Grief

I walked into my yoga class this morning with an unusual and irritating edginess. For an early Monday morning, after a restful weekend, I actually felt quite wound up .

I thought to myself as I rolled out my yoga mat, that it might just be the heat, or general life stressors that are affecting each one of us differently.

I remember, on Saturday, that someone close to me was talking about his distress regarding the shooting in El Paso. He was also talking about global warming. I can remember thinking to myself, as he was expressing his distress, that I honestly could not bear any more violent news. My heart just felt so full and concerned. Many people, both in and out of my office, have expressed very similar feelings of compassion fatigue.

My yoga teacher offered everyone in the class a sticker that was a gold star. She laughed about how her children got gold stars throughout school just well… because! We all got a gold star for just “showing up” to class. I felt both gratitude and appreciation for this small act of kindness. I noticed my eyes well up with the warmth of tears.

She asked everyone to place their gold sticker in the upper corner of their yoga mat. She said something to the effect of, “No matter what you are feeling in these terrifying times, just give yourself a gold star for deciding to show up.”

I noticed that our normally packed yoga room wasn’t so full today. I thought about the various reasons that people might not show up for class: heat, vacations, battle fatigue?

I also noticed that there were two men beginning to argue quite loudly outside of the yoga studio. Their argument began to escalate. Profanities began to be exchanged. The room felt tense.

I then began think about the shadow. From time to time someone will ask me in a phone consult if I work with the shadow. I find this question to be most interesting. “Why are they asking, ” I wonder? After all, I am a Jungian Analyst and we do have an eye, ear and nose for shadow.

While I tell people, “Of course, yes, I do work with the shadow”, I also wonder, privately to myself, what is this persons connection is to their own self love.

I don’t mean this in a new age kind of spiritual bypassing way; I mean that very often, shadow business comes out of a deep avoidance with ourselves, our deepest pains, disappointments and traumas. In a word, it is what makes us human. Are we aware of our shadow which is really our most wounded self?

My personal experience, in my office, is that while there are cases where people might seemingly “love themselves” in a malignant and narcissistic way- most people don’t love themselves nearly enough. In these times of social isolation, speed, chronic stress and “faux” intimacy via social media, people actually do not have enough positive regard for themselves. Because much of social media is curated toward “the perfect self”, it may contribute toward feelings of hatred and disbelief in ones own basic goodness and self worth.

There are new studies that suggest that the internet and social media may contribute to the root cause for many destructive behaviors. People often “compare and despair” with what they encounter on the internet. Self destructive actions that arise out of isolation and comparing to others online may manifest as various kinds of addictions, isolation, depression and anxiety. There is strong evidence to support that eating disorders, especially for adolescents, are on the rise due to this “compare and despairing” while scrolling through the internet and social media.

Unfortunately, the internet is teeming with the allowance of demeaning behaviors such as posting violent or destructive comments. Expressing ones rage or distress online can becomes a vicious cycle because destructive behaviors then increase a feeling of self hatred and around and around it goes. Self esteem grows through esteem-able acts not destructive ones.

Some people, such as the ones who violently attack others online, are only making things more difficult for themselves and possibly for the relationships that they are actually, paradoxically, deeply longing for. Oddly enough, they are trying to destroy the very thing that they need. Envy, when unconscious, seeks to destroy what it truly wants for itself. It takes courage to say, “I am actually worth looking into my own fears, anxieties, blame, selfishness, pride, envy, arrogance, power, self seeking, and control.”
A simple boundary may be the best solution when experiencing aggression online. Creating boundaries is an action that expresses self care.

When my own spiritual tank is full, I feel humbled, open and often quite fragile and strong at the same time. I consider this fragility to be a human strength.

My friend was right. There was very good reason to feel overwhelmed with sadness. There is a tremendous amount of negativity and violence occurring. People are so full with fear and despair that can can lash out at others trying to blame them and/or destroy them. This won’t work. There is also love, respect, healing and support available for those who are willing to face the wreckage of their own lives. Blaming and trying to destroy others online may provide temporary relief, but it will not heal the original trauma.

When I felt tears in my own eyes in yoga, my heart immediately opened up. I had a beautiful practice. I practiced with the intention of healing those in pain.

Allow yourself to be broken open. Love yourself for showing up. Love yourself for being willing to look not only at our own shadow stuff, but also the violent collective shadow business that is erupting everywhere. We, too, are a part of that dark shadow. I feel that we are part of that collective shadow because we are also a part of the collective light of awareness, consciousness and a willingness to confront it and show up in our own lives.

My yoga teacher also read a quote about faith. The jist of the quote was that faith is the bird singing at the darkest part of dawn because it has faith that eventually the dawn or awakening is coming. The light and the dark go together. You cannot have one or the other. One actually informs the other. It is the light of awareness that can see the shadow. In my own experience in my office, it is this very light of awareness that softens people and allows them to cry. May that vulnerable awareness be a small drop in a bucket of collective change.

In fairy tales it is often weeping or tears that can break a spell.

Just as it is said that the Buddha was born from the tears of the great goddess Tara, the mother of compassion, we too can wake ourselves up from our own spell. Weeping in hard times does not make us weak. It allows us to maintain our humanity. Maintaining our humanity is crucial in these dark, confusing and exhausting times.

Weeping connects us to our own compassion and courage. Our tears may keep us safe from falling into the most dangerous of collective shadow: hatred and violence.

“Infinite altruism is the basis of peace and happiness. If you want altruism, you must control hate and you must practice patience. The main teachers of patience are our enemies.” Dalai Lama

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“Let’s do some living after we die..” The Rolling Stones

I have a friend, Sonia. When Sonia was pregnant she, already a very sensitive person, discovered that some very latent psychic abilities began to open up for her. Sonia began to be able to feel other people’s pain. When she felt this pain in her own body, she would then receive images of what, where and why this pain was there for the other person.

She explained to me that this was a brand new phenomenon that definitely coincided with this little being that was growing inside of her own body. Once her son was born, this brand new psychic ability continued to develop. “Well,” she said, “I guess that is is one of the incredible miracles in life.” “I can’t explain it anymore than I can explain the miracle of how a human being can actually grow in my womb, and that this human being will become a man one day.” Amazing, really.

I have another friend who recently witnessed the death of her elderly mother. She said to me, “I can’t explain it. I felt like being with her while she was dying was like witnessing someone being born. The struggle and pain was the same, the breathing was the same and the light, joy and infinite love filling up the room at her last breath felt exactly the same.” She said, “I think that death is just like birth. A miracle”

For me, something similar and horrible and very interesting happened in the last year. The horrible part was that my dear brother, Phillip, was diagnosed with a very rare cancer. I had hoped beyond hope that it could be treated and cured. This was not to be. I watched Phillip suffer as he went through his treatment. The cancer spread. Hope was gone. Phillip died within 7 months of his diagnosis.

I had experienced many, many loses in my lifetime. But this loss was the most devastating for me. Not only was Phillip young, only 48, but also, he was leaving a family behind. To my mind, he was just beginning to live.

Much like my friend Sonia, while Phillip was sick, a sleepy psychic ability began to awaken. While Sonia could feel the pain of another person, I was communicating with the dead.

In my healing work that I do with my patients, I was already able to “see” trauma of ancestors. For me, it is kind of like being able to look at a lit up family tree. I could see ancestor trauma, but this was different. Dead people began to talk to me.

One night while having dinner with my friend Lee, she told me of an old friend of hers whose husband recently committed suicide. I looked over Lee’s shoulder and said, “Ugh, he is right behind you and he wants to explain what happened to him.” I had never directly communicated with the deceased in this direct way before. More and more, if someone had a question about the death of someone close to them-that person showed up- to me, to relay their story.

It would not be unusual for me to wake up at 2:00 am with someone deceased standing next to my bed wanting to give me a message to their living loved ones.

It seemed like the oddest of things. Why when my own brother was dying was I being given a gift that could give comfort to others, while I, myself, remained in the deepest of despair about my own loss? It wasn’t that my brother wasn’t communicating with me after he passed, because he was, but I was not spared from the depths of grief that someone must experience as the price of loving someone so greatly. This was an initiation. I had to walk through it. This was one of the most disorienting and wrenching experiences that I have ever had to meet- this death of my brother.

My grandmother also passed a few days before my brother’s “would be” birthday. I was not sad at her passing. She was nearly 101. I felt relief that she would be with my brother on his “birthday.”

As I am a Buddhist, my Buddhist friends would inquire, “How is it that you are talking to dead people? Don’t they take a rebirth?” All that I can say is that I have NO idea! I have some thoughts- some of those thoughts are far too complicated for the purpose of this blog, but, I know what I know. I know that speaking to the person is exactly the same as speaking to a person who is “here.” {If this is hardly palatable for you, I want you to know that I was going to give a talk about all of this at a National Conference for Jungian Analysts in Santa Fe, but, my brother died two weeks before the conference. I cancelled. Honestly, I was relieved. I felt like he did me a favor. His timing was impeccable.}

I joined a grief group to support my bereavement process. (http://www.ourhouse-grief.org). I felt like a lunatic. How was it that I was helping people resolve their grief by communicating with the dead and yet I couldn’t feel any relief myself? There were/are 8 people in my grief support group. We all feel the same. Our experience of losing someone we love is mirrored in each other’s anguish, bewilderment, isolation, anger, disorientation, lowered immune systems and incredible fatigue. We each share the suffering of the “new normal” that the group feels surrounding the loss of our loved one. Week by week we walk each other through letting go of our “social mask” of “I’m fine, thank you, ” and share what is behind the mask. I have never appreciated the power of group consciousness and collective Basic Goodness as much as I have with the experience of this particular group. We are not different from each other at all. But, I have discovered that grief is some kind of “dirty secret” that no one wants to discuss. It’s no wonder that our culture has become so violent. We are not allowed to feel pain, especially the pain connected to loss.

One meeting in my group, a man said that he had a dream with his deceased mother in it. He asked me if I had dreamt about my brother? “Only dreams that indicate that I am in trauma over his death, nothing else,” I said.

Finally, after about 8 months I had a dream. In the dream I am at a “Grateful Dead” concert with my brother. (He always did have the best sense of humor!) In the dream I realize that I am not dreaming- where I am with him IS real. I am really with him. I say, “Where ARE YOU?? Are you OK? What happens at death? Tell me!” He looks at me nonchalantly and says, “You see that room with the light coming out of it over there? I am there. I am just over there in that other room. It is exactly like before, but another room. I am in that room with others, with Grammy, and I am just pretty busy in there. I am happy.”

I woke up.

I felt better.

I knew that when the dead communicate with me that they are stepping out from this “other room”- that they are with us all along. Besides, which dream is really real? This dream life or that one? Perhaps neither or both.

I am not the only one who communicates with the dead. Most people, if they are honest, will talk about experiences that feel as if the deceased love one is sending them a message somehow: a certain song that plays in the car when you need it most that is significant to the loved one and their relationship with you, a message written in the sand or on the sidewalk or a wall, an object found that symbolizes the loved one, some random text or email that finally finds it way to you after the deceased sent it years ago, a breeze that caresses your cheek out of nowhere, a butterfly that lingers longer than expected and then almost lands right on your nose, something that someone says innocently that is only something the deceased used to say to you. Or, just a certain feeling that comes over your body and into your heart-a knowing that they are fine and you will be ok.

So, you see, you don’t have to be Theresa Caputo (The Long Island Psychic) to receive messages from the dead. You only have to be receptive.

Someone recently gave me an article about the Russian physicist Yury Kronn. The article is about the subtle energy that fills 96% of our existence but cannot be seen or measured. It says, “We live in a 4% world. That’s the world we can see, build, measure, and organize. Then there’s the 96% that we don’t see, but that determines everything…..” Then it says, “Welcome to your new reality.”

If we only use 4% of our perception, then this means that the room my brother is in is a part of the other 96%. Shamans and other investigators of the mind have already known this from the beginning of time. I, for one, am grateful to know about it, to see it, and to hear from the “subtle energies” that reside there. Regardless, the devastation of loss is very real. If we weren’t meant to feel it, we wouldn’t. Grief takes time.

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Working With Our Collective Shadow

Speaking To The Dead