The passing of a loved family member or friend presents us with the greatest challenge that we’ll experience in our lives, and it’s a loss that many never recover from. The idea of moving on after such loss appears insurmountable or debilitating, and the profound impact can affect our daily existence in myriad ways. In honing my process of mindful awareness, I am often confronted with one of our strongest emotions, guilt. I find it extremely interesting to observe the power guilt holds over us, particularly in how it relates to death or loss.
In speaking with people who are struggling to come to terms with losing a loved one, it is often clear that a level of guilt exists in terms of how they manage their grief. Moreso, they are aware of how others may expect them to be feeling, thus placing further burden upon them at a time when they are ill-equipped to deal with such pressure. The same scenario relates to relationship breakdowns. Unfortunately, the nature of our ego is such that it holds us in this grief riddled state for far too long, creating issues with our physical and mental wellbeing.
The notion that if we are not seen to be struggling with our pain, leaving the impression that we don’t care enough about our loss, is too much for us to bear. The guilt factor explodes, and we fall back into a world of misery.
A desire to reduce or alleviate not only my suffering, but that of as many people as possible, led me to closely study the negative impact my ego was having on many facets of my life, and to ultimately discover that through concentration and awareness, we can significantly reduce the level of pain we put ourselves through in dealing with adversity. Whilst nothing can protect us from the initial pain we feel from our loss, we can learn to mitigate it through learned thought processes and much practice. The beauty of this is that this practice will have hugely positive impacts across all aspects of our lives, eventually helping to turn pain into peace.