The Descent That Lifts You: How to Spiritually Prepare for Death (Before It’s Too Late)
Dr. Baruch “B” HaLevi | The Defiant Spirit
We prepare for everything.
College to prepare for a career.
Premarital counseling to prepare for marriage.
Licensing exams to become a lawyer, a doctor, a therapist.
We study nutrition to prep our bodies.
We take firearms courses before owning a gun.
We get scuba certified before diving in Hawaiian waters.
We plan. We study. We train. We prepare.
Even for a damn yoga class—we Google what to wear, how to bow, where to sit.
Preparation is baked into our culture. It’s what we do.
Except when it comes to the one thing that actually matters: your death.
Most people are utterly unprepared. Worse, they don’t even realize that preparation is the point.
This Isn’t About Religion
Let me cut the fluff right now.
I’m not talking about Sunday School or High Holiday tickets or checking a spiritual box on your census form.
I don’t care what you call it.
I don’t care what tradition you come from—or if you come from none.
And don’t come at me with:
“But I’m not spiritual.”
Bullshit.
That’s a copout.
That’s lazy.
You aren’t a body having a spiritual experience.
You are a spirit having a bodily experience
As has been said across every mystical tradition from Kabbalah to Hinduism, from Catholic mystics to modern quantum physicists: the body is the temporary. The soul is the constant.
Drop the labels.
Call it Source. Call it God. Call it Spirit, Energy, Universe, Life Force—call it whatever the hell you want.
Just don’t pretend it’s not there.
Spiritual Readiness Isn’t Magic. It’s Muscle.
And muscles don’t grow by accident.
I’ve never been a “natural” believer.
I wasn’t born praying. I wasn’t floating on clouds. I was skeptical. Resistant. Rational.
But I’ve learned how to practice.
I’ve learned how to train.
I’ve developed the inner life the same way you develop anything that matters—through daily reps, fierce intention, and showing up no matter what.
Because I don’t want to be spiritually flabby anymore.
And neither should you.
Start Now. Do the Math.
If you’re somewhere in midlife—40s, 50s, even early 60s—and you start now?
One hour each morning.
One hour of journaling, meditating, praying, or moving your body in yoga—not yoga for weight loss, not yoga for Instagram, but the kind of yoga that reminds you that God lives in your bones.
One sacred hour. Daily.
That’s 365 hours a year.
That’s 3,650 hours a decade.
If you do this for 30 years, that’s 10,950 hours of spiritual practice before you die.
Do you think that might help when the time comes?
When the breath gets shallow, the body shuts down, and all you have left is who you are underneath the noise?
You better believe it will.
Most People Die as Strangers to Their Soul
I’ve sat with hundreds of people as they crossed over.
Some went in peace.
Some went in power.
Some with joy, even.
But most?
Most went with fear.
Not because they were bad.
Not because they were weak.
But because they were untrained.
They were strangers to their own soul.
They had no practices.
No inner language.
No connection to the part of themselves that doesn’t die.
And that’s the real tragedy.
This Isn’t About My Stepfather. It’s About All of Us.
I recently officiated a beautiful death.
It was loving. It was peaceful. But there was fear.
And not just there. I’ve seen it again and again.
It’s why I do this work.
It’s why I offer spiritual counseling and coaching.
It’s why I scream into the void and whisper to the soul:
You don’t have to die like this.
Not confused.
Not afraid.
Not unprepared.
When You Prepare to Die, You Wake Up to Life
That’s the secret most people miss.
This work isn’t just about dying better.
It’s about living awake.
When you stare death in the face, when you stop pretending you’re immortal, when you build your spiritual muscles—you stop wasting time.
You stop numbing.
You stop coasting.
You start showing up.
You become present.
You become real.
You die a great death… because you finally started living a great life.
Aliyah: The Descent That Lifts You
In Jewish tradition, when someone moves to Israel, it’s called Aliyah—“going up.” A spiritual ascent.
But the land they go to? It contains the Dead Sea—the lowest physical point on Earth.
So to ascend spiritually… you must descend physically.
That’s what the second half of life is about.
Yes, your body will decline.
Yes, your mind will fade.
Yes, your status will drop, your titles will evaporate, your control will crumble.
But your soul?
It can rise.
If—and only if—you do the work.
Your Spiritual Workout
Let’s make this real. Here’s your training regimen.
- Spiritual Morning Routine
One hour. Every day.
Journaling. Meditation. Prayer. Movement. Breathwork.
Not performance. Not productivity.
Presence. - Study the Map
Not TikToks and reels.
Read wisdom texts. The Bhagavad Gita. The Tao Te Ching. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. The Psalms. Rumi. Teresa of Ávila. Ram Dass. Pick your guides. Learn from the ones who’ve been there. - Practice Surrender
You will lose everything. Eventually.
Start practicing now.
Let go of your ego.
Drop the masks.
Shed the roles.
Get underneath the act.
This is where the Enneagram comes in.
Not as a party trick.
Not as a “type” to wear like a cute little badge on your chest.
But as a scalpel.
The Enneagram is not who you are.
It’s who you think you are.
It’s your personality. Your persona. Your protection mechanism.
And I use it for one reason only:
To drop the act.
To cut through the bullshit.
To get back to my soul.
Because I want to know who I really am—not just the survival strategy I’ve been clinging to since childhood.
And when you start living from that place—your soul, your essence, your truth—you’re no longer afraid of death.
Because death can only take what’s false.
What’s real never dies.
- Get Real Community
And I mean real.
Not bar buddies. Not golfing partners. Not shallow, jokey banter.
I’m talking about peer groups.
Especially you men—you suck at this.
That’s why we created Man UPrising.
To give men a place to show up, strip down (emotionally), and do the work together.
Check it out: www.manuprising.org
- Build Belief
Not hand-me-down doctrine.
Not spoon-fed Sunday School answers.
Build your own belief. Earn it. Forge it. Wrestle with it.
But don’t ignore it.
Because when everything else is gone…
It’s all you’ve got left.
Let’s Get Real
You will die.
The only question is how.
Will you drift into the dark, flailing and afraid?
Or will you walk into that mystery with strength? With grace? With defiance?
I’m Dr. B.
I help men and women get spiritually prepared for the descent—so they can rise.
This is The Defiant Spirit.
This is Logotherapy in action.
This is the path to your great death.
Let’s begin.