Grief,
And all its waves.
I wrote this meditation when I was in the midst of my own grief.
Not through losing someone I loved,
But through losing a part of myself that I loved.
But I came to understand that when there is death,
There is also life.
And so I chose to breathe life into my grief.
I invite you just to find a comfortable space,
Whether that's sitting down or lying on your bed or your sofa,
And just come to notice your breath.
Notice where the breath isn't flowing easily.
Notice parts of your body that perhaps feel tense,
And we're not changing any of that,
We're just bringing awareness to it.
And as I guide you through this practice,
I invite you to feel the words I'm speaking as much as you can.
Use your heart in this practice and not your mind.
Grief,
At moments it feels overwhelming,
Yet in others it feels liberating to finally sit with it.
The grief comes from many parts of ourselves,
Our inner child,
Our adult self,
Our past and present timelines,
And even deep within our DNA from those that came before us.
It stores itself in the crevices within,
Places we have hardly visited,
It is there.
When it first touches your heart,
It hits like a truck.
It is heavy and abrasive,
And it feels so destructive,
But then it softens and it holds you whilst it simultaneously unravels you.
It is in these moments that we begin to understand the subtle nature of our grief,
The way that it moves through us,
And the different pathways within that we feel it deep within our bones.
All is valid.
We fear the unraveling that grief gifts us with.
We resist our own undoing in fear of never being whole again.
But what we don't realise is our unravelling is necessary,
So we can strip back parts of ourselves that hide our grief,
The parts that don't allow us to access the divinity that also exists there.
So we hide it,
We try to push it down,
We shop it away,
Drink it away,
Numb it away,
But it never truly goes away,
Until we can really shine light on it,
Until we agree that to bind with the divine is also through the portals of darkness,
It is through it,
Not around,
That expands our heart in ways we can only even imagine.
I believe we face grief more than we might realise,
At many points in our life an aspect of us dies to make room for the new that awaits.
We grieve the old every time we grow into new versions of ourself.
We grieve the people that get left behind in those moments.
We grieve who we ask to be while simultaneously holding the excitement of who we are to become.
We grieve the souls that transition from our physical reality into other realms.
We grieve possessions,
Homes,
Places or people we haven't even met yet.
So just as we meet moments of joy and birth every day,
We also meet grief.
What is your version of grief?
Where does grief reside within you?
Recently I just went on a trip to Bali and experienced such an incredible amount of grief.
And it was there that I felt my holding on,
My resistance to what is.
It is there that I saw my fear of the unknown.
My fear that if I let go,
Where will I fall?
It is there I came to meet parts of myself that I don't think I have ever met before.
Parts of myself I had perhaps buried for a long time.
Parts of myself I had fears of arising because I wasn't sure that I could sit in that amount of grief.
But it turns out that I could.
It turns out that I could hold myself through the unravelling.
That I could be in pain and sadness and despair whilst also knowing that the road ahead was paved with so much light.
It was at that moment that I truly experienced the duality of being here.
The way that we can grieve old moments of ourselves yet have so much joy for what is to come.
We don't have to choose between our grief and our joy.
We can feel it all simultaneously.
That is what it means to be human.
To experience the spectrum of emotions at any given moment and allowing them all to be there.
Allowing them all to take seat.
So I invite you in this moment to come to notice your breath.
Where are you holding it?
Resisting it from accessing?
Does grief live there?
Is that why you refrain breathing life into that part of yourself?
I invite you to open your heart to the grief that resides in that space.
Can you expand rather than restrict?
Can you breathe life into your grief?
Take a deep inhale into your heart.
Allow yourself to face grief in the eye and exhale.
What is it that you want your grief to know?
Is your grief attached to a person,
A place,
A timeline?
Send it love,
All encompassing love.
Allow your grief to be surrounded by luminescent energy.
Allow its form to shift from dense to light.
Allow the pain to exist there as an opening,
A signpost to what you have long forgotten.
It's okay to experience such darkness and loss.
There will be days that do not feel so heavy.
There will be days when your heart does not feel the burden of carrying grief.
Do not fear,
For you are held in each stage of your human experience,
In each season that you pass through.
You are held and all is valid.
Behind the grief,
There's a part of you who you have not known.
They shall appear.
They will surface,
Ready to be seen,
Ready for your acknowledgement.
Who exists there?
Who have you been waiting to meet beyond your unraveling?
Grief is your portal,
Dear one.
Grief is your portal to the divinity within.
Come home to yourself,
My love.
You are safe.
You are held.
