Grief

I’ve been wondering what to share… am I up for sharing? Is the inner work too cloudy to share on the out side?

We had a death in the family on 8 April. By the time this goes out, we will be in full swing, celebrating the un-timely, peaceful death of my beloved brother at 64yo.

It’s been devastating.
After my nephew told me over the phone, I sat down where I was and started crying.
That went on for a few days.
Even on trail runs, stopping and sitting down on the ground to just weep. Sadness.

When I connect with him I get expansion, freedom, relief. He’s not in chronic pain anymore. This feels wonderful.

We’re not doing so well. It was unexpected. And thus shocking.
I’m better and better as the days pass, as I process the grief and the shock.

And as you can imagine, that’s sparked A LOT of meditation.
Exactly the process that I briefly shared last time. In fact, I finished sharing that process hours before I found out… and dove into it heavily.
Sacred synchronicities.
Makes me smile.

One thing I wasn’t expecting: the grief is making everything else harder.
Seems obvious when I think about it.
It is certainly obvious now. :)

Interestingly, doing sessions has been easy.
The timing of them has been so perfect that they’re benefiting from my increased immersion in the subtle realms.
More sacred synchronicity.

Co-Creating with Reality

A big learning I’m getting from all of this intense practice, is the importance of present moment co-creation.
Super simple.
In any given moment, I just silently ask everything around me, “How can we best co-create this moment together?”
Super profound.

The point is to take whatever is going on, start from here, from where we are, and co-create from here… even if it’s super shite and you really don’t want your brother to be dead.
“How can we take what IS, right here and now, and co-create something beautiful? (or joyful, fulfilling, calming, exciting, restful, or whatever)
It can be really general.
Or specific.

And let that happen, co-create that happening… more consciously.

I’ve been asking for meaning a lot lately.
I hit that existential piece of my personal transformation spiral that asks, “What the hell is the point of me being here?”

And part of swirling around in that particular eddy was this deeper relationships with co-creating. Was realizing that I could be really intentional with it, that I can get clear about my desires and put them out as requests to myself and the universe around me. So, in the middle of this existential crisis, I focused on a very helpful intention, “Help me co-create a deeper knowing of what I am offering here (on this plane, in this time-space).”
Help me co-create meaning, something that makes all of this pain worthwhile.

Co-Creating When Things Suck

The spiritual ninja moves here are to first start where you are: accept, breathe in, settle in. Become as fully conscious as you can be of what is here now. Inside and out. And relax into the being-ness of it.
It is what is.
To help with this, ask yourself, “What am I co-creating right now?” Feel into the answer. On as many levels and layers as you’re able.

No one is saying you have to like it!!
But if you start from what’s actually happening, then you can create based on reality, versus trying to create something new out of something that doesn’t exist to begin with...
See the challenge here?
Starting from, “I want to co-create my brother being alive,” while being a normal stage of loss, probably isn’t the best way to co-create present moment happiness…
Start where you are.
Not always easy!
Extremely useful.

Second, whatever your intention, be open to unfolding it together in ways that you don’t expect. To re-tool a Paul Simon lyric, hold it in the open palm of desire. Give your intention room to grow into something: to move around, to shift, to morph to blossom into something new.
Otherwise, you don’t allow life to happen. You don’t allow all of the other co-creating that’s happening to flow and meld with yours… embellishing it with growth and expansion and freshness.
And more importantly, if you don’t, if you insist on only accepting what you have constructed in your mind as acceptable (which is inevitably based on your past experiences – and thus very limited), you will be unhappy with what is becoming.

These two things are both challenging as biological beings.
Our beautiful bodies crave comfort and safety.
One of the tricks here is to lean into accepting what is as safer than living in the clouds. If for no other reason than I can protect myself better if I see the tsunami in front of me than if I close my eyes and pretend that it is not roaring straight towards me. Fight, flight and freeze are perfectly acceptable reactions to stress in the short term, but living and creating from them leads to all kinds of problems.

Another trick is to realize that no matter how much I want something, my desire is only a part of the co-creation. No matter how much I want something to be exactly a certain way, I’m going to be disappointed. You’ll know this from your own life, that practically nothing turns out exactly how you imagined it, so on a purely practical level, it’s better to assume change than to cling on sameness. And now, this fits neatly into the same vein as the trick above, realizing that change is a part of what is, and accepting that things will be different as time moves on, is actually a safer strategy than wanting them to be like the past or wanting them to fit exactly into your expectations. Your eyes stay open, you will be safer.

“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome.” Brené Brown

Co-Creation Practice

Here’s how I’ve been practicing this.
I start where I am, whatever I’m co-creating now. (Lot’s of sorrow in my case.)
And I relax and am as conscious of as much of it as I can be…
Breathe.
Breathe here.

From here, I set my new intention based on the information that I have about what is and what isn’t working for me. I ask myrself and the Universe, to co-create that, and I am as open as I can be to co-creating what wants to unfold.
I assume that whatever happens is information about me and my relationship with my environment,
and that this too shall pass.

I keep iterating.
In fact I have to keep iterating.
As we know, we’re co-creating constantly, with more or less consciousness about it.
Again, it’s helpful to let ourselves LEARN and evolve our ideas, vs getting stuck because we want things to be the way we thought they should…

If you do this right now,
if you take a really conscious breath and open up as fully as possible to recognizing what is for you right now (mentally, emotionally, physically, etc.),
and then form an intention of what you would like to be,
and holding that intention in your open palm of desire, expecting to be surprised at what bubbles up,
then silently pose the question: “How can we co-create this?”

… how does that feel?
And how does that change how you co-create?

My hope is that this sparks new ways to play with how you uniquely co-create your life.

May you navigate with increasing ease, and may your tsunamis be full of joy.
Elena