It can be difficult to imagine grief as anything but a terrible, life-shattering experience.
But if we consider the possibility of grief as a mystical journey,
vast new horizons of spiritual growth are opened up to us.
Nothing can rip us open, hurt us, scar us and heal us more than grief, and nothing brings us more valuable soul lessons. The primary gift of grief is that it changes us permanently and profoundly, and because we are never truly separated from those who have crossed over, their deaths invite us to enter new worlds along with them.
Grief cuts to the core of everything that defines us, and exposes places in our relationships, belief systems, family structures and social values that have been crying out for illumination and healing. Grief shakes us loose from our spiritual lethargy and creates an opening in us that is highly receptive to growth if we recognize the tools and choose to do the work. If we nurture that opening, if we honor it and work with it, stretching and strengthening it a little bit each day, we can discover previously unimagined worlds of wisdom and choose enlightenment over annihilation. Every one of us who's had a life-shattering grief experience has, on a soul level, asked grief to transform us, though on the ego/personality level, we are not aware of having made this request.
We cannot fully integrate the grief experience -- and fully heal -- until we focus on internal transformation rather than reacting to external events.
Excerpted from
Embracing Death: A New Look at Grief, Gratitude and God