Negotiating the Pitfalls of Materiality with Isabel Cowles Murphy

The Messier Objects Catalogue of Big Questions, Volume 1

You’ll need to read this twice.

Once because it’s almost impossible to not get swept up in Isabel Cowles Murphy’s writing. She carries me away every time. And then you’ve gotta read it again a second time because I guarantee there’s another layer of metaphysical fabric you missed the first go. It’s that rich, she’s that good.

Isabel is one of the first people I asked to fill out The Messier Objects Catalogue of Big Questions because I love to see the world (and the other-world) through her eyes. She always expands my capacity to believe in both the big things and the here and now. Again, she’s that good.

She writes The Noble Try on Substack and you should subscribe to her posthaste.

WHO SHOULD BE READING THIS?

• For the ghost-hunter who gets a thrill from scaring themselves, just a little bit.

• For anyone who got ***ked up by the Truman Show.

• For people who never peek under the Christmas wrapping.

• For the person who is grappling hard with the life/death conundrum and wanting something solid to stand on as they reach up into the beyond.

I’m thrilled now to hand you over to Isabel.

xx

Court

💀 Talk Death to Me!

What do you think happens after we die?

While our flesh goes to maggots and mycelia, our souls melt back into unified consciousness–pure love. I imagine it as a white-gold electrical suspension…like floating around in butter-edged broth, an absolute, nutritive homecoming.

What does death mean to the living?

Loneliness and gaping holes until you’re sort of used to the absence. Then it’s just the threat of a blue hour that descends out of nowhere, an awful, debilitating surprise.

What does life mean to the dead?

I think when I die I’ll look back and go, “What a romp!” I’ll laugh at all the times I was petty and anxious… how I missed the point. I won’t be fussed about it, though. I’ll know that junk was part of the deal. Negotiating the pitfalls of materiality is literally what we’re here to do.

How do you lie to yourself about death?

We think it’s the end when it’s actually a respite or a new beginning. Sometimes we come back down to play around more, sometimes we stay in the soup. I’m sure there are souls who get stuck in-between. I don’t know how or why such lingering happens, but I hope it doesn’t happen to me. I don’t think it will.

🫀 Spiritual Bodies Having a Human Experience or Human Bodies Having a Spiritual Experience???

Spiritual bodies having a human experience. How could it be otherwise?

How do souls enter and leave the body?

They choose to. I can’t tell if it’s a childhood dream or an actual memory, but I recall being in a queue with my sister and choosing to go first; to be the eldest. We were told certain elements of our family life would be difficult (what family life isn’t?), but I was certain I was supposed to come through my parents, and I knew Lily would follow. My parents reinforced that message a lot growing up–they constantly talked about how they were supposed to meet so that Lily and I could be born. It was incredibly affirming to hear that as a child. It made me feel predestined and it gave me an unshakeable faith in my parents’ purpose and connection. That kind of thing means a lot to a kid.

What physical object would you miss the most in death?

Trees.

Are aliens real? Are we aliens?

I’ve spent zero time thinking about aliens. But I do often wonder: is this the Truman show? Am I Truman? AM I?

What rituals are important for you to feel good in your body?

Walking in the woods, especially at dusk. I like to scare myself a little; see the world at transitional hours when the shadows are long and the branches are creepy and the hollows look like wide-open eyes. It makes the world fresh and enchanted. I think that’s why it can be enjoyable to drink or get high—it’s exciting to shift our point of view. A lot can be revealed with just a tiny tweak. I’m learning to find those moments in the starkness of sobriety and I’ve found them richer in the rawness. The frequencies get finer. You have to tune in with some athleticism, but the payoff of sustained clarity has surprised me.

🌊 Holding Close and Letting Go

What does grief feel like?

Like the edge of love. If love is a big, fragile bubble, grief is its rainbow-hued edge. They go together all the time—even when somebody’s alive because their loss is an ever-present possibility, encircling the whole, delicate experience. Life is so full and so brief, and we know it. The more sensitized we become, the more we ache–even in happiness.

Where does grief take you?

Sometimes it makes me panic. The antidote is ripening my heart.

What do you hope you’ll say on your deathbed?

“Thank you.”

When you have been close to death (yours or others), what have you noticed?

When I first heard my father died, I felt shot through with elation. Not because I was happy, but because it was so monumental that he’d done it. He leaped to the other side. I was thrilled for him—I remember shaking and feeling so cold my teeth chattered. Christopher, my husband, was the one to call me. I was at home with our first baby and Christopher came home and walked me down to my parents’ apartment, where I saw my father’s body–the doorman had helped my mom and sister lay him in bed. “He jumped to Jesus! He jumped to Jesus!” I thought–words he used to say when somebody died, with a curious smirk on his face. Pappy believed completely in the after-life—mystical Catholicism was the best gift he ever gave me, though lately I’m an Episcopalian.

Anyway! Back to the day Pappy died.

It took hours for my adrenaline to wane and then I felt his absence bearing down like a weight that took my breath away. That’s when I really understood that grief is for the living. But death comes with a little thrill. I’ve felt that same elation one other time: when I had a baby at home, without pain medicine. It affirmed for me that death is also a birth. I thought I was dying when our last son was being born, but actually I was being born alongside him.

🌌 Going Beyond the Beyond

When have you connected with something beyond here?

I grew up in a haunted house. It was built in 1787 and a lot of people have lived and died there; not all of them happily. You can feel the spirits when you walk in the door—they make my arm hairs stand up, still. My sister lives in the house now, and she’s made peace with the ghosts, but when we were kids, I felt that they weren’t all well-meaning. Almost everybody who sleeps at that old house has a story to tell in the morning.

I’m grateful for the malevolence I sensed, because I learned early that love is a force field–the best kind of armor. I’d lie in my bed, thinking about people I loved, praying, and I’d feel my heart get warm and weighty. The first book I learned to read was about a glowworm named Gus, and I pictured myself turning into him, lighting myself up, warding away the darkness. Whether that experience is empirically prove-able is beside the point—if you believe you can ripen your heart, you will feel your heart ripen. Good always comes from that. The world loves you when you love the world.

Do you experience signs connecting you to the other side? If yes, what are they and what do they feel like? If no, what do you think about signs?

Yes. I have a special sign I use with my father, although I try not to court it too much and I don’t make requests or tests. I feel the witnessing presence of the people who’ve passed; I know they’re rooting for me in ways I can’t understand because I’m living in a sliver of absolute reality. I trust the mystery and avoid both skepticism and superstition.

When I was a kid, I made a promise to myself not to research what happens when people die—I don’t want to hear accounts of near-death experiences, etc. I had (and maintain) a strong belief that there are things we’re not supposed to know: it’s like peeking under the wrapping paper of the most special present. We’re supposed to be surprised. One day we’re all going to die, and everything will make sense, and we’ll be touched and amused by our earthly misunderstandings; finally in on the great cosmic joke.

What are your rituals to connect with recently passed loved ones?

I pray. I talk to my grandmothers, my uncles and my father. Mostly it happens when I’m alone in the woods, or in the hours where I’m not quite asleep and I’m love-bombing myself. A lot of insights come to me when I get my heart ripe, lying in bed. I can’t say I’ve ever had specific directives—I’m not sure it’s the other side’s way—but I feel held, which is plenty. I feel deeply and constantly rooted for. I can’t imagine living otherwise.

How do you know what you know?

Visions, memories and dreams. I’ve been here before, though I don’t remember my past lives, and like all the mysteries, I don’t probe. I have flickers of inexplicable memories—experiences come back to me especially through smell and sensations on my skin. I enjoy those uncanny glimmers, and then I leave them alone.

Your Objects

These are art objects that have impacted Isabel Cowles Murphy’s philosophical and spiritual understanding of life and death. Add them to your running list.

FILM: The Labyrinth and Becoming Led Zeppelin, which Isabel wrote more about here

BOOK: When Mary Became Cosmic: A Jungian and Mystical Path to the Divine Feminine by David Richo

MUSIC: The Wexford Carol

ART: Ruth Asawa’s whole life.

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