Chapter 2: Damp Tram Ticket

My awakening to the reality of my inevitable death came like a slap across the face. Then I go one step further to characterise it as a slap from a damp tram ticket. I just want to say that this is not the same as a slap from a wet kipper. Everything isn’t all the one thing. It’s all about nuance in context. The context here is the mindful reflection on what just happened and then the process of deciding what will happen next. It’s not about being knocked for six.

At this point, I don’t want to dive into the details of my slap, there’s time for that later. The focus here is on the process, rather than getting bogged down in the personal and situational details. Here’s my illustration:

You walk into the doctor’s room as he gestures for you to sit. You sit nervously, hoping for good news, guessing it’ll be bad. He silently reads the computer screen. His eyebrows twitch. He sighs. He taps the mouse with a crooked finger and flicks it away. He swivels to face you, leans forward, bouncing his palms off his knees, then clasping his hands, he says, “Sorry, but it’s not good news. That spot on your liver is a metastasised malignant growth.”

To be honest, you feel the lump in your throat as you ask, more pitifully than expected, “So it is cancer?”

At this point the doctor is grateful that you said “cancer” first. The big C. You’ve made his job easier. All he has to do now is lean back, elbows on the armrests, and say, “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

That’s the damp tram ticket slapping you across your face. The next logical question is, “How long have I got?” You need to know. You’ve got things to do, places to go, people to see.

Why not a slap from a wet kipper? A slap from a wet kipper is humorous but a bit too brutal and obvious. There’s no mistaking it. You could be knocked off your feet, left numbed and disoriented. We don’t need that.

A slap from a damp tram ticket is about irony. Something has happened, but what does it mean? The full picture may not be visible at first. You’ve heard the words “it’s cancer” but don’t be surprised if it hasn’t sunk in yet. Expect to go through a series of realisations over the days or weeks ahead. You just need to allow yourself access to these realisations.

You can probably imagine the variety of responses to the fatal news. Some people will react with shock and horror. Some will react with disinterest. Some will try to do both.

Regardless of the response, everyone gets the slap. But not everyone will immediately bring it into consciousness. Shock and horror will drown it out. Disinterest leans on denial. All the same, the slap is a slap.

Whatever your response, you are who you are, and you’ll respond as you do. In psychology we call this personality. It’s you. It’s yours. Your personality isn’t the issue here. Who you are has nothing to do with the fatal news. The real question is getting back to the slap.

In accepting this journey, now at its beginning, my aim is to embrace the slap. If I got knocked off my feet at first, or tried to believe it didn’t matter, I can come back to it with a mindful attitude. I take on an understanding of what it means. I’ve been alerted. But alerted to what exactly? Horror? Or opportunity?

To begin with, I need to figure out where I stand. Is my death something I have to do? Or something that just happens? For it to be my final achievement, it’s something I must do. The irony is, it’s happening to me, and, I must do it. My choice is to accept that it’s happening and to see it as an opportunity for my final achievement. It’s the choice that’s important here.

From the slap, insights began coming to me. For example, the slap is a slap because of what fatal news means. I need to reconcile this meaning. At first, it looks like it’s all about all loss and no gain. I miss out on all the fun and get nothing in return. So, what’s in it for me? It’s easy to see why religion is popular with dying people. The promise of an afterlife makes it doable. You reconcile your loss against the eternal bliss of a wonderful afterlife, or so the story goes.

I’ve been equivocal on the afterlife. I’d love to believe in it. But life’s lessons tell me that hope is ultimately hollow. Dreams and desires happen if the conditions are right, not because we’re hopeful. An afterlife is belief, not fact. It’s theory, and I don’t mistake theory for knowledge.

I want to believe. It’d probably would be easier if I did. If I believed, I could be happy-clapping all the way. And there’d be no consequences for being wrong. If I died believing and there was no afterlife, there’d be no egg on my face, no consciousness of being dead, therefore no embarrassment.

Although I’d love to believe in an afterlife, I really don’t. I’ve decided to be unequivocal and focus on my final achievement. I hedge my bets with the following strategy: if, when I die, I find myself at the pearly gates, I’ll go in. Don’t you worry about that. But I won’t be holding my breath waiting.

I understand the pull of the afterlife beyond just pure hope. I’ve had many supernatural experiences such as, out-of-body experiences, visitations from various entities, physical touches in visitations, lucid dreaming (which is marvellous by the way), Satori moments of pure bliss. I’ve felt these events. As a psychologist, I say confidently, how you feel is not theory. But as soon as you talk cause and effect, you’re talking theory. In psychology, in this context, it’s called “attribution theory”. Theory is too often mistaken for knowledge.

My understanding of “no afterlife”, despite these experiences, comes from insights over my life. I’m influenced by evidence. That wasn’t the case in my early life, where I was driven by intuition and theory. Then, about thirty years ago in my early forties, I completed a Masters by research. That research screwed my head off and put it back on slightly differently. I saw things differently from then on.

Before that, I hadn’t really appreciated psychology as a science. I got through my undergraduate degree without seriously challenging any of my wacky psychodynamic theories. Scientific method, where you test the null hypothesis rather than just confirming what you already know, has a wonderful way of debunking intuitive truths. When I say “intuition”, I mean the hubris of theory.

The hubris of theory risks placing too much faith in abstract concepts without real-world validation. This is the hubris of popular culture and social media. Do your own research and google “counterintuitive findings in psychology”. You’ll have plenty to read.

Personality is a human variable. Whenever you describe someone and distinguish them from others, you’re talking personality. When you describe yourself as someone who experiences the supernatural, then you’re describing an aspect of your personality, not the supernatural. In popular culture, supernatural experiences become proof of the supernatural. In fact, they’re proof of a particular personality profile.

Only certain people have supernatural experiences. Only certain people can be hypnotised. Only certain people can relax their body with internal cues alone. The personality trait is called Absorption. In English, “the person has an absorptive personality”. They can absorb themselves into an experience. It’s a talent.

The intuitive approach is to believe that supernatural experiences make you gifted. Or that someone who can’t be hypnotised is blocking or resisting. Or that needing biofeedback to relax means you’re lazy. In reality, these behaviours are about ability. For example, if you can’t complete a two-metre high-jump, it’s not because you’re stupid or lazy, you just don’t have the ability. It’s not your fault.

I’ll provide two examples from research in psychology to illustrate Trait Absorption as an ability. These are not isolated examples. They represent a body of research involving trait absorption. It is this type of research, and my own research, that changed my intuitive and theoretical mindset.

The first example from the UK into the phenomena of astral travel. The researcher called for people who have regular out of body and astral traveling experiences. The self-selecting volunteers were all tested and were found to have high scores on the Trait Absorption Scale. This finding simply meant that the research was on track. In other words, the sample of astral-travellers was not random on Absorption.

The real test, however, was in the verification of the traveling. For this, the astral, travellers were forensically interviewed for the details of their most vivid out of body experience. For example, one traveller described flying around the tops of the tall buildings in the London city centre. She was asked for the details. Which buildings did she see? Can she name a building? Now can she describe the colour, texture, and material of the roofing of that building? Then the researcher would go to the place and check the details. In this research, there were no examples where the astral traveller’s descriptions actually matched the physical properties of the actual locations. In other words, the astral travellers were able to provide vivid descriptions of the places that they visited, but clearly, they had not actually been to those places to witness the location’s physical properties.

The second example comes from Queensland University. The research investigated the use of biofeedback to gain deep muscle relaxation. A random sample of participants were tested for their ability to achieve relaxation with and without biofeedback. Also, they were tested on the Absorption scale.

The findings here are very interesting. The absorptive participants were better at achieving relaxation without biofeedback. The low absorptive participants were able to achieve relaxation better with biofeedback. Simply, this demonstrates that those with the talent to absorb themselves into the experience of relaxation found the biofeedback an unnecessary distraction. The low absorptive people found the biofeedback useful because it provided information about their internal state that is not easily accessible to them.

It’s important to say that I’m not debunking the afterlife. I’m trying to decide where I’ll focus my attention during the time that I do have left. Should I be searching for ways to cope with the horror and loss? Or should I be focused on living, right up to the last moment?

As an absorptive person, I'm capable of tapping into the experience of an afterlife, and thus satisfy myself that I’m onto something, and that everything will be ok. In other words, I’m capable of creating the experience that gives me hope. And so, do I need that? Is that what I need? Do I need to placate myself, to protect myself, from the horror and loss of death? Is this where I need to devote my energy with the time I have left?

It seems to me that the afterlife has nothing to do with being dead. It’s something that we do when we’re alive. In other words, I would evoke the afterlife before I die. This is like using a topical anaesthetic before getting an injection, so you can face the pain of the jab. So, rather than leaning on hope or avoiding despair, I focus on my final achievement. This is something that I certainly can-do whist I’m alive and it’s directly relevant to being alive. I see the eyes-wide-open approach as desirable. That’s what I want. I’m sure that this approach will heighten my senses and sharpen my wit.

If you take on your death as your final achievement, you’ll do it your way. I’ll do it without leveraging an afterlife, or so I say. I wonder what it would take to change my mind. It’ll take more than an unusual event, given what I’ve concluded about all that. This is my fix: I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

My realisations from the slap are about observing myself and noticing how the pull of the afterlife is such a natural reflex. I find myself lapsing into head-chatter that draws me into the lullaby of the afterlife. I find too that I could easily lapse into a trance or dissociative state, staring off into the distance blissfully unaware of myself. That’s when I remember the slap to re-connect with real-time to heighten my senses and sharpen my wit whilst I’m alive.