Our response to a major loss can be considerable grief. So much so that unresolved grief often follows us forward into future lifetimes until we can resolve it. We might call this the shadow of our past.
As a repressed feeling of loss, it adds fear of loss to our filters through which we perceive and choose. This adds a resistance to growth experiences, including awakening. This is because the ego often sees awakening as a loss of its control and dominance.
For example, when we graduate from high school, we may celebrate the accomplishment and the beginning of a new chapter in life. However, we may also experience grief at the loss of old friendships and our childhood.
What is grief? Grief is how we adapt to change that is perceived as a loss. It is healthy to grieve to process the change but not to get lost in it.
If we’re willing to face that grief and process our adaptation to change, growth results and we move forward in life. Thus, grief can be a gift and a sign we’re surrendering the old and moving into the new. Life becomes richer and fuller and awakening more accessible.
Remember that for the new to flower, some old must fall away. From a place of balance, disintegration arises. This makes way for transformation, integration, and a new state of balance. Plants grow from the compost of last year.
Consider also the laws of creation. Everything arises in an empty space. Create space and you make room for growth. This is true physically, emotionally, mentally, and in consciousness.
Loss creates open space for the new to arise in. This is the power of loss.
Davidya
This resonates a great deal for me. I had my first real glimpse at awakening during a period of intense grief. I felt like I shed so many tears that I reached the bottom of some deep well. I needed to process lots and lots of things I had spent years repressing. The violent death of a friend was the catalyst for this I believe. It enabled me to feel deeply and release so many things. Within a couple of years of this happening, I had my initial shift. So, for me, grief was eventually a great relief. Thank you for your words David.
Beautiful, Aaron. Yes, grief can be a great release and relief if we’re willing to go there.
Here, the culturing of gratitude lead to several waves of forgiveness, often of old perceived losses from prior connections. That helped set the stage for the first shift here.
It’s very common for the awakening itself to include a big release. Often, the bigger, the clearer the shift. Those who don’t have that or hold back may still open but may not be able to retain it or get clear for awhile.
It sounds like your friend was a gift even in death.
Indeed, I discovered this blog, via BATGAP interview, in the wake, or wilderness period, of the violent death of a dear friend (ex-partner actually) too. It was a huge spiritual catalyst also. The pain was unbearable, though I didn’t know about staying with/allowing the pain then.
I still have anxiety around how life can be turned on its head by tragedy and suffering in general (can’t watch much global news, though perhaps it’s not all that bad a thing to avoid) and thus have the said further added “fear of loss to our filters” due to that trauma.
Indeed, there is the grief itself and the future fear of other grief and loss. I now work through these layers daily, allowing them to heal – though the mind always wants them to resolve faster than they do (laughs). Things have been getting much easier in months of late.
Thanks David. Looking forward to the new future interview with Rick! 🙂
Hi Phil
Learning to allow pain that arises is good. But when there is huge trauma, we can only process so much at a time so some is naturally shunted forward to process later. The issue arises if we don’t or can’t get back to it and it builds a backlog. This is the stuff that shows up later, haunting us if we don’t learn how to process it.
I had something show up recently that goes back thousands of years.
Healing the last of the grief doesn’t necessary change the filters. That comes from deeper experiences of the nature of life. Being able to come from a deeper place makes healing easier too.
But yeah, it takes time. And thats good. We don’t want to re-traumatize ourselves. 🙂
Thanks.
Would you be open for talking about healing, such as your recent example of that which showed up that goes back so very very far, with Rick?
Thinking out loud, perhaps it does not matter whether the pain is thousands of years old or from last week. Maybe pain is pain no matter its place in time and just universally needs to be heard/held/experienced irrespective…
Hi Phil
Potentially. The main issue is context. After 30 years of witnessing, then over 10 years of being awake, the process has evolved. The cosmic body was added and now the Divine body.
In other words, it’s a lot less personal now. But I had a cleanse, then started a new rather potent technique thats triggered a new round of clearing in the last couple of months.
But yes, we can heal it in the present or in the past or at it’s origins. All are here now. And yes, pain is pain, whatever. The main thing is our willingness to see, then a bit of understanding and technique to make it easier.
I have an article coming up tomorrow on technique.
This is so important: “We don’t want to re-traumatize ourselves.”
In my experience there is nothing to be gained by rushing this kind of processing, or by hitting it hard (not suggesting that Phil was doing this). In my therapy practice I see so much self-forcing & judgement which ends up overwhelming people…
Agreed, Amaryllis
The right approach is so important. We still may beat ourselves up a little but the goal is to complete experiences, not create more baggage.
This is much easier and more natural after clear awakening. But before that, when we’re still in it, we can be much harder on ourselves. And some seeing takes processing time in itself.
This is also why I encourage processing what arises rather than chasing after things. Stuff arises when it’s time. We don’t need to control this process too. 🙂
Sometimes the things we lose has the quality of loss of opportunity (e.g. not getting the job one wants; or being prevented from pursuing something of interest). Sometimes loss has the quality of dismantling – e.g. losing a marriage, or money or such. The latter has the result of giving birth to a new aspect of oneself, at least for me. The former has its utility as well – in that it makes one not get too invested in an identity of oneself or realizing that one is more than one identity. Are there different types of loss? Or maybe I am splitting hairs?
Hi K
Yes, there are various kinds of loss. Loss of opportunity, loss of relationship, loss of objects like a hairbrush, loss of role such as a job, loss of identity, and so forth.
And yes, we may have a different response to different kinds of loss.
But essentially, loss is change perceived as a loss. Nothing is ever truly lost except illusions. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It is just transformed.
For example, an opportunity is never something we have – it’s a possibility. It’s a virtual loss. Major losses I’ve experienced in my life have often turned out to be gains. It was simply perceived as a loss in the short term.
Even death is a change in relationship and form, not a real loss. This is not to minimize it’s impact but when we experience that souls live on, death has much less of an impact.
It comes down to framing. Awakening can be seen as the death of the ego, the loss of the me. Or it can be seen as the gaining of our infinite nature. As that actually includes the ego, nothing is actually really lost. The relationship simply changes.
All that said, grief is a profound calling to surrender and resolve the trauma from change. It can be a major catalyst.
Thank you for this article. I am in a unique situation in that my child has a terminal disease. There has been a lot of opportunity to accept and grieve some losses- she will never walk, talk, or do certain things that a neuro-typical child would. I had hoped to somehow begin to grieve/process her inevitable passing before the fact, but that hasn’t been possible. Turns out she is the most joyful, sweet, bright soul and my life has been enriched beyond measure- I am so very grateful for her presence in my life. Sometimes though I have a reoccurring thought/ expectation that perhaps the grief, as mentioned above, will catapult me into some kind of awakening. As it seems like such a dangerous expectation I try to let it go like any other thought.
Hi Erin
Thanks for sharing such a profound challenge. And yes, you can’t fully grieve until afterward as it’s an adaption to change.
I can’t imagine such a challenge but yes, any child is a blessing. I well imagine they are an old soul, come to help clean some difficult things up for both of you.
Yes, that is good advise. Expectations are always a trap. You can know that facing this and working through it will be deeply evolutionary and there is a profound opportunity for growth of the heart. But let it be what it is rather than turning it into expectations or goals. It will be clearer in retrospect.
It may sometimes be hard to see, but know that love is driving this experience. Love that has allowed you to connect in such a beautiful way, love that opens the heart to whatever is here, and love that will call you both home.