http://www.care2.com/greenliving/grief-a-necessary-suffering.html
Grief, a Necessary Suffering
Grief is a wrenching emotion and therefore one of the most threatening. Those we love have been taken inside us and made a part of who we are. When they die or are threatened by crisis, we feel that our own being has been attacked.
To the unconscious mind, there is a real threat that we are going to die with them. By going numb instead of grieving, your ego pretends that the loss isn’t agonizing, that the threat is not so grave as it actually is.
Grief falls into the rare category of being a necessary suffering. You have to go through it before you can release it back to the light. The sting of death is no longer quite as anguishing. The possibility of letting in the light once again becomes real.
Feel any source of pain in your body directly, no matter where it is. Ask the pain of every kind to gather in your heart. As it gathers, ask each aspect of suffering to name itself. Be as specific as possible.
Having defined specifically the exact emotion you are experiencing, whether it is fear, anger, guilt, depression, or grief, express the origins of this feeling to yourself through writing or journaling. Be careful not to use the language of victimization.
Once you have completed this task, share these feelings with someone you can trust. Next you may release them through a ritual of your own devising–such as dancing, or burning the papers on which you have written down your experiences.
Finally celebrate the release of this blocked energy. Instead of denying your suffering, which only prolongs it, now you have defined, expressed, shared, released, and celebrated it–and moved on.
Adapted from The Deeper Wound: Recovering the Soul from Fear and Suffering, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2001).
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12 comments
add your comment »Hello Deepak. Thank-you.
I too have experienced the loss of loved ones in my recent lifetime. Working through it, well it is a process that I have wondered if it has an end. I bookmarked this.
Sometimes, I think we might grieve for world events or people that we don't know personally, but who are known by talents, profession, or from being in the public eye and those feelings might be shrugged off as being less important than those we feel when we loss someone known to us.
I like that you shared this article because I think there are times when we might all find a need for help with the healing process. It is not always easy to find help with those feelings.
The world news today is quite different than that of years gone by. It is good to prepare and master our feelings for strength and comprehension for our best personal life possible.
Peace. :-)
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Grief hurts, but only for a little while. One day we will no longer grive. I look foreward to that day when no more tears will be shed. God will wipe all tears from our eyes. But for now, we need to feel the pain, to let go of our sorrow so we can move on. If not, we keep it bottled up inside and one day, it comes out all at once.
Don't be afraid to cry. It is the hardest thing we go through in this life but in someone's death we care for, we learn just how precious life is. Hold on to each day like it was a precious jewel. It is.
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Unconditional love is the bitterest and most painful of life's lessons. We must follow our hearts where they will go and have not the choice of refusing the love because of the pain of eventual separation. The grief we experience is the grief of never again being in the beloved's presence. Though we travel together like flocks of birds from life to life with all the wonder and joy of again recognizing and reuniting with the beloved, the we who we are in this life will never be again.
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With a recent departure of a dear and close relative I have come to the understanding that grief is an internalized process of detachment. We love someone so much that it pulls at our very core when they are no longer there with us. All these feelings of doubt and recapitulations of what could or should have been come to the surface. Is grief a selfish emotion? I'm not sure; but at times I feel guilty even having such feelings and thoughts. It is my understanding that we all go through the cycle of birth and death over a thousand times, and but yet each time, it's such a tragic event for us. Birth brings new life and new beginnings so does death; so why do we grieve? Presently I am learning how to have deep love and compassion for all around me but without the human need for attachment. Having true unconditional love is one of the hardest things to develop. I no longer grieve for my lost relative and I rejoice in the life we shared. I feel life is too short to even spend the briefest of moments on sorrow.
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Here in the present with almost everyone I have ever known and loved dead I am so grateful for the ones that have remained in this world with me. Though only a handful of souls of family and friends, of the closest ones less than the fingers on both hands,their presence is my anchor in this world. When my partner Carlos died I was with him and my spirit, accompanying him to the border wanted to go on with him. The resulting illness that overtook me from my body's shock at my spirit's wanting to depart brought me to my own border. Having no one to look out for me I just lay there waiting to see what would happen. At that point I had a realization that: life in this world was short anyway, I wasn't born just to satisfy my own personal happiness with others but to be useful to those around me, that I might as well live until my spirit decided to go home on it's own. The shortness of mortal life under any circumstances and the pleasure of feeling still useful to the living beings around me and our beautiful world in general allow me to enjoy the things I value most; beauty and it's creation, random acts of love and kindness, and pure silliness and fun. My very close companionship of my most significant others, my blessed cat family, the most helpful of all because there are more of them than me and their attention is always in the present; this now pregnant with all potential,so the weight of them, all their minds as opposed to my one, helps me stay here in the moment with them.
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Thanks Amy.
And Marilyn, thank you for sharing such a message of hope, new-found vision, and showing God's creative energy and spirit working in, as, and through you. What a gift!
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When my parents died, my Grandmother died, my unborne Grandson died, my husbands parents and a sister died all within an 8 yr. period I doubted everything I'd ever believed. "Why do we bother to love if it takes such a toll on us when it is ended?" This was the time I took broken chards of glass and started making stain glass windows and sun catchers. This process was suddenly the salvation for my very soul. From broken, beautiful glass I made something equally beautiful. From my broken heart I suddenly saw all things differently. I simply put, chose to see beauty in the most unlikely items around me. From stained glass, windows. From ingredients, the most delicious edibles. From loss of family and friends the knowledge that they were around me in spirit. Because not many Protestant believers have this belief, I withdrew into a place apart and talked and loved my deceased family and friends. I came out of those closeted times with a renewed faith and love for mankind. With a simplistic love for dogs. Go figure!!
I love the thoughts of Deepak Chopra. I enjoy what he has to offer the world in and through his writing.
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http://larsonpublications.com/book-details.php?id=82 for direct link to Loving Grief!
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Where can I find/see that Amy? Do you have a URL?
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Check out Paul Bennett's Loving Grief which really expresses love and grief being both sides of the same coin. It's very touching
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