The Death Temptation

The Death Temptation
Death Temptation: the space of choosing death over life because the pain has been too much to bear. (Mario Wallner/Pexels)
By Amanda Elithorn, undefined
9/28/2022
Updated:
3/24/2023
I am writing this from a basis of my truth, something that is deeply true to my beliefs and understanding of the world and also knowing that this is not a place or a belief for many people. (It maybe wiser for some to stop reading now…) 
I believe that sickness can have a deep emotional cause. Therefore as part of healing it is important to treat not only the easing of physical symptoms but also an awareness of the energetic emotional block that is part of the whole story. 
In this vein, I recently stepped into a curious space of feeling myself manifesting dis-ease within myself. 

I had stepped into the Death Temptation.

Despite my classic moments of crass insensitivity, I do also empathetically resonate to others’ pain; tears well easily to stories of heartbreak and I feel others’ fears of loss and sadness deep within my system.  So it should be no surprise to me that at times I carry the energy of my friends’ and loved-ones’ dis-eases too.
I am nearing mid life and as such, conspiring with the heavy toxicity of our western lifestyle, there is cancer and illness at too many doors right now. One in two the statistics say. I have been holding the fears and news of many and it has been hard not to hear the ‘what if’… knocking at my own door. 
But the death temptation is not just about carrying the fear of physical death it is, thematically, a more deep rooted emotional block. It is a reaction to disappointment, heartbreak or loss; a battle against life itself. Death in this form is a, conscious or subconscious, power struggle towards self destruction.  The message is that death is perhaps the only thing that could end the pain and exhaustion. 

And this is where holistic medicine works so brilliantly for me. In the last few years I have experienced two enormous heart breaks, I have heard myself speak the words out loud ‘my heart is broken’.

Twice.

And for two very different reasons. I remember the ‘heartbreak’ of my teens and twenties, all boy related of course (!), and they were real but oh so very gentle compared to this grief that has consumed my body and soul. 
And I thought I had processed them well, and I had, but not enough. I have reasoned my way through these processes and not allowed myself to acknowledge the true depth of pain they have caused within me. So when my body started showing me signs of physical discomfort that resonated with all this fear and reality of dis-ease around me, I took myself to my extraordinary and wonderful homeopath who treats the soul and heart alongside the body. 
And she enlightened me to the Death Temptation, this space of choosing death over life because the pain has been too much to bear. 
And she showed me another way. 
ReBirth. 
It is time for me to rise through the pain of loss, to claim my rightful place in the world; to live, to learn, to teach, to love.  
I have faced the temptation of death and I choose transformation instead. 
As always with endless gratitude to Anne .

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