向下閱讀中文How should we live our lives? By really connecting to ourselves (our bodies and relationships) and valuing every moment. I read an article recently by Dr. Casey Means and was moved by how she rethinking death.

On Rethinking Death
By Dr. Casey Means
Excerpted from her new book, Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health

In medical school, I was taught that anything—no matter the cost, side effects, or societal toll—is justifiable to prevent death, even if it only is to squeak out a few more painful, vegetative days. The message patients receive from hospitals and pharma companies isn’t that “we are going to keep you healthy and help you have the best possible life”—it is that “we are going to keep you alive.”

For me, death was my greatest fear from childhood and into adulthood and the one I have had to address head-on to unpeel the layers shielding me from good energy. I have spent more of my life worrying about the ways I or my family could die than about any other issue. Death was the reason for my mind racing countless nights. Death is why I got into medicine.

A set of experiences with my mother beginning in early 2020 changed my perspective on worry—particularly about death—forever. Concerned about her rising glucose and cholesterol levels, I took her to Sedona for “Dr. Casey’s Bootcamp” of proven actions to improve metabolic health: extended fasting, cold plunging, exercise, morning sunrise hikes. It was a year before we’d discover her pancreatic cancer.

Having not eaten for three days and am on a ketone high. I felt euphoric as my mom and I looked at the towering Red Rock Mountains together. My mom and I had hiked to the top of a ridge in the dark for a full-moon drum circle that we’d heard about from a local art gallery, and she and I danced together in the moonlight with abandon.

Looking at the towering rocks, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that the mountains and I were made of much the same thing. The atoms that make up my body have been on the earth since its creation some 4.6 billion years ago. And for a brief sliver of time, my mitochondria produce ATP to power the organization of these atoms into my tissues, organs, and ultimately me.

In Sedona, my mom and I talked about how the ideas of “self” and the finality of death were illusions. In reality, large portions of our bodies are dying on a regular basis—we each shed more than a pound of cells each day. Our cells make up to 88 percent of dust in our homes. In medical school, I looked at slivers of body parts on slides under the microscope and was surprised to see the full spectrum of life and death happening inside what seemed like an “adult” living body. But at the microscopic level, cells were dying, dividing, being born, aging at vastly different rates. At the cellular level, we die and are reborn trillions upon trillions of times in one “lifetime.” The discarded matter from our bodies returns to the earth and eventually creates new things. Fossil fuels, which supply 80 percent of the earth’s energy today, are nothing more than the remains of animals and plants that existed millions of years ago. We are literally powering our cars and homes with the atoms that made up our ancestors.

It is merely a limitation of our visual systems that we don’t see these innumerable reactions happening every second in our body and the constant creation and re-creation that makes up our world.

I speculated with my mom about whether the discarded pieces of myself would be taken up into a delicious piece of broccoli that feeds a child. Or maybe I would supply some carbons that will be pounded into a perfect diamond. Or maybe I will donate some atomic dust to a gust of wind that helps form mountain ranges that are yet to exist.

Probably all the above, plus other forms I can’t even conceive of.

The impact we have on others—the people we love, the people we mistreat, the people we teach, the people who read our writing—literally changes their biology and lives forever. As my mom and I danced and hugged under the moonlight, I thought about how this loving experience with her was literally changing the physical neural pathways and biology in my body through neurotransmitter and hormone release, reinforcing synapses, and transferring microbiomes to each other. My experience of her—and all people with whom I choose to interact— will physically encode itself in me.

On January 7, 2021, I received a FaceTime call from my mother while I was preparing dinner, tears streaming down her face as she told me that she was dying, that she had to leave me, and that she would not meet my future children. She relayed that she had learned earlier that day that her vague stomach pain had actually been widely metastatic stage 4 pancreatic cancer and she had softball-sized tumors all throughout her belly.

Over the next thirteen days—the final days of my mom’s consciousness, she received hundreds of letters about the impact she’d had on people’s lives. I will never forget the gratitude and poignant emotion on her face as she sat reading them, while outside on the porch overlooking the Pacific. Every note was from a human who’d been biochemically changed because of my mother’s impact on them. Just as we had talked about in Sedona, I could feel that she was fundamentally immortal due to her impact on everyone in her life and her energetic ripple effect in the universe, which every one of us is connected to and contributes to by our sheer existence. She was without fear as she held my hand and told me that she could feel her life force rapidly retreating.

Days after she died, we buried her in a natural cemetery along the coastline. How profound to lower her beautiful body into a small patch of dirt next to the endless expanse of the ocean. This woman—whom my brother and I had lived inside of, our source, who built my body and consciousness, who traveled the world, and who impacted thousands of people—disintegrated into the earth to feed the trees and flowers and mushrooms above her in an eternal cycle.

Worrying about the years her physical body existed on Earth seemed so irrelevant. All my years of anxiety about my mortality and the mortality of my family had been wasted energy. Death is uncontrollable and it is OK. I feel that because when I held my mother as she took last breath, she was OK. In her final waking moments, she whispered to me that we are here to protect the energy of the universe. That it all—the life, the death—was perfect.

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We all encounter death somehow in our lives, either by hearing our friends' friends pass away suddenly or by experiencing our own aging. Mindfulness is a way to truly experience our essence and joy at any moment, especially during challenging times. Thank you for creating this awakened, beautiful space through mindfulness among yourself and around you!

Peace and always love,

Caroline

我們應該如何生活？答案可能是通過真正地與自己（我們的身體和關係）連接，並珍惜每一刻。

我最近讀了一篇Dr. Casey Means寫的文章，她對死亡的重新思考讓我感動。

重新思考死亡

作者：Dr. Casey Means 摘自她的新書《好能量：新陳代謝與無限健康之間的驚人聯繫》

在醫學院，我被教導說，不論代價、副作用或對社會的影響如何，任何事情都是為了防止死亡而合理的，即使這只是為了勉強多活幾天痛苦、植物人般的日子。醫院給病人的訊息不是 “我們讓你保持健康，幫助你擁有最好的可能生活”，而是 “我們能讓你活著”。

對我來說，從童年到成年，死亡一直是我最大的恐懼，也是我必須正面解決的恐懼，以揭開遮蔽我內在好能量的層層保護。我生命中的大部分時間都在擔心我或我的家人可能會死亡，而不是關心其他任何問題。無數個夜晚，死亡是我腦海裡不斷旋轉的原因。進入醫學界的動力就是對死亡的恐懼。

2020年初，我和母親的一系列經歷永遠地改變了我對於擔憂 — 特別是對死亡擔憂的看法。擔心她上升的葡萄糖和膽固醇水平，我帶她去了Sedona參加“Dr. Casey的訓練營”，進行了一系列證明能改善新陳代謝健康的行動：延長禁食、冷水潛水、運動、清晨日出遠足。直到一年後，我們才發現她患有胰腺癌。

在禁食三天後，我處於酮症高潮，感到狂喜，當我和媽媽一起看著壯觀的紅岩山時。我和媽媽在黑暗中爬上一個山脊的頂部，參加了一個我們從當地一家藝術畫廊聽說的滿月鼓圈，我們在月光下放肆地跳舞。

看著巍峨的岩石，我腦海中無法擺脫的想法是，山脈和我由非常相似的材料構成。構成我身體的原子自地球形成以來約46億年來一直存在。在一段極短的時間內，我的線粒體產生ATP，以驅動這些原子組織成我的組織、器官，最終形成我自己。

在Sedona，我和媽媽談論了“自我”觀念和死亡的最終性都是幻象的想法。實際上，我們的身體大部分定期在死亡——我們每天都會脫落超過一磅的細胞。我們的細胞構成了家中塵埃的88%。在醫學院，當我在顯微鏡下觀察切片上的身體部分時，驚訝地發現在看似“成年”的活體內部，生命和死亡的全光譜正在發生。但在顯微層面上，細胞正在死亡、分裂、誕生、以不同的速度老化。在一個“生命”中，我們在細胞層面上死亡和重生了無數次。我們身體中被丟棄的物質返回大地，最終創造新的事物。化石燃料，今天提供地球80%的能量，不過是數百萬年前存在的動植物遺骸。我們實際上是用構成我們祖先的原子來驅動我們的汽車和家庭。

我們的視覺系統的限制使我們看不見這無數的反應每秒在我們身體內發生，以及不斷創造和重創的過程構成了我們的世界。

我和媽媽猜想，我自己丟棄的部分是否會被一片美味的西蘭花吸收，然後餵養一個孩子。或許我會提供一些碳原子，被壓成一顆完美的鑽石。或者，我會捐獻一些原子塵埃給一陣風，幫助形成尚未存在的山脈。可能上述所有情況都會發生，加上其他我甚至無法想象的形式。

我們對他人的影響——我們愛的人、我們虐待的人、我們教導的人、讀我們寫作的人——實際上永遠地改變了他們的生物學和生活。當我和媽媽在月光下跳舞和擁抱時，我想到這與她的愛意體驗實際上通過神經遞質和激素釋放在我體內改變了物理神經通道和生物學，強化了突觸，並將微生物群轉移給了彼此。我對她的經歷——以及我選擇互動的所有人——將在我體內物理地編碼。

2021年1月7日，我在準備晚餐時收到了我母親的FaceTime來電，她流著淚告訴我她要死了，她必須離開我，她將不會見到我的未來孩子。她轉達說，她那天早些時候得知她的模糊腹痛實際上是晚期4期胰腺癌，並且她的腹部遍布著壘球大小的腫瘤。

在我母親意識的最後十三天內，她收到了數百封關於她對人們生活影響的信件。當她坐在俯瞰太平洋的陽台上閱讀它們時，我永遠不會忘記她臉上的感激和深情。每一封來信都來自於因為我母親對他們的影響而生物化學上發生改變的人。正如我們在Sedona談論的，我能感覺到她由於對生活中每一個人的影響以及她在宇宙中的能量漣漪效應，基本上是不朽的，我們每一個人都與之連接並通過我們的存在對其作出貢獻。當她握著我的手告訴我她能感覺到她的生命力迅速退去時，她毫無恐懼。

我母親去世幾天後，我們在海岸線旁的一個自然墓地將她安葬。將她美麗的身體下葬到大海無邊無際的廣闊旁的一小塊土地中是多麼深刻。這位女性——我和我哥哥曾在她體內生活，我們的來源，她構建了我的身體和意識，周遊世界，影響了成千上萬的人——融入大地，養育著上方的樹木、花朵和蘑菇，成為一個永恆的循環。

對於她身體存在於地球上的年份擔憂似乎如此無關緊要。我所有關於自己和家人死亡的焦慮都是浪費的能量。死亡是無法控制的，這是可以接受的。我感到這一點，因為當我抱著我母親她呼出最後一口氣時，她是安然無恙的。在她最後的清醒時刻，她對我耳語說，我們在這裡是為了保護宇宙的能量。一切——生命，死亡——都是完美的。

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我們所有人在生活中都會以某種方式遇到死亡，無論是聽說我們朋友的朋友突然去世，還是經歷自己的衰老。正念是一種真正體驗我們的本質和歡樂的方式，特別是在充滿挑戰的時刻。讓我們一起通過正念，創造你自己和你周圍這個覺醒、美麗的空間！

祝福，

Caroline