18 April 2014 5 Comments

Pearls from Pain, Part 15: Expressing the Universal

Profound grief has a transcendent dimension. Powerful pain can bring us right into our humanity, in a base and primal way or in a ways that touch the beauty of spiritual unity. The state of one’s heart is the determining factor.

My most transformative experience of transcendent grief occurred several decades ago, following a crisis that lead to the sudden and monumental loss of an intensive spiritual study group I had been cultivating for three years. This was the only time I had been in an intimate group that felt like lifelong bonds. I felt like dying.

I remember lying down on my bed, staring down shock and grief and taking stock of my life. At the cost of giving up attachment and accepting what life was dealing, I could go anywhere and do anything. I did not WANT to, but I could. I realized that my body was innocent. No use taking things out on my vehicle. Nothing could be done. I would go on. I grieved.P1080209

Profound spiritual traditions say, “Die before death.” The freedom of letting go of our conditions is one part of what they are alluding to. I released my conditions for participating in life as it had just become.

As I began to sob I first heard strain my tone. I felt guided to keep my heart open instead of contracting around the pain, and practiced relaxing my throat, letting the sound of my weeping pour through me like breath through a reed flute. I sought to let the pain breathe me and to stay soft.

Gradually I began to listen to my grief like an ancient song of the universe, primal and eternal. Entering my pain even more fully I embraced it and let it expand, remembering places in the world where cultures support this full expression, like the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and a procession of mourners in a Greek village.

Since my heart could hurt no more  intensely, I began to visualize wrapping my heart around the pain being sung aloud by people on several continents. Expansion beyond Self felt good, even as I hurt. Accepting my pain was drawing me into profound compassion.

From this place of beauty I felt generous, nearly at peace. I thought about Western culture, how we repress pain; of all those in terrible pain who cannot cry. I contemplated the anguish of being locked inside one’s self with such distress, while no one around knows, and becoming too stiff and shut down to release it. My clean, pure pain was like a river of life.

Then a fascinating kind of joy arose as I began to pull through my wide open circuits the pain of those who cannot voice it. I prayed to be an outlet or release point for their pain while I flowed in this eternal song of grief, connected to all Beings, yet safely at the center of my own experience.

This timeless passage gradually resolved to land me gently in the here and now, relaxed and in a state of wonder. I saw fresh and clear the light and shadows in my room, textures, shades of color. I thought  again about the losses I was grieving, now without angst or resistance. I just noted them. I felt like someone waking up on an island after a shipwreck, aware of tragic loss but also of transcendent grace. Life stretched out before me with its particularities and possibilities–the miracle of standing before life like a painter with an empty canvas.

If part of you ever feels like dying, remember: Your body is innocent. If you feel like dying, let ego die to your demands of and illusions about life. You can build a new life.  Your body is a gift. You can create new possibilities and perhaps even experience transcendence by releasing any conditions you place on happiness, and participating in the Greater Whole.

What part of you, or your life circumstances, belongs with your past now, but not your future?

Who can you become more fully if you accept this loss and expand instead of contracting?

5 Responses to “Pearls from Pain, Part 15: Expressing the Universal”

  1. Transforming Grief ~ Moving From Pain Into Universal Expression – Positive Energy Guide

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