The Mother Death archetype. Our reality is defined by two coordinates: life and death.

"Death Education" is at the same time "Life Education."

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”*2

With this in mind, rather than feeling the pressure to act grateful at any moment in time, we should just think of it as a reality and acknowledge our existence, which is represented by two coordinates: life and death.

As the goal of all life is death, our awareness of mortality makes us feel anxiety and fear, although mostly unconsciously.

Is this due to the fact that death is a concept that we humans may never fully comprehend and therefore avoid contemplating our own mortality, or perhaps we simply cannot stand the unknown? Humans tend to prefer predictability, and death likely induces a sense of powerlessness within us.

By writing on this subject, I hope to shed light on the notion of death, which is something we ought to contemplate in our day-to-day lives, so that we can better enjoy our time, our orgasms, our grief, our anxiety, our self destruction tendency while we are here on this planet.
As sexual beings who desire life as a whole experience, being conscious of the fact that death is a part of everyday existence can help us feel more connected to our nature, therefore, more present in our lives, relationships and decisions.

We create art out of our human hungers, desires, and experiences in order to leave our mark, to be remembered that we were here; we only know what we feel in the moment and how we respond to what we feel: our art, music, poetry, mathematics, books, and loves all exist and have meaning because we live and die.

Mother Death Archetype/”Memento mori”

Archetypes are timeless, recurring, universal symbols that "live" in humans, generation after generation and repeat for a purpose. There are as many archetypes as it is possible to experience. "Father," "Mother," "child," "sun," "birth," and "suffering".
”The Death Mother is the shadow side of the Great Mother Archetype, or the Archetype of the Feminine. To grasp a concept of the Great Mother Archetype, think of images such as Jesus’s mother Mary, or Sophia, or Pachamama. These images represent good nurturing, bountifulness, spiritual wisdom, and unconditional love. The archetypal element of the feminine is far from containing only positive characteristics, it is the complete cycle in which decay and dissolution must precede rebirth (Ford, 2004).

The Death Mother is a natural part of the Great Mother or Archetype of the Feminine because she holds the totality of what does not want to be seen, but is a necessary and natural essence of the whole.”-*1

All civilizations and living forms share the enduring experience of death. Many cultures, such as Egyptian, Tibetan, and Jewish mysticism's Kabbalah, acknowledge death as a transition. There is also the individual death of our physical form, which is a natural part of the life cycle.

Each of us dies many times in a psychological way as we grow and mature, and part of "waking up" and shedding our new skin from time to time is being aware of our potential throughout the process of life.

The Ancient Egyptians and Greeks accepted death as a natural part of life, with elaborate burial decorations and the "Book of the Dead" demonstrating their commitment to the dying process. They saw death as a portal to another life, akin to the everyday experience of sleep.

Following Rome's collapse, medieval alchemists and the Roman Catholic Church tackled the issue of death, developing rites and doctrines in response to the incidence of mortality at a period when adequate hygiene was absent and germs were unknown as the source of illness. During eras such as the Black Death of the 14th century, pandemics made death a primary priority, with up to half of the population in Europe.

The Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315–1317) and is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of the European population, as well as approximately 33% of the population of the Middle East.^[14][15][16] There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages and, also due to other contributing factors (the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages), the European population did not regain its 14th century level until the 16th century.

The medieval church established the "the art of dying well," in order to encourage people to think about death and how it affects them. Medieval people got acquainted with the process of dying “Memento Mori” and death via visual aids such as human skulls and corpses, which assisted them in not being identify solely with their bodies in order to be better prepared.

Eastern societies, such as Buddhist Tibet and Japan, emphasized the necessity of making mindful plans for death. The Tibetan Book of the Dead stresses the soul's journey through the Bardo, emphasizing learning, inner labor, and study under a master in assisting the soul to identify the process and make the proper choices for release of life.

The Tibetan text describes, and is intended to guide one through, the experiences that the consciousness has after death, in the bardo, the interval between death and the next rebirth. The text also includes chapters on the signs of death and rituals to undertake when death is closing in or has taken place. The text can be used as either an advanced practice for trained meditators or to support the uninitiated during the death experience.

As a modern world phenomenologist, Jung was fascinated by how people's dreams undergo changes in the years leading up to their death. He believed that this transformation was a natural response to the impending separation from the physical body, indicating that the psyche is somehow conscious of the body's deterioration long before we know or have illness symptoms.

Jung saw the role of our conscious psyche as nurturing guide to this emerging reality, facilitating maximum personal growth before the body's passing away.

The universal aspiration of all people, all ages of all times is to maximize their growth in life before their death, to accumulate as much life experiences and wisdom as they can in order to attain genuine liberation, have the satiation of a life well lived.
For some people this may also mean to be prepared for a transcendence into an enigmatic state governed by space and time that is beyond our human understanding.

Jung suggested that fearing death will inhibit people and push them in the wrong direction.
Instead, we should view death as a goal, the culmination of a life well lived.
But what is a well-lived life?
He stated that a life well lived can be measure by how well have we incarnated the self and how has the ego learned to be receptive to growth, self actualization and achieve individuation. (‘in-dividual,’ who is a separate, indivisible unity or whole -Jung, 1989)

Awareness of death is the key for our temporary existence. “An archetype rich in secret life seeks to add itself to our own individual life in order to make it whole.”

The distinction between animals and humans is eroticism, which results from humans' understanding of their mortality:
"It is because we are human and live in the sober perspective of death that we know this exacerbated violence of eroticism"- Georges Bataille
If we accept this distinction between sex and eroticism, or even if we recognize it within ourselves, we may conclude that sex is associated with reproduction, the creation of the new, to Eros (life instinct), Thanatos (instinct of death), and, as Freud stated they both drives produce libido, which is the force of life.

According to Sigmund Freud, humans have a life instinct—which he named "Eros"—and a death drive, which is commonly called (though not by Freud himself) "Thanatos". This postulated death drive allegedly compels humans to engage in risky and self-destructive acts that could lead to their own death. Behaviors such as thrill-seeking and aggression are viewed as actions which stem from this Thanatos instinct.

Eroticism and death are related in the way we exercise our capacity to surrender, to lose control and be lead in the world of pleasure and intense feelings.

In our everyday lives, we tend to live in our reasoning heads, which might make us used to being in control. However, our sensual nature requires us to surrender and experience liberation (to not be confuse with escapism). Trusting ourselves, trusting life, and our capacity to let our emotions out is the essence of eroticism and genuine pleasure.

When we shut down for an extended period of time when we don't feel alive, open, or receptive, it can be because we may fear life. Not wanting to live is synonimous with not wanting to die. It’s called “Passive suicidal ideation”.

Being receptive and curious is a symptom of aliveness and good mental health, and it is not about saying yes or no; it is about staying curious to experience whatever life bring you, without expecting others to desire the same things; your desires are fully your own.

”Wanting is something that we fully own. No one can make us want except for ourselves.”- Esther Perel

Death drive/death wish

Freud believed that most people channel their death instinct outward. Some people, however, direct it at themselves. Depression has often been described as "anger turned inward." Many with suicidal ideation make disparaging and aggressive self-statements.
This also relates to Freud's theory; some people are driven to destroy themselves.

“Several studies have examined its affect on other risky behaviors—promiscuous sex, gambling, drugs—and determined that those with less secure attachments are more likely to engage in dangerous activities.

And then there’s the common perception that extreme sports enthusiasts are chasing thrills, but Tim Woodman, a sports psychology professor at the Bangor University in Wales, suggests that it's about something altogether different: emotional regulation. In his view, people who partake in high-risk sports often have difficulty experiencing emotions, a condition called alexithymia.
They seek out extreme sports as a way to actually feel.

“These activities force emotion out of them and that primary emotion is fear. So the person who has difficulty with emotions, goes into an environment to feel their emotions,”

Risk-taking activities become an empowering exercise for someone who struggles to feel and express emotions in daily life, enabling them to overcome the most fundamental feeling of all: fear of death.
According to Woodman, "it is rewarding because they have moved from a sense of inadequacy to a sense of achievement."

Extreme sports can provide therapeutic neuromodulation for individuals with ADHD, eliciting positive reinforcement potential through dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, endorphins, and stress hormones. This can help modulate behavior, reversing under-activation in the prefrontal cortex and dysregulation of brain pathways involved in attention and impulse control.

Our genetics, personality traits, biological, psychological, and psychic states are all unique, and we need to find our own way to understand how we relate to life, death, and our tendency toward self-destruction (internalized guilt) and get as little influence as we can when it comes to what is good for us.

In her paper Jinica Torrez The Death Mother and Me talks about her past and her self destructive behavior: ”It seems to me that having internalized Death Mother while growing up, when we find ourselves doing something that we deem to be unacceptable, we silently direct our own Death Mother back on ourselves. At such times we aren’t aware of what is happening; all we know is that we have fallen into a self-created and private hell.

If while growing up we sensed that we were unacceptable to our parents, or if we were not wanted, then our nervous system will have become hyper-vigilant. Our cells will have been imprinted with a profound fear of abandonment; as a consequence, our body will numb-out the moment that we feel threatened. As soon as we realize that we are no longer pleasing somebody we freeze; we are thrown back into our belief that we are unlovable, which then activates our ever-present, but unconscious, terror of annihilation. (p. 179). “

An important part of death education, I feel, is that nobody tells us how to grieve or what grief is, and we do not know what to expect to feel when we lose something or when someone dies. I know for a fact that not knowing what grief is took decades of my life; otherwise, if someone had explained to me what grief can look like, my life would have been different. We tend to minimize our grief and how others experience it, or we compare our wounds like it's a sort of contest. Everybody feels different.

Depression, guilt, anxiety, anger, and loneliness can all be common emotions experienced by people who have lost someone or something important to them. You may experience a period in which you deny the loss as a subconscious way of defending yourself. 

Understanding grief can help us understand death in a different way.

”During this time, your emotions might feel numb. However, once you move past the denial stage, all the feelings you may have been holding in might come out at once. Moving rapidly from one emotion to the next can be normal, and it usually helps to let yourself feel each of them. Since everyone can feel different things during their grief, no emotion may be abnormal or something to be ashamed of.”*4

Orgasm/ “La petite mort”

Besides the theoretical explanations about how orgasm both serves and originates in the death drive, many clinicians confirm that orgasm may, in fact, feel like destruction and death.

Psychoanalyst Sylvan Keiser stated that “orgasm is often accompanied by momentary loss of consciousness”.

“The fear is variously described as dying, as losing oneself, as bursting, disintegrating, dissolving into the air, melting into a liquid that evaporates, disappearing into space, becoming nonexistent. This anxiety is precipitated specifically by apprehension of the physiological, momentary unconsciousness that accompanies a healthy orgasm, which is comparable to death or to falling asleep—all accompanied by withdrawal of cathexis from the body ego”. Body Ego During Orgasm- Keiser

“La petite mort (French pronunciation: [la pətit mɔʁ]; lit. 'the little death') is an expression that refers to a brief loss or weakening of consciousness, and in modern usage refers specifically to a post-orgasm sensation as likened to death.^[1]

The first attested use of the expression in English was in 1572 with the meaning of "fainting fit". It later came to mean "nervous spasm" as well.
The first attested use with the meaning of "orgasm" was in 1882.^[1] In modern usage, this term has generally been interpreted to describe the post-orgasmic state of unconsciousness that certain people perceive after having some sexual experiences.

More widely, it can refer to the spiritual release that comes with orgasm or to a short period of melancholy or transcendence as a result of the expenditure of the "life force". Literary critic Roland Barthes spoke of la petite mort as the chief objective of reading literature, the feeling one should get when experiencing any great literature.

The term la petite mort does not always apply to sexual experiences. It can also be used when some undesired thing has happened to a person and has affected them so much that "a part of them dies inside."

Orgasm anxiety

Psychologist Seymour Fisher (1973) added that “when the fear of ego dissolution becomes too great, anxiety is aroused, which ‘shuts down’ and blocks further sexual arousal” (p. 62). This fear is related to the fear of death. Interestingly, a student of Freud, psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1968/1973), also claimed that “fear of death and dying is identical with unconscious orgasm anxiety” (p. 155). Therefore, if we want to help our patients to experience orgasm, we need to notice the death that wants to be heard and to which submission is blocked through orgasmic disorder.

I hope that this theoretical discussion offers hypotheses as to how the closest form of death known to the human psyche—the death instinct—might shed light on the etiology and treatment of female orgasmic disorder. My intention is that that this presentation may give life to the death drive, and that the ramifications and implications of this theoretical discussion will be useful in clinical settings. I hope that this topic will be developed further with thoughts, clinical observation, and inquiry. Sometimes, we must let ourselves die in order to live.

Sometimes women have an imbalance between the Eros-life force inhibiting the psyche, leading to sadism, and the Thanatos-death drive inhibiting the mind, causing masochism. Sadistic beliefs prevent women from achieving orgasm (anorgasmia, an inability to achieve sexual orgasm), whereas masochistic beliefs allow for orgasm only under conditions of pain and suffering.
The key to our satisfying sexual experiences is to find a balance between those two forces.

Having a healthy orgasm requires us to surrender, let go, rise above our egos, and take our time to feel sensual, connected to ourselves and our lover(s).

Each night we die to ourselves through falling asleep. 

It appears that critical rationalism, like numerous other mythological concepts, has eradicated the notion of transformative death. This is merely the result of the fact that the majority of individuals today identify themselves practically solely with their consciousness identity, status and consider themselves to be nothing more than what they know.

We live in an intellectually dominant era characterized by rationalism and dogmatism that claim to have every answer; there is little room for us to contemplate or even recognize that our knowledge is limited to what our senses can perceive, that nature existed long before us, and that the universe holds all atoms together in a manner that we can merely comprehend.

There is much yet to be discovered that could have been considered unthinkable from our current limited perspective. While the accuracy of our notions of space and time may be questionable, we are still alive despite all odds and have the opportunity to create a unique emotional, physical spectrum for ourselves.

The essence of being alive does not revolve on pursuing or achieving specific goals. Our journey is about becoming ourselves, meeting ourselves in the mirror of life, stage by stage, decade by decade, saying goodbye to parts of yourself, returning to yourself, or welcoming a new self.

In a culture that seeks immortality at all costs, with a constant preoccupation to extend our lifespans as this is the "correct" measurement of life, we paradoxically spend most of our lives indoors, on our phones, in the gym obsessing over our muscle mass and body fat, filling the beauty salons in search of eternal beauty, working difficult full-time jobs that we hate in order to spend all of our money on things we don't need, but we must have them.
Considering the overall quality of our lives, where and to whom we give away valuable power, energy, and limited hours of our time here, how we are truly living our lives, what we might better for ourselves and people around us, and what alternative possibilities are available, are maybe the right questions.

The current state of the planet, our only playground and home, is simply a reflection of how lost is our connection to nature; it is a clear mirror that we are self-destroying, and for those who choose to have children, they will leave the legacy of a lost paradise if we refuse to take accountability of our own state of mind, our impact on nature.

“Aging and death need to be seen as a single reality, aging-and-death. Separating them largely voids the lessons to be learned from aging, and the benefits of seeing life as a whole and learning a new sense of beauty, meaning, hope, and love. All the distinctive experiences central to our sense of ourselves as human beings are tied to recognition of our mortality. Living a full life means accepting and embracing death as not only inevitable, but necessary and desirable.”*3

Establishing a healthy connection with our physical bodies and curious minds is the first step toward creating one of the most significant and gratifying relationships we will ever have in this life time: one with ourselves.

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I write because it’s how I make sense of the world—how I listen, how I speak, how I stay close to what matters.But this isn’t just something I do in the quiet hours, in that space we artists share—our solitude.
It’s also work. A lot of work. It takes time, presence, and energy—resources as real and limited as anyone else’s.

If you find something here that moves you or lingers in you, consider becoming a paid subscriber or offer a coffee. It’s a simple act that carries weight.

You’re not just supporting a writer—you’re helping someone continue the work that feels most true. And you receive something real in return.

Thank you for reading, for arriving, for being here. That, too, matters more than you know.

LOVE AFTER LOVE
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

End of life checklist:
https://untanglegrief.com/end-of-life-planning-checklist/

References Books:
Bataille Georges: Erotism Death and Sensuality
Carl Jung on Death and Immortality
Articles:
1*The Death Mother and Me
2*Quote by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins
3*Accepting and Embracing Our Mortality
4*National grief awareness day
The Death Drive As The Essence Of The Orgasm: Unsilencing The Positive Aspects Of Thanatos
Why Eroticism Should Be Part of your Self-Care Plan
Podcast: This Jungian Life