Sorrow & Longing Part 6: Holding Sorrow & Gratitude

Sorrow & Longing Part 6 of 6 parts, Holding Sorrow & Gratitude Simultaneously. This is an invitation to get curious about how some memories, even if they hurt, can remind us of love, growth, and inner strength.

"The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give" -Francis Weller

Transcript

Hello beautiful human.

Welcome back to the final part of longing and sorrow as a practice.

Over the last six weeks we've covered quite a few different practices and topics and different points for reflection so we'll start with just a little wee recap.

The first week we spoke upon themes of longing and sorrow and how that encompasses our grief.

We created an altar for impermanence and acknowledged that impermanence is often so tied up in our longing and in our sorrow.

The second week we did a self-compassion practice.

The third week we lit a candle for that which was too heavy to carry and spoke about how candles are symbolic in sorrow and longing and also joy and celebration.

In the fourth week there was an allowing of space for feelings to reside with ease in the body.

And last week we discussed letting go in a ceremonious way and the times when it might feel appropriate to let go of heavy longing and sorrow.

And in our final week we move on to holding gratitude and sorrow in the body at the same time which might sound like quite a feat but let's think on it.

So let's start with thinking about gratitude.

So gratitude is being thankful,

Giving praise for and in all religious and spiritual practices there is a big tip of the hat to gratitude.

And we're not talking a disingenuous gratitude.

We're not talking about emotionally bypassing something that is hard and challenging and just sticking a gratitude on it when we don't actually feel that in our body.

That's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about holding something and seeing the silver lining and saying yes this is painful and this is causing me sorrow or I'm longing for this.

However at the same time I'm able to see in amongst the chaos something to be grateful for.

And gratitude practice is a practice just like any other.

So it gets easier the more that you do it.

And if you don't have a gratitude practice I would definitely recommend starting one.

And it could be something really simple like writing down one to three things that you're grateful for on a daily basis and again working that into a ritual and doing that ceremoniously so that it has more meaning.

And I would definitely recommend writing it down.

It doesn't have to be a long essay just a few points.

And at first it might be like you know okay I'm grateful for the sun rising.

The sun rises every day.

Or I'm grateful for this breath that is sustaining my life.

Or I'm grateful that I have a warm bed to lie in.

I'm grateful that I bought a really cool nice new top or whatever it is.

It doesn't have to be huge things.

There are things in the everyday monotony of life that are still worthy,

Definitely worthy of gratitude.

And the more that we practice this muscle the more we're able to to hold gratitude and sorrow in the body at the same time.

So if you don't have a gratitude,

Gratitude,

If you don't have a gratitude practice that might be something that you think about adopting.

And so I'm going to share with you some words from Khalil Gibran.

When you are joyous look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

And this really sums up the practice.

It is an acknowledgement that in order for us to feel happy we also have to feel sad in the most basic way.

The most basic way of describing it.

And that we need contrast in our emotional states in order to feel with real depth and not just be in neutral all of the time.

And obviously the more that we have been joyous and the more that we have loved and been in rapture the more difficult it is when those feelings of elation are not there.

And so if you feel things a lot you might find that holding your sorrow and holding your longing is really painful,

Really difficult because there's more contrast between your happier states which again we're kind of conditioned to thinking are better.

Well really they're just the same thing.

They're just different sides of the same coin.

And from an evolutionary perspective we are hardwired to look for the negative in situations.

It's called negative bias and there's an evolutionary reason why we do that.

And if you think about our ancient forefathers and mothers and other humans,

The cavemen and women,

They had to be really cautious.

They had to be cautious about which berries they ate.

They all,

The berries might look delicious but some of those berries they're gonna kill you.

So you have to exercise caution and that saved our forefathers lives.

Negative bias is the reason,

One of the reasons that we're here.

However you know we live in a world which is pretty safe quote-unquote in many ways.

We don't have to hunt,

We don't have to gather.

Our earth is covered in concrete.

There's very little chance of us falling over and breaking our leg when we walk to the end of the road.

If we don't know where we're going to meet our friend,

We look at our phone and it's got sat-nav in it.

When we get to the end of the road,

We wait at the end of the road and we press that little button and we wait for the green man to tell us it's safe to to cross the road.

And yet we're all feeling this existential crisis and we're feeling psychologically unsafe and anxious and all of these different pathologies and I think it's really interesting that negative bias and gratitude work together in many ways or more aptly,

Gratitude works at pacifying our negative bias.

So the more we practice gratitude,

The less we're expecting things to always go wrong and the more we're able to to see the silver lining.

And I'm going to share with you some more words.

So these are the words of Francis Weller who is really one of the forefathers when it comes to speaking on grief.

He does a really,

Really amazing work and so he says the work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.

How much sorrow can I hold?

How much gratitude can I give?

If I can only carry grief,

I'll bend towards cynicism and despair.

If I only have gratitude,

I'll become saccharine and won't develop much compassion for other people suffering.

Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft which helps makes compassion possible.

And these words again are deeply moving because these are really complex things that we're talking about and the ability to feel into yes that was really sad and that was really difficult but there's still something in this experience that I can be authentically and truly grateful for.

This is a practice and so my suggestion,

My invitation is that if you don't have a gratitude practice to start to establish one or to resurrect one if you had one in the past and you've let it slide.

And if we're thinking about starting this practice of holding gratitude and also holding our sorrow or our longing,

You might want to pick an area that isn't too raw,

You know,

That the the sands of time have taken the rough edges off and you're able to sit with more comfortably.

I wouldn't advise thinking about adopting these principles for something that is really fresh and uncomfortable or scary or traumatic but there might be something,

A memory or an incident,

Something that was difficult at the time and now you can be more reflective and philosophical on.

And I invite you to to do that and it might be that you use journaling prompts to feel into these two qualities of gratitude and of sorrow.

And my friends that I met at a circle recently and we were speaking upon grief and sorrow and and how this important these things were in both of our work which is quite unusual because a lot of people are,

They're quite happy-clappy,

It's not sexy,

You know,

Grief is not a sexy thing,

It ain't gonna sell,

It's not gonna make you a lot of money.

And anyway,

This friend that I met,

This peer,

She said something very beautiful which was,

It's like different wings of the bird.

So one wing of the bird is grief and on the other wing of the bird is gratitude.

And I thought that was so beautiful.

So how can we be more like the bird and encompass these two qualities?

And I'm gonna leave it there,

Beautiful people.

But I really hope that some of these words have landed somewhere useful in your body and that you're able to utilize them either as prompts or inspiration or a container for you to delve gently into this work.

And it does require gentleness and it does require a lot of compassion and patience and practice.

Okay,

Beautiful people,

A fund on my heart sending you so much gratitude for your time and for your curiosity and I really welcome any comments or feedback that you have and I look forward to connecting with you soon.

Reviews

Thank you so much for these six sessions. I have been grieving for a year and your words have given me new concepts to consider and use. Thank you.