My sharing right now feels raw…

We, in my family, have just experienced another loss. Besides my own grief, I’ve noticed how many different ways people deal with grief. What does it look like to you? Do you feel sad? Do you attack? Do you find someone else who is also vulnerable in their grief and misunderstand and blame? Do you withdraw? Do you build a case?

So many ways to defend against feeling a broken heart…

As I sit here, I’m feeling sadness. With death, there is no second chance to reconnect, at least not in this lifetime. There is a finality to it. And I have to deal with the empty hole that is in my heart.

And, I’m absolutely sure that there is a spirit world out there where we can reconnect and heal.

The teachings of the Pathwork seem to indicate that the soul needs a time for healing after death. I wonder what that looks like? I wonder if there is a spiritual hospital that one enters upon leaving this life. And who are those who tend to the incoming souls? Are there spiritual doctors?

And, once again, I see the ravages that addiction cause on a person’s body here on this earthly plane. That makes it doubly sad because there is another way…in Pathwork we learn to feel the past feelings to heal that sore place inside. It’s not an easy way, but once again, I see how I can heal from the past. You can, too. The way is clear.

I’m reminded about what’s behind addiction (from my experience of working with addiction). There are experiences that we have had that we were too young to know how to heal (or even stand it). We looked for something to make our experience bearable. Using something made us feel better. It made the pain of what happened to us less excruciating. Then we grew up.

We continue to use that thing that helped us. It became our “drug of choice.” That drug could be anything—food, excitement, silence and withdrawal, rebellion, blaming, an actual substance…anything that distracts us from the pain. This strategy goes on below the surface; we’re not even aware of it. And yet, it rules our lives. How? We send out energy into the universe that attracts to us the very person(s) who will activate the issue.

For example, I believed (unconsciously) that I was unlovable. That is why my mother would get drunk and pass out. To my adult that seems silly, but it was what I believed. I sent that energy out into the universe and attracted to me people who did not know how to love. See how it works? When we are very young, we make something up to explain why we are experiencing what is happening in our lives.

What to do about it…it’s a two-part fix…at one level we must recognize what is happening—see when the belief is at work and NOT BELIEVE IT. At a deeper level, we must go to those deep dark places that we experienced as a child and feel all the feelings that we couldn’t feel when we very young. When we have done that level of the work (and it takes a while to dig it all out), we can let go of the belief. And the addiction lessens. And we don’t have to die a painful unnecessary death…