There’s nothing so difficult as missing a person, or longing for them (especially if they’ve died or are no longer speaking to you).
The mind will think about all the ways it used to be, when it was “good” or “fun” or “loving”.
This absence is NOT loving, we think.
I’ve written about a friend who enacted a great betrayal once, according to me of course. She never spoke to me again.
This can happen with family members, parents, siblings, children, lovers.
They’re gone, and we’re hurt.
It’s fascinating, however, to study why we feel “hurt” and what exactly IS hurt, and why it occurs to us to feel upset and troubled when the body and presence of that person apparently is not in our vicinity.
Are we feeling useless? Unwanted? Betrayed? Rejected? Guilty? All of the above?
Ahhhh….what a good time for inquiry.
Who would we be without our story of their departure filled with the meaning “I am hurt” (because they’re gone)?
I talked about it in the most recent Peace Talk Episode 143, so join me there to question “they hurt me”.
I’ll also be heading to Facebook Live today to ponder with you the experience of questioning this sometimes profoundly painful story called They Left Me and I’m Hurting.
If you’d like to join me on Facebook live, come on over here at 10:15 am Pacific Time today (May 23) or watch the replay later.
Much love,
Grace
June 3rd East West Books on healing eating issues with self-inquiry 1-4 pm. Also June 10th last half-day retreat of the year Living Inquiries Group 2-6 pm (last one of the year).
As always, a little shuffling goes on in September for the Year of Inquiry program that just began. One person joined last week, one decided to leave, one switched to Eating Peace two weeks ago.
I suddenly realized something, with some of the thoughts in my brain about shuffling, in and out, joining and departing: I’m feeling unhappy about the instability, the lack of guarantee, the comings and goings….namely the “goings” part.
Again. Oh jeez.
I know that may sound like….well, of course. This is something to be unhappy about if someone withdraws, leaves or goes.
But it also sounded to me like the echoes of a belief I’ve questioned before about people leaving in general, and I thought “oh brother, here we go again.”
I need to know who’s in and who’s out. I need to know when, how, and where.
Temporariness is hard to live with, it seems, to my human mind.
But is it? Is this actually true?
The most gigantic temporariness I ever realized was under the spell of something to be feared, worried about, horrified with….
….was Endings.
In the form of death especially.
A huge Nooooooo shouted up at the sky for the “ending” of something. Over. Finished. Done. Wail!
This doesn’t have to be about the Big One (death). It can be about a relationship break-up, a job ending, the family home being sold, divorce, the end of a vacation, or like I mentioned the whispering sadness of a lovely person dropping a course.
Goodbyes are hard.
Is that true?
How do you feel, speak, react when you believe goodbyes are difficult, or unbearable, or an emergency, or must be stopped?
I’ve worked with so many people on this topic.
Huge inner stress.
This past week, I’ve been in northern Ontario province of Canada with a brilliant group of learners all gathering to talk about and inquire into wisdom, death and dying, connection, temporariness, life and living.
One topic brought forth was the act of saying goodbye.
Here comes the voice, the thought…I can’t stand goodbyes. I don’t like parting ways. I don’t want this to end. This shouldn’t be this way. I need it to keep going, and never stop.
Is this actually true?
Because, I notice, reality has goodbye and hello and goodbye and hello over and over again. Constantly.
Which means even if someone has not left, they might. So even worrying about something departing later, in the future, becomes frightening, and how I react….when I continue to believe that departures are bad.
I clutch. I grab.
I often looked at money this way. It needs to stay, and grow, and never say goodbye.
Is it even true that you need to keep the thing you’re worried about diminishing later?
You don’t have enough love (when this person leaves your life). Is that true?
You don’t have enough money, energy, support. True?
You don’t have enough clients, work, people in your retreat.
Is this actually true?
No. I find over and over again…..no, not true.
Perhaps very drilled into our bones, though. Such a common stress. I’ve experienced it time and again. I’ll look at so many little things like it isn’t enough, compared to “that” over there. I need to keep this, I need more, I need to take, I need to be connected, I need to have.
And I notice, when I think my empty nest house right now is not as good as the full house with a “complete” family in it, I suffer.
But can you really be sure goodbyes are sad, or bad, or to be avoided? Are you positive you don’t have enough people around, or love, or support? (Even if you’re sitting in a room by yourself)?
No.
How do you react when you believe “Goodbyes are bad!” (In my case, I’m thinking about people withdrawing from something I’m offering).
Woah is me. Pity party. I quit. Cancel everything. I can’t do it right. Why continue to bother.
Now….who would you be without this story?
Without any thought at all that what’s happening isn’t enough right now, that it’s off, that more would be better, or it was better before these changes? Without the belief that goodbyes are hard, or intolerable, or to be avoided?
I would be so much more clear. More present, more aware, more alive. More feeling full of the heart-break of departure and the joy of reunion, but somehow trusting it all and knowing it’s not up to me, and I can make a clean “goodbye”, or hear one, without regret. With trust.
I might even be laughing, without the thought that goodbyes are bad.
Without the belief in Bad Goodbye’s Good Hello’s I would notice the tide going in and out, and the emptiness of any moment, also full, in this world of both/two/duality/multitudes.
Maybe even laughing and then crying, almost at the same time, and allowing even this to be as it is.
Without the belief that goodbyes are ultimately bad, I’m aware of the equal and opposite advantages for any given moment, I become excited. Turnarounds are so thrilling and wild to try on!
This goodbye is not hard. I like this goodbye. I like this hello into something new that doesn’t involve the same format as before. This is NOT goodbye.
I love parting ways….with my old outdated thinking and stories. I want this to end. This should be this way. I need this to happen, just the way it is.
With the story of Not Enough-ness or “OH NO!”….
….I’m taking in information about what is, and maybe I make adjustments and changes not only to this moment as I inquire, but also to my program(s). Something new is created. I feel the “hello” along with the “goodbye”.
Without this story of being against What Is, I learn to move with the flow, and the sheer joy of this life not being mine.
This is not “mine”. Departures or communions, both not guaranteed to go as I think they should. Both not “mine”. Both definitely happening. Both in the hands of something that knows more than I do.
“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings. God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.” ~ Rumi
Much love, Grace
P.S. Fall Retreat is sold out full, but there is a spot in Year of Inquiry. We have only just begun Month 2 out of 12. Write to me if you’re seriously interested. If you join YOI then we can squeeze you in to Fall Retreat, or you can join YOI for telesessions-only if you’re not able to attend retreats.
Have you ever known someone close to you to become ill, get injured, or find out something devastating?
Yes, everyone’s had this kind of moment in life.
“Dad’s got cancer.”
I remember hearing these words from my mom.
A panic began to rise inside, instantly.
What does this mean? Wait…what? What kind? What happened? Why? What’s going to happen?
The mind is filled with pictures, imagination, possibilities, trying to grab information desperately.
A huge NO fills the body. No, I can’t take this. No, this can’t be happening. No.
When the “worst” thing happens, it’s shocking.
When my dad was receiving treatment for leukemia, which lasted about two years, he was sometimes very sick, sometimes better. He lived just about exactly the length of time they anticipated. The doctors knew so much about the disease, and trying all kinds of ways to make it go away. To fight it.
That was a long, long time ago in my life experience. I was in my twenties, living pretty close by to the big house I grew up in.
I didn’t have inquiry, but my mind had so many questions. Constant questions. Disturbed questions. Questions I had no answer for, couldn’t answer.
Many years later, when I discovered self-inquiry and The Work by reading Loving What Is, I thought….
….well, it’s good for feeling angry and upset with your neighbor (judge your neighbor, right?)….
….but I didn’t even imagine using The Work for situations of life and death.
But then, I was in a weekend workshop with Byron Katie, never having successfully “done” The Work after reading her book, and I recognized one of my greatest, deepest, terrifying, sad, frustrations in life was…..death.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I had a very weird and troubled relationship with loss, change, things being temporary, endings.
The biggest ending of all being “death”. The biggest “neighbor” I wanted to judge was loss, death.
I had something, and now it’s gone. I have something, and I will lose it.
My health, my boyfriend, my wife, my kid, love, my life, my daughter, my house, my necklace, my guitar, my friend, my dad.
It was mine. I had it.
Now it’s lost. It’s gone. Or will be.
Forever.
This is hard for some people to think about. Well, I speak for myself.
It’s hard to look at these places that have been so painful. But oh so powerful for The Work.
Stay with me here, and let’s do it today.
As you see those things, places, times or people you lost….
Is it true you lost them?
Yes. All gone.
Are you absolutely sure? Do you know this in the most deep, absolute way?
Are you positive the energy, love, kindness is lost? Are you sure it’s gone, just because you can’t see it or touch it? Are you sure everything about it is completely 100% gone?
Do you need it to be present physically, in order to be happy?
Wow. No. Not really.
I should still have that person, that thing, that other situation.
Is this true?
Who would I be without these thoughts?
Who would I be without BELIEVING these thoughts?
I notice no thoughts hang around 24/7 without one single other thought coming in for a visit. There are seconds, moments, of other thoughts.
The day my father died, I am quite sure I drank water. I went to the bathroom.
Probably several times. I was capable of having that thought to get up and go. It appeared. I went. People brought food. I ate a little. I breathed. I spoke to my sisters and my mom. I stayed. I was there, holding my dad’s hand as he died.
Who would you be without the belief you lost her? You lost him? You lost it?
I’m not saying something profound didn’t happen. But I love how I like to write about my dad’s death, as I feel the tears sometimes still arise, “it was unbelievable.”
That’s what we say about profound moments, eyes-wide-open moments, present moments, astonishing moments.
Unbelievable.
Turning the thought around: I did not lose my father. I will never lose him.
I lost myself. I lost awareness.
I believed I couldn’t survive loss. I believed there was nothing here, remaining, with myself. I believed I had something, it was mine, and now it’s gone.
Who would you be without your story of losing?
“It’s your body–can you absolutely know that that’s true? That’s a very old concept. ‘This is mine. I say so’….It’s not yours. Just because you believe it doesn’t make it true. When you know that you’re not that, you can sit back and watch.” ~ Byron Katie in Who Would You Be Without Your Story
Could this be also the case for my father? My house? My childhood? My earrings?
Not mine in the first place.
And not required for living, or loving, or happiness, I notice.
Today, can I find evidence for how I gained, how I received, how I lived….instead of the opposite customary sadness?
It doesn’t mean “trying” to be positive and fakey or plastic or thrilled about death or loss.
But I have discovered, with The Work, it’s miraculous to wonder who I would be without my stories of death and loss, and to find examples of joy, acceptance, receiving, kindness, even benefits for what has happened….
….and maybe even though I apparently lost….I also found.
