Grief

We can grieve for the little deaths; the loss of what might have been. I think we often carry a lot of that sort of grief around with us without realizing to what it is we are or were attached. We don't always see clearly what we feel we have lost. Hold up! No, rewrite that; take out the we and replace with I. Yes that sounds true. How mad is that? To be attached in the present to wanting a different past! We encapsulate our past and to want it to be different is to want to change the way we are. That's a wish to extinguish who we are, a wish to die. This is shocking and we only consider it because we see it in terms of wanting to change to some perceived improved condition; the idea of a 'me' that could have better this, that or the other. But that's an other person, a person that doesn't exist. Ultimately that road will lead to the ego's ultimate cutting off its nose to spite its face. But extending the line from 'oh I wish...' to such a terrible act is not clear in our minds at the time of wishing this or that.

Today I pointed to this view to help a friend who is recovering from a lot of suffering. At first it didn't go down well. But as we explored it and shared our pain it seemed to help. Like gnarled trees blown by the wind of many winters we stand in the shape formed by the wind, the light, the conditions. Quite beautiful really.


Life just gets on with it. It is so much larger than our desires. But of course it's our desires that it employs. The tree grows to the light, the fruit it would seem is designed by selection to be eaten so as to spread the seed. The birds display their fine feathers to catch a mate. Life makes us moment after moment; birth and death. Yet we can seem to be behind it; stuck with desires which it has out grown. That's grief and what can we do but sit with it until we can accept the loss and move on. And it's a joy to accept the gnarled bough and let go.