The modern pace of life teaches us not to take everything to heart, and to approach life more easily. However, when faced with the death of a loved one, the most cool-headed and resilient person will not be able to contain his emotions. And even if tears don’t flow from your eyes, there won’t be any lamentations, a feeling of emptiness will make you feel cold in your soul and make you think for a long time about the vale of the earth.
All admonitions such as “don’t worry”, “everything will pass - and this too”, “you need to return to everyday life” will not find a response in the heart. As psychologists assure, only by realizing the reasons for their sadness, experiencing grief and taking independent steps towards a calm existence can a person cope with the shock. It is by “working through” the tragedy and the experiences that followed it that it is possible to recover from a meeting with the inevitable.
Why is it necessary to experience grief? Jumping from difficult emotions into a normal routine does not make life easier. While creating the appearance of calm for those around him, he actually drives his sadness and suffering deeper. This behavior leads to prolonged neuroses, irritation, and depression. A prolonged period of grief becomes no less problematic. In the paroxysm of his feelings, a person no longer thinks about the deceased, but rather revels in self-pity due to his absence. Sadness lasting more than a year should alert others, because this is a real reason to seek help from a psychologist.
How to cope with the death of a loved one
Content
The death of a loved one is always a tragedy. Many of us would rather die than live, having lost someone who is truly dear to us. Some people grieve for years, feeling hurt and resentful of God “who dealt such a terrible blow.”
If you treat life as a school and accept everything it offers as an opportunity to move forward along the path of spiritual evolution, even in this most difficult experience you can find something instructive.
For example:
- Losses are an integral part of our lives . What is born must surely die. What has grown will sooner or later wither. This is a universal law. Is it really possible to forget that our bodies are mortal? Everything around us will one day cease to exist. This applies to plants, animals, people, buildings, cities, planet Earth, the Sun and even galaxies. Everything in the physical Universe is perishable. Having realized and accepted this fact, we can turn to another, eternal source of security and happiness.
- We can be happy again. Some people feel that, having lost a loved one, they will never be able to feel happy again. But time heals heart wounds, and now he begins to smile again (at first, when no one sees it) and realizes that he has greater inner strength than he previously thought.
- One should believe in universal wisdom and justice. When a loved one leaves his bodily shell, we can become angry with God. Without faith in the universal laws of existence, we are not able to accept this event as part of the Divine plan. We do not realize that it is an essential part of the process of our spiritual evolution, that the death of a person close to us has its own reasons. There are no coincidences.
- It is necessary to develop your connection with God. After many failed attempts to find happiness, acceptance, love and security in relationships, we realize that we are faced with two obstacles.
- The first obstacle is that most people do not have the spiritual maturity and strength to love us as we are, that is, as we want to be loved. Besides, we don't like ourselves too much. Therefore, it is not easy for us to meet a person who would be spiritually developed enough to love us without putting forward any conditions.
- The second obstacle is that the bodies into which souls inhabit are mortal. And therefore we can lose the one we love at any moment. Everyone knows that the day will come when we will be separated due to the physical death of one of us. And although we are happy at the moment, this feeling can be overshadowed by the fear of loss, especially if a loved one is sick.
By developing a relationship with God, we discover an inner source of security and love that is independent of the outside world. This gives us the opportunity to love and enjoy life without fear of loss. We are able to love without experiencing a painful attachment to our loved one. Such love will bring much more benefit to both him and ourselves.
- To face the death of a loved one. You should ask yourself: what is life? What is the nature of that energy, that force that, being in the body of a person close to us, made him think, speak, move, love, feel and create? Now that this energy is gone, what is left is a pile of decaying cells. Many people, having lost loved ones, ask themselves these questions. Death makes us think about the essence and purpose of life.
- Reconsider your life values and goals. Facing death makes us think that one day we too will die. We have more and more new questions. Will we be able to realize our life purpose? Why did we come to this Earth? Why did you end up in this physical body? Is our life part of some higher plan? And, if so, what is required of us? How to live your life in harmony with your highest purpose?
Trying to find answers to these questions often makes us realize that we need to change ourselves and change our lifestyle, fill our existence with more meaning, seek pure, unconditional love, etc. We also understand that our life gains meaning only in when we begin to value other people and respect their needs.
- Realize that the soul is different from the body and personality. The body and personality are the temporary means of expression of the soul in its earthly life. We do not cease to exist when they die, just as the breakdown of our radio does not affect the operation of the radio station. Understanding the temporality of your physical existence allows you to realize the significance of the eternal spiritual aspects of life. After this, we no longer pay so much attention to the accumulation of material values and direct our efforts to comprehend our true “I”.
What do losses teach you?
Fear and the pain of loss are two of the most destructive human emotions. They consume huge amounts of our emotional, mental and physical energy and condemn us to suffering. Why?
Our basic needs in life are the need for security, pleasure, freedom and recognition. In the hope of satisfying them, we earn money, acquire things, strive to enter into certain relationships with people, make a career and achieve a certain position in society.
We believe that without having all this, one cannot be happy. And as a result, we find ourselves depending on what we have. We cling to our property, money, connections and position because we are afraid of being defenseless in the face of the hostile world around us.
However, life is primarily a constant flow of change. Nothing around us is immune from change and disappearance. At any second we can lose our money, our job, our husband, wife, one of our parents or our children. We are all just passing waves on the surface of the sea of life.
The ability to adapt to change without clinging to the past is important not only from the point of view of personal and spiritual growth. Thanks to her, we can save ourselves from suffering. The old must give way to the new. This law is relevant both in the material and in the spiritual world.
If blood stops flowing through the veins, the body dies. Standing water spoils. To refill the jug, you must first empty it. Attachment to what we have deprives us of the opportunity to move to a higher level of awareness.
A child ceases to be a child when he becomes an adult. From a seed a tree grows. A caterpillar emerges from a motionless cocoon, which then turns into a butterfly.
From this point of view, every loss is an opportunity to express our inner strength and realize that this strength is much greater than we previously imagined.
There are very important lessons learned from losses.
Let's look at what lessons we can learn when we lose something important, such as a watch, wallet, documents, jewelry, job, position in society, our own home, camera, furniture, etc. (we have already touched on the loss of a loved one previously).
- The simplest possible lesson we can learn from losing something is to understand how valuable what we lost is to us. Very often we don't even think about it until the loss occurs.
- Another lesson is that often we don’t really need what we’ve lost as much as we used to think, and after going through this ordeal we can still live and enjoy life. Any attachment makes us weaker. By losing the object of our affection, we gain the opportunity to realize that we have more power than we thought.
- We can also realize that nothing in the external world can give us a permanent sense of security, satisfaction and self-confidence. Everything is transitory.
- We can learn to enjoy the blessings of life without becoming attached to them. Remember the example of the bird that was resting on a branch. When the wind blew, threatening to break off the branch, the bird was not afraid, because it was confident in its ability to fly and did not forget that there were many other, stronger branches. In the same way, we can rejoice in the blessings that life gives us, but at the same time remember that we have enough inner strength to live happily without them.
- We can learn to be more careful, which will help us avoid losses due to our own carelessness.
- We may have to examine the hidden meaning behind our loss. What is life trying to teach us by taking away what is dear to us? What does this signal say about our life, actions, lifestyle?
- We can learn to regain what we have lost or even fight for it (without aggression and without becoming dependent on the results of our efforts). This means doing everything possible to regain what was lost, while at the same time being prepared to accept a changed reality in case of failure. You need to be able to defend your own interests without excessive anxiety and fear.
- We can also trust in the wisdom of God, which will help us realize that nothing happens that is beyond the control of the just and wise forces of the Universe. Faith in the Divine Plan allows one to accept what is happening as the best stimulus for spiritual evolution that has ever occurred.
- We can realize that only God is the universal source of all things, gives and takes away everything we have, and learn to submit to His will. We come into this world naked and leave it naked. Everything we have accumulated during our lives is given to us as a loan, for the sake of our survival and spiritual growth in this world.
- We have the opportunity to identify those negative beliefs that led to the loss. For example: “There is a lot of evil in the world,” “I can’t keep my job,” or “I’m unable to defend myself.” Such beliefs can cause losses, so that these losses once again confirm their “correctness.”
These and many other lessons can be learned from any loss. We win by accepting that everything in our lives is for a reason.
The next step is to think about how to turn the very fact of loss into potential emotional, intellectual and spiritual capital that will allow us to become aware of ourselves, awaken our inner strength and get rid of any external supports.
The secret is this: you need to be happy with what you have without becoming dependent on anything.
By worrying about what we don't have, we also lose what we do have. When we feel gratitude for everything that life gives us, every loss seems insignificant.
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