Recovering from Sorrow, Loss and Heartache
You may become surprised and delighted to discover that while you’re simply noticing your grief or sorrow and experiencing compassion for Yourself, a wondrous mind flow has begun. Like ice melting in the mountains, pain and sorrow ebb away, flowing out of your heart and your body, out from your feet and hands. Continue to breathe and allow these powerful and painful feelings, sensations, and thoughts to move through you and out of you.
If your suffering isn’t alleviated, allow yourself to become curious and imagine someone who suffered terribly and overcame her loss, someone whose story you know well. Picture this person in your mind’s eye and take yourself through her story of loss and pain from its inception in all its intensity and agony. Place yourself inside her heart, mind, and body. Allow yourself to feel every feeling, and experience each and every dark moment and mood you imagine she suffered. Draw strength from her tragedy and triumph. Visualize and bring mindful awareness to the exact moment in her mind when she made the decision to heal, to transform the direction of pain and sorrow in order to move from internalization to expressive flow. See, feel, and experience yourself as this person as she drew strength, wisdom, and compassion from this heartache.
Envision your heart and imagine the tissue within its wounds begin to repair itself. Feel a stirring of vitality as your heart beats and you imagine seedlings in the earth beginning to awaken from dormancy and buds on the branches of trees beginning to open to the sunlight as flowers burst forth with a new aliveness and energy.
Notice that your heart and mind are beginning to transform. Be mindful of the feelings in your heart as you draw from your inner resource of compassionate awareness. Notice the loss, sorrow, and sadness beginning to shift toward feelings and sensations of vitality, passion, and well-being.
The feelings that arise when you let yourself slow down, become quiet, and access what’s in your heart can be intense. If you’ve been avoiding painful feelings and thoughts for a long time, you may not be able to handle more than a five-minute-long session of mindfulness meditation initially, and you may need someone with you to support you in your process of uncovering this pain. A skilled psychologist or mindfulness meditation teacher can be enormously helpful in guiding you through these emotions and modulating their intensity.
