Grief

Levona: Grief is a very heavy feeling. It is more intense than being sorrowful; more intense than being sad, and grief is associated with a human being experiencing a loss of some sort. With the best of intentions your culture has taught you to stand tall, have a stiff upper lip, don't cry, be strong. Those are all good human qualities but there are times when they are not healthy. When anyone experiences a severe loss, from their perspective, the greatest gift you can give them along with your loving compassion is the OK-ness of crying, of sobbing, of telling of their grief. Grief held in never gets resolved, and that person will suffer from their loss the rest of their life; and no matter what the loss, from the universe perspective, no loss is meant to halt a person's passion for life for the rest of their lifetime. 

I would encourage all of you this week to explore whether or not you have experienced grief yet in your lifetime, and if you have, to look at the grieving process you went through. Did you honor the feelings attached to that loss, or did you bury them? Is there still some of that loss tugging at you, keeping you angry, or bitter, or feeling cheated, or feeling some other type of hurt? If there is, then now is the time to honor the rest of the pain inside.

There are many ways. You may do it alone or with a partner, a friend, a family member. I would encourage all of you this week to look at what grief means to you personally, and if there is any grief still remaining inside of you, to seek your own personal avenues to let the rest of it out.  

When we hold in heaviness and fill all the spaces of our consciousness and our body with that heaviness, there is no room for the Light of Love to come in and heal. So it is a necessary step to grieve until there are 
no more grief feelings; no more tears; for then you have opened up the space to receive your Father's Love to have what you call "a new lease on life." 

Solonia: I would like you to consider tonight that there are indeed different types of grief and consequently different types of grieving. The natural inclination for humans is to attribute the grieving process to instances of the death of a loved one. I would ask you to open your perspectives somewhat to stretch them to include any loss of a loved one, be it through death, through incompatibility, through changes in life focus, through changes in living situations. There is much grief in your world that is caused by family separations. Children, being incapable of understanding adult situations and adult perspectives, are often 
subjected to many layers of internal grief for which they have not the tools to make adjustments. When a parent for one reason or another leaves the immediate sphere of influence of the child, it causes grief.  

Depending on the circumstances and the understandings of the custodial parent, this grief may be buried in the child due to exhibitions of anger, revenge, and hatred. In these instances the child is not allowed the opportunity for healthy grieving. Grieving is a necessary tool for personal compensation of loss.  

Many of you have grief buried deeply within your experiences, and it is difficult for you to be willing to honestly face this grief and to observe it from a more mature perspective. I would say to you that as long as you keep this grief buried, it will continue to influence you in your decision-making process. So many times the Master said, "Fear not," and here in particular is an instance where I would reiterate his most excellent words. You will not die from facing your griefs. You will not experience personality fragmentation from facing your griefs. And I can assure you that your world will not fall apart when you face your griefs. You must allow yourselves to go to places within that you have previously feared, for you must allow yourself to grieve before you will be able to fully heal.  

Grieving is rarely something that humans will choose to do willingly. Your remembrance of grieving and the processes that it entailed can make it difficult for you to agree to going to that place again. Often some of your medicines may have a very bitter taste to them, yet they aid you in the healing process of your body. So you take them, anyway. Grieving can have a bitter taste to it also, but it is a medicine for the soul. It is a tonic that aids in healing. Go to places within that you have refused to go before. 

So it is a necessary step to grieve until there are no more grief feelings; no more tears; for then you have opened up the space to receive your Father's Love to have what you call "a new lease on life." 

When I grew up I was the cheerful one, the strong one; that developed into a PollyAnna, a Holly Go-lightly. My griefs (feelings) were secondary, not important. I stuffed (suppressed) my griefs. All my life I did this. I did not grieve because in grieving I would have to fully acknowledge the injustices and the losses and the abandonment and the selfishness and the ugly, mean, hurtful, cruel and inhumane aspects of the human condition. Who wants to admit that?

If it exists out there, it must also exist in me, I must deserve it, and I don't want to see that. Therefore I will separate myself from the human condition. I'll be beside myself. I'll be above those mere mortal feelings.  

Thus, when the time came, when the grief process came upon me, (all the griefs that I had not expressed or acknowledged or felt since the beginning) I realized it would be a long time before I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. It took literally years. What I eventually learned through the process was that I loved my grief. I hugged it to me. I delighted in it. And when I could see that I was enjoying my grief, I was able to let it go.    
Now when I have something to grieve (a loss of some kind, an alteration in the way I have become comfortable or secure), I allow myself the luxury of really feeling the loss, for in feeling the loss, I AM reflecting the ideal, and reflecting the ideal is a form of prayer. Thus, when I grieve now I put on appropriate music and allow myself to  become really melancholy. A carafe of hot tea, a floor length skirt, a rainy day.

These are my days I try to savor such things as grief. Genuine grief is poignant, and I have great respect for people who appear to know how to do it well and get it over with.

Thanks for letting me share.

Gerdean