WHAT FOLLOWS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE A FULL ANSWER TO THE QUESTIONS POSED. IT MAY BE BEST FOR YOU TO SEEK PROFESSIONAL ADVICE. THESE POINTERS ARE JUST SOME IDEAS ABOUT HOW ‘REFLECTION’ AS DISCUSSED IN THESE PAGES MAY BE OF SOME HELP. YOU SHOULD KNOW WITHIN YOURSELF WHERE AND WHETHER SOME OF THESE SUGGESTIONS APPLY TO YOU.
We are all gifted with the same repertoire of emotions and feelings in a broad-brush way. In that sense, you are not alone. It is a path well-travelled even if it is one unique to you.
We know that Time is a great healer; have you fully taken on board that time is an ally?
An ache does not have to be a pain.
What is going to change over time is yourself. All your relationships will change in a gradual way, including your relationship with the Departed. In time, this is likely to become more settled than with most of those with whom we deal in this life, with its surprises. The Departed can no longer rewrite their lives save, in a sense, in your mind. They still have existence there. Their passing should set a seal on the happiest memories. Imbedded within you, they speak to you, God-willing. They do so from across a widening chasm of mortal time. True, it may be measured in a different way in the immeasurable aeons of Eternity.
One way to notice the change within yourself is to look at videos of the departed person after the elapse of a substantial period. It can induce a sense that this is no longer a record of a time in the extended present but of a time that is over, a new dimension supervening, with the deceased on screen somehow seeming larger than life.
You may care to remember the words of the lictor who rode beside the Roman Emperors in their triumphal processions: ‘Remember that you too are mortal!’ Whether or not you pray and with whatever verbalisations about the Divine that even Holy Books tell us we cannot fully comprehend, there is comfort in the fact that we – every one of us – are all headed the same way.
We can only do what we can. No one can ask more of us. Why tilt at windmills?
Much Reflection is about ‘Thinking acting on feeling’, i.e. how thoughts can affect feeling. Feeling is usually the starting point, but a brain is to be used; why else would it be there. Think about it.
There is no one ‘right’ way to mourn or time that the process takes. Like a long-distance runner, you can pace yourself. Why lie to yourself; you know how you feel. You can be true to yourself as well as to the memory of those you love.
Can Reflection help dampen the sense of loss? A related question is ‘Do you want it lessened, or will you feel that it somehow ‘betrays’ your loved one’, as if to imply that you don’t care enough?
One aim is come to terms with your loss; have it enshrined as a part of your being, a mental blanket to keep you warm when cold blasts of acceptance come. On our mortal plane, we feel temperature; cold is that which humans don’t like; we are more than human. We surely are spirits as well as flesh and bone that is unanimated.
All religions provide comfort and words of wisdom at such a juncture. At the end of mortal day, we know our beliefs will be tested by reality. We cannot not know specifics and even the Good Books are replete with opacity, with the Lord appearing ‘in a cloud’. Are all psychics and mediums, even ghost hunters, wrong, generation after generation? Do you know better than them with their third eye or sensitised instinct or sense of profound revelation?
There is plenty of evidence that the energies or life force of those who loved us when they were alive are engaged with us on an ongoing basis, as from a powering source, even if they are not physically here.
You loved them. They are gone. Perhaps. In that word ‘Perhaps’ is a great salve. Why? Because perhaps they have not gone, in an essential sense.
Sadness there will be. But it can be coupled with gratitude that you have had the relationship. How much better that they were there, once, to love, than that they had never been there. In the words of the Prophet: ‘When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight’. Where to find comfort? It is there to be found, perhaps in the unlikeliest of places. Perhaps you are a Republican but you can appreciate what the late Queen Elizabeth II once said: ‘Grief is the price you pay for love.’
Review, reflect, think again, and in the process of thinking you may arrive at a peace and harmony within yourself that is a truth you need, even if a verbal formula fails the test of 100% certainty. As does almost everything.
You need time for you to hoist in and transmute the feelings you have about bereavement into a form that is more bearable for you. The approaching-the-final picture may not surface immediately in your mind. Run-of-mill situations do not need constant reassessment but this is a different situation from normal earth-bound tales. Pieces in the jigsaw of the life of the Departed and your relationship with them tend to float up to the surface of your mind over time. Allow yourself space as well as time for this to happen.
Here is something that you might like to reflect at a time like you are now going through:
Now, faithful to thy memory, I implore God to grant thy soul’s repose, and to vouchsafe to me the grace of our reunion, when His holy will shall call me hence.
My God, permit that the soul of him/her that I mourn, freed from earth’s painful struggles, dangers and difficulties, and purified through Thy mercy, may share the joys of the blessed in eternity. Amen.’
We can only do what we can. No one can ask more of us. Why tilt at windmills?
Much Reflection is about ‘Thinking acting on feeling’, i.e. how thoughts can affect feeling. Feeling is usually the starting point, but a brain is to be used; why else would it be there. Think about it.
There is no one ‘right’ way to mourn or time that the process takes. Like a long-distance runner, you can pace yourself. Why lie to yourself; you know how you feel. You can be true to yourself as well as to the memory of those you love.
Can Reflection help dampen the sense of loss? A related question is ‘Do you want it lessened, or will you feel that it somehow ‘betrays’ your loved one’, as if to imply that you don’t care enough?
One aim is come to terms with your loss; have it enshrined as a part of your being, a mental blanket to keep you warm when cold blasts of acceptance come. On our mortal plane, we feel temperature; cold is that which humans don’t like; we are more than human. We surely are spirits as well as flesh and bone that is unanimated.
All religions provide comfort and words of wisdom at such a juncture. At the end of mortal day, we know our beliefs will be tested by reality. We cannot not know specifics and even the Good Books are replete with opacity, with the Lord appearing ‘in a cloud’. Are all psychics and mediums, even ghost hunters, wrong, generation after generation? Do you know better than them with their third eye or sensitised instinct or sense of profound revelation?
Perhaps so but have a care about being too certain of anything. Review, reflect, think again, and in the process of thinking you may arrive at a peace and harmony within yourself that is a truth you need, even if a verbal formula fails the test of 100% certainty. As does almost everything.
You loved them. They are gone. Perhaps. In that word ‘Perhaps’ is a great salve. Why? Because perhaps they have not gone, in an essential sense.
Sadness there will be. But it can be coupled with gratitude that you have had the relationship. How much better that they were there, once, to love, than that they had never been there. In the words of the Prophet: ‘When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight’. Where to find comfort? It is there to be found, perhaps in the unlikeliest of places. Perhaps you are a Republican but you can appreciate what the late Queen Elizabeth II once said: ‘Grief is the price you pay for love.’
In this virtual institute are pieces that may help induce beneficial reflection. Here is something that you might like to reflect at a time like you are now going through:
Now, faithful to thy memory, I implore God to grant thy soul’s repose, and to vouchsafe to me the grace of our reunion, when His holy will shall call me hence.
My God, permit that the soul of him/her that I mourn, freed from earth’s painful struggles, dangers and difficulties, and purified through Thy mercy, may share the joys of the blessed in eternity. Amen.’
