What Grief Taught Me About Healing

Beware the semantics surrounding notions of healing when laden with undertones of should; in both mainstream and spiritual communities.

Photo by Katrina Wright on Unsplash

You must love yourself before you can love anyone else. Only love heals.

In a previous post I stated that the mantra of loving oneself, the precursor to loving others, traverses the teachings of spirituality. I also noted that meditation can gift us lessons in forgiveness, a healing path to self-love. Increasingly, I am trusting the guidance I receive in meditation. I defer to my soul and her assigned guides, guardians and angels; navigators for my human-ego experience.  They are benevolent; we all have a support team, we truly are never alone.

I enjoy the freedom of seeking. I am aware of my egoic mind so am vigilant about listening to my gut instinct; to abate the intellectualised over-thinking analytical mind, product of my education and career’s work. However, I am grateful for the discipline of that field; it strengthened my learner disposition, my acuity in seeking universal wisdom. What a sweet relief to understand ego. It has released the conditioned habit of handing power to others; through recognising from whence those patterns were born, and to subsequently accept and embrace the wounded inner child. That is an enactment of self-love. I have never questioned whether we have a soul; yet I didn’t know how powerful I was, how powerful we all are.

Mainstream society does a great job in keeping us hidden from ourselves, through endorsing, enabling and perpetuating oppressive patterns for the individual, the collective.

Meditation facilitates access to the vibration of universal truths. Sometimes I meditate with a specific intention; oftentimes I meditate when physically fatigued as I tend to re-emerge reinvigorated. I don’t always receive messages, or perhaps I don’t remember ... until what I understand as a knowing, might drop in. An openness; a trust in the process, void of expectation, has enabled messages to expand and evolve. Encapsulating the language to articulate and translate vibrational signs and patterns remains an enticing investigation of seeking clarity.

Sometimes the messages are related to spiritual texts I am reading or viewing; sometimes they are more directly related to my contextual experiences of grief. Regardless, many universal truths remain beyond the scope of language because their supposed lack of tangibility means we haven’t quite been able to conceptualise them. And that is probably a good thing. We have all been subject to the culturally biased trimming, cutting, slashing and boxing that conceptualising mandates, inclusive of the associated judgements of right and wrong. Enter the egoic mindset.

There is however, more good news amongst the fray of competitive comparison and contrast. Each of us, when we are attuned and willing, can invite our soul to lead our ego. For our soul best knows our human point of need. The challenge for humanity and its attached ego is remembering who we are; eternal souls dwelling in the universal source energy of unconditional love. I have stated before, same destination, different pathway and that is OK.

 What does humanity’s collective challenge have to do with notions of healing?

Again, I am drawn to consider an apparent misnomer of popular mainstream and spiritual teachings; flaunting attached conditions and expectations surrounding the griever and healing. Blending two universal truths, Only love heals, with, You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else, invokes yet more head shaking WTF moments when said healing is reduced to shallow slogans. As if an induced rattling of my head will somehow offer a juncture, a rearrangement of puerile and derisive beliefs of what love is meant to look like, into an amenable offer of something  healing ... fixable?

What is healing anyway?

So, I  meditated over this question; agitated by both mainstream and spiritual mandates bandying instructions about love; carefree pontifications, as if loving oneself is as simple a choice as whether to have cereal or avocado on toast for breakfast? Such proclamations can present as vacuous band-aid solutions to those trying to heal their experiences of grief.

I wonder about the noticeable paradox; the underlying culture of should, the implicit dismissal of the complexities of our individual experience ... our story; our point of need in the grief or other chapters of the life we are playing out? Often shared assumptions between mainstream and spiritual authorities, can problematically have nothing to do with be-ing and everything to do with do-ing. In the scarcity of empathy and compassion, mandating self-love can trivialise the individual and collective journey. Each individual contributes to the human collective’s endeavour to align with universal truths.

Ask a question, and in meditative silence and you may well be given an answer. The answer to my question, What is healing?, included:

We will tell you what it is not! It is not returning to a pre-condition. Any desire to return to a pre-condition stems from a perspective of lack ... which is fear. Love is healing because it fosters an acceptance of what is ... to show courage and resilience when you stumble ... for you will stumble ... and we will catch you.

Viewed through a spiritual lens, we chose to come here to have the human experience and central to our purpose is remembering who we are as an eternal and expansive soul. This spiritual awakening grants access to vibrations of love beyond our human conceptualisation.

It does not mean we stop having our human experience, that would be a nonsense.

It means we are better equipped to understand ourselves and others emotions; our roles, and importantly, how we might harness the power already within us to shape the narrative. This is a lifetime of work. It is futile to make simplified, vacuous banners to flash across mainstream and spiritual platforms. Seeking guidance over the mantra of having to love yourself before you can love others, I received a direct statement:

 Be present for yourself, then you can be present for others.

On balance, many altruistic people assist others to exercise the power they have within themselves to heal. With gratitude I  acknowledge the spiritual teachers who continue to present at my evolving points of need. Authentic spiritual teachers help us invite internal guidance; your soul and their team reiterate messages you need to know and they are relayed in ways that relate to you. Trust your soul’s discernment. Central to my learning and on-going healing is understanding that our bodies know and trust universal truth, it is our human minds that cast shadows.

Keep reminding your body you are safe ... when your mind wanders to past haunts. There is nothing to fear in the present.

Generating thoughts filtered through the heart resonate with universal truths. The mind relays what the heart transmits via the bodies senses and intuition. That is what, in spiritual circles I understand as knowing. Such are universal laws.

It is widely shared amongst spiritual practitioners that humanity is currently transitioning from a 3D to 5D reality, commonly referred to as the New Earth. What engages me with the probabilities and possibilities accompanying this evolutionary shift will be the absence of fear. Fear is apparently not a vibrational match in 5D, therefore it cannot exist. John Lennon’s visionary Imagine, comes to mind.

How will we embody grief in the absence of fear? We will still be human; have an ego, associated free-will choices re our actions and emotions. The desire to keep incarnating; transitioning to and from this realm through birth and death will remain. Such is the cycle of our soul choosing to have hundreds of lives on this planet. We will continue to create a story and construct its narrative. Stronger connection with self and others, including the planet and her other inhabitants will therefore be an imperative; restorative for her and all her sentient beings. Nevertheless, death will remain the transitional phase that it is. All organic matter on Earth will continue to die and regenerate. Universal Laws are permanent and eternal.

As such, we will experience grief in the 5D reality. Grief is multidimensional and not all grief is intrinsically fear-based.

Human emotion is a transient aspect of the human experience. Absent of restrictive societal dogmas, our human ego will be liberated by a soul seeking search no longer necessary. Emotional trials may well assist our human evolution rather than hinder it. Nevertheless, a bounty of unconditional love from eternal connections can be harvested now. It is our individual responsibility to shift into 5D; a free-will choice. I was offered this endearing wisdom in a recent meditation:

Your wonderment is your soul’s gift to you, its human aspect.

The following poem was my first post on Substack. This post provides a context for the poem. It was written in October 2021, post meditation. I feel John’s presence and collaboration when writing.  Eternally grateful.

The Healing Heart

Archangels’ galactic, silent descent …

Navigators of helpers and healers,

Suspended in the timeless present …

Guardians of the Eternal.

He came in the night …

Behind closed eyes, in illuminating light,

Riding the slip stream of Angel dust …

Seeds of love strewn across the Heavens.

Surrender the myths of the dream …

Archangel Michael’s harmonious wings,

Shields of protection nurturing our embrace …

In synchronicity of peace, of love.