New Thoughts On Grief
The Love After Life Facebook group had a Zoom meeting yesterday and in it Kim LaCapria brought up a point that got me to thinking more about grief. Her point was that a transdimensional relationship is not really that much different from most relationships. In most relationships, especially those that are last a while, we may spend only a small amount of time actually touching and talking with/to our partners. The largest part of our happiness and sense of wholeness with our partner, while they are still living, is often just the knowledge that they are with us, a sense of them being present and in our lives.
We may be in different rooms, or at work, one of us indoors and the other outside, one of us visiting family and friends, etc. We also may not sleep all piled up or cuddled up on each other most of the time. So, a large portion of our day may probably doesn't consist of being in any kind of vocal, sight or physical contact.
If our loved one went out of town to visit family for a few days, or had to go out of town for work for a week, we did not plummet into grief. Many years ago Irene would be out of town for a week at a time while our son went to work and his wife went to school. Back then we were quite poor and long distance communication was very expensive, so we might go two or three days without any contact whatsoever. Still, I didn't plunge into grief.
Throughout this blog I've used the following analogy for grief: "It's like being addicted to the most wonderful drug for 27 years and then going cold turkey off of it. I don't care who you are, that's going to be very painful and very rough until you get used to your new situation (IOW, go through withdrawal so that you can start to experience your relationship in a new way)."
However, there's something fundamentally wrong about that particular scenario; people can go for a week or two without physical contact and not plunge into grief, but when their partner dies, they usually immediately plunge into grief - so it's not like they don't have enough of that physical "drug" in their system. Something else is also at work here.
Even if we know there is an afterlife, people still fall into grief when their partner (or other loved ones) die. Other loved ones don't even have to be around that much - like a child that lives in another city or is deployed overseas - and we usually only feel that deep, dark grief if they die.
So, what is going on here? What generates the grief experience if it's not so much a physical withdrawal and we consciously accept that there is an afterlife, that they are with us, that they are communicating with us via various methods (signs, dreams, thoughts, sensations, synchronicities, EVP, etc.)? I don't think that I would feel grief if, while Irene was physical, we were separated physically even if it lasted years. I might feel sad, but that dark, despairing, end-of-the world grief? No, because I would still know she existed and know we would, at some point, be back together.
Don't all of us in the afterlife community know those things?
Thinking (and reading, thanks to this blog) back on my grief experiences, there was one sensation that was the core of my grief, and that sensation translates into words this way: "She's gone forever. I'll never have her again." When I think those words now, I recognize that sensation even though I don't feel grief. Tears spring to my eyes even now and I feel sad, but it's not a "real" sadness; it's exactly as if I'm watching a sad movie. It's a feeling about a theoretical situation, whereas before I experienced it as my real and devastating situation.
I thought, at the time Irene crossed over, that my belief in the afterlife, as well as my belief she would always be with me, was pretty solid. However, I have a long history of finding deep, subconscious views, or "programs", that I wasn't even aware of, that would drive my reactions, thoughts and emotions. For instance, when I was much younger, even though I didn't consciously believe in hell, I had a helluva time getting rid of my **fear** of hell. It took a lot of time and reprogramming to root it out.
This scenario where I have discovered I have deep, subconscious "programs" running even though I consciously don't believe the content of those programs has played out several times in my life, the most pernicious of which would surface in terms of fear, insecurity and doubt that plagued my conscious perspective. I understand now that my deep, subconscious program was: death means the end - even though I never, in my life, consciously believed that.
How can that be? It seems to me that the entire weight of my surrounding environment - society, family, friends, etc. - was that even if they, on the surface, believed in an afterlife, nobody actually acted or reacted that way when it came to death. People fell into grief when a loved one died. People avoid death at all costs. Nobody talked to or about crossed-over loved ones in the sense that they still actually existed. Gravestones marked the beginning and the end. That contradictory arrangement of what people said vs how they behaved and how society was deeply organized was imprinted on me, I think, simply by immersion in that environment.
I will say this - I don't think my subconscious "death is the end" programming was as strong as it is in most people, because I have never feared death and also because it was relatively easy (in terms of duration) for me to reprogram myself out of grief. However, some of that programming must still be in there for "She is gone and I'll never have her again" to have affected me that way this morning (although thinking of it now, after writing this, doesn't affect me at all); it should have been a laughable thought, not one that produced tears.
My view of grief and getting through it has now become a bit more radical; I think that grief is almost entirely rooted in a deep, subconscious program that can be generally summed up as: "death is the end," whether or not one consciously believes that. I now think it has very little to do with the actual physical absence because regular physical absence for periods of time does not trigger grief. Before our partners died, any time that they went to the store or walked outside or went to visit friends could have been "the last time" they would physically be in our lives, but that did not trigger grief (although it might cause us to worry). It seems to me that it's only if the absence reaches the point of a credible view that "I'll never have them again" that grief can be triggered, even in cases where people do not die, but rather there if is an ending of the relationship, which can also trigger despairing grief in some cases.
So, when we consciously believe there is an afterlife, and consciously believe they are always with us and we will be entirely with them again, how do we eliminate the subconscious root of our pain? How do we replace it with our conscious belief and begin reacting, from a deep level, in harmony with that knowledge? With joy, happiness, enthusiasm, excitement? Additionally, should we eliminate the grief programming?
I know traditional grief advice - even in the afterlife community - is to allow the feeling of grief, to experience it, to let it run its course. "Honor your grief" is what they say. That may be a good practice for many or most, but that's not what I did, though. I attacked my grief because I knew it was based on something not true. Even in terms of physical withdrawal, I was not going to "honor my withdrawal pain"; I was going to get the hell over it as fast as humanly possible and get back to our happy relationship (if possible). I knew she wasn't "gone". I knew we were fine. I knew she would never leave me and I would never leave her. I just wasn't reacting according to my conscious knowledge.
What I actually did back then was embark on a relentless attack my grief by saying, thinking, praying, affirming, shouting, imagining, visualizing, screaming through sobs at times, "You are with me! We are happy! We are joyful! Nothing can stop us! We are eternal! I can see you, feel you hear you! I see your signs! It is you I see in my mind, you I hear in my head, you that I feel when my heart quickens." Etc. Every time I would feel that pang I would forcefully beat against it with my counter-programming until I was exhausted.
My question now is: why should I (or anyone) "honor" a reaction that is almost entirely based on something that simply is not true? The conventional wisdom is that if I do not "honor" my grief, or "give it its time", it will be unhealthy or lead to issues or an even greater resurgence later. Now, I wasn't trying to "choke down" my grief - I was screaming and crying, letting it all hang out - there was no bottling that shit up. No stopping it - it was like vomiting uncontrollably.
While I was experiencing it, though I would defend myself and attack it with my affirmations and reprogramming, with thoughts, imagination, information, and words. I knew, even at the time, that it was a lie that she had "ended", but I thought at the time my grief, doubt and fear was being caused primarily by physical withdrawal and chaotic chemical interactions which can generate all kinds of sensations and thoughts.
What I realize now is that it wasn't as much the physical discontinuance that likely caused the worst of it - the actual despairing grief, because being physically apart from her when she was alive did not cause grief. Lack of communication did not cause grief. The only thing that could have caused the grief, based on these facts and the fact that I consciously believed in the afterlife, is that my subconscious considered death the end and I didn't even know it. It's why people can feel deep grief when a relationship ends without death being involved, or other situations that come to an end: the sense that something is gone, forever.
It's all about that sense that it is "the end" and that they are gone, forever. But, that simply is not true.
We never come face to face with that subconscious belief (that death = the end) until someone we love this much dies. Then, it explodes on us with the full force and fury of a nuclear blast even if, consciously, we believe in the afterlife, even if we get signs, messages, synchronicities, dream visitations, etc. That miserable suffering will go on as long as we do not address and change that part of our subconscious because it will simply force that reaction on us regardless of what we are consciously aware of or consciously believe. Even if we find afterlife information, we can (and usually do) still feel that grief. Knowing is not enough; the subconscious programming must be rooted out or overwritten if one wants to stop the grief.
So, of course saying things like: "You are with me! We are happy! We are joyful! Nothing can stop us! We are eternal! I can see you, feel you hear you! I see your signs! It is you I see in my mind, you I hear in my head, you that I feel when my heart quickens." ... feels like you are lying to yourself because your subconscious is largely what generates how you feel and emotionally react. But it is not you who are lying to yourself ... it is your subconscious that is lying to you by making you feel things based on something that is not true. When we say those things, imagine us together and happy, visualize our future together, we are deliberately, forcefully, strongly reprogramming our subconscious, overwriting its erroneous code with what we consciously know to be true, weeding out society-infused behavioral and reactive conditioning we picked up over decades of immersion.
We are not subverting a natural process or setting ourselves up for an even worse reaction later. We are not "dishonoring" our love, our loved one or ourselves. Yes, I cherish the deep agony of grief that I felt because it laid bare the great love for my wife and revealed exactly how much she means to me in terms of what it would do to me if she had "ended." But, I would have been doing neither of us any good by continuing to live in grief.
IMO, though, the whole idea of "letting it run its course" is unhelpful and can even prolong grief; it can last decades, to the end of our lives, if the subconscious programming doesn't change. Yes, that programming can change over time pretty much on its own if our conscious mind engagements of the afterlife information, community, and interaction with our loved one seeps down into our subconscious and slowly reprograms it - but why not do all we can to help quicken that process? The thing is, our immersion in this culture has baked that programming in deep in our subconscious; do we really want to just let it slowly get reprogrammed, bit by bit, over who knows how long?
That's for the individual to decide.
IMO, this is why fear and doubt can continually bubble up and trigger grief for many if not most people; way down in there, that program is still running on the idea that our loved one has "ended."
We may be in different rooms, or at work, one of us indoors and the other outside, one of us visiting family and friends, etc. We also may not sleep all piled up or cuddled up on each other most of the time. So, a large portion of our day may probably doesn't consist of being in any kind of vocal, sight or physical contact.
If our loved one went out of town to visit family for a few days, or had to go out of town for work for a week, we did not plummet into grief. Many years ago Irene would be out of town for a week at a time while our son went to work and his wife went to school. Back then we were quite poor and long distance communication was very expensive, so we might go two or three days without any contact whatsoever. Still, I didn't plunge into grief.
Throughout this blog I've used the following analogy for grief: "It's like being addicted to the most wonderful drug for 27 years and then going cold turkey off of it. I don't care who you are, that's going to be very painful and very rough until you get used to your new situation (IOW, go through withdrawal so that you can start to experience your relationship in a new way)."
However, there's something fundamentally wrong about that particular scenario; people can go for a week or two without physical contact and not plunge into grief, but when their partner dies, they usually immediately plunge into grief - so it's not like they don't have enough of that physical "drug" in their system. Something else is also at work here.
Even if we know there is an afterlife, people still fall into grief when their partner (or other loved ones) die. Other loved ones don't even have to be around that much - like a child that lives in another city or is deployed overseas - and we usually only feel that deep, dark grief if they die.
So, what is going on here? What generates the grief experience if it's not so much a physical withdrawal and we consciously accept that there is an afterlife, that they are with us, that they are communicating with us via various methods (signs, dreams, thoughts, sensations, synchronicities, EVP, etc.)? I don't think that I would feel grief if, while Irene was physical, we were separated physically even if it lasted years. I might feel sad, but that dark, despairing, end-of-the world grief? No, because I would still know she existed and know we would, at some point, be back together.
Don't all of us in the afterlife community know those things?
Thinking (and reading, thanks to this blog) back on my grief experiences, there was one sensation that was the core of my grief, and that sensation translates into words this way: "She's gone forever. I'll never have her again." When I think those words now, I recognize that sensation even though I don't feel grief. Tears spring to my eyes even now and I feel sad, but it's not a "real" sadness; it's exactly as if I'm watching a sad movie. It's a feeling about a theoretical situation, whereas before I experienced it as my real and devastating situation.
I thought, at the time Irene crossed over, that my belief in the afterlife, as well as my belief she would always be with me, was pretty solid. However, I have a long history of finding deep, subconscious views, or "programs", that I wasn't even aware of, that would drive my reactions, thoughts and emotions. For instance, when I was much younger, even though I didn't consciously believe in hell, I had a helluva time getting rid of my **fear** of hell. It took a lot of time and reprogramming to root it out.
This scenario where I have discovered I have deep, subconscious "programs" running even though I consciously don't believe the content of those programs has played out several times in my life, the most pernicious of which would surface in terms of fear, insecurity and doubt that plagued my conscious perspective. I understand now that my deep, subconscious program was: death means the end - even though I never, in my life, consciously believed that.
How can that be? It seems to me that the entire weight of my surrounding environment - society, family, friends, etc. - was that even if they, on the surface, believed in an afterlife, nobody actually acted or reacted that way when it came to death. People fell into grief when a loved one died. People avoid death at all costs. Nobody talked to or about crossed-over loved ones in the sense that they still actually existed. Gravestones marked the beginning and the end. That contradictory arrangement of what people said vs how they behaved and how society was deeply organized was imprinted on me, I think, simply by immersion in that environment.
I will say this - I don't think my subconscious "death is the end" programming was as strong as it is in most people, because I have never feared death and also because it was relatively easy (in terms of duration) for me to reprogram myself out of grief. However, some of that programming must still be in there for "She is gone and I'll never have her again" to have affected me that way this morning (although thinking of it now, after writing this, doesn't affect me at all); it should have been a laughable thought, not one that produced tears.
My view of grief and getting through it has now become a bit more radical; I think that grief is almost entirely rooted in a deep, subconscious program that can be generally summed up as: "death is the end," whether or not one consciously believes that. I now think it has very little to do with the actual physical absence because regular physical absence for periods of time does not trigger grief. Before our partners died, any time that they went to the store or walked outside or went to visit friends could have been "the last time" they would physically be in our lives, but that did not trigger grief (although it might cause us to worry). It seems to me that it's only if the absence reaches the point of a credible view that "I'll never have them again" that grief can be triggered, even in cases where people do not die, but rather there if is an ending of the relationship, which can also trigger despairing grief in some cases.
So, when we consciously believe there is an afterlife, and consciously believe they are always with us and we will be entirely with them again, how do we eliminate the subconscious root of our pain? How do we replace it with our conscious belief and begin reacting, from a deep level, in harmony with that knowledge? With joy, happiness, enthusiasm, excitement? Additionally, should we eliminate the grief programming?
I know traditional grief advice - even in the afterlife community - is to allow the feeling of grief, to experience it, to let it run its course. "Honor your grief" is what they say. That may be a good practice for many or most, but that's not what I did, though. I attacked my grief because I knew it was based on something not true. Even in terms of physical withdrawal, I was not going to "honor my withdrawal pain"; I was going to get the hell over it as fast as humanly possible and get back to our happy relationship (if possible). I knew she wasn't "gone". I knew we were fine. I knew she would never leave me and I would never leave her. I just wasn't reacting according to my conscious knowledge.
What I actually did back then was embark on a relentless attack my grief by saying, thinking, praying, affirming, shouting, imagining, visualizing, screaming through sobs at times, "You are with me! We are happy! We are joyful! Nothing can stop us! We are eternal! I can see you, feel you hear you! I see your signs! It is you I see in my mind, you I hear in my head, you that I feel when my heart quickens." Etc. Every time I would feel that pang I would forcefully beat against it with my counter-programming until I was exhausted.
My question now is: why should I (or anyone) "honor" a reaction that is almost entirely based on something that simply is not true? The conventional wisdom is that if I do not "honor" my grief, or "give it its time", it will be unhealthy or lead to issues or an even greater resurgence later. Now, I wasn't trying to "choke down" my grief - I was screaming and crying, letting it all hang out - there was no bottling that shit up. No stopping it - it was like vomiting uncontrollably.
While I was experiencing it, though I would defend myself and attack it with my affirmations and reprogramming, with thoughts, imagination, information, and words. I knew, even at the time, that it was a lie that she had "ended", but I thought at the time my grief, doubt and fear was being caused primarily by physical withdrawal and chaotic chemical interactions which can generate all kinds of sensations and thoughts.
What I realize now is that it wasn't as much the physical discontinuance that likely caused the worst of it - the actual despairing grief, because being physically apart from her when she was alive did not cause grief. Lack of communication did not cause grief. The only thing that could have caused the grief, based on these facts and the fact that I consciously believed in the afterlife, is that my subconscious considered death the end and I didn't even know it. It's why people can feel deep grief when a relationship ends without death being involved, or other situations that come to an end: the sense that something is gone, forever.
It's all about that sense that it is "the end" and that they are gone, forever. But, that simply is not true.
We never come face to face with that subconscious belief (that death = the end) until someone we love this much dies. Then, it explodes on us with the full force and fury of a nuclear blast even if, consciously, we believe in the afterlife, even if we get signs, messages, synchronicities, dream visitations, etc. That miserable suffering will go on as long as we do not address and change that part of our subconscious because it will simply force that reaction on us regardless of what we are consciously aware of or consciously believe. Even if we find afterlife information, we can (and usually do) still feel that grief. Knowing is not enough; the subconscious programming must be rooted out or overwritten if one wants to stop the grief.
So, of course saying things like: "You are with me! We are happy! We are joyful! Nothing can stop us! We are eternal! I can see you, feel you hear you! I see your signs! It is you I see in my mind, you I hear in my head, you that I feel when my heart quickens." ... feels like you are lying to yourself because your subconscious is largely what generates how you feel and emotionally react. But it is not you who are lying to yourself ... it is your subconscious that is lying to you by making you feel things based on something that is not true. When we say those things, imagine us together and happy, visualize our future together, we are deliberately, forcefully, strongly reprogramming our subconscious, overwriting its erroneous code with what we consciously know to be true, weeding out society-infused behavioral and reactive conditioning we picked up over decades of immersion.
We are not subverting a natural process or setting ourselves up for an even worse reaction later. We are not "dishonoring" our love, our loved one or ourselves. Yes, I cherish the deep agony of grief that I felt because it laid bare the great love for my wife and revealed exactly how much she means to me in terms of what it would do to me if she had "ended." But, I would have been doing neither of us any good by continuing to live in grief.
IMO, though, the whole idea of "letting it run its course" is unhelpful and can even prolong grief; it can last decades, to the end of our lives, if the subconscious programming doesn't change. Yes, that programming can change over time pretty much on its own if our conscious mind engagements of the afterlife information, community, and interaction with our loved one seeps down into our subconscious and slowly reprograms it - but why not do all we can to help quicken that process? The thing is, our immersion in this culture has baked that programming in deep in our subconscious; do we really want to just let it slowly get reprogrammed, bit by bit, over who knows how long?
That's for the individual to decide.
IMO, this is why fear and doubt can continually bubble up and trigger grief for many if not most people; way down in there, that program is still running on the idea that our loved one has "ended."
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