Episode 209: Day of the Dead & Memento Mori: Contemplating Death to Live the Life You Want!

Published Oct 18, 2024, 4:00 PM

Join Sandra and death expert Joanna Ebenstein for a look at why we fear death, and discover a culture that believes in the afterlife!

And you're here.

Thanks for choosing the iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost, d A and Paranormal podcast Network. Your quest for podcasts of the paranormal, supernatural, and the unexplained ends here. We invite you to enjoy all our shows we have on this network, and right now, let's start with Chase of the Afterlife with Sandra Champlain.

Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast to Coast, am employees of premier networks, or their sponsors and associates. We would like to encourage you to do your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself. Hi. I'm Sandra Champlain. For over twenty five years, I've been on a journey to prove the existence of life after death. On each episode, we'll discuss the reasons. Now know that our loved ones have survived physical doubt, and so will we. Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. Hey, I have a favor to ask before we begin the episode. It's simple, two words. Be kind. Yeah, be kind to yourself, Be kind to others make a difference wherever you can. We know we're living in a time of a lot of uncertainty. There's so much pain suffering. My goodness. You watch the news, natural disasters, man made disasters. We're having disagreements with our loved ones and our neighbors. We have a fear of the future and so much more. Times are tough for so many and we know that if we haven't walked in somebody else's shoes, we don't understand why they do the things they do, why they believe what they believe, and ultimately, we don't know what other people are experiencing. It is my pure belief that you and I are souls having a human experience on this fine planet we call Earth. It's a rough one. It's not easy. So as we navigate our journeys today and in the future, just remember Sandra said be kind. Wherever you can insert those two words and put them into action, I will be eternally grateful, and I will do the same now onto our episode today. What would it be like to befriend death, to honestly accept that it's going to happen to all of us and make peace with it. I know that seems like a crazy request because we fear death and we are looking for proof of the afterlife. But have human beings always lived this way? Our guest today says no, it's only been the past one hundred or one hundred and fifty years that we've had such a burning desire to understand death, and that it's all due to the culture we were born into. Joanna Ebinstein is an internationally recognized death expert. She is the author of several books, including her latest Memento Maury, The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life, Coming to us from Mexico Today. She is the founder and director for Morbidanatomy dot org. Mexico, as we know, is one country that celebrates the afterlife. Joanna, Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife.

Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here. I'm excited to talk to you.

I watched your ed X talk and search through the internet about you. I ordered your book. I'm all excited. Yeah, this is a story I think that needs to be told to just more people because here. Yes, I know there's a lot of grieving people who want evidence of the afterlife, but there's something missing I think in our culture, especially in North America and places in Europe, is we don't talk about death like I think it used to be talked about. So if you wouldn't mind, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you are, and how I got into this fascinating world. So it's just such a good question.

So I was based in New York City for about twenty three years, where I ran the Morbid Anatomy Museum. It is now Morbid Anatomy without the museum, mostly online. My quick answer is always, I think all children are interested in this, and at a certain point they realize it's gross or weird, especially if you're a girl. And for whatever reason, I didn't. So that's one of my answers. And my other answer is I was the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, so in my family, death was a part of everyday life. We were allowed to ask about it, but we knew that my favorite grandmother and grandfather who we spent our summers with, had suffered this insane death event and lost many of their family members. They were also doctors, so they were very non nonsense about the body and about death. So I think all of those things combined to make it so that when more normal kids maybe would have outgrown stead they weren't interested in this anymore. I continued to be interested.

And you are in Mexico right now.

Right, Yes, I'm based in Mexico, which was a direct response of all of the work I've done exploring death myself to try to come to terms with it, and my organization had been doing trips to Mexico for Day of the Dead, so I had started coming down here as part of that and just fell in love with the culture and ended up staying essentially.

Yeah, in Mexico and South America, places that embrace death and the reality of the afterlife and celebrating and all of that. So if you wouldn't mind sharing, share your heart out, because I know there's so much that I think could maybe lighten up the conversation. I know, one hundred years ago, even in America, people saw death, They lived on farms, they had funerals in the parlor, which a living room when it was normal. And no, it's from our view.

What I always say to my students, and what I really want to impress upon people is how strange is the way that we approach death and when you look at the rest of human history, and that, as you said, goes up to the last one hundred or one hundred and fifty or so years in our own country, but still all around the world there are places that have relationships with death that we would find strange or bizarre. I should also back up and say what I studied in college was a subject called intellectual history, and intellectual history is looking at the past through the products of the time. So we wouldn't read history books, but instead, if you were studying the eighteenth century, for example, you'd read philosophy, you'd look at mass that was developed at that time. You looked at clothing and paintings and all of these things that were the product of a time to understand kind of the temper of the time. And so with that, Lens I went to Europe for the first time after I'd graduated college, and I went to these museums and these churches, and my mind was blown because I was seeing all of these objects that combine death and beauty in ways that I had been told tacitly, and in my culture that was impossible. Death and beauty just don't go together in our culture. But when you go to all of these museums, all of these churches, and you see one after the of these objects. My intellectual history mind began to say, well, okay, wait a second, what's going on here. Either European history is really morbid, or something has changed in the way we've looked at death that has made these images that were once prosaic and part of everyday life strange and bizarre. And looking at how many of them again through the lens of this discipline, tells me that this was not seen as bizarre or strange. There wouldn't be so many and they wouldn't be preserved. Right, So there's something in us that's changed, And that began this kind of inquiry of what is it in us that.

Has changed that has made death seem strange?

And I would say the other prong of that development was my grandmother, So the same grandmother I mentioned, who had lost a lot of family in the Holocaust. As she grew older, she lost her husband, they'd been together since they were nineteen. All of her friends were dying, She couldn't read anymore, and she was relatively healthy, but she just began to say, whenever I saw her, she would pull me aside and say there's no one else I can say this too, but I just want to die. I really felt that in my heart, and I also felt, well, of course you should be able to say that, that's about the most important thing you could share with another human being. What is it in our culture that made it so you're not allowed to say that? How did it become taboo? So it was kind of these two things that formed this area of inquiry for me that became morbid anatomy. So I began to look at different images and also histories of the way death had been looked at and explored and befriended, if you will, and imagined in different times and places as a way to try to understand how we got to where we are now and if it's inevitable, which I do not think it is, and why it is that we're so estranged from death. And later, as I developed this project, my hope began to be by showing all these images with very little texts, have people come to the same realization that I did, you know, on their own, which is basically, wow, we're the weirdos. You know, all of human history is not the weirdo And you know, going back to your question, right, like this idea of humans and death, Humans and death have been intimately entwined, and since the beginning of our consciousness, all humans deal with death. And until we had hospitals and funeral homes, which is not in the hospitals as we now think of them. Not until the nineteenth century, people died at home, people lived in extended families, people butchered their own animals. So this idea of death as being something other and outside of daily life, I always like to say, is a luxury that is unique to our time and place. There has never been a time in human history that I have found in which we could deny death because it's there, right, we have created a world for ourselves in which we can sweep it out of our consciousness.

But that is very, very unique. This morning, I was driving with my mom and where we live, we go right past a turkey farm and I always turn my head. I don't want to look at the turkeys. I know what's going to happen. And then I thought, Sandra, you're really a hypocrite, because do you buy turkey at the grocery store. Yes, So there's part of me that doesn't want to see it, but of course you know, I'm no vegetarian.

Yeah, but I would just say, you know, from my experience in Mexico that that is just cultural. My big realization spending time in other places, not just Mexico but also Bolivia and Hungary, is that if we were born in a different time of place, we'd think differently, very very probably. And so here when I go to my local market, you know, the big market, the open air market, where there's vendors selling fruits and vegetables and meat.

The animals have.

Heads on, you see blood dripping on the floor. It's a different way in which even death in this way is encountered in this culture. I really really feel like it is unique to where we are born in the industrialized, affluent West, that we can have this distance, or that we would have this distance and have to be hypocritical in our consumption of meat, right, I get it.

But yeah, I think.

It just matters so much when and where you're born how you feel about that, And.

That helps to hear because we don't have to blame ourselves. This is the culture. I want to ask you about this art work you were talking about. What kind of artwork did you find.

I found so many things. So the first thing I think of our paintings of saints and martyrs in Catholic churches or even Christian churches. So basically, when I went to the churches in Germany and Austria, I saw pictures of twenty martyrs being put on crosses with blood dropping.

You see a.

Big cleaver going through the head of a saint, or a beheaded saint holding his head in his hand, right. So many of the Catholic saints are defined by their martyrdoms, and so they're depicted in images. So that's one thing. And then there are all these art genres that revolve around literally doing what we're here to talk about today, getting people to contemplate their own mortality. So some of these are called momento mary. And these are objects that are objects or artworks or sometimes practices that are intended to remind the viewer of their death or the participator of their death, in order to remind them to live according to their real values, their sole values, if you will, or however you might want to think about that.

You know, from a Christian point.

Of view, a lot of these are obviously about, you know, don't sin because you're going to meet your maker soon. But I think we take that outside of that religious context and see it as your true values versus the easy values of everyday life, of you know, wanting to have a good time and enjoy your life, reminding you of what's really important to you and what you might regret on your deathbed so that you can live the life you want to now. And so these artworks could take the form of what are called manitas, which were still life paintings that would often have a skull, but also dying flowers, a candle with the flame snuffed out, symbolizing a life cut short. There's all those ornate symbolism bubbles which is the brevity of life, or coins and crowns signifying like the pleasures or the powers of earthly life that disappear upon our death. And these were artworks that were hung in people's homes primarily in order to remind them of their mortality, that life is short.

Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the Eye Heart Radio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain and we're with Joanna Ebinstein talking now about artwork. People in olden times in Europe would display about death in order to live a better life.

These artworks could take the form of what are called manitas, which were still life paintings that would often have a skull, but also dying flowers, a candle with a flame snuffed out, symbolizing a life cut short. There's all those ornate symbolism bubbles which is the brevity of life, or coins and crowns signifying the pleasures or the powers of earthly life that disappear upon our death. And these were our works that were hung in people's homes primarily in order to remind them of their mortality, that life is short.

I think we need that, we really do. I've seen pictures of children and adults dead, like, do you want to talk a little bit about that, because I think the child mortality rate, all mortality rate was much higher. Yeah, that's a great point.

So, yeah, child mortality rate from the numbers I've read in the nineteenth century, as many as three out of five children died before reaching adulthood, which is I know, impossible to imagine.

And parents then grieved as much as parents now.

I mean, this was as hard for them as it is for us, even though death was commonplace, and so for the very, very wealthy you might see paintings of the decease, called post mortem paintings. But once the technology of photography developed and became more within reach than painting, that became very, very popular, and this was called post mortem or memorial photography. So photographers every town would have their photographer or business before we had our own little portable cameras, right would come and it would advertise that they would also specialize in photographing the deceased. And I think something that's really important to think about when we remember this tradition is that because photography was so new, some families wouldn't have a photograph of their childs yet until they died, right, So this might be the only photograph they would have, And so the photograph might go on a locket, it might go on a wall, or in a photo album. These were a part of everyday life. They weren't hidden away in the way that you would expect now. And sometimes the child was laid out on a bed as if sleeping. This was called sleeping beauties. This was a tradition at the time. Sometimes you see them in the coffin with the flowers. Sometimes the parents posed with them, So there's all sorts of different approaches. Yeah, they're really heartbreaking and very beautiful photographs, very tender, and they really show I think, as I said that, even though there were so much death and parents were clearly warning loss of their children as much as we do now, I will say what they had that was I think an advantage to what we had is these artistic practices that help them make sense of the event maybe or commemorate the event, or stay with it. Another tradition that I really love from this era is called Victorian hair art. So women would make objects with the hair of the dead beloved, sometimes even someone still living, as a sentimental reminder. But this could take the form of jewelry like going in the lockett a breed in a locket, for example, but could even be these big kind of shadow boxes that have these ornate constructions with hair from the entire family. So there's a lot of artistic or craft traditions going on at that time that women were engaging in women who could afford it as an act of mourning that I feel like not only commemorated the dead, but it seems to me helped the living work through their grief in a poetic way. And I tried to do hair work. One of our teachers is named Karen Bachman, and she taught herself how to do Victorian hair work through looking at the old magazines and visiting some places, but still do it. She teaches it for us and I took the class once and it's really really hard to work with human hair. You have to really go slow, you have to concentrate, and I feel like when I did it, it was so meditative. You have to get into this meditative space. And I began to think, oh, that's probably a big part of why it was so popular. It forces you to slow down, to withdraw from life, and to work with something so intimate to your lost loved one towards the production of something that will be a keepsake and a memory. But the actual act of working with it, I think must have been a big part of why it was so popular.

That makes sense, and my mind is just reminded. I've done a lot of research into the grieving process and how our anatomy change as far as neurotransmitters deplete and things. And one of the things to help restore us is being in the present moment to help through grief, to be present and when you're so focused on those pieces of hair or whatever it is, you're doing an opportunity to heal. And I can totally get how that would be helpful through grief. I wanted to ask you to share some of the cultures that embrace death the afterlife celebrate. I know I've been to Mexico around the Halloween the Day of the Dead.

Yeah, so I think Mexico is the one that's best known in our culture and the one that I know the best. So I run this organization, Morbid Anatomy, and through that I met a man named Salvador Albeine. He's from Monterey, Mexico, and he started doing work with us at Morbid Anatomy, doing programming about death in Mexico because we were all so interested in it. He started leading tours to Mexico for Day of the Dead, and I think everyone that I've spoken to has been changed by these trips if they'd never been to Mexico for Day of the Dead. Well, first, let's talk a little bit about what they do around Day the Dead, which is our Halloween. Traditionally, families will go to the cemetery together and clean the cemetery plot and decorate it with these beautiful, bright orange flowers is called marigolds marigolds, and they light candles and copaul incense. They decorate the graves. Sometimes even there's a lot of I would say overlap between Halloween, or at least some and Day of the Dead. Hair sometimes you'll see Halloween decorations as well on the graves. And also the movie Coco, which of course is the most famous celebration of Day of the Dead in the United States. I think also the iconography of Coco gets worked into Day the Dead down here, which I think is really amazing. You go to the cemetery and people if you go by night time, people are lighting candles and they're spending the nights with the dead at the graves. So the concept is the belief for I would say from talking to people, a tradition is that you go to the cemetery and the dead are allowed to return to the land of the living for just a few days. It's this time of year when the veil between the living and the dead.

The lands of living and.

The dead is uniquely porous, so they can come back, they can celebrate with their ancestors, spend time, enjoy food and drink that they loved in life, enjoy loving relationship, and then returned to the.

Land of the dead.

And this is a yearly thing, and this is something that happens with a lot of culture. Is interestingly this tradition that there's a time of year in which the veil between the land of the living the land of the dead allows the dead to come back and spend a little time with the living, which I think is a very beautiful tradition. And when I've spoken to people down here, who are young people that I've met, and I asked them what they think about Day of the Dead, what I've heard again and again is well, this is what we do. I go to the cemetery, I talk to my grandmother, and that what I mean. I don't know that I'm actually talking to my grandmother, but that's what we do. And I thought that was really important to this distinction between belief and practice that I think in the United States or in the West, were really was it real?

Is it true?

I don't think that matters. I don't think it matters in Mexico, and from studies I've read on grief, I don't think that necessarily matters either. There's a wonderful book that I quote a lot in my book by George Bonano. He's at Columbia University and he did a book called The Other Side of Sorrow I believe is what It's call, which he was grieving his father when he did these studies, and he began to do studies about grief and what is normal or not normal, and one of the things he looked at was talking to the dead. And I thought what was so interesting is he interviewed a lot of people who after the loved one passes, have a tradition of talking to the dead, either to a photograph or in their head or sometimes out loud. And when he asked them, well, is it real, they said, well, that doesn't matter. It's not even an issue. And I think that's one of the biggest hang ups we have in the West, is there's something in our mind that wants to know is it real? Capital are real? And I'm not sure we'll ever know, But that doesn't mean it doesn't have value and it doesn't mean it's not real. And this is on my mind too because this weekend actually ending yesterday, I went to the International Association of Parapsychologists here and married on Mexico. And these are people who are trying to scientifically study the afterlife, all of these unusual phenomenon that people in our culture, some of them are skeptical about out and it's just really interesting to me to think about. It is possible that we'll never know for sure. You know, it is possible that that's not what's meant to happen. Even if it is capital are real, maybe it's not meant to be that we can prove it. I don't know, but these are things that definitely I think about from talking to people in Mexico and these conferences.

For me, yeah, I was the biggest skeptic on the afterlife. I was, Oh, I was pretty mean. I'd go on to a bookstore and I'd see people reading spirituals books and things that get out. There's no proof of that until I went through a huge fear of dying, which was over twenty five years ago. That has led me on this quest. So in this time I have now interviewed six hundred and sixty hours on the Afterlife. So it is one hundred percent my belief that we go on, and even talking to people that are big in studying near death experiences and the brain shutting down for even up to an hour, and the verifiable evidence, there's something big that shows that our consciousness survives, which gives hope. But I think for each person it's our own personal journey. Now, if we get there by listening to episodes of shows and having signs and those things ourselves, it's great. But I also think what you're talking about people you interviewed in Mexico to have a belief in a practice in the culture that's okay with death Now, yes, so we're going to miss our loved ones, but when death becomes more regular, I think one hundred percent that even with everything that I share, it's all about having people live a more powerful life while we're here. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. I've talked to surgeons and anta caesiologists that have a practice when they put people to sleep so to speak, before surgery. The fear that goes through people, the regrets, all of that whole world, and to be able to have people live without that so the moment they do pass or they do get put under the knife or whatever, that they're at peace. Right. Wouldn't that be a great way to live life? Absolutely?

And going back to what we were saying about Mexico, one realization I really had spending time here is that if I was born in Mexico, I might not be afraid of death, or the fear is different at least and not as intense as what we have. And that's a huge generalization. I know it's not true for everyone, but many people that I've spoken to have agreed that this is true. So, yes, everything you say is true. So in my book I have a lot of information. I talk in kind of a narrative way about all these different cultures and what happens. But what's equally important is I have all these exercises and journal prompts helping people exactly what you said. It is only your own journey that takes you to that place. It has to be your own belief and your own understanding, and it has to come from within. And a lot of the journal prompts and exercises are about stepping back from what we're being brought up with and trying to question where they came from. First of all, where did I get these ideas about death? And what was death like in my family?

Was I afraid of it? Et cetera, et.

Cetera, But then also doing a sought experiment that I think is really interesting.

Let's take our next break now, and we'll hear about the experiment when we get back. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain, and we're here with death expert Joanna eban Stein, author of Memento Maury, and I want to just underline something she said up about living in Mexico and how growing up in a different culture might give us a different belief. Here's what she says, going back to what we were saying about Mexico.

One realization I really had spending time here is that if I was born in Mexico, I might not be afraid of death, or the fear is different at least and not as intense as what we have.

And that's a huge generalization.

I know it's not true for everyone, but many people that I've spoken to have agreed that this is true. So in my book, I have a lot of information. I talk in kind of a narrative way about all these different cultures and what happens. But what's equally important is I have all these exercises and journal prompts helping people exactly what you said. It is only your own journey that takes you to that place. It has to be your own belief and your own understanding, and it has to come from within. And a lot of the journal prompts and exercises are about stepping back from what we're being brought up with and trying to question where they came from. First of all, where did I get these ideas about death and what was death like in my family? Was I afraid of it? Et cetera, et cetera. But then also doing a sought experiment that I think is really interesting. Basically, if you look at mythology, and this is something that I have done, i'd say almost every mythology tells us that life goes on. There's very very few mythologies that tell us that death is the end. I haven't found any, but I don't know. Maybe there's one out there. One of the thought experiments I provide is, what are the odds that everyone in all of human history was wrong and we in the last one hundred and fifty years or so are right? And then if that's so, has the world gotten better with those beliefs? Does to think about it in that way, to step back and to get out of our cultural context and to think bigger and so just verify what you're saying. The other thing that I always like to say to my students that I'm thinking of now that you're talking, is that I get a lot of people skeptics in my classes, and they're like, well, everyone knows it after you die, that's it, nothing happens. Like, no, we actually we don't know that. Nobody knows what happens after we die. It's no fun And isn't that beautiful in a way and amazing and hope inspiring as well?

We don't know.

It is a great human mystery, and as such, the idea that it should be delegated as something taboo, something thought of as morbid, is absurd. How could we not be interested in the greatest human mystery that affects each of us equally, that each of us will go through this portal, this transition, this rite of passage into another reality. Whatever that reality is. Nobody knows, and to me that's beautiful as well. I know there's a lot of people who kind of want to solve the mystery, and I can totally understand that too, But personally, I love that we don't know, and to me it means everything is possible.

What's nice is hearing your belief and understanding because you didn't come to it like me in these twenty seven years of investigating, an interview, doing and reading, and I've had some mind blowing experiences too. You have, yes, but you don't need that. I mean, you've seen death, you've embraced it, you've studied it. And to come to the same understanding that life matters. Yeah, and how are we living it? I think is great. So I'm super happy we are talking today.

Likewise, I also think there are many paths to this place. You know, I think any genuine investigation that's about a fear of death will bring you to this place, probably if you've become obsessive like we did, right and just like end up devoting your life to it because you quickly realize that it's beyond our understanding. It really is not in the realm of the rational mind. And something we can understand that way just isn't Grief isn't either, right, it doesn't make rational sense. There is a whole other world beyond the rational that has value and meaning and actually creates meaning for us in our lives. And without that, life is intolerable.

It's true. And when you talk about beliefs, even us believing that we're flesh and bone and blood sitting in our homes one hundred and fifty years ago, could you imagine if they introduced zoom and computers and wireless internet. No, I mean that it would blow people's minds. It really would. And then even everyone that looks at us on a molecular level or quantum level, down to our tiniest bits, we are just vibrating energy, invisible vibrating energy. Not to mention Joanna, that we are hurling around the universe, the ever expanding universe, on this ball called Earth. So questioning beliefs and things. I love that. Could you tell us a little bit more about Momento Moory and what's in it? You shared some Maybe there's a little tool we can use today that you could give us. So that's a contemplate before we leave.

Well, the first thing I'll say, because I know what your interests are, what the audience's interests are, is So the book is organized in twelve different chapters that look at death from different perspectives. So one is about what is death, and one is about my mental moory, and one is about what happens after we die. And so that's the way I kind of want to talk a little bit about because I do go into near death experience and vertical near death experiences particular, and I just want to say I agree with you looking at you can't write it off and having just gone to this parapsychological conference as well, these are very serious people trying to find ways to prove this, and I have real respect for what they're doing and the level of rigor that they're bringing to their experiments. You know, they're not messing around and they're trying to be really careful and they're helping their colleagues like they're really really interested in trying to figure this out in a scientific way. But in that chapter, I talk about all the things that we're talking about now, Basically the sense that in mythology, life does not end. And also Carl Jung, So the backtrack Carl Jung is another big part of this book. So I don't know how much if any of Carl Jung that you'ven investigated or but he was a big part of my journey. So he's hard to read in his own words, he's a very dense writer. There's a great book if people out there are interested, called Man and his Symbols, which is an edited volume, so it's different people writing about some of his core concepts, and we get the illustrated version that's got lots of images. And for me that was my end. I need that, and when I read it, of all the modern thinkers, I know, he's the one who really bridges what we're talking about with the past and is also looking at death as something really important to think about. And what he said to his analycens or his clients is that it's important for each of us to develop our own myths, our own belief and understanding about death. And it won't do to have someone else's, as he said, it won't do on your deathbed to think, Carl Jill thought this, you have to have your own. We are born in a time that unless you were born into a faith that answers all your questions, and if so, God bless you and you're very lucky. But I was not right. So many of us are not and we have to find our own truth. He would call it a miss and myth does not mean it's not true to us. It just means that it's a story that defines our life and that we can't know one where the other if it's true. And it doesn't matter, as he says, whether it's capital t true or not does not matter. What matters is that you believe it and that you live into it and it provides you a bridge into the next world. And one thing that Carl Jung pointed out is that he had this contiv of archetype. So archetypes are things that happen in every culture. So basically the idea of giving birth would be an archetype, or death is an archetype, or he said life death and rebirth is also an archetype. This idea of these cycles of life that we still see in the Hindu world, and some people in Mexico talk about it that way as well, This idea that it's not a linear view of time where there's an end in the beginning, but rather these cycles. And of course that's what we see in the natural world, right we see the butterfly, the caterpillar become a butterfly. We see the plants bloom and then go fallow in the winter or in the dry season, depending on where you are, and then rebloom. And so this idea of life, death, rebirth rather than death being an end, which is really a materialist, scientific conception that didn't emerge for most people until the last couple hundred years. Right, So I think that's one thing that's a really big takeaway that I'm really trying to encourage people through the book. So through this twelve week process, and it is very much a process. There is texts, so in each chapter has text that kind of talks about death at whatever angle I'm talking about it in that chapter, in different times and places. And also some personal anecdotes, stories that I share for my own life about my experiences with these things. But then again ending with these exercises and these journal prompts, the goal of which is to help you on a transformative process where at the end you end up with your own myth of death, your own understanding of death, and maybe even your own image of death. That I kind of offer this optional exercise of creating your own momental morey, so, your own object that will remind you of the brevity of life so that you can live the life you really want. The book is also trying to help you, giving people tools that I have used in my own life of looking at death in order to live the life I want. So, for example, I hate flying very much, but I love travel every much that I hate flying, I love travel, so I fly all the time. And when I was in my adolescence, I developed a little ritual that I've been doing ever since where I would close my eyes when I got on the plane and I would say, Okay, if I die on this flight, what would I have done differently with my life? And then that is the kind of memento Moory that helps me and I think would help any of us using our fear of death as a way to make really clear what it is we want to do with our time on earth that that makes sense. And so I offer exercises like that to just ask yourself instead of do I want to do this, say what do I want to do with my time on Earth. I think that changes it, right, Suddenly you understand what it means. For example, moving to Mexico. After we moved here, the Ukraine War broke out and my husband was really freaked out and we had to talk and I said, okay, would you be happy to die here? And he said yes, said me too, and then you're okay. It's like going straight to that helps you free yourself from the burden and the fear of it, I think in my own experience, and so I offer props and tools like that to help people use a confrontation with death to figure out what it is they really want to do with their time on Earth. I think it's hard to figure that out with there's so much advertising and so much stuff that's being thrown at us. That is, you know, acting as if it will answer our life questions. But when you start asking yourself the bigger questions and saying, well, what do I want to do with my time on earth? Suddenly everything falls into place and it's much more clear. And so that's where I see the value in contemplating death in order to live the life you want, so we don't die with deathbed regrets.

Right, exactly what does momento Maury actually mean is? Yeah, it is.

It's Latin for remember you will die. It was a phrase they use back then, just like in the Roman Wells use the term carpe dam, which many will remember, right, So carpe dam means the is the day? And I think my mentormory in the Roman times were meant to go with the idea of carpe dm. It wasn't about living a Christian life, right, it was about eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you will die.

But I think this idea.

Of remember you will die can mean whatever we want it to mean for us. You know, it doesn't have to be a Christian concept. It doesn't have to be a Roman concept.

But what is.

It for us? That is a life well lived? And a lot of my exercises are aimed at trying to kind of ascertain that.

As well. As we head off to the break, I want to leave you with a question. Do you know why we call the room in our house the living room? Ponder that and you'll hear the answer when we get back. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandras Champlain and we're here with Joanna Evanstein. And I asked her what memento Maury means and is it Latin? It is. It's Latin for remember you will die.

It was a phrase they used back then, just like in the Roman they'll use the term carpe dam, which many will remember, right, So carpe dam means theese the day. And I think my mentor Maury in the Roman times were meant to go with the idea of carpe dam. It wasn't about living a Christian life, right, it was about eat, drink and be married for tomorrow you will die.

But I think this idea of.

Remember you will die can mean whatever we want it to mean for us. You know, it doesn't have to be a Christian concept, It doesn't have to be a Roman concept.

But what is it for us? That is a life well lived?

And a lot of my exercises are aimed at trying to kind of ascertain that as well.

I was thinking too back in the day here in the United States they call it the living room the parlor, right, And then people would die and they go view them in the parlor, if I'm right. Once funeral parlors happened and taking death outside of the home, the word was changed to living room.

Yeah. Yeah, that's one of my favorite anecdotes, and that this was spearhead at least impart by a women's magazine who in an article in like nineteen oh six or nineteen oh seven, basically wrote this article saying, Hey, now we have this new room. It's for the living, it's no longer for the dead. So very specifically, what you're talking about, what I'm.

Really left with, and I think our listeners maybe as well, is to not make ourselves wrong for having a fear of death, because, like you said, you know, for all of humanity, right, people believed in the afterlife that we go on. I mean, you can tell from the Egyptians all those wonderful things that were buried in the tombs. So people believed, and so we were born into a time where for most of us death has been kept secret. Yes, seniors go to often an old age home, whereas a lot of places in the world embrace having their elders with them for the love and wisdom of family, right, So that's normal, and to not make ourselves wrong that we are living in a time that this is occurring to us. But start questioning, and I don't know what it is about us modern day people, but why we feel we're so much smarter now people that lived hundreds of years ago.

I know, Chris, I don't know. It's the scientific mindset. I feel like the material of scientific mindset has a superiority. And once tell us that we're very different from people in the past, but I don't believe that's true. I know what you mean, and yeah, I just want to reiterate what you say. I think we happen to be born into a time and a place that doesn't offer us any tools for coping with this thing that we're all coping with, not only our own death, but the loss of our loved ones, right, Like this is part of love, is to lose. That's just the way it is when death is part of the picture and our culture offers us nothing. You know, if if you've or not from a religious tradition, which many of us no longer are, or that tradition doesn't answer our questions. So I feel like the fear of death is not something you should beat yourself up about it is part of being born in this time when we're given very little answers. And as you said, it's also hidden from view, which just makes it more frightening psychologically speaking, Right, you can push, push, push down something that's real, but it doesn't mean it goes away. It just means it's like in the back of your mind where it's even more frightening because you haven't looked at it properly. And that's another thing I'm trying to do in this book is get people to really right about well, what are you afraid of? Look it in the eye and think about it and talk about it, so it's not unconscious anymore, so it's conscious. And then I think once you start bringing it to consciousness, you have a possibility of making a relationship with it, but not until.

You do right. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think for homework that I'm going to take for this episode is just to do a little practice when I go to bed at night, just like you get on an airplane. If this was going to be the end, yeah, I accomplish what I wanted to do. What's missing, what's left out? There's something about us human beings that whatever we get used to just becomes normal. So sometimes the things that we were once worried about start doing them and they've just become regular. Even me studying the afterlife and witnessing some mind blowing things, Oh, they've just become regular. Right, So to do a practice that maybe you're afraid of, maybe you're afraid of looking at death and if it was really the end, so maybe night want to be like, oh do I really want to do this? But night too, it's like, h yeah, I'm going to have this night three. We make it the practice, and then I think what'll happen is it becomes normal. You know, maybe what am I grateful for today? And if this was my last day, what I miss? Yeah, and I can talk to something. But I think that's a great combination too.

And I think, you know, that's another thing that I really recommend people do, is to exactly what you're saying, think about what you're grateful for. That's what I do every night when I'm falling asleep, And even that just starts to shift your sense of how you are in the world and makes you grateful for these things, for the life that you have as it is right now, right, rather than all the things that you could focus on about where it's not exactly where you want it to be. Of course we can all do that, but I think it is it's like a habit of mind.

It's like an exercise, a practice.

And I think this is where the Buddhists have so much to teach us as well. Like I'm not a Buddhist, but I think so many of their practices are so practical, and they're about these things. They're basically saying, well, you know, I think the Christians create a world in which we demonize all these bad thoughts in ourselves and think they're bad and it makes us bad. Where the Buddhists are like, all humans have those thoughts. Here are some practices to help you accentuate the good ones and give less energy to the bad ones. And I really really appreciate that. And I think their practices of thinking about gratitude is the flip side of regret, right It's like, what do I appreciate and what would I regret? Both are really great ways to help you live the life you really want right now.

I love it. And as human beings, we're not designed to think about gratitude all the time. It's usually what's left undone, unsaid, still have to do what's on the horizon. It's just part of being human. That's how it works. You've referred to students and classes and things. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you offer, what we'll find on your website, Yeah, et cetera.

So I've been doing a project called Morbid Anatomy since two thousand and seven. It started as a blog. It was a support for a photo exhibition I was doing about medical museums, so objects that combine beauty and desk that you see in these scientific medical museums. And it had a life of its own, and it has since evolved. For a while it was a museum and now it is a mostly online project, though we do have an open to the public research library in Brooklyn, New York. If you have any listeners there. It's open every weekend from twelve to five free of charge.

You can go in.

You can read books about the topics we're talking about.

Lots of stuff on spiritualism in.

The afterlife, and Carl Jung and death and art and culture in different places in the world, and all sorts of things, and also objects I've collected around these ideas and online we offer many, many classes with teachers around the world, many of which revolve around death and mortality, but not all of them. We have a lot of different topics. Now I will be teaching a class based on the momentum more books. That's also available, And this is on our website it's Morbid Anatomy dot org and lectures every Monday night, and we have a Patreon that has lots of articles and all the videos that we've been archiving since we started doing online lectures.

It's fun.

It's someone called it morbid YouTube, which I really like.

My goodness talk about really reframing what we think about death and bringing it to lights.

And there's no it's heavy, and I will say it is heavy, but I will say one thing that I find very heartening is that I've been doing more of anatomy for a long time, but it was really with COVID that the audience began to expand.

And part of that is because yes.

We had zoom and we could do things online. But also I think COVID made a lot of us start thinking about death who hadn't wanted to or been confronted with it before. And what morbid anatomy offers is a way to investigate this idea with curiosity and with like minded people and with compassion. It is scholarly in the sense that there's rigor, but it's also very accessible and very engaging and very fun. I think all of our teachers kind of share this ability to really speak to a popular audience and share this curiosity about this great mystery of our life.

It sounds great, it really does. And I just think if we look at death a little different and not blame ourselves for the culture we were born into, not only can we live a different kind of life, Joanna, but it is my belief that when we get death handled for ourselves, not only does life seem to make sense and we can be grateful for what we have and things, but we can start pushing the envelope as to what's possible and we can really dig deep into who am I really and what is my life for? And also just thinking that many years ago, when you talk about, you know, hundreds or thousands of years ago, people were very spiritual. People would tap into their inner wisdom, and I do know we are all these intuitive creatures were no different than the animals with their great instinct. But with all the technology that we have and all this busyness in our mind, we're not really tapping into who we are. So there is much more to explore once we take a look at maybe what we're fearful of and we make peace with death. Yeah.

Absolutely, And as you said, as a way to live the life we want, it's the best god there is to live the life we want before it's too late. It's a reminder that our time is limited and that's not necessarily a terrible thing, you know, or at least we can look at it through a lens in which it's empowering as well as limiting.

Right. Yeah, Well, thank you so much. Is there anything else you'd like to share while we have a few minutes stick, No.

I just want to thank you for your time and thank all of your listeners for your interests. And you know, definitely, if death is something that you're looking to explore with like minded, compassionate people and not feel like a big weirdo in the world, morbid anatomy is the place for you. It's a place in which we're all curious about death and we don't have to pretend not to be.

That's morbid anatomy dot org. And I know you could hear it in my voice, but that was a refreshing conversation and it never dawned on me to question our culture that we were raised in and for thousands of years people believed in the afterlife, and now that death is so hidden from our view, it can really do a number on us, looking for evidence, looking for things to believe in, but ultimately empowering us to live a good life. And I mean it. We start every night what am I grateful for? And looking at life if this was my last day on earth? Did I do everything I wanted to do and get comfortable with that? I do believe we can live a very powerful life. I'm excited in a weird way. I hope you are too. Don't forget Come visit me at We Don't Die dot com. Our Sunday gathering happens every Sunday, two pm New York Time. Inspirational fun and a medium demonstration included. So are you interested in create your own memento mori, something that reminds you about your belief in the afterlife to live the life you want. I'm Sandra Champlain. Thank you so much for listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast am Paranormal podcast Network.

Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost Day and Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out all our shows on the iHeartRadio app or by going to iHeartRadio dot com

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