Reprint "The Grief Experience"

The grieving process is one of those experiences that when we really look at it we can see how it affects the the different layers of us being multi-dimensional beings. Yes, we can track a formula that follows a certain pattern and sometimes it soothes us a little to have a particular course that we can follow. But then there are those other times we may find that we are stuck in a monotonous cycle of the grieving process reliving the experience over and over. So the next question is, "When does it end?" That is a very good question and when we look at ourselves again as multi-dimensional beings we see that we are indeed very complicated beings making that question dependent on healing three important parts of ourselves that hold our grief.

Grief is an emotion that marks the separation of the mind, body, and soul scattered in different directions. When we grieve, we grieve with our whole being but each part of the mind, body, and soul has it's own unique way of processing the whole grief experience. For example even if we are able to accept and understand what has happened, our body may still be moving through its own course of action in releasing the loss. This is why we find that we burst into tears, become angry, or feel depressed even after we thought that we had mentally processed a loss. Another example is when we feel that something isn't right and yet we can't place a finger on it feeling an enormous emptiness or heaviness within ourselves as we have lost our way. This can be described as Soul Sickness. The soul has lost or is missing something that needs to be processed or experienced within the lifetime of the individual yet it makes no sense to that person until they find meaning or cause in making a serious effort to change their course in life to heal the soul. Then there is the mind which can also play its part in grief causing a person to relive and over process an experience of loss to a point of minor madness.

Ancient Chinese medicine says that we carry our grief in our lungs. For many of us we feel it in our hearts. If it is not through the breath in our lungs it is through our hearts torn into a thousand pieces. Even though it may seem to be cruel it is the physical body's way of realigning itself so that it can bring itself to heal within the cells as it tries to reprogram itself to cope with what has happened to continue on with life. The mind also has it's own way of remembering, replaying, processing, firing-off, or even forgetting an experience as it also adjusts itself to come to terms to what has happened or endured. Then there is the energy of the soul that spills over affecting the energy bodies within and the outer layer of the subtle bodies that surround the physical body. Each of these energy centers are also influenced by the mind and body experiencing the grief causing them to become out of balance creating more anxiousness and frustration with one's plight in life. 

For whatever reason a person is moving through their own grieving experience it is always good to know that there is more going on than just the emotion of grief. Grieving is not a process of allowing time to change things so that we heal. No, it is a process of finding balance and learning how to work with and heal those different parts of ourselves that are experiencing the grief. We are after all a whole being not just a body, not just a mind, and not just a soul. We are unique as multi-dimensional beings with all three built into one that needs to find a healthy balance for our grief to heal.   

photographs by Angelique