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| Recovering from Grief in the New Year
A feature article by Robin Renee Bridges, Jan 01, 2005 If you lost a loved one during the past year, you undoubtedly just lived through the worst Christmas of your life. The whole community put on shiny tinsel, twinkling lights, and non-stop Christmas carols everywhere you turned. You went through a gut-wrenching tradition without the one that made the whole thing worthwhile in the past. Is there anything you can do about it? Yes, there is. Grief and bereavement are not depression. They are depressing, but they are not depression. Grieving is a normal response to a loss, whereas depression is a way of looking at the world. If you were depressed before you were bereaved, you probably need professional help to recover. Advice from a mental health professional and possibly medications may help you to focus on learning to see the world differently. If you were not depressed before your grief and bereavement, there are some things you can do right away. Firstly, suspend your doubting mind. (Don’t worry, you can pick it up again later.) Whether you look at life after death spiritually, or logically as the natural culmination of evolution, or through quantum physics, you come up with the same answers. Probabilities indicate that life continues after the death of the physical body. Secondly, understand that your loved one is still here with you. Don’t say, “Yeah, right!” Suspend your doubts. Go somewhere quiet, somewhere you can be alone even if it’s a closet. Close your eyes. Get still inside, and just stand there, or sit there, and breathe. Give yourself a few minutes to calm yourself and imagine how you would feel with your loved one standing right beside you—so close that you can hear him breathe and feel his body heat. Pretend, if you will. Your loved one has not “passed away” anywhere. In reality he’s closer to you than your heartbeat. There’s a thin veil between heaven and earth. Your loved one has simply passed through the veil. S/he can still hear you, see you, and touch you, but your physical body is a barrier to your being able to perceive your loved one. Thirdly, when you’re quiet inside, ask him/her in your mind something simple like “Are you here with me?” Ahh HAH! Where did that “yes” come from? Inside your head? Well sort of, but there’s more to it than that. Psychologists say that we all have an inner child and an internalized parent within us. In a similar way you have internalized your loved one. So what you hear are partly the characteristics of your loved one that you have internalized and partly the still living, growing, eternal character of your loved one surrounding you in the spirit world. The body is a mechanical device powered by chemistry. The living, thinking, loving, remembering, planning, and dreaming part of you is LIFE, and it is eternal. Life cannot be destroyed. Upon the death of the mechanical, chemical body, the real living consciousness of you is immediately aware of a sublime freedom. You are capable of seeing your spiritual body for the first time, and it is exquisite. As for the logical culmination of evolution, logic requires that there be an afterlife. Nature naturally selects the characteristics of living creatures. Qualities that insure survival are chosen over other qualities. If life ends at the grave, why have humans evolved so many qualities that they have little or no use for on earth? Altruism, charity, honor, patience, fidelity, etc. have little value in a society where materialism, war, and self-interest prevail. Humility and service do not generate financial gain or the acquisition of power. They are a handicap, if anything. Yet, they persist as character traits in the majority of people. Man is driven more by abstractions like love, loyalty, accomplishment, curiosity and discovery than by simple biological directives. Why? An unborn child develops arms, legs, eyes, and lungs because it will need them to function in the world into which it will be born. Man develops compassion, devotion, generosity, hope, understanding, and trustworthiness (to name but a few) because he will need them to function in the world into which he will be born when he leaves the physical body. And in the same way that an unborn child is not separate from the world of his family, we are not separate from the loved ones that have passed through the veil between heaven and earth. And what if the quantum physicists are right? What if we really do live in a world with multiple dimensions? What if those dimensions are all around us as they theorize, and they really do effect and influence our world? What if the other dimensions are the “mansions” that Jesus referred to? To summarize, the best way to recover from grief in the New Year is to acknowledge that your loved one is still here with you. Include them in your in your thoughts and in your heart as you continue to live your life. Listen to the still, small voice in which you will hear them, and watch for serendipitous incidents that they send you to remind you of their nearness. |