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The Aging Spirit’s Guide

By John P. Schuster — 2018

The expert in the spiritual dimensions of aging and dying, Kathleen Dowling Singh, has herself died, in October 2017, in her early 70s, from a “form of cancer,” in her words, that she had not known about, or at least had not told people about. Kathleen was a psychopomp, a spirit guide to the underworld, the world of the dead. The Grace in Dying was her first book in the early '90s.

Read on www.psychologytoday.com

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An Introduction to the Death-Positive Movement

In most modern cultures, it’s common for people to feel uneasy about death. We express this discomfort by avoiding conversations on the topic and lowering our voices when speaking of the dead and dying.

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Terminal Options for the Irreversibly Ill

My Feb. 5 column, “A Heartfelt Appeal for a Graceful Exit,” prompted a deluge of information and requests for information on how people too sick to reap meaningful pleasure from life might be able to control their death.

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Alternatives for the Final Disposition

Though I wince at the redundancy, funeral “pre-planning” is a phenomenon receiving increased attention, and a growing number of Web-based guides tell how to go about it. As www.funerals.org puts it: “Funeral planning starts at home.

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When Your Fears About Dying Are Unhealthy

The fear of death and dying is quite common, and most people fear death to varying degrees. To what extent that fear occurs and what it pertains to specifically varies from one person to another.

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What Death Teaches About Life: An Interview with Frank Ostaseski

Frank Ostaseski, an internationally respected Buddhist teacher and pioneer in end-of-life care, has accompanied over 1,000 people through their dying process.

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Ram Dass Is Ready to Die

For more than 50 years, Ram Dass has watched as other nontraditional spiritual leaders have come and gone while he has remained.

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A Heartfelt Appeal for a Graceful Exit

Studies of dying patients who seek a hastened death have shown that their reasons often go beyond physical ones like intractable pain or emotional ones like feeling hopeless.

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Don’t Tell Me When I’m Going to Die

Prognoses are more of an art than a science. Maybe it’s better not to know.

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How to Bring More Meaning to Dying

Palliative care specialist BJ Miller and Shoshana Berger explain how to bring more meaning and less suffering to the end of life.

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What Is Death?

This year has awakened us to the fact that we die. We’ve always known it to be true in a technical sense, but a pandemic demands that we internalize this understanding. It’s one thing to acknowledge the deaths of others, and another to accept our own.

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EXPLORE TOPIC

Facing Own Death