Grief, Grace, and the Love That Never Leaves

Some mornings we don't come for inspiration - we come because we're hurting. This week on Sunday Morning Joy, we turn gently toward one of life's most profound experiences: the loss of someone we deeply loved. Together we'll explore grief not as something to overcome, but as something to be with - with compassion, with community, and with the quiet understanding that love outlasts every goodbye. If you're missing someone today, this space is for you.

Transcript

This, Dear ones, Is the power. Pranayama Now the body slowed down. A brain calm. The breath. Relaxed. Let us go into the deep end of the pool. I welcome you to this. Practice on grief. Increase. And the love that never leaves. The ancient Soviet mystic Rumi once said, The wound is the place. Where the light enters you. The wound is the place where the light enters you. And this must be one of the most outrageous things. You've ever heard. At the very place that you are broken. When we said. Is the place God enters in. That grief. Which feels like the end of the world, End of love. Is actually love. Nowhere left to go. Gently downshift your gaze or close your eyes. Your hands. Rest. Rested open in your lap. Palms like a bowl waiting to be filled. And just for this moment. You don't have to be okay. You don't have to have moved on. You don't have to have made peace. You don't have to explain the size of what you lost or justify. How long? You've carried. This feeling. Come as you are. Come as you are. Dear one, Grief is honest. It is the most honest thing the heart does. It does not perform. No pretense. It's simply saying. This mattered. This person, This love, The season of my life, It mattered more than words can hold. And that honesty. That's sacred. Now I want you to bring to mind what you are grieving. It doesn't have to be a person. It could be a version of yourself you had left behind. A dream that did not survive contact with reality. A relationship that quietly dissolved before you even had the chance to say goodbye properly. Perhaps a life that was supposed to look different than this. Whatever it is, Let it come. Don't push it away. Don't dress it up in gratitude before it's ready. Just let the brief. Presence. Let the grief be here. In this room with you right now. Being witnessed. Because the thing about grief that nobody tells you is. It's not the absence of love. It is love. Still alive. Still burning. Still looking for its beloved. You didn't stop loving. That love. Didn't die. It just. Changed or Now I want you to imagine for a moment that the love you shared with whatever you've lost. Never actually left. This still, Yeah. Is woven into the fabric of who you are. Sitting quietly in the way that you laugh. The things that still make you cry at unexpected moments. It's in the values that you hold. The way. You love other people now. More carefully. More fully. Because. You know what it means to lose. That love shaped you. In fact, It's still shaping you. There is a word in Hindu philosophy called sanskaras. Sanskara is the impressions left on the soul by everything that we have ever loved. Ever experience and ever survive. Every grief you have carried has become a sanskara. A sacred groove in your being. It's an initiation. You are not broken by what you lost. YOU WERE BROKEN OPEN Now I invite you to Let grace in. Not as a replacement for the grief. But as its companion. Grace is not the feeling that everything is fine. Grace is that quiet. Stubborn. Almost irrational sense that underneath all of this You are held. That something larger than your pain is present in your pain. Like even here. Even in the wreckage of what you loved and lost. There is a ground. That does not give way. Feel that ground now beneath you. Solid. Still. This is the ground of being itself. And it has been here this entire time. Even in your darkest nights. Even when you could not feel it. Even when you stop believing in it. It did not leave you. And that. Is what the mystics knew. Across every tradition. In every age, Mystics sang the same song in different languages. Love is not destroyed by death. Or loss. Or time. Love is the only thing that is real. And real things. Do not disappear. They transform. So let me ask you to do something now that may feel impossible. Let yourself be loved right now. Not by the one you lost. But by life itself. By this moment. By the grace that held you together on every day that you thought you wouldn't make it through. By the quiet miracle that you are still here, Still breathing, Still willing to feel. That is not weakness. That is extraordinary courage. So dear one, I want you to now place one hand on your heart. I want you to feel it beating. The heart has been broken. It is still beating. Do you understand what that means? Do you understand the kind of love it takes to keep beating through everything? Yours has been through. You're not just surviving your grief. You are being transformed by it. Transformed into someone. With more room. More depth. More capacity for compassion than you ever had before. Because you know what it costs to love. And you keep loving anyway. Holy cow. God is real. Let us now seal this with three affirmations. Receive them not as just words, But as truths being spoken back to the deepest part of you. So as I speak them, I want you to silently speak them inside yourself. Let them move through your lips like a quiet prayer. My grief is not a sign that something went wrong. It is proof of how fully I love. And that love has not left me. It lives in me still. And it is making me whole. Second. I am not behind on healing. I am exactly where the sacred needs me to be. Grace is not waiting for me at the other side of grief. Grace is here. Inside the grief. Holding my hand. Number three. The love I shared with what I've lost was real. And real things do not die. That love has become a part of my soul. It walks with me. It will walk with me forever. I am never ever alone. As I bring this practice to a close, I want to leave you with a question. Not something that you need to answer right now not something you need to make a row I want you to sit with it. The same way that you sit with something precious. Carrying it in your day, In your week. Into your quiet moments. That question is. If the love I lost never actually left me. And it is still alive somewhere inside who I am. What does it want me to do? With the rest of my life. I'll say it one more time. If the love I lost never actually left me and it's still alive somewhere inside who I am. Does it want me to do? With the rest of my life. I want you to please bring your palms together in prayer position at your heart center. As we bring this practice to a close, I want you to gently tuck your chin. Your heart space in a posture of gratitude. And I want you to now rub your palms against each other, Because the palms are an energy vortex. And as you rub your palms, You regenerate the chi, Or the prana, The life force. When you feel a nice warm ball of energy welled up between your palms, I want you to cup your eyes and bless yourself and speak these words to yourself. I am fortunate. I'm lucky. I'm truly blessed. I attract wonderful people into my life. Attract great opportunities. I attract love. Attract incredible ideas. I attract wealth. I am guided by love. I give everywhere I go, Even if it's only a smile. My abundance. Overflows to those around me. I love my life. I am the M in magic. I am unstoppable. I welcome wealth into my life at the intersection of light. And matter. I welcome wealth into my life as life-giving life and life-sustaining life. I welcome wealth into my life as a manifestation of truth. Goodness and beauty in this world. Now bringing your palms back together in prayer position at your heart center. I thank you for joining me in this practice today. Om. Ciao. Shanti.