During Transformation

By Ara Parisien

When we witness someone in the final stages of life, it can look unbearably painful. Labored breathing, physical tension, or the fading of the mind often leave loved ones believing the soul is suffering. Yet what appears as struggle on the outside is rarely the soul’s true experience.

The human body is designed with reflexes and automatic responses. In dying, those reflexes continue even when the soul has already begun to release its focus. The nervous system may fire signals of pain, and the body may strain for breath, but the soul is no longer fully anchored in those sensations. It is loosening its tether, hovering between here and there.

From the soul’s perspective, transition is far gentler. While part of its awareness still touches the body, much of it is already expanding into a freer state of being. What we interpret as suffering is more often the personality’s clinging, or simply the body’s mechanical process. The deeper self has stepped back, witnessing more than participating.

In conditions like Alzheimer’s or dementia, the soul has often untethered even earlier. While the personality appears diminished, the soul is already living free in another stream of reality, touching the body only lightly.

At the final moment, the release is instantaneous. Many describe it as a “burst” of expansion—relief, freedom, and peace flooding in all at once. Whatever the body seemed to endure vanishes like a dream the soul no longer claims.

So while death may look painful to us who remain, the soul’s experience is far different. It is not imprisoned in the body’s struggle. It is quietly, gracefully, slipping into its next horizon of life.