Transformative Grief: Mourning Makes Mystics Of Us All

This is a quick overview of why this course exists. Just a little bit about me, and how I came to be spiritually rearranged by my experience, and why I decided to create a course like this one.

This section of the course briefly introduces the idea of mysticism as a method of investigating our relationship with mortality. It also goes over the format of the course and gives you some idea of what to expect as we embark on this work together.

The experience of bereavement is deeply embodied. Whether we admit it or even experience it consciously, the phenomenon is something that happens to us on the deepest physical level. We are met with waves of physiological discomfort that rival our emotional turmoil. This short talk discusses how and why this is worth our attention, and sets us up for our first meditation practice.

Through immense pain and suffering, we can find ourselves at the edge of a sort of abyss. And even the most cynical among us — and I'm talking about myself here — can feel a pull toward more transcendent methods of making meaning out of our experience. In this section we'll take a look at a few different teachings and teachers who can lend us practices and perspectives when we feel lost in sorrow.

You are in a breathing, living body. This can be an easy thing to forget, or push to the bottom of your list of things to care about, when you are in the depths of mourning and taking the practical steps to close out someone else's life. This practice is about simply noticing and attending the internal dance of physical and emotional reality in the venue of your body.

It seems paradoxical to turn toward our pain, but teachers like Ram Dass tell us that learning to grieve — which, if we are lucky and live long lives, we will have to do — means opening ourselves to the all-consuming experience of the pain of loss. It is through practices like mindfulness that we are able to observe and allow what's happening, even when the turmoil feels like it could overwhelm us.

Many spiritual traditions situate the seat of the emotions in the heart center. The Sacred Heart of Jesus, the heart chakra of Hinduism. This practice is a visualization technique that you can use to find and rest in the base of your heart, creating spaciousness all around you in order to grow the room in your heart for grief, love, and anything else life offers.

Ever since you can remember, you have observed and experienced life from the inside out. You looked at the world, had sensations, emotions, fell in love, had your heart broken, and all of it watched and witnessed by some part of you that wasn't consumed by the experience, but was attending it. This meditation is designed to seek out and make contact with that part of you that endures and contains everything — what some might call a soul or higher self — and open a line of communication.

Just like we can imagine ourselves sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the entire history of humans who have loved and lost, we can also see our pain and our predicament as being very much a normal and unavoidable part of life. The outrage that accompanies grief is also normal and well-documented in psychology. But what happens after the outrage, and after the deep processing of our pain? Acceptance, in fits and starts perhaps, or gradually, will eventually settle in. This section confronts the reality of our situation and offers some practical wisdom for how to meet reality where it is.

Academic research demonstrates that those who speak with their departed loves ones tend to have better grief outcomes — they are less likely to ruminate or find bitterness in bereavement. I came to understand this intuitively, and I tell you a little bit about my own journey to being open with conscious contact with the other side. A note here: it is not necessary for you to believe in an afterlife in order to benefit from the next exercise.

In this meditation, we'll tie together the practices we've been building on, creating spaciousness in our heartspace from which to access our deepest desires to be with our loved ones again. In our mind's eye, we can reunite and visit with them.

When the worst thing happens, it can be very easy to stay away from the world, whether because we carry fear, resentment, or just exhaustion. It is normal and okay to feel like keeping ourselves to ourselves. But if we have the courage to venture out into society without closing our hearts, we will always find opportunities to be of service. I'm not talking about volunteering or donating — although these are worthy efforts that can and do make a difference — but about the very simple service of sharing our grief with others.

Very few who are born into a human life will leave it without having experienced grief. The loss of a loved one is nearly universal. This is a simple fact of human incarnation that is inescapable, but that is also a powerful connector. All who love will lose. This metta practice has been adapted slightly to be a method of cultivating compassion for a world full of beings who suffer the pain of bereavement. Just like you and me, all beings deserve compassion and healing.