Grief can be one of the most painful feelings we come across. At it’s worst it feels like an intense loss, as though we had our chance for happiness and now it’s gone and now we will never have this chance again. It also stretches out, in a grief state we can’t reconnect to past times we have overcome it, it can feel like “i’m going to feel this way forever” it can feel like we are powerless and crying out for help yet knowing it will never be answered.
It’s not very fun. Some people even spend their entire lifetime here. So how do we deal with grief? Surprisingly it can actually be dealt with very quickly. This may seem unbelievable but it has worked in my life and many others who have tried it, and it is also experiential, you can try it out after reading this and experience profound results. The first thing to do is to decide we actually want to get rid of the grief. With emotions like grief there tend to be attachments, these can actually be very convincing. Such as a common one “If I let go of grief it’s all I have left of this person”. It can be noticed that all reasons to hang on to it are for some benefit, normally to convince another or make another feel guilty. Sometimes it is even because there is a pleasure in the grief. Like in the old romanticized songs of heartbreak grief can feel good and be used as an excuse for self victimization. A part of the mind loves to cling on to grief and use it is an excuse for how the world has wronged it and all the injustices that have gone on. It’s worth noting all excuses of hanging on to the grief to get something don’t work. You can realize this by asking “Have I gotten what I want from hanging on to the grief?” (am I happy) the answer will be no. So there is sometimes an attraction to grief and surprisingly it can be noticed we actually want it to be there. It feels good in a masochistic sense. If this is the case it is important to look at it and decide we want to let go of it anyway. Otherwise efforts may not work because we for some reason are choosing to keep it. If we have decided to let go of our grief and that we have had enough of it we can then move into a way to actually handle it. We do this by letting go of the emotion behind it. It will be noticed that their is the event and then there are our feelings about it. For example in a break up, there is the event of the break up and there are the feelings of sadness and the wanting to get the person back and all the stuff that comes along with it. Looking it at this way we can notice (and here's the secret) the problem is not the actual event but the emotion. The event itself without the emotion is not painful at all and in fact we can be surprisingly peaceful and indifferent about it. For some people divorce brings up intense grief for example, yet for another it may be a relief. From this example we can see that it is not really the event but the emotion that is the problem. When we have unrequited love it may feel like “if only this person would be with me than I would feel better” and there are all sorts of stories. But really we can look for ourselves and see quite easily that the problem is the feeling of grief is it not? The intense feeling on the pit of the stomach of grief or the feeling of tears building up behind our eyes and wanting to cry. This is an important distinction to make, the pain is not from the event it is from the emotion. You can even notice there are certain times when we are not thinking of the event and we still feel grief, it still feels just as bad as after a traumatic event like a death when we are doing something completely unrelated like driving to work and not even thinking about the person. We can be watching tv and in the background this feeling of grief is still there. From this we can see we are not dealing with an event we are dealing with an emotion. The event is not painful it’s the emotional pain that we fear. Whether the event is losing a job, breaking up with a partner, losing a family member or loved one to death, or reminiscing about how life used to be, it is always the same feeling of grief. A feeling of tears welling up, or a feeling in the pit of the stomach like a heaviness and a urge to cry or moan in pain. Whatever way it comes about it is just the emotion of grief. Knowing this is useful but doesn’t exactly solve the problem yet. Most people are able at this point to accept that it’s not the event but the feeling that is causing the problem, but as long as the feeling is still there it doesn’t change anything. It then becomes evident we must find a way to disappear this feeling of grief. This is done by the process of letting go/surrender. What does this mean? It means we allow the grief to come up and complete give up our need to control it. When a feeling is not resisted it will eventually run out, often surprisingly quickly. We just have to be willing to feel it. So practically how can we do this? We sit down, and have the intention of sitting there and surrendering to this emotion until it runs out. It can be useful to have a timer set for around an hour at this stage. After sitting down we feel into the feeling of grief. It arises somewhere in the body whether it is in the pit of the stomach, or in the need to start crying. We sit with it allow the sensations to be there and let them come up. While doing this any thoughts about it are ignored. Thoughts are endless and self reinforcing and have no value for us in letting go of grief. Thoughts only propagate and will get us caught in thinking about the energy which is again a form of resistance. If this happens we simply relax, and move our focus away from the thoughts and back to the feelings that are there. We simply relax and fall behind the energy, letting the energy pass in front of us. It arises by itself we don’t have to do anything except ignore the tendency to get stuck thinking about it and just relax and fall behind it. As the feeling of grief arises we stay open to it. We do not close off. The tendency of the mind is to resist and close of to feelings, the alternative is staying open and staying present. We close of because we don’t want the feeling to be there, but that keeps the feeling in. The only way for the feeling to run out is to stay open to it, and relax and fall behind the energy. A negative emotion or feeling that is not resisted will always run out. As we do this we continuously allow the feelings of grief to arise, they may get more intense for a short period but we keep allowing them no matter what. We stay present and let the energy of grief come up and be fully aware of it as it arises without doing anything about it, just watching it. As we do this eventually (and normally very quickly) the feeling will decrease and be replaced by a feeling of lightness, or laughter. It may take something like ten minutes of feeling it with no change before we notice it starting to dissipate, but as long as we don’t resist it the feeling will shift quickly. Sometimes even before the hour is up the feeling can be completely gone and replaced by a sense of serenity and calmness. If the feeling reoccurs or lasts longer, it just means there is more of it to let go of, so this process continues. Why does this work? Again it comes back to the principle of when a feeling is felt without resistance it eventually dissipates. It is like we have a boiling pot, resisting, trying to fix/get rid of the grief or getting caught up in endless thoughts about it is like keeping the lid on the pot. This is called suppression, and as well documented in the various schools of psychology. The more grief we suppress the more sad we feel and it takes less of an event to bring it up, our world than becomes colored by this suppressed energy which seeks an outlet. Our life becomes sad, we walk down the street and see only sad people going about their lives, we also constantly have recurring patterns of loneliness and sadness come up if we do not let go of the energy of grief through the means described above. Alternatively when we sit down and feel the grief letting it come up without trying to change it, it is like taking the lid of the pot and letting the steam run out. It now makes sense why people say things like “I always feel better after I have a good cry” because they were able to let go of the suppressed grief in this instance by allowing it to come up and release.The more we do this the less grief we have until eventually it runs out, and the event can no longer make us feel grief. We are than detached from it. We may prefer if certain things happen and act to make them happen, but if they don’t there is no longer grief and all sorts of painful emotions about it. We feel happy, and may even look back and think “I can’t believe I used to think I couldn’t live without this.” It’s often shocking how easily life can go on without the thing that we have lost be it a relationship a job or whatever. In fact life actually becomes better if we used this technique. This is due to the event being used as a catalyst to let go of some of the repressed grief we were carrying. Our life can ever get better in a traumatic event if we let go of the event. Or worse if we repress and store more of this emotion by avoiding the feelings. All it takes is the willingness to stay open and feel the feeling. References: Healing and recovery David Hawkins.
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