A Final Gift—Liberation - A Mindful Approach to Dementia & Psychedelics
My husband, who wanted me to be his voice to advocate for microdosing for people with mild to moderate cognitive impairment, which he had for over ten years, passed away two months ago. Since then, I have been capturing and reflecting on the momentous, transformative, and intimate journey of his dying process and even the hours after. I am also readying for closure of this part of the blog—A Mindful Journey of Dementia and Psychedelics—started in 2024.
Microdosing during Henry’s Alzheimer’s journey significantly helped ease the journey in so many ways. This was especially true in the many months after his official diagnosis, and that, as well as a mindful approach to life and death in those preceding months, helped pave the way for end of life.
In a recent blog, I mentioned the incredible energy felt in those last days and even the hours after physical death. However, the most profound experience happened the second night after Henry’s passing. Originally, I felt it was too intimate to share—the most sacred being held closely in the chambers of my heart. Since beginning meditation over fifty years ago, my chamber is filled with much sacredness. Words do not do justice to many experiences that are boundless and beyond the fixed duality expressed through language. However, I felt Henry’s story would not be complete if this most incredible experience were omitted.
It points to a potentiality of the human experience. It points to a potentiality in physical death. It points to a potentiality to be present in another’s dying journey. It points to Henry being my greatest teacher in the hours before, during, and after his physical death. It points to a mindful approach to every moment present in life. For in those lofty hours, a lived sense of total liberation has transformed me forever.
Over the past few decades, Henry had been the only witness to certain blissful experiences that oftentimes came in meditation but in the last few decades came more and more at night, especially in the hours before dawn—experiences washing over and through me and felt in every cell of my being and beyond. Coincidentally, these sacred pre-dawn hours are referred to as Brahma Muhurtu in Hinduism. In the decade+ of living in India, the chants and spiritual practices from ashrams, homes, and street corners could be heard during what is considered the purest, most sattvic time of the twenty-four hours; a time most auspicious for spiritual practice and spiritual awakening.
All the training of meditation and mindfulness of many decades served as a foundation from which I could be open-hearted, ever present, and grateful for what was before me. I was also committed to protecting Henry—as if in a bubble of peace and well-being—but in a transcendental journey between life and death that needs to be held and witnessed with love, not fear, with presence of being and grace. Though Henry was no longer on medication of any kind in the last two days of his life, he had already entered another state of being beyond words, sight, or outward signs of life beyond a most gentle breath. However, there was subtle and almost imperceptible inward activity, for if not, how else to explain the energy generated from him that filled the room, touched my daughters, and is forever embedded in me. To be present to what might be called miracles is simply meeting death within these conditions and to do so in the presence of a great meditator.
Awake within my mind and aware of the images and experiences, there I was. The “I” of being me did not exist. No body, no “Lauren,” no self-identity or ego. It was the “I” of just pure awareness. I found myself in a lofty mountainous kingdom at the top of one of the highest Himalayan peaks. As I witnessed its existence, similar kingdoms appeared on other Himalayan peaks. A knowing: Shambhala. This is the kingdom of Shambhala. A mythical kingdom, but also believed to be real, though not a physical destination as much as one only entered from different realms of being. As I traveled ever higher, though there was no separation, airborne into open space of sky, I soared into liberation. No fear. Total freedom. LIBERATION.
This timeless experience did not have minutes or hours that I can assign to it. What I sensed is that I may have made vocal sounds audible to others. Henry was used to this during other times, while he may have slept by my side, or next to me in meditation, when I went into blissful states of being. Soft “mmmms” hummed from my very core at times.
Remaining in this liberating state of being, suspended in space and time, a singular bird appeared. It flew at eye level to me, horizontally through the sky. GLORIOUS.
Then momentarily, I felt a hand firmly placed upon my hand. Its firmness of touch startled me awake. My daughter sleeping by my side must have gently but firmly placed her hand on top of mine to wake me just enough to stop my blissful sounds.
As I opened my eyes to meet my daughter’s, I saw she was in a deep sleep. In the morning, as we both woke in bed, I asked her if she had gently brought me out of my deep experience because I was making sounds that woke her. Emphatically, she said she had never woken up, had never heard a thing, and certainly had not touched my hand.
I sat in that mystery for days. My daughters insist it was Henry communicating with me. I still sit in the mystery, but to me, more importantly, the possibility—now lived experience—of total liberation resides in me, in my energy field, forever changing the way I am in the world.
I moved with tenderness in the week following Henry’s death, staying at home. The kindness of friends who came to visit briefly marked the mornings and afternoons. The spaciousness of that time led me to find photos and journals and other memorabilia tucked in a corner or found in a cupboard. One such journal had a page ripped out, found in a desk drawer. Written the year before, a one-line description of a dream: I am flying and a bird met me directly at eye height, then flying horizontally by me, in unison.
Like my daughters say, I too would like to think that I was reunited with Henry. Perhaps our vow of a union and marriage based on supporting the other’s spiritual growth brought about this miracle. His final gift of welcoming me to experience what he was experiencing upon his release from physical form: liberation, a merging of the divine, pure moksha.
- Lauren Alderfer, PhD.
