Birth, Love & Death: Existential Trilogy

We will explore the themes of birth, sensuality, and death, encouraging a deeper understanding of the human experience. You'll have the chance to reflect on personal truths and the unique perspectives that shape your life. This is a space to honor your individual experiences while acknowledging the complexities we face as existential beings. Come ready to engage in a thoughtful exploration of what it means to be alive.

Transcript

So welcome to today's talk,

And thank you for arriving this morning,

Afternoon,

Or evening,

Wherever you may be tuning in from.

And this contemplation,

I think just in the words that we see in the title,

I'm sure that there are some of you that immediately one word really struck you,

Or maybe two,

Or maybe all three.

But birth,

Sex,

And death.

This trifecta of humanity that touches each and every one of us,

No matter what country we come from,

No matter what color our skin,

No matter our age,

No matter any of our conditionings,

Or the parables,

And the stories,

And the myths,

And the belief systems that we might run on,

We are each touched by each of these experiences.

And so the reason that I wanted to speak to this is,

Living in the moment now,

Whenever you may be listening to this,

But in this moment,

We are in a very significant shift,

And I'm sure that even hearing that,

It can apply to any time.

So there is a timelessness to change and to adaptability.

But I would sit behind the notion that at the moment we're sitting in somewhat of a what metamodernists call the dark ages.

So it's like a postmodern dark age.

And there's a lot of existential angst,

And anxiety,

And depression in the world right now.

A lot of free-floating anxiety from the amount of unnecessary deaths,

And conflict,

And dissonance,

And dissolution in the world at the moment.

We have gotten ourselves collectively to a point of such,

In a way,

For many bodies,

And this is not to say for everybody,

But self-betrayal,

Like the capital S,

Self-betrayal and self-abandonment.

We have turned a lot of our functions,

Our executive functioning as well,

Our thinking over to larger systems.

It's been very easy to get ourselves kind of plugged in.

And I would say not even thinking together,

But non-thinking together.

And getting our work done,

Drinking our coffee,

Driving into work,

Being stuck in the same lines,

Doing the same things,

Getting on the computer,

Doing the same rituals or habits.

And a lot of our non-thinking is happening together.

But what we're seeing in the shift is that when you put a large amount of pressure on any system,

At some point it begins to crack open.

And I think that our system that worked for a bit,

The non-thinking,

You know,

After the agricultural revolution and the technological revolution,

It was easy to tap into those systems and to be productive.

And we've gone through quite a few decades of efficiency and productivity and we've learned to be very machine-like and to get things done,

To be productive and to be successful.

But where we're at now is a shift.

There's been like a break in that system.

There's been so much pressure on us to be productive,

To be efficient,

That it's beginning to crack open because what also exists there is sentience.

We are feeling beings and we are also existential beings,

Meaning that we exist somehow.

We exist in this body.

We exist using this mind.

We exist having this heart that feels.

So the sentience and the existential aspects of the human being,

They don't disappear when we become productive and when we become efficient.

But I think that we've gotten to this point where these aspects,

Even though some great thinkers have been speaking about them for hundreds and hundreds of years,

Many of us may have not contemplated these aspects.

We might have thought about them in passing or we see it in a movie or we see somebody that we love closely pass away.

Or we see somebody that we love closely have a child.

We see birth.

We see a birth story.

We see a death story.

We see someone lose their life and we feel what it feels to lose them.

And at some point,

Eventually,

Or maybe some of us that are in this space right now listening,

Actually contemplate death quite often.

Also contemplate what it means to be born.

But there is a lot of mystery in these subjects.

And sex,

The bridge between,

Sex is life.

Sex is creation.

Sex is creativity.

There is a lot of creative force in sexuality.

So these topics,

I bring them together because I see sex as that,

The bridge between.

The enjoyment,

If possible,

Of life,

Or at least the continuation of life.

And so something to sit with that a dear beloved said to me,

You know,

It's very interesting that we all come into the world in the same way.

We come through mothers.

We come through the body of the mother and we arrive,

You know,

In a very similar fashion.

We've been birthed in this beautiful warm belly for about the same amount of time and we birth ourselves into the world,

Yeah,

Crying.

And on the other end of the spectrum,

Not really,

Not one person really dies exactly the same.

In exactly the same mental state,

In the same place,

At the same time,

In the same way.

So there is this kind of essential birth story that we all share.

And there is this mysterious,

Uncertain death story that we all share,

But that is so different.

And something that one of my mentors said to me as a death doula,

She said,

Isn't it interesting that every year 365 days of the year pass and we celebrate our birthday.

And every year we eat cake and we celebrate and we are so excited about this day.

But every year we are walking past our death state without knowing it.

Every year,

The day that we are going to die passes and we live on that day and we have no idea.

There is an uncertainty to it.

And how wild and paradoxical is that,

That one of these days is celebrated and one of them is so ambiguous and unknown.

And it made me think,

You know,

For those of us that are very intuitive,

That have other senses,

That see beyond the tangible,

That see beyond the scene,

There are some days in the year that we just feel deeply.

There is a deep melancholy or maybe nostalgia of life.

And I thought to myself,

What if that day actually is,

You know,

As the timelines collapse,

That is the day that we are experiencing our finality,

You know,

Our mortality.

And there's a sweetness to that day.

Maybe there's even a deeper sweetness of,

Wow,

You know,

I feel so nostalgic to be alive.

I feel so grateful to be alive.

And so this topic is really not what's most definitely not to give any answers.

It's most definitely not to give any advice,

But it is a portal and a channel to contemplate your beginnings and your endings and to also become very aware.

You know,

I have,

I have people say,

This topic is morbid.

You know,

Why would you talk about death?

Death will come one day.

What is the point of talking about it now?

And for me,

What I have learned is that by befriending death and also why,

While death has befriended me over the years and becoming a death doula and studying death education and really stepping into the deep contemplation of my own existential nature,

I have become more alive.

And it's not to say it hasn't been difficult.

It's been terrifying at moments.

It's been incredibly painful because when you think about it,

Each of us,

The entire world does exist around each of us in the sense of my mind is contemplating and digesting what it means to be in this specific body,

In this specific culture,

In this specific country,

Wherever I find myself,

I am interpreting the entire world.

So to actually sit and contemplate and sit with the reality that this existence,

This voice that speaks,

This body that moves,

This heart that loves at some point ends,

You know,

And depending on your different belief systems,

This is a huge,

Huge and weighty and very dense aspect of the human experience to sit with.

Because in this moment,

We're so alive and we feel so much and we love so deeply and we have so many dreams.

We have so many desires and there is a part of us that feels the justness of that,

Like my deserving.

And for some of us,

Of course,

We sit with shame and we sit with guilt.

So there might be also a complete surrender to death,

But not out of deep,

Deep liveliness,

Out of deep,

Deep dread and angst and not a full participation in the first step in the first place,

In birth and living.

So our relationships to death are very different.

And this is a beautiful and deep and profound well to dive into as well,

Because for some of us,

Death might be a beautiful relief story where we think,

Wow,

The ultimate surrender,

The ultimate rest,

May I please.

And for some of us that are still deep in that sex bridge,

That liveliness,

You know,

Sex,

Not just the act of sex between two individuals.

When we look at life at large,

When we look at the planet at large,

Nature is birthing in every moment.

You know,

The spiral of sex is moving into every,

Every single moment,

The way that life breathes into us,

The penetration of breath and the inhalation and the exhalation.

In a way,

This is life making love to us.

We are given constantly energy,

Energy,

Energy.

And each day as the grass grows,

As the wind blows,

As the seeds are planted,

As fruit is fruiting and our vegetables are growing and we are fed and we are eating and we are nourishing the body.

These are creation stories.

These are birthing stories.

These are stories of sexuality as well with humanity,

With life,

With mother earth cycling,

Constantly cycling.

And so when we think about the words birth,

Sex and death,

We can look at them from a very linear perspective.

And we see a baby being born and sex.

We see maybe a very,

Very,

What we're so used to seeing,

Like the genitals of the male and the female coming together and death,

The body lying down.

But there is so much more in there with the masculine,

The feminine principles,

With what it means to be birthed,

What it means to die.

And for those of us that have different belief systems,

When we think about rebirth and we think about reincarnation,

There are so many different steps to these three topics.

And for so many,

We don't really think about that.

We think very linearly.

We're not really sitting with the complexity of each step.

And something else that I've sat with,

I was walking through the forest a little while ago and I was walking in the fall and there were many leaves that had fallen from the trees and that they were laying the pathway and just thousands,

It seemed of leaves.

And everywhere I walked,

I was just crunching.

And I thought,

Wow,

What a beautiful metaphor.

For death.

I thought each of these leaves has already fallen from the tree.

Who knows how long ago?

It could be months ago.

It could have been yesterday.

Could have been today.

And some still have bright colors of yellow and green.

They have the edges of like the chlorophyll,

The life that still exists in them,

But yet they've been cut from their source.

And so actually they are already dying or they are already dead.

Who's to say which?

Are they dead or are they dying?

Because I still see life in some of them.

Some have color.

And so as I continued to walk and as I saw it walking through this graveyard of leaves,

Of thousands of leaves,

They still had so much beauty and they had so much use.

Some of them were decomposing and becoming a part of the soil and new life was birthing from them.

And some simply were there to create this crunch,

This sound beneath the feet that really gave voice to the forest.

It was like,

You know,

The Koshi bells of the forest or the chimes of the forest.

And I thought,

Wow,

We're not so different from leaves.

Because in my contemplation of death,

The way that I see it,

And this is not to say it's the only way to see it,

But I give you my metaphorical understanding of it,

Is that the moment the leaf falls from the tree,

The moment the leaf is pulled from the branch,

From its source,

That it already is going to die or it already is dying.

It already is separated from life force.

So the moment that the human comes into birth,

Comes into a human birth and steps away from source.

So the moment the human being comes into birth through a human body,

It is plucked from source like a flower.

So the moment that the child is born,

It is already dying.

Just like the fallen leaf.

Yes,

It has colors and it's beautiful and it's radiant because it's just been plucked from source.

And as it grows,

There's still this radiance and this life from it.

But it is also dying.

In the process of being born,

The process of dying is happening at the same time.

Each day,

No matter how young we are,

We are one step closer to the day that we die.

And just like the leaf,

The human body and its organicity has the ability to decompose and give back to the land that it has fed on for its whole life.

So in a way,

It makes love to the soil,

The decomposing body or the ashes.

They make love to the soil or the waters that they're poured into or into the air.

And they come back into connection with the earth,

The bones come back into the earth.

And the cycle of life again is reborn in some way.

Life comes back in.

And so when I thought of this,

I thought,

How interesting that we spend so much of our time thinking that death only comes at one point.

Death comes when we get the diagnosis.

Death comes when we are hit by a car or there's a tragic accident.

Death comes spontaneously.

But when I thought about it,

I was like,

No,

Death is actually visiting us each and every day.

It is walking alongside us.

And the reason that we fear it is because we do not befriend it.

We put it over there and we say,

Not now,

No,

When I become old or not now,

Only when I become sick,

Then I think about it.

But if we actually see that the human body,

If we think about it and we think about sex being the bridge between birth and death,

Then the human body naturally,

If you watch it,

Our skin changes,

Our bodies shift.

If we are in a female body,

And this is not to say a feminine body because I want to make sure that I am also using inclusive language here.

But when we talk about the biology in the female body,

As we get older,

Our periods change.

The way that we bleed changes.

Our body naturally begins to shift from a place of creation to a place of surrender.

So in time,

As the body gets older,

It's as if,

If we really see it this way,

It's not a tragic thing that society has made it into.

Stay young forever.

Do all of the injections.

Make yourself young forever.

Life is giving us a natural opportunity to learn our cycle within the laws of nature.

So as the body begins to slow down and stop bleeding,

Or in the male body,

We have less and less arousal.

And for some of us,

This doesn't happen for quite some time.

So this is not to say in general,

But the bodies begin to slow down,

Sex becomes less important.

And when we think about sex,

Not as,

You know,

This is,

We try to hold on to it so much in our conditioned society.

But when we see it as an opportunity,

Actually,

For the body of the being that's in that body to slow down and experience themselves moving into the fall of their life,

It's beautiful to see that we've made it through another season.

And so as the body begins to slow down and the body stops bleeding or sexual arousal slows down,

It's an opportunity to contemplate and sit with,

You know,

What it means to be walking towards death,

Walking towards winter.

And for some of us,

We might be walking towards winter for 50 or 60 years.

So it's not to say that we give up on life and it's a resignation,

But it's also a time for deep nostalgia.

Think of grandparents,

You know,

Thinking about their grandchildren and showing pictures of their daughters and their sons and how proud they are.

And this is,

You know,

An archetypical grandmother or grandfather.

I'm not saying that we're all fortunate enough to have that.

But when we think of the happy grandfather and grandmother in nostalgia over the birth cycle and the sex cycle of what they've created and what's been born into their lives,

Life actually gives us,

When we actually sit with its natural processes,

It gives us a very beautiful path of understanding what is to come.

So that if we actually walk along the natural progression,

That we're not surprised when death comes and that we live every moment because we actually understand and accept our part in the cycle of life and the wheel of life.

So that now in this moment,

Whatever phase we're in,

Those of us that are here,

Whether we are walking the path from a very early space or that mid space or later in the fall and winter years,

That we really appreciate all parts of this.

You know,

That we really look outside ourselves and we see the beauty of birth in every moment.

We see the beauty of sexuality in every moment of life,

Making love to itself.

And still,

If we're in our older bodies,

That we don't mourn for the time that we had really wonderful sex or that we don't mourn that maybe we never got to have the big dynamic,

Wild sex that we wanted and that we see sexes in so many things.

It is in the breath moving in and out of our bodies.

It's in that penetration of the inhalation.

It's in the fall leaves falling down on you or the flowers budding at spring.

There are so many processes,

Making love at every moment that we get attached to this very human experience of sexuality.

And for so many of us,

And I'm not there yet,

But I sit in the contemplation if I'm fortunate enough,

Because my life is not promised.

My life is not promised.

But if I am fortunate enough to live into my old age,

May I see the beauty of life birthing in every moment.

May I let go of and may I surrender my explicit sexuality when it's time.

Because for so many of us,

The suffering comes from clinging.

All the photos that we take,

The social media,

The things that are able to capture moments that were meant to be fleeting.

Now they stick with us and we can look at them and say,

No,

That was a better time.

I want that.

I want that.

And we don't see the beauty of the time that we get.

And if we could start to respect and see the beauty in our elders as well,

And not the fear of,

Oh no,

I don't want to get old like that.

Or,

Oh no,

I don't want to get sick and die.

But we can look at our elders and think,

Wow,

They've walked the earth for this many years.

They're here to tell their stories.

I want to hear what they have to say.

They have an understanding of time that I do not have.

They have more time in a sense.

They've seen different phases and cycles of humanity.

There's such wisdom here.

And if we could give our elders the place that they deserve,

Which is deep respect and reverence for the fact that they've walked and they've stayed here with us,

Because not everybody does.

Many people leave earlier than we've expected.

May we then not fear death in the moments that we ourselves begin to walk into the fall and the winter of our lives.

And may every phase be so celebrated.

If we've just had a child,

May we really celebrate the birth story of that child.

And yes,

There are the sleepless nights and maybe the sexless evenings with our love and life changes.

But may we see the beauty in this phase because it is so quick and it will move into a different phase.

And when we're in that phase of deep sexuality and we're learning about ourselves and we're learning what our desires are and what we want,

May we celebrate our sex.

May we really experience it.

May it be excruciatingly pleasurable and all of the things.

May we not be fearful to say what we want.

May we speak our truths because that phase transitions.

Our body transitions.

Things shift.

So may we stop trying to make ourselves perfect and to be younger or when we're younger to be older and more wise.

And may we see the phase that we're in and not look at others and say,

Oh,

I want that phase or I want that cycle or I want to be young again or I want to be older so I have more stability and financial security and may I have a home.

May we appreciate the phases that we're in because they will so quickly change and sooner than any of us ever expect death does come.

You know,

It tends to be a surprise for people and many,

Many people in this age are dying in absolute terror and fear.

They're dying in hospital beds under terrible lighting with doctors that don't really know their names.

And not everybody gets to die in hospice care or with a death doula.

And my invitation for you is that you begin to really sit with this and you contemplate for yourself,

But that you also bring this into your community,

Into your home,

Into your family constellation.

And that instead of pitying the person that is passing or fearing or wanting them to stay away from the family,

Keep death away,

That we invite in their experience of death.

If we have somebody that is sick or if we ourselves are sick,

If we ourselves are walking towards that winter,

That we find the beauty in that surrender and in that rest.

And it's not about giving up,

But it's about really letting life in at that point.

You know,

Even more as we are walking towards winter,

That we really take in the breath,

That we really look around us because when we are ultimately incredibly present,

Time slows down.

When we are ultimately in love with the moment,

Time slows down.

So think about the moments that you've been deeply in love with a lover or your child or a parent or a moment.

Think about how all of a sudden the clocks,

The watches,

Time just.

.

.

Everything slows down.

And what are we doing in this society?

We're speeding everything up.

We want to go faster,

Faster,

Faster.

We want more money.

We want more things.

We want more sex.

We want more experiences.

And we are running towards our falls and winters.

We are running past that bridge of sexuality,

That bridge of creation and of beauty and of cyclic existence just happening all around us.

So I really encourage you to sit with these concepts of what does birth mean to me?

What does my birth story mean to me?

And what does sex mean to me?

What do I get from sex?

What does sex mean to me?

What is my relationship to sex?

How do I talk about it?

How do I think about it?

How do I feel it?

How do I experience it?

And how do we make sex more sacred?

How do we slow down and tune in and really see the beauty of life and life when we are making love actually in the experience of sex?

When we are making love,

We are making love to life.

Life is breathing into us.

Your relationship to whatever your higher source is,

God,

The Godhead nature,

Mother Nature,

Whatever it might be,

In that moment between two bodies making love or however your constellation is in that making of love,

You're breathing.

Life is making love to us in that moment and we should be in celebration.

This shouldn't be a moment of performance.

This should be a moment of deep,

Deep presence where we slow down even if we're speeding up and that we feel life making love to us and that we see that if we exist,

We belong.

Our existence is the proof that we belong because life wouldn't breathe into us and every day and every moment something is dying,

A flower,

A fly,

A weed,

A parasite,

A human.

In every moment something is dying but somehow you here,

10 years old,

20 years old,

30,

40 decades,

You have decades where life has just breathed into you,

Meaning in every moment you are chosen,

You are made love to.

Life says yes,

Yes,

Yes,

Yes,

You,

You,

You,

I choose you,

I choose you,

And in that love making to you and especially in actual love making with another human being,

Life is choosing you in that moment.

It is birthing through you and so I really encourage you to be born in every moment,

To make love in every moment and to die in every moment,

To surrender to the uncertainty of life because you are being born in every moment and you are making love in every moment and you are dying in every moment.

You are walking one step closer to your death,

One step closer to the death of every single person in your life that you love and that existence,

That truth,

That existential nature,

It's important to note not to be morbid and not to step into fear but to appreciate.

When I look at my beloved and I see that he is existential and that he will die and he gets sick sometimes,

But I look at him with that awe every day of,

Here you are again,

Life chose you,

You're born again in this moment,

Here you are again,

I get to love you,

I get to make love to you,

I get to watch you grow,

I get to watch you step closer and closer to your own ultimate surrender.

This is precious and nostalgic and deep and profound and it makes it so much more difficult for me to yell or to be angry or to be in my righteousness towards that person because I see the complexity of their human experience and it doesn't mean I don't get mad and it doesn't mean that I don't do the very human things that we do when we forget,

But we are here for such a short amount of time and we're running,

We're running towards what we're going to do in retirement or what we're going to do 10 years from now and it's not promised.

You know when I hear people say oh when I'm older I'm going to do this or when I'm retired and I'm like what makes you think that you get to retire or that you get to be old?

Who told you that?

Who told you that that is your right?

And if we get it,

Wonderful.

You know when I see old people on the streets or I see them walking and maybe talking to themselves or sitting on a park bench I think wow like how fortunate are you that life has continued breathing into you and I think if I'm so fortunate to get to that age,

If I'm so fortunate,

I will be grateful for the experiences and who knows what will happen along the way.

Maybe I will lose my gratitude,

Maybe I will grasp to my younger years,

But I really really keep death close as I walk you know towards the middle parts of my own life to be kind to myself,

To walk with grace,

To walk with ease and to enjoy each season of my life because when I look back I had a very beautiful summer that I suffered in as a young woman.

I had a very potentially deep and powerful sexual beautiful summer and a lot of those years were wasted in suffering,

Absolute agony of I'm not enough,

I'm not lovable,

I'm not this enough,

I'm not beautiful enough,

Young enough,

Tan enough,

Brown enough,

Whatever it might be,

All the things,

The enoughness and that summer passed,

That summer passed and I can't get it back and I wouldn't want it back you know I wouldn't want it back and now as I am slowly in the summer moving towards the fall I want to really enjoy this season,

I want to enjoy this season as my body slows down,

As my cycles change,

As the possibilities for creation shift in my body and I want to enjoy the slowness and the silence and the stillness even when it's loud at times and even when it's fast at times and yeah and I want to sit with this season not in the contemplation of will I get to my winter but just enjoying the fall and so may each of you enjoy your seasons and be nostalgic about the other that's beautiful but may you really enjoy the season and may you enjoy the seasons of those that you love,

May you really look at the existential nature of those that you love and when you are upset or wanting to project trivial things onto them remember that they are walking this existential timeline and that they are limited in their time here and that we won't know how long they'll be here but may we enjoy their existence now,

May we revel in the awe of life breathing into them and us walking together on this path

Reviews

Thank you beautiful soul, Echo, for this powerful sharing & explanation of the seasons of our lives.. Much love & gratitude 💜🙏🏻

Love this profound session on these topics. Please create more! Sending gratitude and love ❤️

Thank you so much for sharing with us your thoughts about the human experience, that was such a great talk. 🙏

Very thoughtful and you gave me new perspectives. In a peaceful way. Thank you 🤍

Thank you. I appreciate your talks and meditations as they have helped to show me new ways of being and I now am gaining a better understanding and embodiment of how to enjoy this season of my life. Hearing the evolution and what is alive in you through your talks has been inspiring.