Grief: Loss or Learning

When we lose someone deeply woven into the fabric of our lives—it could be a partner, a parent, a child, a sibling, or a close friend—grief is the natural human response. When lives have been intimately shared, their absence forces us to find a new way of being, sometimes at many different levels. 

For most people, the grieving process typically lasts one to three years. During that time, emotions rise and fall, and the experience can feel somewhat similar to depression—not in a negative sense, but as a turning inward. Grief asks us to withdraw, to reform ourselves, and to create a new life structure after something central has been taken away. Depression, when used positively, is a similar process. It is a reformulation of ourselves.

Your connection with your loved one is irreplaceable and unbroken. The question is how you wish to experience this human journey and whether you choose to allow grief to become a doorway into transformation and a deeper awareness of love.

Healing Heartache

Much of our heartache comes not from other people but from our expectations of others and what we feel they should bring into our lives. If other people truly caused our heartaches, we would have little power to heal our hurt. Healing would primarily be left to the passage of time. Even then, the big heartaches could easily be reignited. 

It’s no point arguing with the heart. It doesn’t help to talk reason. The heart doesn’t even hear. It doesn’t know that language. It is instinctive—for good and bad. Whereas the mind will try and patiently think through the reasonableness of any situation, the heart is powerless to do so. The heart is all feeling and flows from a great line of experiences and expectations, both remembered and forgotten.

The most pressing thing we generally want from other people is a sense of love and security. It is a wonderful feeling to bask in the warmth of another’s affection, attention, and protectiveness. It is equally as un-wonderful to feel that the source of that love has somehow betrayed us. Once hurt, we can go through life shutting people out or keeping people around but blaming them. We can close the door of our heart. However, without our heart, we become an empty shell. Perhaps, an intelligent empty shell, but empty nevertheless. 

The heart carries the beat of life. 
It makes existence meaningful and beautiful. 
The heart bypasses language. It doesn’t lie. 
Everything moving and powerful has heart.

Life is Immortal

We are here to evolve. All life forms serve one ultimate purpose—to align themselves with the good, the beautiful, and the infinite. As human souls, this takes a tremendous amount of growth; much more than one short time on Earth can give. We gradually become more aligned to the higher life-force over a long period of soul evolution. What may seem a tragedy by the standard of one short lifetime is merely a page in an ongoing story which has a higher purpose and plot far beyond the momentary appearance. We can trust the Divine nature of the story with all its twists and turns.