Journal
Grief
I have been dealing with grief and loss after the tragic loss of a dear friend and the continuing grief of losing my father. As I contemplated grief, I started to notice wise insights presented by many gifted teachers. The following are many of these insights. Please check back when you want to contemplate grief, I will be adding to this page.
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"Each of us passes in and out of this state [grace] many times in our life. This is a universal human experience. As we fall out of grace it looks and feels to us as if we are failing. Indeed we call it "failure"; a part of us dies. But this is the process by which we make space for the birth of something new, something more true to ourselves." "Falling out of Grace, Meditation on Loss, Healing and Wisdom" Sobonfu E. Somé. Thank you to Suzanne Bigelow for exposing me to this work.
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"Letting go and moving through life from one change to another brings the maturing of our spiritual being. In the end we discover that to love and let go can be the same thing. Both ways do not seek to possess. Both allow us to touch each moment of this changing life and allow us to be there fully for whatever arises next." Jack Kornfield https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/15483153c1bce07e
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"Grief might be, in some ways, the long aftermath of love, the internal work of knowing, holding, more fully valuing what we have lost." Mark Doty, Don't They Know?
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“If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future.” Eckhart Tolle
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Spring returns via the maple trees. Image by Margaret Gervais
"Closure is delusive – it is the false hope that we can deaden our living grief. I’ve long thought that Kübler-Ross was wrong. The ‘psychological stages' of dying and grieving are wholly different. For the person who dies there is an end, but this is not so for the person who grieves. The person who mourns goes on living and for as long as he lives there is always the possibility of feeling grief.
Each of us mourns differently, but in general the initial shock and fear triggered by death does diminish with time. Through the work of mourning, we gradually feel better, though some heartache remains. Holidays and anniversaries are notoriously difficult. Grief can ebb and then, without warning, resurge. The loss of a child, a loss through suicide – these losses, and many others, can and do cause enduring sorrow.
‘Grief Lit’ – a burgeoning sub-genre of 'Recovery Lit' offers many titles, and the message is: ‘your grief is something that can be fixed. You can recover. You can have closure.’
My experience is that closure is an extraordinary compelling fantasy of mourning. It is the fiction that we can love, lose, suffer and do something to permanently end our sorrow. We want to believe we can reach closure because grief can surprise and disorder us – even years after out loss. Closure is delusive – it is the false hope that we can deaden our living grief.” Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
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"Perhaps we all carry an immemorial wound, an infinite loss, a self-exile we perpetrate on ourselves. It turns us into isolated entities stalking the earth in search of what we think we need—the temporary stays against ennui, despair, loss, and terror. But sooner or later, the wound can carry us toward its own remedy, if we only let it. It seems too much to hope that right in the heart of our troubled selves there might actually be the healing we seek. But if suffering and awakening form a single weather-system, as many a wise person has come to know, then when storms come, perhaps we can accept them with less dread and aversion, and more trust, and even hope." Henry Shukman, http://www.tricycle.com/feature/beautiful-storm
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Thich Nhat Hanh is a Master teacher and this is from him. He often teaches walking meditation and if one does a walking meditation with this exercise, you would coordinate the breathing with slow, even, relaxed steps. This exercise can also be practiced as a sitting meditation. Buddhist philosophy includes impermanence, that all that is alive is ever-changing and will die, and wisdom around this can set us free; free of clinging.Thich Nhat Hanh presents "The Five Awarenesses Exercise":Breathing in, I know that I am of the nature to grow old.Breathing out, I know that I cannot escape old age.Breathing in, I know that I am of the nature to get sick.Breathing out, I know that I cannot escape sickness.Breathing in, I know that I am of the nature to die.Breathing out, I know that I cannot escape dying.Breathing in, I know one day I will have to let go of everything and everyone I cherish.Breathing out, there is no way to bring them along.Breathing in, I know that I bring nothing with me except my actions, thoughts, and deeds.Breathing out, only my actions come with me.
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Learning to Grieve - from Ram DassPosted July 9, 2014, http://www.ramdass.org/learning-grieve/"It is important, as we get older, to learn how to grieve. Although this may sound self-evident, experience has taught me that it is not. In a culture that emphasizes stoicism and forward movement, in which time is deemed “of the essence,” and there is little toleration for slowness, inwardness, and melancholy, grieving – a healthy, necessary aspect of life – is too often overlooked. As we get older, of course, and losses mount, the need for conscious grieving becomes more pronounced. Only by learning how to grieve can we hope to leave the past behind and come into the present moment.The older we get, the more we lose; this is the law of impermanence. We lose loved ones, cherished dreams, physical strength, work, and relationships. Often, it seems like loss upon loss. All these losses bring up enormous grief that we must be prepared to embrace completely, if we are to live with open hearts.My dear friend Stephen Levine has recommended that we build temples specifically for the purpose of grieving, ritual sites where we can feel safe to pour out the sadness and loss that we feel. In the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva, and in the traditional Irish wake, we find such outlets for extended grieving, but these rituals are becoming rare in our culture and are not frequently practiced.Over the years, in working with people who are grieving, I’ve encouraged them first of all to surrender to the experience of their pain. To counteract our natural tendency to turn away from pain, we open to it as fully as possible and allow our hearts to break. We must take enough time to remember our losses – be they friends or loved ones passed away, the death of long-held hopes or dreams, the loss of homes, careers, or countries, or health we may never get back again. Rather than close ourselves to grief, it helps to realize that we only grieve for what we love.In allowing ourselves to grieve, we learn that the process is not cut and dried. It’s more like a spiral that brings us to a place of release, abates for a time, then continues on a deeper level. Often, when grieving, we think that it’s over, only to find ourselves swept away by another wave of intense feeling. For this reason, it’s important to be patient with the process, and not be in a hurry to put our grief behind us.While the crisis stage of grief does pass in its own time - and each person’s grief has its own timetable - deep feelings don’t disappear completely. But ultimately you come to the truth of the adage that “love is stronger than death.” I once met with a girl whose boyfriend was killed in Central America. She was grieving and it was paralyzing her life. I characterized it for her this way. “Let’s say you’re in ‘wise-woman training.’” If she’s in wise-woman training, everything in her life must be grist for the mill. Her relationship with this man would become part of the wisdom in her. But first she had to see that her relationship with him is between Souls. They no longer have two incarnated bodies to share, so she had to find the Soul connection. Two Souls can access each other without an incarnation.When my Guru died in 1973, I assumed that because of the important part he played in my life, and the love I felt for him, I would be inundated with grief. Surprisingly, I was not. In time, I came to realize why. He and I were so well established in Soul love that, in the years since he left his body, his palpable presence in my life has continued unabated." Ram Dass
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"While we live, we are able to live. When it's time to die, we are able to die. This is the natural order of things, and to the extent that we align ourselves with this, we experience peace even in the midst of distress." Meikyo Robert Rosenbaum, "Breathless"
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sunset
OUR FINAL GIFT
“Our death is the gift we make for the life we have enjoyed. The fact that it is a required gift doesn’t mean that we can’t give it with graciousness and an open heart for all beings who will benefit from it. It is a gift to our children and grandchildren and to rocks and trees that need the passing of life in order to live and grow themselves. Without the change resulting in our death, there would be no new beings coming into the world – no joy of holding a newborn, seeing the smile of a child or the leaves of a young tree facing the sun. We would have never grown up, helped others, learned new things, known the joy of spring. Death is our gift to the universe, the dues we pay for the joy of our lives.
This does not mean it’s not hard to let go of this life. Dag Hammarskjold wrote in Markings, that when he was in his twenties, death was one of the crowd. But now, in his later years, death sits beside him at the dinner table. Sometimes death is a good companion and tells us wise things. Sometimes we look at death and are grief-stricken and angry. It’s normal to grieve for our lives and be angry at their being taken – saying we shouldn’t is only putting a layer of suffering on our pain. None of us wants to go.We know, in the last analysis, that there’s nothing for us to do but let go of life and trust the universe to do something good, something useful, something we would have liked with it.Death is not and end. It is a change. The elements that made us up are still there, just as yearn is still there in a finished hat. It is itself, but it’s something else, also. Even though we’re in a sense still here, “self” as we know it is gone. That “self” won’t be appreciating the sunrise tomorrow. But, still, we are here in the places where our elements alight – a tree, a bird, a rock. Remember that things had to die so we could be born – stars, rocks, dinosaurs, plants. As we give up this life, we can thank them for sharing it with us so we could be here for a while.” Zuiko Redding, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly, Winter 2014.
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Insights from someone with a terminal cancer diagnosis:
"I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."
Oliver Sacks, a professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine, is the author of many books, including “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html?_r=0
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Perfectly resting rose. Margaret Gervais
"Sometimes all this healing asks is that we become present. for ourselves. A meditation practitioner once came to one of our two month retreats at Spirit Rock after his four year 3 old son had died in a car accident. This man, the father, had been driving. Immediately following the accident, he had kept himself busy, seeking help and talking to shamans and lamas, and being consoled by friends and others. And yet, in some way, this was also a way to keep his grief at bay. Finally, when he knew he was ready, he came to a meditation retreat. Somehow he knew that it was time for him to experience his pain directly, to find the cure for the pain in the pain itself. He started with lots of prayers and mantras and visualizations. Finally, one morning he just sat still. Waves of grief and quilt and loss poured out. And his great and simple task was to bring a kind and healing attention to the grief and suffering that he carried and could no longer run from." Jack Kornfield, http://www.jackkornfield.com/the-temple-of-healing/
“To bow to the fact of our life's sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable. As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.” Jack Kornfield
"Over the years, in working with people who are grieving, I’ve encouraged them first of all to surrender to the experience of their pain. To counteract our natural tendency to turn away from pain, we open to it as fully as possible and allow our hearts to break. We must take enough time to remember our losses – be they friends or loved ones passed away, the death of long-held hopes or dreams, the loss of homes, careers, or countries, or health we may never get back again. Rather than close ourselves to grief, it helps to realize that we only grieve for what we love.In allowing ourselves to grieve, we learn that the process is not cut and dried. It’s more like a spiral that brings us to a place of release, abates for a time, then continues on a deeper level. Often, when grieving, we think that it’s over, only to find ourselves swept away by another wave of intense feeling. For this reason, it’s important to be patient with the process, and not be in a hurry to put our grief behind us." Ram Dass,
https://www.ramdass.org/learning-to-grieve/From Brain Pickings, 7 wonderful children's books on grief and loss. I would love to have these in my library. Who can't relate to a beautifully told children's story about such a tough subject? http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/23/best-childrens-books-death-grief-mourning/“The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.”
How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss
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"This body is not me; I am not caught in this body, I am life without boundaries, I have never been born and I have never died. Over there, the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies all manifest from the basis of consciousness. Since beginningless time I have always been free. Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out. Birth and death are only a game of hide and seek." Thich Nhat Hanh "On the Path With Thay," Allan Badiner, Tricycle Spring 2015.
"The Grief Path" is a beautiful story and this video shows her work to chart and paint her grief. I would love to do this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XilHRThzC8Great advise. Think about death everyday to be happy. http://www.bbc.com/…/20150408-bhutans-dark-secret-to-happin…Death Is a Part of LivingUntil you realize the fundamental fact that reality is really in the moment, you’re thinking about long-term goals—'when I do this' and 'when I become that'—so you think, I don’t want to die, because then I won’t be able to do all these things. But if you’re living in the present, death becomes a part of living.—Jason Lewis, "An Interview with Jason Lewis"
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“The young psyche is absorbed in itself and its point of view, until something happens to destroy that innocence – we fall in love and the person leaves us, or someone in our family dies, or there is a crushing disappointment, like not getting into the college we had our heart set on because we didn’t’ make the grade. Whatever it is, something breaks the heart, and when the heart is broken, the wound begins in the psyche, the wound that will act like the grain of sand in the oyster. Dealing with that wound over years, with awareness and hard work, will produce the pearl of inner essence that cannot be taken away, because it’s indestructible. But to build an inner indestructible essence, we must first be destroyed in our more naïve form. “ James Hillman"Within the silence that follows the final breath of a dying person is the certainty that something is occurring. In the no moving movement of air in the room one senses a deep, deep loneliness and at the same time the connectedness of everything." Robert Chodo Campbell, "Death is not an Emergency," Tricycle, fall 2016
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"Within the silence that follows the final breath of a dying person is the certainty that something is occurring. In the no moving movement of air in the room one senses a deep, deep loneliness and at the same time the connectedness of everything." Robert Chodo Campbell, "Death is not an Emergency," Tricycle, fall 2016A Meditation on Grief“When after heavy rain the storm clouds disperse, is it not that they’ve wept themselves clear to the end?”~Ghalib"Grief is one of the heart’s natural responses to loss. When we grieve we allow ourselves to feel the truth of our pain, the measure of betrayal or tragedy in our life. By our willingness to mourn, we slowly acknowledge, integrate, and accept the truth of our losses. Sometimes the best way to let go is to grieve.It takes courage to grieve, to honor the pain we carry. We can grieve in tears or in meditative silence, in prayer or in song. In touching the pain of recent and long-held griefs, we come face to face with our genuine human vulnerability, with helplessness and hopelessness. These are the storm clouds of the heart.Most traditional societies offer ritual and communal support to help people move through grief and loss. We need to respect our tears. Without a wise way to grieve, we can only soldier on, armored and unfeeling, but our hearts cannot learn and grow from the sorrows of the past.To meditate on grief, let yourself sit, alone or with a comforting friend. Take the time to create an atmosphere of support. When you are ready, begin by sensing your breath. Feel your breathing in the area of your chest. This can help you become present to what is within you. Take one hand and hold is gently on your heart as if you were holding a vulnerable human being. You are.As you continue to breathe, bring to mind the loss or pain you are grieving. Let the story, the images, the feelings comes naturally. Hold them gently. Take your time. Let the feelings come layer by layer, a little at a time.Keep breathing softly, compassionately. Let whatever feelings are there, pain and tears, anger and love, fear and sorrow, come as they will. Touch them gently. Let them unravel out of your body and mind. Make space for any images that arise. Allow the whole story. Breathe and hold it all with tenderness and compassion. Kindness for it all, for you and for others.The grief we carry is part of the grief of the world. Hold it gently. Let it be honored. You do not have to keep it in anymore. You can let it go into the heart of compassion; you can weep.Releasing the grief we carry is a long, tear-filled process. Yet it follows the natural intelligence of the body and heart. Trust it, trust the unfolding. Along with meditation, some of your grief will want to be written, to be cried out, to be sung, to be danced. Let the timeless wisdom within you carry you through grief to an open heart." Jack Kornfield, The meditation is taken from the book, The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace.
"Being alive means engaging in a continual process of transformation. Nothing in the natural world stays the same. Everything shows signs of being in relationship with its environment. Trees cannot deny the effects of a forest fire. Rocks do not try to hide the smoothness that results from the relentless pounding of waves upon them. Icebergs do not feign being untouched by the rising temperatures of our planet.Yet we humans try to defend ourselves against the inevitable changes. Aging. Loss. Grief. We spend so much of our resources chasing some external solution to our internal discomfort. We have such difficulty sitting with the feelings that, if felt all the way through, could renew us. Release us. Transform us.Our transformation depends on our ability to sit with and accept the feelings that arrive with the truth. Not our version of how we wish life would be and not the version of reality that we need to be true in order to justify how we are living. Just the honest truth. How it lands with us in this moment. What it means for our life. Right here, right now.
"Nothing about our lives or about this world will ever change without our willingness to be relentlessly honest. Especially about our past. Especially about our present. Especially when accepting the truth means that it’s time to let something go." Chani Nicholas, http://chaninicholas.com/
"The Five Invitations"
Don't wait
Welcome everything. Push away nothing.
Bring your whole self to the experience.
Find a place of rest in the middle of things.
Cultivate "Don't know" mind." Frank Ostaseski, "Starting With the Fruit", Heart Wisdom Podcast. May 18, 2017.
"Don't just stand there with your hair turning grey, soon enough the seas will sink your little island.So while there is still the illusion of time, set out for some other shore.No sense packing a bag, you won't be able to lift it into your boat.Give away all of your collections, take only new seeds and an old stick.Send out some prayers on the wind before you sail.Don't be afraid, someone knows you are coming. An extra fish has been salted." Sono. Frank Ostaseski, "Starting With the Fruit", Heart Wisdom Podcast., May 18, 2017.'
"Not one of us is here by mistake. Not one of us is out of place. Not one of us is unwanted by life. This world is deeply incomplete without each of us in it. Incomplete without each of our individual imprints on it. Our specific touch." Chani Nicholas"Mother's dying almost stunned my spirit....She slipped from our fingers like a flake gathered by the wind, and is now part of the drift called 'the infinite..'" Emily Dickinson, from brainpickings.org
"Whether it's physical or emotional pain, anything you give space to can be transformed." Jack Kornfield, "No Time Like the Present," pg. 17
"Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story of awakening from a dream in which he was having a conversation with his beloved mother a year after she has passed away. He’d been close with her, and after her death he grieved the loss terribly. But on a moonlit night in his mountain hermitage in Vietnam, he awoke from a dream of his mother, fully feeling the reality of her presence. "I understood, he said, "that my mother never died." He could hear her voice inside himself. He went outside, and she became the moonlight tenderly caressing his skin. As he walked barefoot among the tea plants, he was able to feel her with him. The idea that she was gone simply wasn't true. He realized his feet were "our" feet, he said, and "together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp evening soil." Jack Kornfield, No Time Like the Present
“We all sit on the edge of a mystery. We have only known this life, so dying scares us-and we are all dying. But what if dying were perfectly safe? What if you could approach dying with curiosity and love? What if dying were the ultimate spiritual practice?”
Ram DassSeven books recommended by LION'S ROAR, September, 2018, for how to help dying people - and how to die yourself:
The Five Initiations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, by Frank Ostaseki,
Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End-of-Life Care, edited by Koshin Paley Ellison and Matt Weingast,
Making Friends With Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality, by Judith L. Lief,
No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom For Life,by Thich Nhat Hahn,
Living in the Light of Death; On the Art of Being Truly Alive, by Larry Rosenberg,
Leaning into Sharp Points; Practical Guidance and Nurturing Support for Caregivers,by Stan Goldberg,
Being With Death and Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death, by Joan Halifax.
“If I am going to die, the best way to prepare is to quiet my mind and open my heart. If I’m going to live, the best way to prepare is to quiet the mind and open my heart.” Ram Dass.
“Knowing how to use our suffering is essential to realizing true happiness.” Thich Nhat Hanh.“So far you’ve survived 100% of your worst days. You’re doing great.” Spiritual movement, Instagram.
“You cannot live without dying.” Consciousnessnow, Instagram
"Every thought, every emotion, every action, every moment of time, has multiple causes and reverberations-tendrils of culture, history, hurt, and joy that stretch out mysteriously and endlessly. As with us, so with everything: all things influence one another. This is how the world appears, shimmers and shifts, moment by moment.” Norman Fisher, Lion’s Roar, March 2018, pg. 66.
HOW IT SEEMS TO ME by Ursula K. Le GuinIn the vast abyss before time, self is not, and soul commingleswith mist, and rock, and light. In time, soul brings the misty self to be.Then slow time hardens self to stone while ever lightening the soul, till soul can loose its hold of self and both are free and can return to vastness and dissolve in light, the long light after time.“You may no see it now, but this very difficulty will strengthen you. Your heart will grow wiser, your spirit stronger. You already know this. You can even begin to see the ways that this is true.” Jack Kornfield, Instagram
“Bit by bit… it comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this one garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true mourning, which, though it may not be rending, is yet a little bitter. For nothing, in truth, can replace that companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.
So life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich; and then come other years when time does its work and our plantation is made sparse and thin. One by one, our comrades slip away, deprive us of their shade.” Saint-Exupéry.
“I cannot say that I am not afraid. A friend of mine had cancer, and though he was not scared, he was sad because there were so many things he wanted to do. But I try not to look away. I am consciously aware that death is certain, the moment unforeseeable and every moment infinitely precious. At the beginning of our life, death frightens us like a trapped animal; in the middle of it, we try to do everything right to not miss anything, and in the end, we are calm and clear. So, death is like a friend.” Matthieu Ricard"Here is a powerful yet simple way to understand. Look in the mirror. You will see that your body has aged. But oddly, you will also experience that you don't necessarily feel older. This is because your body exists in time. It starts small, grows up, ages and dies. But the consciousness that is looking at your body is outside of time. It is spirit that takes birth, experiences your life, and will witness your death. Maybe even say at the end, "Wow! That was an amazing ride!" Who you are is loving awareness witnessing the dance of birth and death." Jack Kornfield, No Time Like the Present."you are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a ddrop." Rumi"You left ground and sky weeping, mind and soul full of grief. No one can take your place in existence, or in absence. Both mourn, the angels, the prophets, and this sadness I feel has taken from me the taste of language, so that I cannot say the flavor of my being apart." Rumi
"goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation." Rumi
"Grief is one of the heart's natural responses to loss. It takes courage to grieve, to honor the pain we carry. We come face to face with our genuine human vulnerability, with helplessness and hopelessness. These are the storm clouds of the heart. We need to respect our tears. Without a wise way to grieve, we can only soldier on, armored and unfeeling. Let whatever feelings are there, pain and tears, anger and love, fear and sorrow, come as they will.The grief we carry is part of the grief of the world. Hold it gently. Let it be honored. Keep in mind that grief doesn't just dissolve. Instead it arises in waves and gradually, with growing compassion, there comes more space around it." Jack Kornfield.