There is a great deal of fear that accompanies terminal illness and issues come to the surface. “What happens after we die?” I worked for many years as a medical social worker with dying patients. Usually they were the first to accept the truth. Often the person with the disease knows that the end of it is near. What I observed in many of them was an extreme fear of the actual “crossing” process. Depending on religious beliefs and personal experience, that means different things to different people. However, I do know that all the visualizations I did with the terminally ill seemed to bring comfort and reassurance. Visualizations can be seen as a form of crossover. When we close our eyes and “travel” somewhere inside, we can imagine that this is how it is after we die. For many, the reality was peaceful and serene. I usually used a variation of the visualization below. The results were always different with each person. What a person sees is unique to that person’s experience.
After doing some relaxation techniques, such as breathing and tensing/releasing the muscles, I would have the client imagine that they were traveling upwards and would eventually arrive at a “temple of healing.” This is not a place to cure your disease, it is a place “to heal”. Heal and cure are two very different terms with different goals. At the healing temple we walk through a beautiful, serene garden and imagine the sounds and smells of being there. We then entered a healing temple. It is important not to describe this temple because people will create their own. There is no talking or exchange during the exercise. After you finish, you would discuss the details of your experience. When this exercise was done on a weekly basis, it added more elements to the visualization. If there were a group of “master healers”, one week, I would bring them back the next week, and the patient would quickly return to the previous scenario. Then I would add a new twist to the story depending on what was coming to mind at the time and what was going on in the person’s life. I have always let myself go where my intuition takes me in the moment. The client often tells me afterwards that I was right and that the symbols or metaphors had some special meaning to him.
What’s the point of doing these weekly exercises with someone who only has a few weeks to live? Often they will let go and release some particular problem that they have not been able to let go of before. They will come to terms faster with issues that need to be dealt with immediately. They will make peace with life events that they will miss out on, such as future graduations, weddings, etc.
The “healing temples” in the visualizations and the “healing teachers” who come to participate during these guided IMAGES are extremely reassuring at a time when the individual is coming face to face with the unknown. The dying process should not be one of terror and loneliness, but can be a time when families come together and people tie up loose ends and release old resentments.
