GRIEF: THE WAY BACK TO WHAT NEVER LEFT

We are humans; therefore we grieve. And vice versa; we grieve; therefore we are humans.

In a linear understanding — the classic representation of a horizontal line drawn across a hierarchical time: past, present, future — we may think that grief starts with the self’s incarnation into this body, this world.

Within this view, grief is often held as a passage: something that starts, unfolds, and eventually ends. There is a before, a during, and an after. Like a ladder, it suggests ascent and pressures the individual into the constant territory of “somewhere to get to.” So, we walk through life with a cause-effect reaction only, and we say we are “getting over it/something,” waiting for the peak of a mountain with a victorious view where grief had to vanish completely in order for celebration to be present in our lives.

And in a way, this is a nice story. But that’s all it is. A powerful, but not alive, narrative created by a terrified mind that likes to control the movement of life and conquer the Unknown. And here is where we enter the labyrinth of illusion and give away our birthright to experience.

We exchange aliveness for inertia.

The great paradox that stays right in front of us is that grief is movement, although it does not define. So again, we realize that in our desire to hide from it and have no relationship with it, we stop expansion, trajectory, unfolding.

If we follow for a moment the ascending history of humanity — because it’s part of Reality — we come to realize that grief has never been merely an emotion in philosophy. It has been a threshold, a place of questioning, of seeking, where the illusion of separation begins to soften if we dare to look into it.

Since the Stoics, Epictetus and Seneca, grief became a sort of teacher, encouraging the individual to see what they are holding onto. The loss hurts because it was fundamentally believed that something external was ours.

In compassionate Buddhism, grief becomes a doorway: we are constantly reminded that grief exists because there is impermanence (anicca). Clinging to the idea of permanence brings unsatisfactoriness — dukkha; disappointment, and nevertheless constant suffering.

The territory of Existentialism has defined grief as something that became the cost of having truly loved in a finite world.

And Martin Heidegger chooses a more subtle path: grief is not just about loss; it is a revealing. Actually, what he wants to say is that grief strips away distraction and brings us closer to what is real. There is something so profound in his exposure.

I recollected all this human historical evolution to show that it truly brought great questioning, but somehow there is a part of it that remains untouched, which is: what does grief say about the great Unknown?

What came before Epictetus and Seneca? Which separation is grief merely pointing at? And why does every loss in our life come with more separation and keep us at our most basic levels of survival?

Not long ago, I read in a book that an accurate scenario of grief would be that of “a child barely able to hold ground in the world — anxious and uncertain of its place and belonging.” In the language of trauma, we are reduced to conflict, escape, or numbness. But there is actually more to it...

A Creation based on the fundamental law of Wholeness offers us a larger picture.

The Nondual view presents grief as a constant reminder in our unfolding. A feature of Reality that is part of everything that exists. And the only way to grasp it is the way through. You create space for grief to exist when you do not try to deny it or kill it.

The way through does not mean becoming identified with grief, but being in relationship with it, which means choosing not to experience only a part of Reality and therefore bringing more division. The way through means being free through anything that is being met in our experience.

In all that exists, life and death are partners in manifestation and not opposites that sequentially try to replace one another.

The same Creation that has the force of life also presents the force of life that can stop this form of existence. The same body that witnesses' illness presents the cure as well. Jason Shulman, the founder of A Society of Souls and of The Nondual Kabbalistic Healing, goes deeper and offers us his understanding: that the co-arising of delight and plague is a relational aspect of the Universe.

It cannot be one without the other and still be called Wholeness.

And here comes the kindness: when we look at it this way, we begin to see that repair embraces healing, and healing — in its infinite ongoingness — embraces repair, reminding us that this is why we walk the walk.

The causality fundament emphasizes the idea of a fragmented Reality because there is no space for both cause and effect to coexist at the same time. It always has to be a role played sequentially, in parts. One determines — the cause — and the other follows — the effect. And sometimes, they are not even allowed to change turns. There is more to this: cause and effect are part of a hierarchical classification based on a sort of comparison (first/second; bigger/smaller, and so on) — a fixed division that rarely allows sameness to be perceived.

The Nondual wisdom guides us to look at love and grief as not being opposites. They are movements of the same field. While love is the recognition of unity, grief is what that same love feels like when unity appears to be broken. And we are asked, gently, not to choose one over the other, but to allow both. To let love be vast enough to include grief. To let grief be seen not as a closing, but as a deepening. Because what remains, when we do not resist it, is not only sorrow. It is intimacy.

As Francis Weller so beautifully expressed: “Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close.”

This quality of love that coexists with grief in the same territory is not the love that depends on presence, but the love that IS presence. It is the coexistence of grief and aliveness together. Let us not misunderstand: working with grief is not static — “grief is alive, wild, untamed; it cannot be domesticated” — it is under no circumstance inertia. Grief involves an inward movement that brings an honest practice with oneself.

A practice of self-kindness, of releasing what is not gentle, of listening, deepening, and unlearning. The gift of a self-kindness practice means choosing yourself. It is what many practitioners call “the pilgrimage of friendship toward oneself” — which whispers kindly: “Do unto yourself as you would do unto others.”

Being with grief means being present with truth and choosing freedom. On the contrary, avoiding meeting the grief in your life makes you a fugitive, a constantly exhausted “practitioner” of a treadmill that never stops for you to have a moment to simply breathe and take a sip of fresh water.

So, integrating grief, welcoming it into our intimate abode, means that we invite our heart to stay open. To choose the Real. Or, in Francis Weller’s words: “Facing the sorrows of the world requires that we remain intimate with the world.”

The road is one, but it can be walked more easily with the support of another. All of life, all of the Universe, speaks about relationship as the pillar that supports existence. Which makes enough space for separation and unity, individuation and relationship, to manifest in a dance that brings aliveness, expansion, and experience as the only real commitment on this path. It is about walking the walk. It is not about becoming. It is not about personal success or failure; it is not about self-improvement. This is a cultural fixation on perfection in our days.

When life is not driven only by outcome, or by the need to become “the best” (as comparison is the only lens through which you see this walk next to another), something softens. The striving relaxes. Let us put it this way: we do not defend a certain “territory” idealized by the mind, because we are not here to conquer anything. Eventually, we realize that our only “goal” is simply to be journeyers. A journeyer not necessarily good at walking, but a journeyer engaged in the walk, no matter the falls, no matter the breaks needed. A pause is also an invitation. Pausing is not only the opposite of movement, but also its companion, supporting the walk.

I totally invite you to walk next to me in this journey of non-self-improvement. It's really exciting!

And I know, dear reader, that it's not easy. I encounter difficulties in my practice every single day. But it opens up in myself cracks on the walls of my broken heart that I have never considered healing would permeate through.

Grief comes in our lives and requires truth only. As I mentioned in my previous article "Seeking and Homecoming" - which I really invite you to have a read at it -, grief comes in many forms, shapes, sensations, emotions, scenarios, colours and seasons. For some, grief is hidden in their obsession for work and achieving; for others, in the constant avoidance of relationships of any sort. There are also those that present grief in their vigilance, or in their constant seeking of something by changing objects, partners, jobs, with an immediate effect and dullness.

There's grief in someone who has no relation with loyalty, with committing, with anger, with self-honesty, with bravery or escapism. The grief finds place to exist in both hiddenness and transparency. It doesn't choose one or another. Because there's great fertilizer in both for grief to be revealed. It hides, it runs away, it urges, it shows up, it separates, it creates confusion and foggy filters through which we see the world, it separates us from everything. A life can begin to organize itself around grief when it is not only allowed, but quietly enthroned.

But when recognized as a question that doesn't need a universal answer; when we can stay in this question, and delay an urgent answer, we are able to see that the only thing that grief asks for, is to be acknowledged, to be revealed. THE GRIEF ITSELF IN ITS ESSENCE ASKS TO BE MET!

As for me, dear companion, the grief was always present in my desire to hide and be seen at the same time, in my longing or/and wanting to be understood, in my fondness for nostalgia and solitude, in my insatiable curiosity for endless books and in my urge to gather knowledge, to listen to my Creator’s voice in words I am able to materialize through writing, in my continuous search for this Existence/ for this 'home' that sometimes feels far away...and others, when I remember :) .. and integrate my foolishness, I realize I am nowhere but 'home'.

Late in life I learnt that I present also constant grief called "anima mundi" for the burdens of this world we live in.

Our world has brokenness, and that's something we cannot fantasize about. The loss of a loved one, divorces, illness, loss of safety, war and genocide, ecological devastation, delusional geopolitical and economic systems, and so on; they are all realities part of the same constellation of sorrow. And for some, it can be immense, as they pass through many losses at the same time or throughout a long period of time, maybe all their journey.

And the great news is that once we pass the numbness phase and learn to receive and create relationship with grief, we feel more connected to the "anima mundi", to this soul of the world. Yes, we will keep grieving, I am not going to lie to you, but we will not let grief drown ourselves in our grieving anymore. It will just become another expression of life, another feature of life, as the leaves of the trees that change their colours within every season.

We do not want to live a life that allows grief to be a bacterium that lives as a parasite within another organism.

We want to allow everything to be ITSELF! We want to be in authority and not misled or manipulated with our own permission. We want freedom! But not freedom from, we are here to meet the FREEDOM THROUGH!

So whether you choose to empty your heart, release your tears to a good friend or any other place that is safe for you; whether you choose to create a shrine that helps you locate physically the grief on a table or a corner; whether you choose to enter a process of healing that helps you with the practice; let me tell you, you are not alone. Rainer Maria Rilke offered us a beautiful gift to consider in our saddest moments: "I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough to make every minute holy." Just reach out, dear you! In a culture that encourages denial, suppression and forward momentum at any cost, choose now to step outside the line. Choose nourishment for yourself!

Dear one,

Your light and darkness are parts of me, are parts of all of us, are parts of a whole world.

I am grieving, but I am not grief!