Our attitude of openness and inclusiveness is essential as a basis for working with dying, death, caring, and grieving. The only way to develop openness to situations as they are is by practicing the partners of presence and acceptance. We give our best to experience everything as totally as we can, not withdrawing from the vividness of any experience, not matter how scary it seems initially.
This is actually a totally ordinary state. I call it "no-big-deal dharma" — simply everyday life. It is nothing special. With this kind of open and spacious awareness, we are complete, and this moment is complete. There is nothing special to realize, no transcendent reality to achieve, nothing outside of what is unfolding in any given moment.
— Joan Halifax, Being with Dying