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Healing the Grieving
Most physicians and
therapists know very little about death, dying, and grief. Those who have a
personal experience of their own with grief understand it a bit more, but, in
essence, most members of the healing professions do little more than describe
the stages of death and dying and the symptoms of grief.
They do not explain what
happens to those who are progressing from dying to death and beyond. They do
not provide all of the tools to assuage grief. Clearly, we do not pretend to
know everything about the spiritual process of dying, but experiences begin to
provide such tools.
Grief therapy has to
incorporate psychic events as well as spiritual thoughts. People who have had
near death experiences, regressions to past lives and the in-between-lives state,
out-of-body experiences and certain psychic phenomena dealing with life or
consciousness outside of the body, usually do not grieve as deeply or as
profoundly. They know something more than the rest. They know that
consciousness never dies. People who know that they are going to die often go
through the process of mourning their own death. This process can begin as soon
as the diagnosis of a terminal illness, such as metastatic cancer, is made. The
dying person may experience feelings of denial, anger, and despair. Family and
friends may also begin to grieve well before death occurs.
Grief can easily become
clinical depression. Th e dying or grieving person feels despondent, hopeless,
and beyond help. Psychological pain becomes acute and omnipresent. Sleep
patterns, the ability to concentrate, appetite, and energy levels are all
disrupted. Friends try to cheer the grief-stricken, to distract them from
their despair, but to no avail. Yet the grief of both patients and their
families can be healed before death. As they learn about the wonderful
experiences of others, such as those told in this book and elsewhere, they can
begin to feel more hope. Th e dying and the grieving can be encouraged to
communicate their experiences and insights to each other. They can talk about
the possibility of being together again.
They can express their
love. They can more easily and more calmly accept death. A dreaded experience
can be transformed into a time of honesty, sharing, love, and sometimes even
humor.
Occurrences are often so compelling and extraordinary
that frequently the patient is afraid that a counselor or physician who hears
about the event will trivialize or dismiss this precious experience and
consider the patient odd or strange. When the patient is reassured that it is
safe to discuss these experiences, doctor-patient communication reaches a new
level. The healing bond is strengthened. Take the time to talk with and listen
to their patients and their patients' families. Feel a responsibility to be
with their dying patients, not only to provide excellent technical medical
care, but also to offer psychological support. This provides immense
satisfaction to them, gives comfort to the others, and has taught them a great
deal.
We are on the frontiers
of a new form of helping, one in which those in the helping professions are not
merely able to identify the stages of grief but are also able to communicate a
more spiritual, open, and enlightened understanding of the actual death experience.
Hopefully, this frontier is one in which the dying, the grieving, and the
caretakers will all be able to learn and grow together.
According to a 1990 poll
by the Gallup Organization affiliate, The Princeton Religious Research Center,
roughly half of all Americans believe in extrasensory perception. Like the
extraordinary experiences that can occur during the dying process, psychic
experiences concerning a departed loved one can also induce profound changes in
a person's life and his or her attitude toward death and dying. Healing and
growth can occur as these lifealtering events are integrated. Profound grief
and fear of death diminish, especially when the psychic experiences seem to be
connected to "the other side."
I have learned in
interviewing patients and conducting past life regressions that it is not rare
for those suffering a sudden and violent death to cling to the earth plane and
to be confused and in a state of limbo for a while. Eventually, though, they do
find their way to the wonderful light and the spiritual presence of a guide or
universal love and move onward.
Several other people who
have come to my office have described similar visits shortly after the physical
death of a loved one. Some have even described receiving phone calls from the
recently deceased, calls that have sent shivers down their spines. In my
professional opinion, the descriptions above and many others that I have heard
come from normal, nonhallucinating people.
It seems that a primary
purpose of experiences like these is to encourage the living to heal their
grief through understanding.
Like my patients, those
who have these experiences come to understand that they will never die, that
only their bodies will die. For death is inevitable. Death is how we grow, how
we move from lesson to lesson, from lifetime to lifetime. We will all die, and
based on what I have learned from past life regression therapy, most of us have
already died many times before this lifetime.
This is good news. This
means that most of us have grown significantly, have been allowed to savor new
life experiences while retaining former strengths, talents, and even loves. It
also means that we will continue to grow even after our deaths.
Critics may comment that
reunions such as these consist of nothing more than fantasy or wish fulfillment.
But fantasy and wish fulfillment do not produce the powerful healing forces
that can take place as a patient reconnects with the eternal nature of the soul
and experiences bonds with departed loved ones. Patients felt dramatically
better after their trance experiences and all reported that ongoing symptoms of
grief and anxiety lifted as a result.
Everyone has learned
that death is not absolute. Ultimately, it is this knowledge that is the great
healer. The loved one is not lost. After death, a connection to that person
remains.
People who have this
experience or knowledge learn that death is less of an ending than a
transition. It is like walking through a door into another room. Depending on
the level of spiritual or psychic development or interest, communication with
someone in that next room may be very clear, or intermittent, or there may be
no communication at all. Nonetheless, whatever the nature of the basic
connection, it can be improved as long as the grieving understand that the
separation is not permanent or absolute. They and their loved ones have
probably been together before, and separated before. Yet, they were allowed to
come together again.
This gives the grieving great hope for the future, hope
that they will meet again. Of course, they may not meet within the same
relationships or circumstances that prevailed in the current lifetime. For
example, a father and daughter might meet again as friends or siblings or
grandfather and grandchild. Nevertheless, souls do continue to meet again and
again. In a way, the grief of the dying is a grief over loss of self, and in
that sense, the past life regression experience can also be very helpful. Those
who experience it or learn of it understand that death doesn't mean a
disappearance of the self into oblivion or blackness. Patients have shown me
that it simply means that, in the wisdom of the soul, the body is no longer
needed. The time has come for the soul to pass out of the body and to exist in
a nonphysical, spiritual state. Awareness is immortal, and so are aspects of
the personality.
Often the soul returns
to a new lifetime with the same talents and abilities a person exhibited in a
previous lifetime. Sometimes, people even access unknown talents in the current
lifetime after recalling the existence of these talents in previous lives.
There are so many
different levels of the self. We are wonderful, multidimensional beings. Why
must we limit ourselves mentally by restricting our definition of ourselves to
the personality and body that exists in the here and now? The entire spirit is
not encapsulated in the body and the conscious mind. The part of the self that
exists here is, in all probability, just a fragment of the entire spirit.
No doubt the potential
exists that even as Philip met his children in the meadow, another aspect of
his son's and daughter's souls could be growing and expanding further in a new
incarnation. The versatility and potential of the soul are limitless, infinite.
The ideas and experiences outlined in this chapter are probably just the tip of
the iceberg in terms of the ability to account for the full dimensions of the
soul.
The mystic Yogananda has
said that life is like a long golden chain floating deep within an ocean. It
can only be pulled out and examined one link at a time while the rest glistens
beneath the surface , alluring and unobtainable. What we now know of death,
indeed of life and the soul, is probably just one link in this golden chain .
As we integrate our grief into growth, we will be able to raise more and more
of this golden chain of joy and wisdom from the ocean of being and into the
light.
#plrtsalem #pastliferegressiontherapy
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