Running from our feelings, running from our grief

"when you are lost in the forest stand still - the trees and the forest know where you are...stand still...you are not lost...everywhere you are is called 'here'...." David Whyte

A friend emailed me this quote the other day.  She said she was feeling overwhelmed and trying to figure things out.  She complimented me on my "ability" to get overwhelmed, stop, take a few deep breaths and let it come...... well, people don't always see the panting in between the deep breaths or the chaos in the mind before the calm sets in!  But I was honored for her to see my light and to see her light within me.  That's what we do for one another, we mirror each other's light when we feel lost.  That is why when we greet each other we say Namaste -- I honor the light within you, that is also within me, that is within all things, and is the One.  (Or maybe the here, according to Whyte?)

It is hard to imagine that when feelings of anxiousness, fear, anger, agitatation distress, woundedness, etc. etc.come that we are given an opportunity.  I know for me, my first thought it not, "wow, something good is coming my way because I am quivering with panic".  If it is for you, I bow humbly to you.  What I am learning, and what I have learned during my own grief journey and through my client's grief jouneys is that it is in those moments that we are most human, most open to growth, when we know how.  And we know how, we all do.  We just forget.

Agony, confusion, franticness...all invitations for us to see that something is not r"ight" in our world.  And yet, when we feel these things, (and when we feel them after a loss, we may feel all of them at once), our natural instinct is to run.  Such pain goes through our hearts, and minds, and spirits (whatever you would like to call it) when we have been crushed by such a blow as the death of someone we love.  We feel lost and like no one understands us.

And yet, Whyte tells us, like so many mystics before him, that we are not lost.  It is our illusion that keeps us from feeling like we are disconnected.  That we are forgotten.  That we are isolated in a dangerous world.  When we become silent in our feelings that accompany our grieving, would see that there is nothing there but thoughts and feelings? And behind those, when we are still enough, would we see that there is only Oneness and that we are never disconnected?

It sounds esoteric doesn't it?  But the universe always knows who we are, even when we have lost the "very best part of us", the meaning in our lives, the person who we can no longer hold and see.  It is we who forget where we are and this is natural in grief.  It's our way of protecting ourselves.  But, your whole life you have been a sister, a wife, a mother, an uncle, a best friend, a grandfather, and now that person who is in relationship to you in no longer there.  So, who are you without them?

To me, that really isn't the question.  To me, the question is, who do I choose to be as I learn to live without the physical presence of that person?  Who do I get to find among those trees when I am still?  And what is this "here"?

In our grieving, we tend to run from our "here".  We think it is the most painful place to be.  So we hang out in yesterday and feel bittersweet longing for the way things were.  And we feel pain.  We stuff the pain, maybe medicate it with sleeping too much, chocolate truffles, staying too busy, and surely this pain, this stuff called grief will go away.  But it doesn't. 

We think about our future.  Yikes!!!!  How can I imagine a new future because I already had my future planned with the person who is now not here beside me.  We think, how can I go on without that person, without our plans.  And we feel pain.  And we stuff the pain.  This time it is in spending a lot of money, spending a lot of time in front of the television, spending a lot of time in the garden.  We think if we stay busy enough, our grief will not be able to keep up with us.  And yet, it does.

We spend so much energy trying to find creative (very very creative ways) of staying away from the feelings that come up for us in our grieving.  And we wonder why we are exhausted, why we have this gnawing feeling in our stomach, why we feel hopeless.  It is that we fight that which is so natural -- the pain that comes from having taken the risk to love. 

So what would it be like to stand still?  What would it be like to collapse into the here and now and feel?  Do we really fear the answer to that so much that we can't sit still in the forest and just listen to the breeze?  Listen to the sound of no-thing?  You are no more lost than the person who has died.  You are where you need to be and that person is where they need to be, as unfair and painful as that may be to think about.  And, sometimes, when we sit in our hearts, and stay open, we can feel, hear, taste, and smell that where they are and where we are is the same place. 

Stand still.  Listen.  Breathe.  Feel what comes.  Can you recognize that feelings come and go?  That thoughts come and go?  That what seemed liked constant pain is really moment to moment being.  Being in pain, being bored, being "itchy", being annoyed.  Stand still and breathe.  Take genltle care of yourself as you do this.  You don't have to feel like you are doing it right or wrong, just do it.  Stand still and tall like the tree and know that where you are is where you have always been, in just the perfect place for you.

Namaste, Jennifer