How would you live if you weren’t afraid to die?
I’ve fantasized about this. Yes, I am weird but you knew that already. As we get older, we tend to consider these existential questions, so I ask you: What if you lived every day completely unafraid of dying? This is the premise of a very enjoyable and thought-provoking new book, Enjoy Every Sandwich, by the late Dr. Lee Lipsenthal, a colleague of Dr. Dean Ornish who did the intro.
Dr. Lee, who loved rock and roll, borrowed the name of his book from a Warren Zevon album. Lee was a guy with a positive outlook, doing good work at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in California where he helped empower even very sick people to live life fully. Then he received a grave diagnosis, but he never freaked out, and his family and friends wanted to understand why. The book is the answer to that question.
Like me, Lee was raised to be afraid of everything, sure that disaster loomed around every corner. He says of his well-intended, Depression-era parents, “Maybe they came by their anxieties honestly, but they honed them to an art!”
“My parents taught me to look for stress in life. I now realized that looking for stress creates stress. The harder I looked, the more I found.”
So he changed his awareness. “If I looked for fun, joy and playfulness, I would find it. If I looked for trouble, stress and heartache that was what I would find.” He also began a lifetime study of meditation, which can change the physiology of the human brain so one produces fewer stress hormones. This in turn benefits blood pressure and circulation; improves respiratory function; reduces the perception of pain and body discomfort; lowers the risk of artery blockage; decreases heart rhythm disturbances and risk of heart attack; modifies fear and anxiety reactions and enhances immune system function. Not bad for twenty minutes a day.
“Meditation also helped me see that my expectations were just stories that I was telling myself about life. I became free of what life was supposed to be and able to enjoy life as it was.”
I felt empowered by his thoughts. For example, “Our bodies have an incredible capacity for self-healing. We have an intricate and complex immune system that knows what to do with cancer.” The more healthfully you deal with stress, the more your body is able to do its thing. And one of the best ways to deal appropriately with stress is meditation.
To be honest, Lee loses me a bit when he delves into his perception of past lives, although many readers will find it delightful, because there’s enough evidence there to think he isn’t just kidding! He included it to suggest we should open our minds and hearts to the idea that we don’t know everything, so we should give ourselves over to the joy of the “what if?” It also explains why he wasn’t freaked out about dying, and by extension, why we don’t need to be either.
I do wish he had explained why, given that he had only a 10% chance of beating his type of cancer, he chose to be ravaged by chemo and radiation instead of taking a pass and enjoying the time he had left? In the end, does that undercut his message?
I don’t think so. Even if a man blinks when staring into the dark maw of Death, I still buy Lee’s message that we should try harder to live in the present, suffused with gratitude. I recommend Enjoy Every Sandwich and I wish his family peace.
Contest and disclosure: I was invited to review this book, and in return for my honest impressions, the publisher promised to send one of my readers two free copies plus a $25 gift card. I will forward that bounty to whoever answers this question in the most interesting way before January 6, 2012:
Do you believe that, after we die, our souls reappear on earth in the form of another human? If you do, tell us why.
I believe that we do return to this earth in another form once we die and we continue reappearing. It is as if there are only a certain number of souls meant to be and so those souls keep coming back. I remember the person I was before I became who I now am. I was born in the 1880’s. I lived in a small town along the Ohio River. I fell in love with my high school sweetheart. I finished high school and became a gifted seamstress and created and crafted beautiful clothes for the more affluent women in nearby towns. My darling went onto college and medical school and became a surgeon. We were married in the early 1900s and had a girl and two boys. I have this recurring memory of our lives in the 1920s. I joined him in a larger city after he completed school and we were married. When our children were young we joined a country club and had friends with whom we golfed on Sunday afternoons. I remember a white gauzy dress I wore and as I swung the club the skirt would twirl around my calves. My off white leather pumps would have to be cleaned after each round of golf. We returned to our home and played cards while the help prepared supper for us. We dined while our sole maid put the children to bed. My husband developed a drinking problem and died in 1936. We had divorced by then because I couldn’t cope with the alcoholic stranger he had become. These memories come to me as though I had indeed lived those moments. I truly believe it was myself in an earlier time.
To all my AST friends who have commented above, I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring you! But after responding to a few comments I thought maybe I should skedaddle off the page, since there’s a contest going on. I’ll be back on Friday with more thoughts and the name of the winner, although from the looks of your comments, you’re all winners – what amazing thoughts. See you in a few days.
Love,
Lynne
Lynne, I am recently remembering things that had left my mind. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that those former things really did happen to me. I did walk through those streets and pathways; I did mingle with those people; I did eat those strange foods, … I did lay in that bed. It sometimes catches my breath away to know that I lived a life previous to right now that was so different, that even I have to remind myself that it was me. I don’t regret it now. Then, it was more than an adventure, the way that I lived seemed to be an adventurous necessity, for that time. I felt led on a blessed path of discovery, and en route, I discovered me. Thank God.
When you ask after we die, do our souls appear on earth as another human? I have been led by my own desires to copy or take on the spirit of others, like the courage of King David or the wisdom of Joseph, Daniel, and/or the faith of Abraham. And the spirit that they moved in them is a spirit that I have shared in faith, so that I might feel like Daniel or Ruth or Hannah in my own mind and in the movement of my body, usually during a particular time, place or situation. But I always feel that the reference that these old souls have given me serve as an anchor, and not necessarily as a permanent stand in. Their examples allow me to stand, when I am not able to stand on my own. The example of Love, Peace, Grace, etc. shown by such great heros provide a common spirit that lasts and can be walked in by faith, hope unseen, yet realizable. And when the results come in, it’s much better results than when I attempted to do things without regard to the connection that I have now with those who came before me, by faith.
We are what we lend our minds to. I used to find it easy to not believe in the uniqueness of my own existence. After spending some time with me alone, I enjoyed finding out about me. Now, my path is in a different environment and I have to challenge myself to keep growing. Growth is what keeps adventure for me, no matter what the environment, and remaining adventurous and open to discovery in my heart keeps me connected to greatness. Although I may carry the traits of some others in my body, my spirit and my heart, I am the strength of my own will to be me, in my soul. It would be my utmost pleasure to encourage someone else, the way that others have encouraged me and others before me to greatness after I pass on.
Here’s another way to put it:
Is to the T
The A to the Z
The First to the Last
Etre, To Be.
I AM made to be is.
I AM MADE to be is.
I AM made TO BE IS.
Thanks for the encouragement to share.
I was blown away by this…not about the dying and living stuff, that I get. But, I thought it was only my family that was brought up to be frightened of every blasted thing in the universe. I wasn’t even allowed to ride a bike ….my one big rebellion in life was to learn to ride at 12. I secretly snuck over to the neighbor’s who taught me on her bike.
Lynne, I strongly reject the idea of reincarnation as another human being. I believe that God created each human as unique and that once our sojourn on earth is over, we (if we accepted His Son’s sacrifice on the cross) return to the Heavenly mansion that’s been promised us. That’s not to say that heavenly messengers can’t cross the divide between earth and heaven — I believe they can and do! Interesting review — I like Dr. Lee’s switch from looking for disaster to looking for blessings. Now that’s optimistic living!
P.S. Lynne, I meant to tell you that was an excellent review of “Enjoy Every Sandwich” I feel very intrigued by the message and eager to read the book. Great job!
Lynne, I don’t believe in reincarnation in the sense that we come back in the form of another person or animal but I do believe that the spirit of who we were on earth does live on after we die. And, as you know from my white dove story, I do believe that our loved ones send messages from the other side to bring us hope and consolation. I am deeply rooted in my faith in God~ “Faith is walking to the edge of all the light you have and taking one more step”(author unknown) Too many (good) things that I cannot explain have happened to me to think otherwise.
At my late husband’s memorial service I was overtaken by the feeling that it was not him lying there in the casket. When I thought about it, I realized that it was the spark behind his blue eyes that was missing. The more I thought about it the more comfortable I became with the idea that our soul, our spark is energy that must return to the universe when our bodies are done with it. I don’t believe that the energy itself dies, it is simply reabsorbed, recharged and made ready to become the life source for another entity. Will it be human? Another species? This I do not know. But I believe we are, through energy, much more connected to the Earth than many of us would care to think. Carol
If we do come back as a different human, why do we keep hauling all the people we’ve met before along with us? I believe in the Avatar version of reincarnation. All of life is a network of energy, all energy is borrowed, and one day we have to give it back. This calms me. Why would my soul choose junior high again? I believe we have genetic memory, which is quite old, and sometimes it skips a groove. Not everyone was Cleopatra or Joan of Arc in a past life. Somebody had to polish Joan’s armor, and keep track of her horse. Maybe our energy remembers those women. Perhaps what confuses me is the soul. I think (but cannot say believe) that my soul is a one-off. But my right brain and all its ancestors just might disagree. My left brain ego may be hijacking the neurons again.
That rambunctious left brain ego, at it again! Thanks for your thoughts, Linda. I’ve always been amused by the “Cleopatra” complex in some who contemplate the possibility of past lives. I figure if one didn’t polish the armor then, one will eventually.
I’ve had so many experiences that can’t be logically explained. The explanation that resonates the most with me is that we are all part of one life force, travelling together through time. We leave imprints on others as we do so, sometimes in terms of real time relationships, other times as messengers. Are we always human? I don’t know, but I think not. But, for me, if I think of myself as an extension of you, of everyone, all religious/ethnic/racial boundaries disappear. My purpose in life becomes one of making this world a better place for all of us, because every single thing I do and every single way I am impacts on everyone.
Renee, I once dreamed that Boris Yeltzin had been shot, and fell backwards against his security man, and the two of them tumbled into a clawfoot bathtub. I woke up befuddled. I never dream about politics (thank God) and I had been in a cabin in Big Sur for the past 3 days, without electricity or news of any kind. I went outside to get the paper. There had been a coup in Russia within the past few hours. My therapist explained it this way: you were relaxed, your brain was clear, and you picked up on a distant frequency, a signal within a consciousness over there. What an awesome thought. How else to explain?