Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How Thinking About Death Can Improve Your Life | Alua Arthur

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

There seems to be one clear bug in the human operating system — most of us do not like talking about death. Yet when we do talk about it, it can genuinely upgrade the quality of our lives.Our guest today is Alua Arthur, a former attorney who is now what’s called a death doula, which is someone who helps guide people through the end of their lives. Through this work, she has learned some extraordinary stuff about how to live life right now. Alua is also the founder of Going with Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization. She is working on her debut memoir, which will be coming out next year called, Briefly Perfectly Human.This conversation took place at the 2023 TED Conference in Vancouver, immediately after Alua delivered her triumphant talk, which is out now. Special thanks to the TED Audio Collective. You can listen to Alua's talk and other TED talks on the TED Talks Daily podcast. In this episode we talk about:How death can be a powerful motivator How consistently being aware that you’re going to die can be a “stress reliever” The utility of imagining your ideal deathHer view on reincarnation How the concept of “healing” can sometimes be used as a weapon against ourselves The importance of not leaving things unsaid How “hope” at the end of life can sometimes be unhelpfulWhat surprises her about death How her work helped her out of her depressionThe five steps that you should take when confronting your own death The harm that can sometimes result from too much medical intervention toward the end of lifeThe often fraught relationship that vulnerable and marginalized people can have with the medical community The benefits of thinking about what version of yourself you want to meet on your deathbedThe death meditation that she uses when working with people What to say and do when you are with somebody who is grieving And a practice she calls, “The dying things exercise” For tickets to TPH's live event in Boston on September 7:https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/dan-harris/Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/Alua-Arthur-619See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? It seems to me that one clear bug in the human operating system is that most of us do not like talking about death. And yet when we do do it, it can make us feel good and genuinely upgrade our lives right now.

We're gonna try to demonstrate that for you today with a genuinely extraordinary human being. Elua Arthur is a former attorney who is now what's called a death doula, which, and you will hear her describe this better than I can, is somebody who helps guide people through the end of their lives. Through this work, she has learned some extraordinary stuff about how to live life right now. In this conversation, we talk about how death can be a powerful motivator, how consistently

being aware that you're going to die can be a stress reliever. The utility of imagining your ideal death, her view on reincarnation, how the concept of healing can sometimes be used as a weapon, the importance of not leaving things unsaid, how hope at the end of life can sometimes, in her words, be fucked up, what surprises her about death, how her work has helped her out of depression, and the five steps that you should take when confronting your own death. A little bit more about Elua before we dive in. She's the founder of Going with Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization. Her debut memoir called Briefly Perfectly Human is out now.

This conversation took place at the 2023 TED conference in Vancouver. I actually interviewed Elua immediately after she stepped off stage after delivering a triumphant talk which you can watch by clicking the link in the show notes. Special thanks to the TED Audio Collective. We love those people. You can listen to Elua's talk and other TED Talks over on the TED Talks Daily podcast wherever you're listening to this podcast. Couple housekeeping notes. First, this is a rebroadcast or repost of an episode

that was super popular the first time we posted it. The second thing is that there are some stray background noises at moments in this recording because it was recorded in a convention center, but I think you'll be able to handle it. Elua Arthur coming up. But first, a little BSP, blatant self-promotion. Two little things to tell you about, then one big thing. First little thing, if you go to danharris.com, my new website, there's a merch store up where you can get 10% happier

t-shirts and sweatshirts and a tote bag. Also, if you go to danharris.com, you can sign up for my new newsletter in which I share the two biggest takeaways for me from the shows on any given week, plus three cultural recommendations, books, TV shows, movies, TikTok videos, you name it. Okay, here's the big thing I really want to promote. We've got a meditation party retreat coming up at the Omega Institute, which is outside of New York City, that's coming up in May. There's actually another one coming up after that in November.

This is a weekend long thing I do with the great meditation teachers, Semenay Selassie and Jeff Warren. It is not your traditional silent meditation retreat. We call it Meditation Party for a reason. We do many sessions where we have a lot of conversation among the three of us on stage We do some guided meditations. We take questions from the audience. It's highly interactive. There's a dance party on Saturday night We've got a great DJ Tasha The Amazon is coming to play some jams on Saturday night come for this. The last one we did was incredibly fun

So we're doing two more this year Go to e Omega comm to sign up or to the link in the show notes. Before I go, I just wanna say something about the 10% Happier app. Many of you are familiar with the great teachings of Joseph Goldstein, the amazing meditation teacher. We've got six courses and more than 50 guided meditations from Joseph over on the app,

including our free introductory course, The Basics. Download the 10% Happier app today, wherever you get your apps and get started for free. I'll also link to it in the show notes. I'm Alice Levine. And I'm Matt Ford. And we're the presenters of British Scandal. And in our latest series, Hitler's Angel,

we tell the story of scandalous beauty, Diana Mosley, British aristocrat, Mitford sister and fascist sympathiser. Like so many great British stories, it starts at a lavish garden party. Diana meets the dashing fascist Oswald Mosley. She's captivated by his politics but also by his very good looks. It's not a classic rom-com story but when she falls in love with Mosley, she's on a collision course with her family,

her friends and her whole country. There is some romance though. The couple tied the knot in a ceremony organised by a great, uncelebrated wedding planner, Adolf Hitler. So it's less Notting Hill, more Nuremberg. When Britain took on the Nazis, Diana had to choose between love or betrayal.

This is the story of Diana Mosley on her journey from glamorous socialite to political prisoner. Listen to British Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Emily, one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. Some of them hit the big time overnight, some had to plug away for years, but in our latest series we're talking about a man who was world famous before he was even born. A life of extreme privilege that was mapped out from the start but left him struggling to find his true purpose.

A man who compared to his big brother felt a bit, you know, spare. Yes, it's Prince Harry. You might think you know everything about him, but trust me, there's even more. We follow Harry and the obsessive, all-consuming relationship of his life. Not with Meghan, but the British tabloid press. Hounded and harassed, Harry is taking on an institution almost every bit as powerful as his own royal family.

Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wandery Plus on Apple podcasts or the Wandery app. Hey, Luah Arthur, welcome. Thank you, Dan. How'd you get into the death business? Through a lot of ups and downs by serendipity. I met a woman on a bus who had uterine cancer.

She was a fellow traveler from Germany. And we talked a lot about her life, and then we started talking about her death. And she shared with me things that I'd never been privy to. Not only had nobody in my life died yet, but it was also one of the first times I was having a real conversation about mortality with anybody. And people in her life didn't make space for her to talk about death. They just want her to focus on getting better. And she didn't only want to talk about that because for her it was a possibility that

she could possibly die from her disease. And we talked a lot about it, and it broke my heart that she didn't have people to talk to. It felt like some existential gaslighting to only focus on getting better rather than acknowledging the possibility of death from her disease. And during that bus ride, I felt pretty clear that this was something I could do

because I'd been practicing law for so long and I was so depressed, and this was, you know was one of the first times that I was fully in my body and fully present with what was happening and I was just being myself and what being myself did created some value for her. I thought, well, this feels pretty good. Rich conversations, deep conversations, fun conversations. So we came back and we started to think about doing it. So you felt like being a lawyer was,

I don't know if that's the right way to put it. You were leading a fake life in some ways. You weren't, I guess the cliched way to put it would be you weren't being true to yourself. It was crushing my soul. It was round peg in a square hole. I think so. I don't know, square peg round hole maybe? That one. Zebra dressing up as a horse every. Mm-hmm. I think so. I don't know, square peg round hole maybe? That one.

Zebra dressing up as a horse every day. It just wasn't working out. I was trying so hard. It wasn't working. And this works. You're like, oh, this clicks. Every cell in my body is telling me, oh, this is meaningful. Absolutely.

So what is a death doula? A death doula is somebody who offers all the non-medical and holistic care and support for the dying person and their circle of support through the process. I don't think most people even know this as a thing. Like how do people even find out about death doulas? Well, a lot of word of mouth. I mean, it's part of why I'm just out there

stumping death so much just so that people can learn that there is a service that can support them when it's time. But they're finding out more and more now, I like to think. Folks are being more open to the conversation about how we die, which is creating space for them to think about what kind of support they might need. So what does that require of you as the doula

in those moments while people are expiring? What's your purpose in those moments? To support. I'm there, I listen, I offer resources, I help them sort through information, act as an intermediary when they need it, help them talk to the doctors, sometimes run errands, help them get really clear on what they want, help them voice what they want. I'm an advocate, I'm a friend, I'm a companion.

I'm somebody just to be there for them in the really tough parts for them and the people that are around them. So for people who haven't done this work before and didn't have your experience of sort of awakening on this bus ride with the woman with uterine cancer, I would imagine, and I'm sure you hear this all the time, that some people are thinking, this sounds like the worst job ever.

You're just around death all the time, and yet you are, people can't see you, but you're one of the most luminous and alive-seeming people I've ever met. Thank you, but that's because of my work. Because by virtue of being present for and around death so much, it's a constant reminder and invitation

that I'm still living. And I want to be in this body, be in this life as much as I can, because I see how it goes. Life just hangs on the breath. It's here one minute, then it's gone the next. And so while I still have it, I'm going to use it. I'm going to fill up this life, this body,

as much as I can, because before long, sooner than I'm probably ready for, it's going to be done. Do you ever have shit days where you forget the lessons of your work? Oh, all the time. I cry about having fat elbows constantly. What? Yeah, sometimes I'm looking at your elbows right now. Not that long ago.

I mean, not only internalized fat phobia, but also come on girl, like it's not that serious. It's not that serious, you know, when I'm zooming out and thinking about my death, none of it is that serious. But naturally, I mean, I'm also very human. I get caught up in this world. One of the things I say too much as the host of the show, and I suspect sometimes listeners might get annoyed with me for saying it,

but I think it's so important is that there's an ancient word, S-A-T-I, Sati, many millennia old. We translated currently commonly as mindfulness, the self-awareness that allows you not to get yanked around by your emotions. But the original translation of that word is remembering or recollecting. I would imagine what you're saying here is that you have to get better and better at just remembering the lessons of your own work so you're not worried about your elbows? 100%, 100%.

Also, a big component of death care is reminding people, being there as people remember their innate capacity to care for dying people. We all know how to care for somebody. We know how to love somebody. We know how to take care of our fellow. It's just when death seems like it's on the horizon, people freak out and think that they need a professional

or somebody in there and they don't. And so I'm just there to remind, to reflect back, to say you got this over and over and over again. It is a remembering in the work as well. And now you're talking here, I think specifically about the family members, not the person who's dying. I think that dying too. I think it's something that bodies know how to do.

Even though it's the first time that I'm going to be doing it in this body, I trust my body to carry out so many functions over the course of my life. I also get to trust that it knows how to not when it's done. And I think we forget that or it's something that's super foreign to us because we are living. But our bodies know how to die also. They do it well. There's so much in what you just said,

because you think about it, our body, we're carrying around these meat sacks with us all the time. They're doing all of this work below the level of conscious awareness. You couldn't pick your pancreas out of a lineup. No. And yet it's doing all of this stuff for us

in concert with so many other organs and a circulatory system. And of course, the body knows how to die, as you just said. And yet, the notion of dying feels like a malfunction. You say to somebody, how are you doing right now? I'm dying, man, I'm dying. It's synonymous with something going wrong. But it couldn't be more synonymous with failure.

And yet it could not be more natural. 100%. It's not a failure. It's not a failure of the body, of the human, of anybody. It's just how it goes. It's just part of the circle and part of the cycle. But so much of the medical care system, I think, and societally, we think of death as at odds with health or with thriving, whereas it's just part of how it goes. Like things must die so new things can be born. Our cells are doing it constantly. My body's dying while it's living.

It's all happening all the time. It's not a failure at all. It's just part of the system. I'm interviewing you just as you stepped off stage after having given a triumphant TED Talk, which I don't know if it'll be out by the time this podcast goes up, but it's amazing. And one of the things you say in the talk is, if you were celebrating your 874th birthday,

I don't know if that's the exact number, but in that zone, you'd be like, as you said in the talk, begging for death. Begging. We'd be so over it. You know, right now we know that our time is finite. Even if we're not living constantly in relationship to it, we know our time is finite. I think death can be a really powerful motivator.

If we had all the time in the world, nothing would matter. Like, why would you try? You know, nothing would make a difference. Death is useful. But why am I so scared of it? Because it's scary. We don't know what's happening.

We don't know what dying is gonna feel like. We're so used to how we live and living. It's also really hard, I think, for the brain. Part of the function of the brain to me, at least, is to experience consciousness, to be here and see you as solid and to feel this is solid, this chair is solid, et cetera. And so to ask the brain to no longer do that,

to ask it to imagine not doing that anymore, it's really hard for it to do. That's its job. And so it ask the brain to no longer do that, to ask it to imagine not doing that anymore, it's really hard for it to do, that's its job. And so it makes us uncomfortable. I can imagine what it's like scuba diving, I've never done it, but I can try to imagine. I cannot imagine what it's like to not be experiencing consciousness the way that I am currently. There will be some people listening to this

who have a diagnosis, most people probably not. One of my great fears is getting that diagnosis and it will happen. There's some reasonable probability that it will happen unless I die suddenly. I have this real fear of, you know, what's it gonna be like to know I'm walking around with this dagger hanging over my head.

Of course, we're walking around with it all the time anyway, but just the certainty of it in that way is terrifying to me. Is that scary to you? No, it's not scary. It's not quite comforting either. It just is. It's just a fact. So if you get a call tomorrow from your doctor,

hey, something funny showed up on your scan, we talked to you and they said, hey, you've got this disease. You probably get six months and it's probably going to be painful. Do you feel like you can handle that? I think I could handle it. I will weep. I'll feel sad.

I will think about all the things that I have yet to do. I need to finish this book. I'll think about the things that are still remaining. And I think I'd try to go full throttle while also just laying in a hammock plenty and feeling the sun on my skin and hanging out with my niece and my nephew while getting treated.

And then I think if they could no longer treat it, then I'd strap in for the ride of my life. I think, I think I might freak out. I might be the one who's trying to get all the treatment being like, not me, never. But I feel a certain amount of peace with what my life has become thus far, which creates more ease for me when thinking about my death.

Because I'm okay with what I've done. It feels pretty good. Well, you've achieved this towering. So I would hope that you could feel comfortable with that. And I would imagine having been around so much death that you have some familiarity that would reduce the fear going into it, I think? I think. We'll see. I think that part of the familiarity comes with being with my own death as much as possible. You know, it's one thing to watch somebody, but it's another thing

for me to constantly be thinking about my life through the lens of death and seeing what else we have left. Like, what else do I need to do? How else am I feeling about my life? What do I need to say? Who do I need to talk to? Do I need to forgive somebody? Do I need to forgive myself? What remains? And it has very little to do with what I have to do,

although I mentioned my book, but far more with like, how fully have I been in my life, such that when they tell me that it's time for me to die, I'll be like, all right, cause we did it. I'm not still waiting for something. So you're living your life now, employing and deploying a bunch of practices to prepare you.

Yes. So what are the practices you personally engage in and that you would recommend to us in terms of getting ready for this, which I'm deeply in support of this, because I think not only will it prepare you for the inevitable, but it will revivify your life right now. That's a great word, revivify.

I like to show off. It's like an SAT word, revivify. Yeah, thank you for accentuating what an asshole I am. You got it. I don't know how many of the practices are conscious, but I will tell you some of the ones that sometimes I use. Occasionally, when trying to make a decision in my life, I'll look at it from my deathbed. With this decision that I have to make right now, looking forward to my deathbed, will

I be happy I did it? Will I be sad I didn't do it? Or will it matter at all? Most of them fall on that it won't matter, then it doesn't matter what I do, I can just figure out how I'm feeling that day, decide what direction I want to take it in. But if it has some other bigger implication,

like moving or breaking up with somebody, then looking at it through the perspective of my death, I can see a little bit more clearly who I want to be and how I want to show up for my life. So that's one that I use, but I use it sometimes for silly things like trying to figure out whether or not I want to take a nap. And the answer is always yes, take a nap. I'm always going to take a nap when I think about it from the perspective of my death,

which I think some people would think that you'd rather not nap and just do the thing because there's that old adage, you can sleep when you're dead, but that's not sleep at all, it's dead. But I like rest, I want to feel rested in my life and so when I'm looking at it from the perspective of my death, I'll take a nap. Another thing that people can do that sometimes I suggest is to look in the mirror, in the eyeballs, in your own eyeballs, like deep, not searching your face, but looking in the eyeballs and repeating, I'm going to die a couple of times

and see what it brings up and be present with whatever it brings up. It could be scary, but I find that people often feel a little bit more peace. It's a little bit of a stress reliever to be aware of the fact that you're gonna die consistently. Is it a stress reliever because it gets you out of worrying about demonstrably stupid

shit or is it a stress reliever because you're taking this fear that's lurking in the corners of your consciousness and dealing with it forthrightly or both? Both. Both. I think in the immediate, it makes microscopic the thing that you're worrying about. But in the longer picture, it gives greater perspective on life itself and has you look at the things that scare you

and then be with the things that scare you and then take the sting out of them, tiny, tiny. Hmm, I have more questions about these practices and I've got a list of some of them I wanna ask you about. But just on this question of fear at the end, I have no experience compared to you, but I did volunteer in a hospice for a few years. Wow.

And made a lot of really good friends there and had some powerful experiences. And I, with one exception, didn't see a lot of fear toward the end. Did I just get lucky? Or is there something about the human organism that I don't know some sort of equanimity kicks in around the end?

I think the latter. I think that folks at some point start to reconcile their lives with their deaths and say, all right, we're here. It's part of why as a death duel, it's really important for me to work with somebody who's already come into some recognition of the fact that they're going to die, because otherwise I am just working with their fear. Not to say that there isn't any when the reconciliation is being made, but it's a much more pliable fertile ground to work with. As a death dealer, you don't necessarily wanna come in

and work with somebody who's still quote unquote fighting. Right. Unless they can also hold that they're dying. People often think that my work is about helping people get over their fear of death, but it's not. I mean, have you ever tried to have like a friend break up with a bad boyfriend or something like that? It's so hard.

People just have to be ready to step into it when they're ready. So I don't do that necessarily. I can just sit with people and their fear and their discomfort, but I'm not trying to get them from point A to point B. I'm just being with people and their fear and their discomfort, but I'm not trying to get them from point A to point B I'm just being with them where they are. So when people say to you, I'm terrified. I'm terrified I'm just freaking out you don't have something you say that's comforting you just sit in the dark with them

Yeah, what are you scared of? You know, we start there. What is the fear? What's the root of it? Helps them tease it out and often like we were saying before when we're looking at it directly it starts to numb it It's like exposure therapy in a weird way. Like you just start slowly numbing it. You take the sting out of the scary thing. And oftentimes it's things that we can do something about. Like if one of the big fears is the process of the body, which is a big one, what happens when we're dying? What does that feel like? We can start making plans to make sure that your pain is well managed, that you can have clues for thirst. We can talk about how thirst is actually supportive at the end of life because it acts as an analgesic.

It will numb the pain. There's things that we can discuss to take a little bit of the fear away. Thirst acts as a pain reliever or getting your thirst quenched? Dehydration. So dehydration is good. At the end of life, yeah. It serves as an analgesic effect. Interesting.

Yeah. Do you have any, having been around the end of so many lives, have you developed some sort of suspicion about what's on the other side? No. I know. I wish I did. What I notice is how often it looks like peace on people's faces as they're dying. Even if the mouth is open, because people do often die with their mouths open, it doesn't look scary.

That's what I walked away with. Oddly was, you know, I haven't done it in a couple of years. This was pre-pandemic, but I walked away from my time in the hospice feeling much less scared. It's come back because I haven't been exposed recently, but it was not a scary place. And people weren't screaming in pain. Modern medicine is quite powerful. And as we established, there's something about the human organism that seems to ease into this transition. But I remember quite powerfully feeling like it was a relief to have that experience. Sounds like it's time for you to go back to the hospice.

Yeah. And yes, absolutely. I find that people are more peaceful and they're ready on some level to die. Because likely, particularly in a hospice or so, it's coming at the end of a disease process. Probably just tired of being sick. Yeah, that's true. Like I get the flu and after three days, I'm ready to be over it, you know?

Particularly when you are in a disease process that's likely gonna kill you. Man, at some point you're just like, all right, enough already. My father used to have this joke about, when you get the stomach flu, that you switch back and forth between thinking you're gonna die and fearing that you won't.

No, that's good. Yeah, it's good. So one of the other practices if memory serves that you recommend for people is to really get pretty granular in thinking about how you want to die. I love that one. Why? Why do you love that one? Because it creates an ideal that can serve to create peace around it. So much of the fear around death is like, what's going to happen? What's

it going to feel like? What's it going to be like? This is scary thing. I can't even think about it. So if I can think about in a way that feels peaceful to me, my nervous system will be soothed by the idea. And so I suggest that people fill it with as much sensory detail as possible. What's it feel like, what's it smell like, who's there, who's not there, what are you wearing, what are you seeing, what are you smelling, what time of day is it, where are you,

what's the lighting like, make it really tangible. Because I think once we can land it in the sensory experience, then we can ground it in the body, and then it doesn't feel so scary, because this is my ideal death. This is something that feels comfortable or comforting to me.

And oftentimes, what I hear is it's like people Sunday afternoon, or when they're with the people that they love, or when they're in their comfortable clothes, or a place that they're already familiar with. So if I think, well, if I can die in a way that I'm comfortable living, then maybe the process of dying won't be so bad. Maybe.

You do this in your talk, but can you paint a picture of what your vision is? Yeah. Sunset. Sun's going down. The sky is changing. The colors are really vivid that day. It's not one of these days with all the clouds, so I can't see the sky. But everything's changing. It's really pretty.

I can see it. Ideally, I'm outside on a deck or something like that in my own bed or a bed that can be wheeled outside. There's no machines. I can hear the wind and the leaves. I can smell some nogchampa amber. My people are around, but they're not just hovering over me, looking at me, because I don't like being the center of attention. It would make me really uncomfortable. You don't like being the center of attention? No, I me really uncomfortable. You don't like being the center of attention? No, I don't.

You just came off stage in front of 2,000 people. And they're wearing bright orange, and I don't like it. She's wearing bright orange and it's pretty fetching. Thank you. But I want them to be like over there talking amongst themselves and comforting each other. I want soft things. I want to feel soft things. I would love it if there were sunflowers nearby. I want like a mustard yellow blanket or something.. I want to feel soft things. I would love it if there were sunflowers nearby. I want like a mustard yellow blanket or something. I just want to feel cozy and warm and safe

and like people care, but I'm not going to totally fuck up their lives by the fact that I'm dying. What about pain relief? Do you have some desire to avoid that so you can be maximally conscious? Yes, I would like to be as conscious as possible, but with my pain managed.

So middle path between obliteration through morphine and being as awake as you can tolerate. Absolutely. Although I know some people that want to be as awake as they can, one guy who I supported doing his end of life plan didn't want any pain medication at all. That's what he said.

Did he change his mind? I don't know. He's still living. Oh, great. Yeah. Coming up, Elua Arthur talks about her view on reincarnation, how talking to people about their death can be a life-affirming experience, actually, the importance of not leaving things unsaid,

how hope at the end of life can sometimes not be helpful, what surprises her about death, and she starts to talk about the five steps that you should take when confronting your own death. I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we delve into the life of Alan Turing.

Why are we talking about Alan Turing, Peter? Alan Turing is the father of computer science and some of those questions we're thinking about today around artificial intelligence. Turing was so involved in setting and framing what some of those questions were but he's also interesting for lots of other reasons Afro. He had such a fascinating life he was unapologetically gay at a time when that was completely criminalized and stigmatized and from his imagination he created ideas that have formed a very physical practical foundation for all of the technology on which our lives depend.

And on top of that, he's responsible for being part of a team that saved millions, maybe even tens of millions of lives because of his work during the Second World War using maths and computer science to code-break. So join us on Legacy, wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever felt like escaping to your own desert island? Well that's exactly what Jane, Phil and their three kids did when they traded their English home for a tropical island they bought online. But paradise has its secrets and family life is about to take a terrifying turn.

You don't fire at people in that area without some kind of consequence. And he says, yes ma'am, he's dead. There's pure cold-blooded terror running through me. From Wondery, I'm Alice Levine and this is The Price of Paradise, the real life story of an island dream that ends in kidnap, corruption and murder. Search and follow The Price of Paradise now to listen to the full trailer. Looking too deep in your meditation practice with a dash of both wisdom and humor? Dive into the 10% Happier Meditation app, download it for free wherever you get your apps, and get started today.

I asked you this earlier about any theories you might have about what's on the other side, but maybe as I'm getting older, I find more and more, I don't believe in heaven, or I don't have any evidence for heaven, but reincarnation on some level is starting to feel more intuitively true to me. And maybe that's because I'm in this Buddhist cult now, but does that appeal to you or do you feel like it might be true? I have no idea. And also, I would like to be when I'm done. Yeah, I'm down for this.

But also I'm okay with the idea that we might just keep circling around each other. I heard a theory not that long ago, I think it was called the egg, which basically says that we come back as each other for all times over and over and over again. And only when each individual incarnation has come back as all the rest will it all be over. Hmm, that seems like a long period of time.

Yeah, but what is time anyway? Right. Fair enough. I mean, it's eternity, but a drop in the bucket. One interesting thing about reincarnation, in the Buddhist view, the goal, or at least in some schools, is to escape the cycle of repeated rebirth because life is, this is going to sound, I mean, you know a lot about Buddhism, but it is going to sound kind of dark, but the Buddha's principle proclamation after he got enlightened was life is suffering.

He didn't mean that life sucks. He just meant that life is frustrating because we're never fully satisfied and we're always clinging to things that won't last. And so the idea is if you achieve enlightenment, and again, I'm not saying any of this is true, this is just the theory. If you achieve enlightenment, you can be one and done, or at least done after this one. And I have some suspicion that my increasing gravitational pull toward reincarnation is

really ego, that I just can't fathom that this point of consciousness will no longer exist. That's a big one. Because so much of our fear of death, and I think reincarnation kind of hits at it a little bit because it says that you're just going to come back so you won't just be done, is based on an egoic sense of self that says that

I can't be finished. But I also am really curious, often, and this is something that I butt up against when talking about reincarnation, is that on some level, place is enlightenment out there, whereas enlightenment, I think, is something that's available right here, right now, through our awareness. It's not something that I have to gain, but something that's ever-present, provided I am present to it.

Well, that's exactly right in my understanding. I don't want to speak in too definitive a way about an experience that I have not had because I'm fully unenlightened. But my understanding, my sort of suspicion and based on what I've learned is that, of course, there is no other time in which you can experience enlightenment than right now. It's just our conditioning is obscuring the seeing of the truth. 100%, I would agree. And I think it also dovetails well with something I've been playing with a lot lately.

Healing. How folks lately I am witnessing, because I did it to myself also, use healing almost as a weapon against ourselves. Like I'm not good enough, I gotta fix this, I gotta get better at this, I gotta blah, blah, blah. Don't get me wrong, the ways in which I am an asshole and I show up in the world that is difficult for other people, I want to work on. But I am not bad or wrong or broken as I am. My wholeness is available right now and I am whole.

There's just some things that maybe are difficult for other people to do those things I want to work on. But I don't want to be constantly in the state of healing, which says that something is broken that needs to be fixed. Does that make sense? Yeah, well, it's bringing to mind a thing that is really one of my favorite quotes of all time. It's from some Zen master whose name I'm not going to be able to access, who told his students, you're perfect and you could use a little improvement. Yeah, yes.

Let me read some quotes from you back to you and get you to talk to me about what you mean by them. Talking about sex won't make you pregnant. Talking about death won't make you dead. Yes, that's actually Gail Rubin, who said that to begin with. And I think what Gail Rubin meant by it, and what I'm saying, what I believe by it,

is that some people don't want to talk about death because they fear they're going to call it on themselves or something like that. And I say, well, duh, it's happening anyway. It's going to happen and it's not going to happen now just because you're talking about it. This maybe is very unfair to say, but like, we're not that powerful to speak words

to cause somebody else's death. I mean, I couldn't cause a partner to show up for years, let alone think I'm going to make myself die or somebody else die death. I mean, I couldn't cause a partner to show up for years, let alone think I'm going to make myself die or somebody else die just because I'm talking about it, you know? And so talking about it isn't a problem. It's nothing to fear. It's not going to make it so just because we speak on it. I'm going to keep going with these quotes, Ikola.

I feel most alive when I'm talking to people about their death. I do. It's such a great, right place. Because there's no part of our lives that death doesn't touch. You know, when I'm thinking about my death, I'm thinking about my relationships, I'm thinking about my body, my work, my friendships, the earth. I'm thinking about all of it. Death holds all of life within it.

So if you had five minutes left to live, and you put you on the ground and ministered to you for those remaining minutes, do you feel right now and basically on a rolling basis, your affairs are in order? I'm ready. You don't have any relationship hiccups out there that you haven't yet addressed?

My best friend's mad at me currently over something and I would like to talk to her, but I was just gonna wait until after the TED Talk to do so. Got it. That's the only thing. So those five minutes I'd call her. So it's not like stuff doesn't keep coming up, it's just that you have this practice of staying on top of it

because it could all end at any moment. At any moment. And it doesn't necessarily mean fix all the things that are bad and wrong, but it also means there's relationships in my life that I've decided that if I were to die today, I'm okay with where they stand. Got it.

Yeah. Right. So there's some people that I'm just mad at and will stay mad at. Okay, so boundaries are key here. It's not like universal forgiveness, no matter how bad the shit was that you did to me. God, no. I hope not, no.

Some things are unforgivable and that's okay. I don't suggest that people just go about forgiving folks that they don't actually feel forgiveness for, just because they're dying. I think that we need to be consciously aware of the choices that we're making in our relationships so that we can be okay with those choices if they were to die or when we do.

Do you live your life in such a way that if you were to die right now and you didn't have a chance to talk to your best friend, she would know with certainty that you loved her. Absolutely. Okay. 100%. And she'd feel like a real dick.

Sorry, Mac, that. But that's, I mean, like I'm doing an audit on myself. It's like, I don't know that I'm doing that. I mean, I think I feel reasonably evolved. I host a podcast about doing life better and I do a lot of meditation. And I don't know, I mean, even for me, I feel like there are probably some things that have been left unsaid.

And so I think what you're saying is, try to get in the habit of not having that be the case. Absolutely, absolutely. And sometimes it requires sitting on it for a moment. Yeah, like I'm not always saying it at the time, but I might sit on it and say, is this worth it? Is this worth it for me to discuss? And I'm often wondering whether or not it's worth it because I'm thinking about my death. Like if I were to die tomorrow, does this need to be said? And often I can just get over it and move on, accept the person

for who they are, how they showed up in relationship, not expect them to be any different than they are. If they've hurt me, if it's something, not expect them to be any different than they are. If they've hurt me, if it's something that can be remedied, then I'll speak up. I was on the phone yesterday with a very close person in my life, and there are some things that I have not talked to this person about

that I really want to talk to this person about. And I didn't, in this conversation, we didn't talk about it, but I did say with full sincerity, I love you. And so, tell me if I'm wrong, maybe I'm trying to let myself off the hook. I do feel if I died right now, the most important thing to have communicated, I have communicated that. I think that's only up to you to decide, but I think yes.

If they know. But I also feel like if there are things that you think that you really should say, you should probably just say them. Yes, I think both things are probably true. Yeah. I don't plan on dying anytime soon, but who knows, that's not my choice. All right, I'm going to keep going

with these amazing quotes from you. Hope, you have said, is such a fucked up thing. Oh, it's true. I'm glad I said that. What do you mean by it? Hope at the end of life is a fucked up thing. Because what happens is people start hoping for a miracle or a cure,

and then they're really, really disappointed when they're not cured. I think that it's okay to hope as long as you can also hold the possibility of death at the same time. Hope is not at odds with preparing for the end of life. And sometimes people put them against each other. And so, yes, go ahead and hope,

but maybe don't hope for a miracle and you're cured. Maybe hope that you can make it to see your grandson turn 18, or you can hope to make it to the wedding this summer, or you can hope that you die gracefully. But we also need to be preparing for the end of life while we're holding hope. But just hoping for a miracle

and blinding the rest out is not effective. Yeah, no, that sounds right. You were on a podcast with Glennon Doyle, who, by the way, Glennon, if you're listening, you're invited on the show anytime you want, and she asked you what's something surprising about death, and you said that it can be beautiful. Yeah, very surprising. I mean, aside from the image that I had of dying people who

had it all figured out and everything is great for them, I've also often thought of it as just so sad and scary and painful and terrible. But what I've witnessed is that there's so much beauty and joy and love available as well. Like the best of humans show up, the worst too, but the best also. People hold each other and they say their things and they take care of folks and there's a lot of vulnerability. It's such an intimate space. It's like so rich with like the best of human being.

And when somebody dies in a way that felt best to them under the circumstances and they felt cared for and they feel loved and the people around them did their best, it can be beautiful. As I'm listening to you talk about this, I'm thinking, your life is saturated with these experiences, and you're not depressed anymore. I'm not depressed anymore. This wasn't like, I'm kind of bummed.

You were not bathing, you were not getting out of bed. This was deep. I was 50 pounds lighter than I am now, and I'm not a big woman. I was skinny skinny. The elbows. The elbows are still fat. I couldn't eat, I couldn't put a meal together. I was barely cleaning my place.

I mean the psychiatrist said you cannot go to work anymore and I went on leave of absence. I didn't request it. They said no, because going back there would have killed me. Ironically, the thing that revivified you was death. Death. Yeah. 100%.

So you talk about these five steps, and I have them in front of me if you have forgotten them, so I can use this as a prompt for you. But there are these five steps that one should take when confronting one's death. We talked about some of these, but I think it's worth just ticking these off so people have the list.

One of them is healing your relationships. Yeah. Yep. Say all the things that need to be said and make peace with the things that don't. The second is getting your affairs in order. What does that mean? Just being like getting a will written? A will is lethal a concern, honestly. If you have a big estate, then get a will.

If you have businesses or kids, get a will. But make sure that you have an advanced plan, something that says very clearly who you want to handle your affairs in the event that you can't. Oh, your desires for life support, what you want done with your body, your services, your possessions, not just the big ticket items, but like your sock drawer. You care if somebody throws them away, can they burn them all? What do you want done? Also think about your dependents, pets. If there are any disabled adults in your care, what's going to happen to them?

Gather your biographical information, all of your documents, birth certificates, marriage certificates, divorce decrees, social security cards, passports, citizenship documents, get all those things together. And then your finances. Who's on your bank accounts? How much is in there? Who's a beneficiary? All that stuff.

I could feel this inertia setting is, I don't want to deal with this shit. Who's on your bank accounts? How much is in there? Who's the beneficiary all that stuff? I could feel this Inertia setting is I don't want to deal with this shit first a lot of red tape and plus it just gets me thinking about This thing that I at least tell myself. I don't want to think of that Yeah, the shitty thing though is that if you don't do it the people that love you are gonna have to do it After you die and it's much harder Yes, cuz all the information that you hold about that stuff is gonna die with you Yes, and then they're gonna be trying to play clue to put it all together. When you talk about advanced directives in terms of medical instructions to caregivers

about what kind of treatment you do and do not want. I mean, my wife is a pulmonary and critical care physician and so worked in ICUs for many, many years, and she is really militant on her behalf and on mine that not much be done because her view is that it's very painful and very invasive and a little violent what gets done, especially these aging bodies, and you're making a face like, yeah, you agree. It's pretty gruesome. Yeah. Yeah.

If you've seen it, you don't want it. And so it's no surprise to me that most doctors or emergency room techs do not want any intervention at the end of their lives. My wife's theory is that she was working with a lot of vulnerable, marginalized populations, and they wanted everything done. And her theory, and I'm not trying to say she came up with this, but at least the explanation that was circulating among the medical staff was that so many of these communities justifiably mistrust physicians because there's been such a history of abuse

or mistreatment or lack of treatment. So they demand that everything be done, but it's actually not to their benefit. Yeah, 100%. And as you said, understandably so. Of course. You know, for centuries, bodies have been abused and disregarded. Experimented upon. Experimented upon.

You give me all of my treatment so that I know for sure that you actually tried to save my life. Coming up, Elua talks about the benefits of thinking about what version of yourself you want to meet on your deathbed, the death meditation that she uses when she's working with people,

what to say and not to say when you're talking to somebody who's grieving, your deathbed, the death meditation that she uses when she's working with people, what to say and not to say when you're talking to somebody who's grieving, and a practice she calls the dying things exercise. Hello, I'm Hannah. And I'm Saruti. And we are the hosts of a Red Handed, a weekly true crime podcast. Every week on Red Handed, we get stuck into the most talked about cases. From the Idaho student killings, the Delphi murders and our recent rundown of the Murdoch

saga. Last year, we also started a second weekly show, Shorthand, which is just an excuse for us to talk about anything we find interesting because it's our show and we can do what we like. We've covered the death of Princess Diana, an unholy Quran written in Saddam Hussein's blood, the gruesome history of European witch hunting, and the very uncomfortable phenomenon of genetic sexual attraction.

Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behavior. Like, can someone give consent to be cannibalized? What drives a child to kill? And what's the psychology of a terrorist? Listen to Red Handed wherever you get your podcasts and access our bonus short-hand episodes exclusively on Amazon Music

or by subscribing to Wondry Plus in Apple podcasts or the Wondry app. 50 high school senior girls descend on Mobile, Alabama every summer to compete for a massive cash prize. It isn't Survivor. It's one of America's most lucrative scholarship competitions for teen girls. It's one of America's most lucrative scholarship competitions for teen girls.

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early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus. Back to the list, creating the death bed. Who do you want surrounding you? What do you want to be wearing? How do you want the room to smell, et cetera? We talked about this a little bit, but we need to get pretty granular and deliberate about this.

Absolutely. Make it feel as good as it can to you. Four is exploring consciousness and the afterlife, if any. Again, we also talked about this, but why do you think we need to think about this? Because one of the major fears around death is what if anything happens after I die? And so I think it's important for people to get clear on what their beliefs are because that can allow them to sit a little bit easier about the potential. Even if your belief is I don't know. Even if your belief is I don't know, but what do you know? Those people who haven't died

before, do you feel any connection to them still? Can you still talk to them? Do they send you signs? If anything like that, then that suggests that you believe that there is something that exists after we die. Right. So that's the place to start at least. But, I mean, it's different for everybody. I know folks that are very comforted by the idea that it's just like the end of a film tape.

Five, finally, unfinished business of living, take the trip you always wanted to take, etc., etc. Not everybody's going to have a chance to do that, but you really think using whatever time you have left to do your so-called bucket list. Yes, bucket list, but also the little things bucket list, like what's still undone in your life. Sometimes it's figuring out their affairs, sometimes it's healing the relationships, sometimes it's spending a little bit more time with their niece, sometimes it's a chocolate

milkshake from around the corner when they were a kid. That was actually a request somebody had. That was a big thing. He wanted to taste that chocolate milkshake again. So it doesn't always have to be this like, go to Phuket on the full moon party. It could also be sit with my grandson and watch a fire, teach my grandson how to build a fire.

I made a note here that one of your main takeaways is what version of yourself do you want to meet on your deathbed? What version of yourself are you right now and what's in the gap? Yeah, that's a rich exercise to think about who I'll be when I'm dying. Again, that requires a sense of safety thinking about and imagining your death. But if you're thinking of the most lush one that you can, and you can picture yourself there, scan the body,

what has the body held? One thing I really like to do is to imagine myself on my deathbed and I imagine myself as I am today. I don't imagine myself very old, but what does my face tell about the type of life that I lived? What pleasure did my hands create? What pain did they hold?

Who did I hug with these arms. I look at my body itself to see what the body has endured while it was living and then try to think about what's in the gap between who I want to see and where I am today. This question of what version of yourself do you want to meet on the deathbed is so useful because it can get us to prioritize our lives right now. And yet I do keep coming back to this question of remembering because we are programmed for denial.

So I would imagine your answer to that is do these exercises because that's what's going to keep you in this zone of living in the light of death. Absolutely. As often as possible and staying with it as often as possible. Are there death meditations that you recommend and how do they go? Yeah, absolutely. There's a nine-part death meditation that's based on the nine contemplations of dying that were written by this 11th century Buddhist scholar named Atisha.

And I'm not going to remember them off the top of my head, I could try, but I don't wanna bastardize them like that. And they've been developed by Joan Halifax and Larry Rosenberg, but using those nine contemplations to die in these universal truths about our lives and our death, I built a series around them to talk about what each other's contemplations mean,

and then having people think about any resistance they have to any bit of it, and then having people think about any resistance they have to any bit of it, and then eventually walking the person through the body shutting down, through the body's end. So thinking through, because it's only an intellectual exercise, all the organs shutting down, the system shutting down, the heart not pumping anymore, the body not meeting nutrient rich blood anymore, everything, consciousness swirling, swirling, swirling, and then the end.

And then bringing folks back from that and having them talk about the experience was just uncomfortable. So the idea is that if you can really get as deep into imagining the process of death, what's happening in your mind, what's happening in your body, that is the source of remembering. 100%, it's a tremendous exercise, I think,

for people to reengage with life. I've heard some incredible results. I mean, folks with severe anxiety done with the co-assign of their mental health provider, therapist, or psychiatrist, start to not experience great anxiety anymore. Not just death anxiety, but anxiety about life and living. A woman I know that I worked with was severely agoraphobic. She could not go outside.

Did not everyone go outside. We did this death meditation and she began to see that her fear is really around dying and all the ways that she could die, but she didn't share death itself. And one of the things in her agoraphobia was going outside and something happening to her that would cause her death. And so seeing that it wasn't death that she was worried about, then we looked at dying, what she controlled within the dying, like we talked about a little bit earlier, pain in the process of the body, she started going outside.

Yeah. It's like if you go to the primordial fear, the worst fear, death, and really get intimate, this is like exposure therapy to beat all exposure therapy, then somehow all the other anxieties can maybe fizzle and fade. I believe so. And I think all fears are fear of death in a way. I'm also super biased. I think everything's about death.

But I think most fears have, all fears have a fear of death that underlies them. That sounds right to me. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty close to an expert in fear, just because I live with it so often. But yeah, that does sound right to me. I'm thinking about death meditation. The Buddha, he would have his monks sit, eyes open, meditating on decomposing corpses, you know the internal grounds That's intense. Yes, but I mean that's the accelerated route. Yeah, that'll get you there. That's the HOV lane for sure You spend a lot of time not only around people who are dying But then around the families after the death

I think a lot of us struggle with what to say to people who are grieving Any advice for how to handle people in our lives who might be in grief? Oh, yoy yoy. I wish I could say here some magic phrases, but the thing is there aren't any, right? Because we all relate to it differently. I think the best advice I can give is to strongly be with our discomfort around somebody else's pain that makes us want to fix it for them. Because often what we're offering are platitudes

because we think it's gonna make it better for the other person. But not only do I not know what your experience is, that thing might not be supportive. People often say things like, oh, she's in a better place now. Well, how do you know that the best place for her is not right next to her mother?

You don't know. We say these things because we're so uncomfortable with somebody being in any pain or grieving in front of us. And grief is okay. It's hard, but it's okay. And we also need to trust our fellow human to be able to walk through that experience on their own. I don't have to save them.

I can just be there with them. I can just literally sit, open the space, I'm here for you. I really don't know what to say. If there's anything you'd like to talk about, I'm here. You know, and give the person an opportunity. Maybe they want to talk about the grief or the loss. Maybe they want to talk about Kim Kardashian. Let them. I mean, it's not dissimilar to the strategy that you described earlier of you're sitting with somebody who's on their deathbed and they say to you, I'm terrified. You don't have some pat answer. You just, I'm just going to sit with you in this.

I mean, yeah, what do I know? What I can observe is a human with a full rich life and history and background and everything, who is this far, walk themselves through their lives. And I must be able to trust their capacity to keep moving forward. Any intervention in that is me being uncomfortable with their capacity to do it on their own. Yes, right, so it becomes ego. 100% about ego.

But I can just say, I don't know. It's hard. Like, we don't know what to say with grief. We don't know what to do, but we have a hard time watching people walk through it. We want to make it better, but it doesn't make it better. Right, what can make it better is just being right there with them.

And also they're a person that they love not being dead. Well, of course, yes. That would make it much better. We can't fix that. Exactly. What we can do is sit there, hold their hand, if that makes them feel more comfortable. Exactly. But that does require a kind of getting out of your own way,

not saying a bunch of shit that actually is designed to make you feel better, but just to sit there and be uncomfortable in that presence. Yes. There was one other thing on this list, which is the dying things exercise. Oh Oh yeah. I love that exercise. So there's a couple of ways to do it. From the vantage point, the place that you sit or lay or are right now,

look around and see how many things that you can count around you that are dying or already dead. Not forgetting your own body. I see some cardboard, used to be trees. What else? These light bulbs are probably dying. They're going to go out. I think I saw them flickering someplace. You human in front of me, dying. Sorry, Dan. My fingernails, my hair.

We're in a big convention center, so there's not too much nature around. But in a home, it's pretty easy to do. You can see like clothes even, your jeans, cotton. It used to be a plant. Like look around and see what's dying or dead around. And thinking about that consistently, I think allows you to also see the living

that's occurring at the same time, all the time. I think this will land for a lot of Buddhists who listen to the show. We're taught to tune into impermanence. Impermanence. And you can just walk through your whole life just tuned into the fact that not only is everything around us changing all the time or dying all the time, but every step you take, the angle shifts a little bit.

What's in your line of vision shifts. There's so much impermanence to tune into at any given moment. So rather than walk around planning some glorious expletive filled speech you're gonna deliver to your boss the next time you see them, you can actually just make a practice of tuning into impermanence, which again,

to use that embarrassingly show-offy word of revivification, it really does bring life back to life because we're deadening this experience all the time with our comparisons, with our compulsive wanting, with our day dreaming. And I love daydreaming, but like if you're just never right here right now, it's impoverishing your life. And so if you can make this a practice, it doesn't need to be that formal of just tuning into change and death all around you. And of course life too. It feels like a better recipe for doing this life. I think so. I would absolutely agree with you. I'm also curious if you intended that pun when you said it's deadening the experience.

No. See? It's everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere. Yes. Right. I'm trash talking death in that. Yes. We shouldn't be giving death such a bad name. I agree. Yeah, it's useful.

Anything else you want to call me out on? No. I think I did plenty already. Is there something I should have asked but didn't? Is there a place that you wanted to go that I just didn't take us? It felt pretty good. Let me just say that I think you're just doing

extremely important work in the world and in the non-creepiest way possible. You're a very beautiful person. Thank you, Dan. It's a pleasure to sit and talk to you. Thank you so much. Thank you. This has been great.

Thank you, Elua Arthur. Please go check out her website, goingwithgrace.com to learn more about her and her work and the many resources she has on offer. Also be sure to watch her TED talk, it's fantastic. And don't forget her new book, Just Out, it's called Briefly Perfectly Human, Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real about the end. Before I go, I also want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Lauren Smith and Tara Anderson and we get

additional production support from Colin Lester Fleming, Isabel Hibbard, Carolyn Keenan, and Wanbo Wu. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, Kevin O'Connell is our director of audio and post-production, DJ Cashmere is our managing producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Do you want to hear about the $100 wedding dress that just saved Abercrombie?

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