So welcome everyone and thank you.
Thank you for listening.
So there is a line from the Shiv Puran which is one of the ancient Hindu texts and that line has stayed with me for years.
Grace does not always come as sweetness.
Sometimes it comes disguised as loss.
I'll say this again.
Grace does not always come as sweetness.
Sometimes it comes disguised as loss.
Grace disguised as loss.
Now this is not an easy teaching.
It is not a comfortable one and I want to be very careful with how I offer it to you today.
Because I know some of you listening,
Like me,
Might have experienced loss and not the poetic kind,
The kind that levels you.
Loss of a loved one,
End of a relationship that was your whole world,
A diagnosis that changed everything,
A failure that felt like the end of you,
Or a betrayal that broke something you thought was unbreakable.
And if you are in the middle of that right now,
If you are in the dark,
In the rubble,
In the raw wound of loss,
I am not going to tell you to look for the silver lining.
I am not going to tell you that everything happens for a reason and I am not going to tell you to be grateful.
Because that would be cruel and it would also be untrue.
But if you are further along,
If some time has passed,
If the wound has begun to scar,
If you are starting to wonder what all the pain was for,
Then perhaps this might have something to offer you.
Grace disguised as loss,
The fire that burns and the fire that transforms.
So let's explore this together carefully with reverence for what you've been through.
Now,
I am not saying that everything happens for a reason.
And I know this is a very popular belief.
I know people find comfort in it.
But when you are in the middle of loss,
Real loss,
And someone says everything happens for a reason,
You can feel like a slap,
Like your pain is being dismissed.
Like you're supposed to just accept it and move on.
Now,
The friend who tells you it's all part of the universe or God's plan,
Or the acquaintance who says the universe never gives you more than you can handle,
Or that Instagram post about good vibes only.
Good vibes only as if grief were a violation of the rules.
As if loss were a failure of positive thinking.
Now,
This is called spiritual bypass.
Using spiritual ideas to avoid the full reality of human pain and it is harmful.
It tells people their suffering is their fault.
And if only they had the right mindset,
They would not be hurting.
It shuts down grief before it can be fully felt.
And it creates shame on top of the pain.
Now,
Here is the truth.
My truth.
Some losses are just losses.
Some pain is just pain.
Not everything has a reason.
Not everything leads somewhere better.
Some things are simply devastating.
And you do not owe anyone a silver lining.
You do not owe anyone growth.
You do not have to make meaning out of your suffering just because it makes other people comfortable.
Now,
I need you to hear that before we go any further.
Because I'm not offering you a spiritual bypass.
This is not toxic positivity.
It is something more nuanced than that.
Let's call it the possibility.
Not the requirement.
The possibility that sometimes in time,
Looking back,
We can see something that was not visible in the darkness.
Not a reason.
Not a justification.
But a strange unexpected gift that grew in that very painful wound.
And if you never see that gift,
That is okay too.
It is not failure.
Some losses remain losses.
But the teaching still holds.
Now,
Here is something important.
You cannot skip to grace.
There is a temptation,
When something terrible happens,
To jump straight to the lesson,
To find the meaning straight away,
To figure out what you're supposed to learn so you can move on.
Now,
This is partly a defense mechanism.
If there is a reason,
It hurts less.
If there is a purpose,
We can bear it.
We want to make sense of the senseless because the senseless is unbearable.
But when you skip to the meaning,
You skip the grief.
And grief that is skipped does not disappear.
It waits.
It shows up later as depression,
Anxiety,
Numbness,
Maybe the inability to fully feel or love or to be present.
So the wound that is not felt does not heal.
It just goes underground.
Now,
In psychology,
There is the research on something called post-traumatic growth.
And it is real.
People can experience profound positive change following difficult life experiences.
And they report greater appreciation of life,
Deeper relationships,
Increased personal strength,
New possibilities,
And sometimes spiritual development.
But here is what research also shows.
This growth cannot be forced.
It cannot be rushed.
And it only happens when the person has actually processed the trauma,
Not bypassed it.
So the growth comes through the pain,
Not around it and not instead of it.
And the order matters.
So if you are in pain right now,
Please do not try to find the gift.
Do not try to see any grace.
Just be in pain.
Feel what you feel and grieve what you've lost.
The grace,
If it comes,
Will come later.
And it will come when you're ready.
It cannot be hunted,
Cannot be forced,
Manifested,
Received.
And it will not come until you have honored what was lost.
Now,
In Hindu tradition,
Shiv or Shiva or the formless is the destroyer.
But destruction in this cosmology is not evil.
It's necessary.
It's like life,
Consciousness,
Shiva,
Formless,
Find a word for it,
Destroys what is false,
What is stagnant,
What has outlived its purpose.
So that's something new can emerge.
And the destruction is not separate from creation.
It is part of it.
The same fire that burns the old also clears ground for the new.
Now we find this in Western traditions too.
Alchemy,
The transformation of base metal into gold.
But the transformation requires fire.
The base metal must be dissolved,
Broken down,
Before it can be reconstituted as something precious.
Now the alchemist called this stage nigredo or the blackening or the dark night,
The dissolution.
And it was considered essential to the process.
Without it,
There's never going to be gold.
So what if some of what we call loss is actually alchemy?
Not all of it,
Not always,
Sometimes.
What if the fire that burned your old life was also the fire that made transformation possible?
I am not saying your suffering was good.
I'm not saying it was necessary.
I am saying that sometimes,
Sometimes,
The destruction makes room for something that could not have existed otherwise.
Now Rumi,
For those of you who have heard of it,
Rumi said the wound is the place where the light enters you.
Not instead of the wound,
Through the wound.
The crack in the shell that lets something in.
The break that becomes an opening.
Now this is the alchemy.
Not that the breaking was good,
But that beauty can be made from brokenness.
That the cracks can be filled with gold.
Now,
Just let me offer you some examples of what grace disguised as loss might look like.
And not to prescribe anything,
But to just create an opening.
Now,
The relationship that ended,
Any relationship in your life at any time,
At the time it felt like death.
You could not imagine life without this person.
The future you had planned,
Gone.
The love you counted on,
Gone.
You grieved,
You fell apart.
Sometimes you never even got any closure.
And you wondered if you could ever recover from that.
And then,
Slowly,
Something unexpected happened.
You started to find yourself again.
Pieces of you that had been lost in the relationship.
Your voice,
Your desires,
Your identity began to return.
You realized you had been dimming yourself.
Playing small.
Abandoning parts of who you are.
So,
The relationship ending was devastating.
And it might have freed you to become yourself.
So,
Was the heartbreak grace?
Now,
You might not use that word.
But looking back,
You can see what the loss made possible.
Then,
For some of us,
Illness.
The illness that forced you to stop.
You were running.
You were working too hard.
Pushing too fast.
You might have been ignoring your body signals.
And then the illness came.
Not as a punishment,
But as a limit.
You could not keep going.
And you had to stop.
And in the stopping,
Something shifted.
The things you thought mattered fell away.
The things that actually mattered became clear.
Relationships.
Presence.
The simple fact of being alive.
So,
The illness was not good.
But it taught you something you might have never learned otherwise.
Then,
There is the failure that redirected you.
You worked so hard for something.
The job,
The project,
The goal.
And it did not work.
You might have failed.
Painfully,
Completely,
Publicly.
And the failure forced you of a path you thought you wanted onto a different path.
One that turned out to be better.
More aligned.
And more you.
So,
You could have not chosen to leave the old path.
Because you were too invested.
The failure chose for you.
And looking back,
You can see it as redirection.
Now,
Being very sensitive to everybody that's listening.
The death that might have cracked your heart open.
Losing someone you love.
Or even ending of a closed relationship.
Is one of the most painful experiences a human being can have.
There is no silver lining.
There is no upside.
It is loss.
Pure loss.
And yet,
Something can happen in grief.
A cracking open.
A rawness that strips away everything superficial.
A presence to life that you did not have before.
A knowing that every moment is precious.
Because every moment is borrowed.
So,
The death was not grace.
But something graceful may have grown in its wake.
Then,
The breakdown that preceded the breakthrough.
Everything fell apart.
Maybe your stability,
Your sense of self,
Your mental health.
You hit bottom.
You thought it was the end.
But it was not the end.
It was dismantling.
The false structures,
The pretenses,
The ways you had been holding yourself together.
They collapsed.
And in the rubble,
Something more real began to emerge.
So,
The breakdown was terrifying.
And it made room for a truer way of being.
Now,
I offer these just as examples.
And I speak only from personal experience.
Not everyone will see their loss this way.
And not every loss contains a hidden gift.
And no one should be pressured to find one.
But if you recognize yourself in any of these stories.
If you have glimpsed the grace disguised in your own loss.
Then perhaps you can hold it.
Nor is the reason for suffering.
But as a strange beautiful truth that sits alongside.
The pain.
Now,
There is something important about timing.
When you are in the middle of a loss.
You cannot see the grace.
It is not there yet.
Or if you.
Or if it is.
You have no capacity to perceive it at the time.
So,
This is not failure of vision.
It is appropriate.
When you are in the fire.
Your only job is to survive the fire.
You are not supposed to appreciate the warmth.
And let this land again.
When you are in the fire.
Your only job is to survive the fire.
You are not supposed to appreciate the warmth.
Grace disguised as loss is usually only recognizable in retrospect.
Looking back with distance and with time.
You cannot demand it.
You cannot hunt for it.
It emerges on its own timeline.
If it emerges at all.
And for those of you that are still in it.
If you're still in the dark.
You cannot see any grace,
Any gift.
Any possible good in what has happened.
Please do not add that to your burden now.
Do not make yourself wrong.
For not being further along.
Your job right now.
Is to survive the fire.
Feel.
The meaning making if it comes.
Will come later on its own.
And if you're someone who has been through the fire and emerged.
If you can look back and see the strange gifts.
Hidden in devastation.
Hold that knowledge gently.
Do not preach it to others.
Do not impose it.
Hold it.
And trust that what others will find.
In their journey.
They'll find it in their own way.
And in their own time.
Now here is the reframe I want to offer.
Not it happened for a reason.
But.
What.
Has it made possible.
So the first is an explanation.
It looks backwards.
It tries to make sense of the pain.
By assigning it a cosmic purpose.
And it often falls flat.
Because not everything has a purpose.
Some things just happen.
And the second.
What has it made possible.
That's an exploration.
It looks forward.
It does not claim the loss was meant to be.
It simply asks.
Given that it happened.
What has grown in its wake.
So this allows you to hold both truths now.
Loss was real.
Pain was real.
Nothing about it was okay.
And something.
Something may have grown in the wound.
Something may have emerged that could not have existed otherwise.
Not because the loss was good.
But because you are.
An alchemist.
Because you took what was given and you made something out of it.
The grace is not in the loss itself.
The grace is in what you have done with it.
The way you have grown.
The way you have softened.
The way you have opened your life because you know how fragile it is.
So you turned base metal into gold.
Not the universe.
Not fate.
But you.
And that is the grace.
That is the disguise being revealed to you now.
Now.
In a moment.
I'm going to guide you through a practice.
And.
We are going to hold space for both.
The loss.
And what it may have opened.
We are not going to force grace.
We are not going to manufacture silver linings.
We are going to honour what was lost.
And gently explore.
What has grown.
If you are still in acute grief.
You might want to skip this.
And just rest.
There's no rush.
Just come back when you're ready.
And if you think some time has passed.
You're ready.
You're further along.
This practice may help you integrate what you've been through.
To hold both the wound.
And the gold that has filled it.
Find a comfortable position now.
And just let yourself arrive here.
Feel your body.
Feel your breath.
The simple fact of being present.
Now let this be a sacred space today.
A container for whatever needs to be held.
You are safe here.
Whatever arises today.
It is welcome.
And whatever arises.
It is welcome.
Now gently.
Let a loss come to mind.
Something that broke you.
Something that changed everything for you.
You do not have to go into all the details.
Just let it be present.
And acknowledge that it happened.
Notice what you feel in your body as you hold this loss.
Where does it live?
What is its texture?
Just let yourself be with it now.
No fixing.
No analyzing.
No explaining.
Just be with it.
Now let yourself honor what was lost.
Now say this silently.
Or in your heart.
I lost something real.
It mattered.
The pain was real.
I lost something real.
It mattered.
And the pain was real.
I lost something real.
It mattered.
And the pain was real.
Let the loss be what it is.
You do not have to make it okay.
You do not have to find meaning.
Just acknowledge it.
If grief arises,
Let it.
If tears come,
Let them.
This is all part of the honoring.
Now if it feels right.
Gently look back at the time since the loss.
Not to minimize what happened.
But to see the whole picture.
Has anything grown in this wound?
Has anything changed in you?
Softened,
Deepened,
Opened.
That might not have happened otherwise.
If you see something.
Let yourself see it.
If you do not.
That is okay.
Now try to hold both.
In one hand,
The loss.
The real loss.
The pain that was and will always be.
And in another hand.
The unexpected grace.
Let both be true.
The wound and the gold.
The destruction.
And the creation.
Now say this silently.
The loss.
The loss was real.
And something has grown.
I did not choose this.
And I have made something of it.
I am the alchemist.
I have turned my pain into gold.
The loss was real.
And something has grown.
I did not choose this.
But I have made something of it.
Now.
Whatever it is that you are feeling right now.
Just let yourself feel it for another few seconds.
If you have an activation,
A memory,
An emotion.
And you think you need more time in this space.
Please feel free to pause this recording here.
Gently now.
If you have any images,
Let them fade.
Gently now.
Feel your body again.
Gently now.
Feel your breath.
And the room around you.
Just bring with you whatever has been useful.
And leave the rest.
Bring with you whatever has been useful.
And leave the rest.
Take a deeper breath now for me.
And when you are ready.
If your eyes were closed,
You can open them.
So welcome back.
So you have just held something sacred.
The loss and the grace.
The wound and the gold.
Now this is not easy work.
It asks us to honour the full truth of our experience.
Not just the pain.
Not just the growth.
But both.
As you move through life now,
Remember this.
You do not have to find meaning in the things you do.
You do not have to find meaning in your suffering.
You do not owe anyone a silver lining.
Some losses are just losses.
And that is allowed.
And if grace does come.
If you glimpse the gold in your cracks.
You are allowed to hold that too.
It does not diminish the pain.
It sits alongside it.
Once again,
We started with this inquiry.
That grace does not always come as sweetness.
Sometimes it comes disguised as loss.
So may you have the courage to grieve what deserves grieving.
May you have the patience to wait for grace when it is not yet visible.
And may you have the wisdom to recognize it when it finally shows its face.
You have been through the fire.
And you are still there.
And that in itself is grace.
So go gently.
Thank you for being here.
And until next time.
Namaste.
