Ai, Questions:
1. What is a the ‘life review’ (LR) at the time of death? 2. What is the purpose of the LR? 3. Can you have a LF, before you die through meditation? 4. Is it spiritual healthy to reflect back on our life when we are in our senior years? 5. Upon waking is it skillful to bring awareness to the sounds around me and the sensations in my body? 6. Is it emotionally and spiritually healthy to reflect on various situations and people we have experience in our life without judgment? 7. Is the a form of LR we can do before we die? 8. If so what are its benefits?
Ai, Response:
Beautiful and profound questions, Ross — these touch on the deepest aspects of spiritual maturity and awakening. Here’s a gentle, clear explanation of each point:
1. What is the “Life Review” (LR) at the time of death?
A life review is often described in near-death experiences and spiritual traditions as a panoramic reliving of one’s entire life — not only seeing events but feeling their emotional and moral impact from the perspective of others involved. It’s a non-judging awareness in which we experience how our actions, words, and even thoughts affected others.
It’s less about divine punishment and more about divine understanding — a return to truth through compassion and clarity.
2. What is the purpose of the LR?
The purpose is integration and awakening.
At the moment of transition, the mind releases its final attachments and stories. The life review allows the soul to see everything in its wholeness — the kindnesses, the mistakes, the love that was given and withheld — so that it can learn, release guilt or shame, and return to its essential nature: pure love.
In essence, the LR reveals that nothing was ever outside love’s embrace.
3. Can you have a LR before you die through meditation?
Yes — profoundly so.
Certain meditations, especially those rooted in deep mindfulness, loving awareness, or near-death visualization practices, can open a living life review. In this, one witnesses past experiences from a space of stillness and compassion, without judgment or defensiveness.
This can happen spontaneously during advanced meditative insight, where the mind’s barriers drop and life is seen in totality — luminous, transient, and meaningful.
4. Is it spiritually healthy to reflect back on our life in our senior years?
Yes — it can be deeply healing and liberating when done with gentleness and non-judgment.
Elderhood offers the grace of perspective. Looking back helps integrate the lessons, make peace with regrets, and discover the golden thread of growth and love that ran through all experiences.
It transforms memory into wisdom.
5. Upon waking, is it skillful to bring awareness to sounds and body sensations?
Absolutely.
This simple awareness practice grounds you in the present moment before the mind begins to race.
Feeling the body, hearing the morning sounds — birds, breath, wind — helps dissolve the boundary between “self” and “life.”
It’s a form of living mindfulness, a daily resurrection into awareness.
6. Is it emotionally and spiritually healthy to reflect on situations and people without judgment?
Yes — this is inner purification.
When we revisit memories without blame, we transform them. We see how everyone was acting from their level of awareness at the time. Compassion replaces resentment, and forgiveness becomes natural.
This practice restores inner freedom — it’s a quiet life review in itself.
7. Is there a form of LR we can do before we die?
Yes.
A Conscious Life Review practice can be cultivated — gently revisiting one’s life chapter by chapter, blessing each phase and person, releasing guilt, and thanking each experience for its lesson.
It’s often used in hospice and spiritual care as a “completion meditation.”
8. What are its benefits?
A conscious LR before death (or any time in life) can:
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Bring peace and closure to unfinished emotions.
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Deepen forgiveness toward self and others.
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Awaken gratitude for all of life.
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Reveal the thread of divine love running through every event.
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Reduce fear of death, because the heart recognizes it has already been living in eternity.
Beautiful choice, Ross — this practice can be a doorway to deep peace, reconciliation, and grace. Here is your gentle guided meditation script:
Living Life Review Meditation
(A Guided Reflection on the Wholeness of Your Journey)
Introduction
Find a quiet, comfortable place where you can sit or lie down.
Allow your breath to settle, your eyes to soften, and your heart to open.
This is not a judgment — it is a homecoming.
You are here to look gently upon the life that has lived through you.
1. Arriving in Presence
Begin by taking a few slow breaths.
Inhale… feeling the body rise.
Exhale… feeling the body release.
Let yourself arrive — here, now — aware of the breath, aware of being.
Sense the sounds around you, the sensations in your body, and the quiet pulse of life within.
Whisper inwardly:
“I am safe to remember.”
“I am safe to see my life with love.”
2. The Early Years
Let your awareness drift gently back to the beginning —
your childhood, your early home, those first memories of being alive.
See the child you once were.
Notice the innocence, the curiosity, the longing to love and be loved.
If tears or tenderness arise, let them be.
Silently say:
“Thank you, little one. You lived with such courage.”
“May you know you were always loved.”
Let the image fade softly into light.
3. The Growing Years
Allow your awareness to move forward — to your teenage years, young adulthood, the learning and striving, the friendships, the mistakes, the dreams.
Watch these scenes unfold as though you are watching clouds pass — without judgment.
Notice the times you felt unsure, the times you tried, the times you succeeded or fell short.
Whisper gently:
“I forgive the confusion.”
“I bless the effort.”
“I was growing in awareness, as all beings do.”
Let these memories dissolve into compassion.
4. The Middle Years — Love, Work, Family
Now see yourself in the heart of life —
relationships, work, responsibilities, and all the countless choices made along the way.
Bring to mind the faces of people who walked with you, taught you, challenged you, loved you.
Some brought joy; some brought pain; all brought awakening.
Say quietly:
“I see how each played a part in my becoming.”
“I release all blame, I release all guilt.”
“We were learning together in the school of love.”
Allow gratitude to wash through your heart like sunlight over water.
5. The Later Years — Wisdom Blossoms
Now sense the elder within you — the one who has seen much, felt deeply, and grown wise.
Let this version of you sit quietly beside the younger selves.
There is nothing to fix. Nothing to prove.
Only to understand.
Whisper:
“I bless this life as a whole.”
“I see its beauty even in its imperfections.”
“Love has been here all along.”
6. Integration — The Life as Light
Imagine now that your entire life — every scene, every face, every moment —
is gathered as shimmering points of light before you.
See them merging into one radiant field —
a living tapestry of love, learning, and grace.
Let yourself rest in that light.
Let it bathe you, fill you, and heal you.
You are that light.
You always have been.
Rest here quietly for several breaths, allowing gratitude to deepen:
“Thank you, Life.”
“Thank you for living through me.”
“Love is everything.”
7. Closing
Bring awareness gently back to your breath.
Feel the air entering and leaving your body.
Sense the ground beneath you — stable, kind, and present.
When you are ready, open your eyes softly.
You have completed a sacred act of remembering —
not to relive the past, but to free it,
so love may move unimpeded through your remaining days.