A wonderful friend of mine who loves to do The Work kids around about the fact that he has an old shirt that he uses as a rag to cry into when doing his inquiry. Kleenexes are just too small!
And boy, we sure needed some old shirts today to cry into during the Relationship class.
Our topic was Loss and our assignment was to imagine losing something or someone very precious to us, very important, that we couldn’t bear to lose.
Everyone really went for it: they picked their child, their sibling, their partner, their parents.
I have done this exercise and imagined my children gone.
I once met a woman when enrolled in a class who had three sons who had all been killed, and I thought to myself “how could she even be teaching this class today?” It was like in my mind, I thought she wouldn’t be able to even cope, for the rest of her life, because of that experience.
It is so powerful to find out what these painful thoughts are about losing someone, as they are the biggest, worst, most horrifying versions of what we really believe about loss.
A lighter version about loss that still leaves some people reeling, is ending a relationship. An even lighter form of loss with someone we care about is having them move to another town.
What do you believe about “losing” someone?
In our class this morning one of the beliefs we questioned was “I want her to talk to me”.
How do I react when I believe that thought? I had images flash through my mind. I remembered being so anxious to talk with a man once who I was dating that I carried my phone into the bathroom. What if he called, and I missed it? I remember being aware of the power of that thought and how I was believing it so strongly, I had no peace, no freedom.
Who are you without the thought that you want more than anything in the world for that person to talk to you?
Without the thought I come back to the present. Woman standing in a bathroom, space all around….air, ceiling, floor. Woman who can now see what is present right here in this moment. Woman no longer interested in carrying her phone with her everywhere, even to the bathroom. FREEDOM!
If my children were gone, I would live. I would know because I was alive that I had more living to do here, and they did not.
The amazing thing is that with doing The Work and becoming freer of the fear of loss, freer of the idea that I have lost important people, my life seems so full.
Amazing to live in a world where people can come and go, live and die, and I flow with what happens. I can argue with this…but I will suffer.
Eckhart Tolle writes “To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them – while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.”
Much Love, Grace
P.S. The topic and awareness of LOSS when it comes to sexuality is just as powerful. So many experiences where people feel they have lost out, are losing out, will lose out when it comes to happiness and sexuality. We may be full for the class, but email me if you want to be on the waiting list and you may be able to start with us on Friday!