Death: The End of Self-Improvement

This book celebrates the great stripping process of aging, dying and spiritual awakening. Beautiful, poignant, at times humorous, transcendent, messy, down to earth, refreshingly honest—the book explores death, and more importantly, being alive, through a rich mix of personal stories and spiritual reflections. Joan writes about her mother’s final years and about being with friends and teachers at the end of their lives. She shares her own journey with aging, anal cancer, and other life challenges. She explores what it means to be alive in what may be the collapse of civilization and the possible extinction of life on earth due to climate change. Pointing beyond deficiency stories, future fantasies, and oppressive self-improvement projects, Joan invites an awakening to the immediacy of this moment and the wonder of ordinary life. She demonstrates a pathless path of genuine transformation, seeing all of life as sacred and worthy of devotion, and finding joy in the full range of our human experience. The book is about fully embracing death, and therefore life, whole-heartedly and relaxing into the total disintegration and loss of control that growing old and falling apart—and living and loving and being awake—actually entail. It faces the sometimes painful and often messy realities of aging and death without turning away. But at the same time, it sees the beauty in the mess and the hardship. Joan’s view of spirituality includes all of life. Hence, the book includes many things often seen as "unspiritual" or even unmentionable. The book points to the transcendent right here in the ordinary actuality of this moment, just as it is.Reviews:Beautiful, profound, tender, playful, serious, true. Joan’s spirit is so remarkable, her humor, and her sense of being alive and grateful. A rare jewel.—Lenore Friedman, Meetings with Remarkable WomenWhat’s remarkable and unique to me about Joan's book is the congruence of the presentation with the teachings she offers. The story of her life, the way she unfolds and reveals the whole mess of it, from birth to death—tears, laughter and poop—perfectly models what she is teaching: the Here-Nowness of everything, beyond right and wrong, seamlessly coming and going—in and out of linear time—all of it one whole Unicity. What’s special and remarkable for me about Joan is her utter transparency and humility as a teacher, always a student sharing and acknowledging the teachings of other teachers, seeking therapy and talking about it openly, as she does her illness, fears, etc. All of it! No high horse for Joan. Just one of the gang, like me, like everyone.—Dot Fisher-Smith, artist, poet, activistTollifson doesn’t claim that embracing unpleasant experiences will stop them being unpleasant. Rather—and in a way that’s hard to express in words—it stops them being a problem. It becomes possible to be “at peace with exactly how it is, even [including] the not-being-at-peace that sometimes arises.” We tend to assume, Tollifson writes, that a life of dignity “means being in control, not being overwhelmed by emotion, not screaming or crying in pain, not losing control of our bowels, not losing our minds, and so on”. But perhaps there’s more dignity in deciding not to run from what can’t be outrun. “Old age,” she goes on, “is an adventure in uselessness, loss of control, being nobody and giving up everything.” The challenge is to see which new experiences of decay and decline you’re able to welcome – since they will, in any case, be showing up at your door.— Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for MortalsThis book is great beyond words. It opened up a kind of "vista" for me that I have never experienced before. It was like my 'authentic' self suddenly emerged and everything was seen through the lens of wonder and it's still happening. —Eric Gross, Liberation from The Lie Read more