Grief: Why feeling bad can lead to feeling good.
Grief is something that is as human as we can experience
This inexorable and painful something, this yearning for things to be different, only to embrace the fact that they are exactly as they are. Which, let's be honest, can hurt, a whole bunch. This is a truly frightful experience and one that can really test us as individuals. The reality of this is, that it is meant to.
Grief is there to tear us apart, to let the shell of our being crack open and in turn allow the nectar to pour in. It is a process of letting everything, preconceived notions, support systems and the way our reality exists go. As only when we really let all of this be, can we learn to expand.
Expansion is something that has a good bit of clout at the moment. Everyone wants to expand, learn to hold, and take up more space. Let me be the one that can hold the woes of all. The truth of this is quite chilling, as many want this for, again, the clout. Truthfully, however, to hold space for others, to be there, to help and heal, this all requires great levels of grief to have been endured. We are only able to help others through, that which we ourselves, have been through.
So we learn and we grow how to actually go about doing this in one way. Experience. Cold, hard, and rather grueling experience. The motion of the ocean is one that picks us up and tears us apart. We are surely more capable and learn afterward, but the moments we are going through that experience are completely terrifying and all too shocking.
Grief is always so painful, or what?!
In my own experience, I find that grief was unchecked, those bits of emotional turbulence, upheaval, and catastrophe, are all happening for the purpose of development. Which is amazing! Except, that at the moment it is a literal earth-shattering experience, of our complete foundation being torn apart. So, I feel and agree with general thought patterns saying, “Grief is healthy” & “A necessary part of life”. The thing I feel though, is that perhaps we need to return to what many cultures, especially cultures more cultured than the West, which is to say just about any, in employing grief rituals.
Amazingly, this concept is one that can just arise, the idea that as opposed to waiting for some grief-stricken time, we choose to venture into the space of grief sooner rather than later. As in we make the space, time, and grief known. We choose to embark on this experience.
In doing so we are able to actually get to the deeper parts of ourselves. To see who we are under all the layers of this or that. The reality we then face is the truth. The truth of self, beyond just the momentary satisfaction of self, but rather leading to a more holistic picture of the whole piece of society.
Why do we need wholeness?
Now I myself have wondered, why do I need wholeness? Why do I benefit from being more whole? Well think about it, go on I will wait….
Ok, trusting you all took a moment. Done now?
Ok a little longer.
Ok cool. So tracking back a bit, if we want to be there for ourselves, we need to allow any and all parts of ourselves. This is often necessary to do specifically in the space of seeing how we have and continue to live in life. How we relate to those most close to ourselves and learn a way to do this better. This is the first initiatory part of taking up space.
Once we start along that path, the next piece starts to be on the borders, where others exist. Now how do we hold that space? How do we fill it? How do we meet in the middle, compassionately in such a manner that we can fulfill ourselves, and others? This is a big question and exploration as it ultimately determines our impact on the world around us.
Grief is helpful here, as that which we grieve is also that which we learn from. When we allow ourselves to see reality as it is, without any need to change it or make it seem any other way, we learn. This provides a fully played-out experiment as a whole. Seeing the pattern?
We can then determine what we like, or dislike. What led one piece to another and in silence, begin to understand the simple sequence of events. This leads us to embark on and with our growth, to sign up for the passage of time and subscribe to be a co-creator.
Why Co-create?
Now here is some territory I love personally, good old co-creation. A space where the beauty lies in it being more than just me. Now there is a you. Together we co-create. At the simplest level, this provides more inspiration, opportunity, and expression. At the heights of ecstasy, each is taken far beyond where they may journey alone.
Through the vehicle of self-awareness and connection, a dance is created and may be shaped in so many different ways that it ultimately takes shape to grow far beyond the previous limit.
This I feel is the purpose of grief, to push beyond the limits of potential and into the ideals of the infinite. Today. We have long since been in a space of here, there everywhere. Creating for the sake of creation, but now, to turn toward ourselves and let us grow into our being.
How do we do this you ask? We feel the things we are most afraid of feeling. We let them roil through us, like a wave that completely washes away the footsteps in the sand.
We see the troubles we have made and choose to create serendipitously, with reverence for the responsibility we are entrusted with.
Elevation at its Core
To elevate is to rise to a new level, but much like the tree, “Can only grow to heaven if its roots reach to hell”. We are required to challenge ourselves, to go into the dark cave, the abysmal dark, the night of nights. To sit there and let it all wash over us, without want of change and simple acceptance of all that is.
This is a path of growth, simply and always synchronistically. It happens if we want it or not. Oftentimes at the exact moment, we would prefer for it to abate. However, it does not wait for us. So a challenge I have then, why wait for it?
Why wait for the next wave of existentialism? Why let it choose the timing, it will come either way, yes. We can therefore choose to prepare to willingly know it exists and seek to remember, not for the sake of being down. No, rather for the sake of remembering the divine ecstasy through which we exist and allowing this to be a baseline that allows us to safely travel into these spaces.
All things change, this is a fundamental piece of life. So, I hear that things may suck, and I am not trying to tell you otherwise, but maybe you can see that accepting their suckiness, gives you a slightly more positive experience. Stop trying to work your way out of the hands of the infinite and instead rest in acceptance and peace.
To see how life begins to let go of the tight grip, the grief becomes more manageable, and new support systems arise. Life changes. Love enters anew. We are ready to answer the new call of our spirit.
How to engage with Grief?
Cool words bro, how do I do it?
Fair point my main man.
The short and sweet of it, allow it. Recognize any point of tightness in your body, and sit with it. You may wander away from it. Go back and feel it. Grief is frustrating, annoying, and painful. So feel all the points in your body that feel that way. Learning to release the want to change them and make them be in any way besides how they are right now. That is how they are, there is no magic cure. Sit and feel. Stop. Stop. Stop. Breathe. Now let the body do what it knows how to do. It will be released at the right time. At the right pace, properly and holistically. Let it happen.
A part of grief, and the reason we as a society struggle with it so much, is that we have forgotten the perfectness of life. Well of course it is a very easy thing to forget given how much the society we live in is designed to simultaneously have us suffer and run away from this suffering. Quite a conundrum if you ask me!
We live lives that hurt, we are disconnected from nature a lot of the time and see others that may be hurting in so many different places. Yet we also live in a society where instant gratification and dopamine dumping a constant. How do we mediate these two?
I feel that this is done by realizing again that to accept a negative experience is a positive one. Truthful positive at that. So we get to show up for ourselves in a way that is whole. That is aware of both sides of the coin and free of the ugly middle muddle. We show up for ourselves and in turn, create the connections we wish to experience.
So travel deeply into your grief, let it consume you, holding faith that on the other side is who you have always been waiting to be.
"Life is a growth in the art of loss." – John O'Donohue
