Coping with the Loss of a Loved One

It’s been a while since I last posted. I have, like most people had some major issues arise. Amongst other things we have lost some very loved and significant people in our lives. Earlier this year my 13 year old daughter lost her best friend and just recently my partner lost his best friend of over 30 years. Both exited our lives very abruptly leaving us in disbelief, with their passing feeling surreal.

One thing no one will ever escape in their life is the death of a loved one. Every person will eventually go through the process of grief, or face the loss of a loved one. Losing a young soul is devastating and can be difficult for the mind to reconcile; however, losing someone who has been in your pattern for as long as you can remember can also be heart breaking.

We all deal with loss differently. In fact some people take on such a strong avoidance response that I have heard others question their depth of pain. Make no mistake- everyone hurts, even if their grief is expressed differently to the way in which you have responded to loss AND- there is NO PAIN LIKE IT!

Given that we are all going to die one day, there is such incredible sadness for the loss of the human form. I have also noticed that there is a difference in the way people react depending on their spiritual beliefs or non-beliefs. The people with faith in an after-life or transition to something greater seem to cope better. The non-believers will argue that the believers have created a false sense of security by believing in something no-one has ever proven or in a place from where no-one has ever returned.

If this was indeed the case that: ‘you live and you die-That’s it!’ –then to me, it means that we would only be grieving the loss of a bit of time on the planet, because in the scheme of things 10 or 20 years is really but a moment. Eventually everyone will cease to exist so no one has really benefitted to have stayed a little longer.

The best interpretation I have heard from our Spiritual teachers is that you ARE ‘life’. You are a unique expression of ‘life’ itself. You cannot lose what you are. The opposite of LIFE is not DEATH. The opposite of LIFE is BIRTH. We are ‘life’ that is born into a physical form then the ‘life that we are’ exits the world of form. Because the mind by its nature needs a “beginning” and an “end”- it is difficult to accept the notion of “has always been”.

Inherit in this interpretation from the teachings of Eckhart Tolle is a place of formless or a transition. In other words, you do not die – only your physical body falls away and the ‘awareness that you are and have always been’ remains without form.

One example I heard was that when this happens, the life that you lived is akin to the dream you had last night. It was relatively REAL in that it happened in a subterranean consciousness but not ultimately real or important to your life when you awaken from the dream. Similarly, the lifetime on the earth, although relatively important and real, it is not ultimately important in the scheme of the bigger picture.

If one happens to die consciously then, as I understand from the various teachings, they are given the choice of rebirth as opposed to entering the cycle automatically.

As for losing young souls as we did earlier this year, I could only find comfort in knowing that without access to the larger picture- I have to accept that it will never make sense. It is like pulling a paragraph out of a novel and trying to make sense of the whole book.

Dealing with the loss of our loved ones is always going to be difficult and will cause us immense pain and suffering. For anyone that is dealing with the loss of a loved one:

I hope you can find some comfort in the teachings summarised today

 

Photography by MDH and Fagun Mishra
No Comments

Post A Comment