover more and walk with us by hopping over to… wildsovereignsoul.com slash unio or click the link in the description. And if you're called to go even deeper, join us for the very first, the maiden voyage, the Wild Sovereign Soul Pilgrimage, a three month immersive online group journey home to soul. We begin later on in May. And depending on when you're listening to this, either the wait list is open or enrollment is open and you can join us at wildsovereignsoul.com slash pilgrimage.

And they're not there yet. But if you're listening to this on the replay, you can find all the links and everything else I've about at the show notes, which is at wildsovereignsoul slash podcast slash five four seven. If you don't want to miss our next week's episode and we have got some really juicy ones coming up, actually head on over to your podcasting app or platform of choice, including YouTube and hit that subscribe or follow button. That way you'll get each episode delivered straight to your device as soon as it's released.

Thank you so much for joining me. You've been wonderful. I'll catch you again next week. And until then, I'm sending you all my love and blessings as you walk your wild sovereign soul path.

 
 
Lian Brook-Tyler
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