Using the Deathbed Meditation to Challenge Negative Thought Patterns
The ‘deathbed meditation’ is a mental exercise that I thought was an original idea I came up with. But others have stumbled upon this idea before — centuries ago, in fact. It involves visualising yourself on your deathbed, looking back on your life. By doing so, you put your current self into the perspective of your dying self, which gives you an opportunity to look at your current situation, and your past, with a new and fresh point of view. This can provide insight into what matters most to you in life, what you should let go of, what brings you joy, and what life path suits you best.
Essentially, the deathbed meditation is a way of imagining what you would tell yourself if you had reached the end of your life. The deathbed is a place where we reflect on the life we have lived: the memories we cherish the most and, conversely, the regrets we have: the things we wish we had done differently. Our true values and priorities become clarified on the deathbed.
Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish Catholic priest and theologian, discusses in his book Spiritual Exercises (1548) the subject of decision-making. He offers the following suggestion:
I will consider, as if I were at the point of death, what procedure and norm I will at that time wish I had used in the manner of making the present election. Then, guiding myself by that norm, I should make my decision on the whole matter.
It’s important to note that Ignatius is not recommending this deathbed perspective to clarify what decision one should have made but how one went about making that decision. Did one make this decision in a mature, balanced, and virtuous way? For Ignatius, a good decision is one made freely — not limited by habit or fear of change, not shaped by the opinions of others, and not dictated by concerns about wealth and prestige.
On the other hand, I think we can equally use this deathbed meditation to help us figure out what decisions are in our best interest. Moreover, Ignatius, as a priest and theologian, was using this deathbed perspective to figure out how best to serve God in our decision-making. The deathbed meditation I have in mind has no inherent religious connotations (although a religious person may decide to use this visualisation exercise with those connotations).
However, I’ve not been using the deathbed meditation to think differently about life decisions; what attracted me to this form of visualisation was its potential to catalyse cognitive restructuring: the act of identifying and challenging negative thought patterns. A deathbed perspective helps me to recognise — or, I should say, remember — that cycles of negative thoughts are irrational (they’re a waste of time and don’t achieve anything helpful). If I look at them from the point of view of myself on my deathbed, it becomes clear that I would look back on negative rumination in this way: as a waste of precious, limited time. I don’t think anyone would be on their deathbed glad that they spent so much time rehashing the same worries and self-critical thoughts in their head, or regretting that they didn’t spend more time doing this.
The difficulty is remembering to apply the deathbed meditation, which I suppose applies to any technique aimed at cognitive restructuring. If negative thought patterns are automatic and ingrained, then they have to be continually tackled, until the alternative and healthier ways of thinking themselves become more ingrained — more automatic. But so far, I have found this meditation useful for breaking the cycle of negative thought patterns. If I find myself stuck in repetitive thoughts surrounding regrets or perfectionism, imagining myself on my deathbed and interjecting a rational comment (this is a real waste of time) helps unstick me from that mental loop.
The benefit of the deathbed meditation is not just in this negative utilitarian sense: reducing psychological suffering. It is also useful in the positive sense of refocusing my attention on the thoughts and attitudes that improve my moment-to-moment experience in the world. If I were on my deathbed looking back at my life, I would feel glad about being as present-minded as possible and enjoying the small things of the everyday (the details of the environment I find myself in, especially natural settings), rather than being absent-minded and hoping that contentment lies in some future achievement or experience. This feels like a pretty cliche realisation to have. But there is always a risk that if it’s cynically looked at as just a basic cliche, or not articulated clearly, then it won’t be taken seriously and properly integrated as a persisting outlook. I think Schopenhauer best articulated the problem of placing happiness in the future. As he puts it in his essay ‘On the Vanity of Existence’:
We look upon the present as something to be put up with while it lasts, and serving only as the way towards our goal. Hence most people, if they glance back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along they have been living ad interim: they will be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded and let slip by unenjoyed, was just the life in the expectation of which they passed all their time. Of how many a man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death!
As we can see, Schopenhauer here is also engaged in a deathbed visualisation exercise. He uses it to point out that the hindsight of the deathbed underscores how we often live detached from life, with our attention placed on an imagined future. (This way of thinking is very Buddhist, of course, but Schopenhauer’s philosophy is known to match Buddhist thought in several ways.) The deathbed meditation can help us challenge negative thought patterns, by highlighting how we would certainly look back on them as wasteful. Conversely, this meditation can show us the habits of thought that we would reflect on as being essential to contentment. These might be an attitude of appreciation for life and its particularities or an aesthetic view of the world. Thinking about yourself being on your deathbed may feel a bit macabre, but it can be an effective way to improve your mental well-being in the present.
Originally published at https://www.samwoolfe.com on July 22, 2024.
