Ameli Tanchitsa | Psychotherapist
To my young daughters.
What happens at Death?
I don't know, but I had a beautiful dream about it once.
It's a glistening day. I can see my hands holding the fishing rod. Suddenly, the fishing line is pulled hard! The way the pull is changing direction, I can tell there is a fish at the end of it. I pull the fish up and hold it in both hands. I hold it like it's the most precious thing. I observe it very closely. Its pearly scales, silvery colour of its body, the fins and the gills moving, opening and closing.
As I notice how incredibly beautiful it is, I also realise at that very moment how Life and Death are both present at the same time.
The fish is dying and will not survive even if I put it back in the water.
At that moment, the fish lets out a last breath, which sounds like a generously deep and loud exhale, "Aahhhhhhh ..." As I hear the sound, I recognise it as unmistakably as my own. I recognise my exhale in the same way as I would recognise my own face in the mirror.
That morning, I woke up with my heartmind in a deep state of peace, like water falling on a rock.
What happens at Death?
My sense is that it really depends on what happens in Life. It depends on the clarity with which we ask Life's questions.
What happens when I realise that I don't need to know what happens?
Life and Death seem inseparable. When I free myself from the need to know, I am free to be and die as I am right now. To let go entirely and generously is to let our Life fully open and deepen.
Take the wave.
If I were born a wave, my Life and everything that happens in it, including my relations, my work, all of my thoughts, sensations, feelings, memories, and words, would be like bubbles in the wave’s whitecaps.
The shape of the wave is like an idea of myself, my parents, my grandparents, and so on, extending back into beginningless time. Each one of us is a wave rising and falling back into the vast Ocean.
Each birth and death, including mine and yours, my dear ones, is like a wave on the surface of an endless sea. Now here and now gone. Like an idea.
What happens when I don't hold on to any ideas about who I am supposed to be?
Without ideas about myself, I am simply all of this! An embodied direct experience of Life and Death, of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Without an idea of me, this is me without an idea of I. Then, everything in my direct experience flows like an essential ocean of our luminous nature, from moment to moment. Full and complete. Like Life and Death.
The everyday phenomena and ideas are like this. Like the most beautiful and precious pearls in the sea. Each is unique and will never be repeated. Remember, they are bubbles on the surface of your vast heartmind. Be grateful for each one of them.
Wanting to know what happens at Death is like the Ocean wanting to know what whitecaps are made of. Please don't be fooled by others' ideas about who you are.
Stop, and you will know who you are. Find the space between thoughts and sink deep to the bottom of your own pure nature from which we come to be and to which all waves return. This is where you will find your intuitive, natural, compassionate heart. Hold your Life and Death in this luminous place. This is your own nature. The place of origin and self-compassion. Extend it into the world and all beings.
What happens if I let go of ideas of Life and Death? Let go of the Ideas of being and non-being.
What if this direct experience is what happens? Always the same. Just this as it is.
Each moment is full and complete.
Original.
Like the space between thoughts.
Vast and uncluttered.
I hope we all live such a Life and embody it directly and completely.
I love you both always with my ocean heart.
Dad. AT.
— Ameli Tanchitsa (2025)
Editor’s Note: Originally from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ameli moved to Sydney at the end of the 92-95 war. He has worked in the fashion industry for over two decades and was a co-founder of MAD CORTES, a multi-award-winning Australian Fashion Label, 2000-2008. He is an artist and a teacher with decades of contemplative practice and current orientation towards the intersection between spirituality and somatic psychotherapy. Ameli is completing the final stages of Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapy training with the Hakomi Institute. He is a cofounder of the Somatic Psychotherapy Clinic.
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