Something that is happening right now, individually and collectively, is grief.
We are all feeling grief. It doesn’t matter if we’ve recently lost someone, gone through a breakup, or need to let go of an old part of our lives, job, old identity, or relationship with life. We are experiencing a dream that is fading as a new one asserts itself. We’re all collectively, at the same time, feeling a significant sense of grief.
We’re not only grieving people who have left our lives and old things that we lived through; we’re also grieving our old selves who once served us but are no longer.
We are grieving the death of an old story. We might call this an old wound or a karmic imprint. We might have done work and realized that it was something we carried in from a past life or passed on to us in our lineage, but it is time to allow for death to do us part. The angel of death is on her timeline; there is no negotiation.
We are grieving because we are moving to a higher level of consciousness. Part of this process is to release the pain of the old self stored in our physical, intellectual, or emotional bodies. I invite you to release this beloved friend and stop protecting this old story like the most precious gift you have ever received. Maybe it’s time to grieve this old story like you allow yourself to mourn the passing of an old friend or a beloved pet. The truth is that the old story doesn’t matter. The new story is you need to be allowed. You need to allow yourself to grieve and mourn death. In doing so, you honor the deceased, you honor the memory, and you allow the true nature of the light.
In this lies a most beautiful gift. Just imagine if nothing perished. Everything ever created in this universe would still exist in its original form. There is a most profound beauty to a lifespan. From the cosmic dance of stars and suns and their lifetimes to the fading beauty of a flower on my altar, I recognize the importance of death.
It came to me that Vincent Van Gogh was inspired by the life cycle of sunflowers. He painted them repeatedly in various states, tenderly honoring the emotional awareness they brought him, from their heads held high to the sun to the eventual bowing of their heads to the weight of their abundance and the cycle of renewal that they were so prone to serve.
One of the things that makes grieving so hard is when we trick ourselves into thinking we’re all alone in this and that we’re the only ones who feel this way. It’s really easy to feel isolated and alone when you are grieving. This is why we tend to reach out to those who are grieving a loved one and make sure they are okay and not isolating themselves.
Whether you’ve lived as a victim or an achiever, this old way of life has been held as a precious gift. Maybe it’s time to return the gift. It could be that we are grieving ideas that we thought would become something. We’re grieving parts of ourselves that no longer service us. The only responsibility we have in this process is to allow.
Yet, many times, our egos get in the way and try to stop the grieving, as if the ego is trying to negotiate with death. But let’s be clear: the part of you trying to stop the grieving also needs to be allowed to die and grieved. In taking your spiritual path, you cause the death of the ego. And, of course, the ego will pull out all stops to try and remain the center of your experience. It will try to confuse you about what love is and do everything in its power to keep alive your distorted experience of love. Yet the true essence of who you are is here now, and the universe is doing everything it knows to assist you in releasing the old self, the wounded aspects, karmic imprints, and that false definition of love.
You created this old self as a protection mechanism so you wouldn’t get hurt when you were a kid. It was designed to make room for the real you to show up. But we then lose our sense of divinity and identify with this protective construct as the authentic self, and it becomes a fortress that guards our present self from our true self. The universe is trying to work through the divine you, but to succeed, it needs to remove all the distortions, fortresses, and illusions that you’ve stored in your body that no longer serve you.
This is the good news about grieving individually and collectively. Grieving and releasing our old selves provides examples and possibilities for others to do the same. Just imagine what is being purged from the collective consciousness as we grieve in unity. And let me just say at this point that this collective could be a country, this planet, a tight-knit community, or a group or circle of people you surround yourself with.
As this collective consciousness ascends, it creates normalization. It makes it okay to let go of worn-out ideals and systems and allow a new dream to emerge.
It’s time to say goodbye to what we were and realize that despite our best efforts, we can’t return to the past.
Grieving follows death.
Whether it’s someone you know who has passed, whether you’re going through a breakup, or whether you’re purging a wounded aspect in yourself, it’s time to embrace grief. This is genuine compassion. What you allow for yourself, you can allow for others.
There is no reason to try and avoid grieving; it only tends to extend it. When we embrace grief, we let go of how we think things should turn out and how they should be. We let go of our wounded expectations. We let go of the idea that we can change the nature of things.
We begin to grieve what we used to give authority to, what we gave power to. We grieve, realizing that we gave our power away and nobody actually took it. We quit blaming others and stop blaming ourselves.
As we allow the grief, it becomes easier. The more we allow the grief to come through us and not avoid it, the more we make room for a new version, a new dream; a potent, truly synchronistic, magical, and miraculous version of ourselves that can dream a new world into being.
But for this to happen, there must be a death. Death is the beginning. We may be clinging to our old experiences in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Some of these were ecstatic, and some very painful. And yes, these experiences served their purpose; there was something we decided we needed to experience. But now it’s time to release these experiences and create space for a new version of who we indeed are.
It’s time to get ready for something new and something magical. We are all seeking our uniqueness, but in order to embody it, we must embrace the death of the old identity, grieve it, and make room for our true uniqueness.
It’s time to say out loud what we feel needs to be said without fear or retribution.
Maybe it is that I miss you; maybe it is that I’m scared or feel hopeless. This honesty then allows others to find their vulnerability and their receptivity. And then perhaps we can be fearful and hopeless together and find a unifying way to be in this truth and heal it. When we come together as a collective, regardless of the size of the community, we release blaming others, we quit blaming ourselves, and move into our hearts where we feel the loss, where we feel the fear, where we feel the lack, and where we finally feel the truth.
We finally see the divine presence of that inner child on the other side of the veil, of this wall, this fortress that we were taught to construct, with the idea that life would be easier if we protected your heart and inner child.
I have come to realize that we are not permitting ourselves to grieve our inner selves. But so many self-help programs, ideologies about healing our karmic imprints, and the wounded aspects of self teach us how to conquer them essentially. Eventually, we learn these tricks and techniques, and we begin to rely on them as a saving grace. We become spiritualized egos.
I also realize that some of you wanted to heal the pain of the past but didn’t realize that in doing so, you would be called to create a spiritual practice that would serve your newfound consciousness.
Maybe it’s time to sit with what arises and not try to solve or eliminate them but simply be there with them in love. Perhaps it’s time to realize that they will release their heaviness and return to their lightness by merely being in their presence. So maybe it’s time just to feel what we feel, with no outcome in mind, no need to solve, no need to be the healer, no need to be the victim, and sit with it and allow what arises. Love what arises.
Maybe it’s time to permit ourselves to grieve what no longer serves us.
Here in the northern hemisphere, we are experiencing the beauty of autumn, the beauty of death.
We are not allowed to rush through this season or solve and manipulate it to our advantage so that we can move on to winter and, eventually, spring and summer. The best we can do by divine grace is to participate and bear witness. Harvest the abundance.
We don’t mourn a person in order to get over them or past them. We mourn to honor all the memories, experiences, and interactions we had with them. We permit ourselves to do this. We allow this process, rooted in nature, to take its course.
Maybe it’s time to permit ourselves to grieve the death of what no longer serves us on an individual and collective level.
So, I invite you to extend this ritual to yourself and allow the space to be created for the dream you are dying to experience.
For me, this is the essence of Dia de los Muertos.
Honor those who have passed. Honor that which has passed.
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