Loss.

This week’s topic for reflection is loss. Loss is one of the most emotionally painful experiences we can have. Loss of a child or spouse is sometimes never gotten over. We can loose a job or career that we expected to last a lifetime. I think of refugees fleeing with nothing, from the country they have always known for an uncertain and difficult future. We long for certainty, security and a way forward.

How does significant loss feel? Perhaps like a tearing in the chest. A disorienting confusion of not knowing who I am now or what to do. A lack of meaning and purpose. Insecure and untethered. Floating nowhere. An unspeakable upwelling of grief that returns and returns and returns.

There can be a tendency while floating in this nowhere land to need to attach to something, anything. It’s a need to be grounded to something real. So we attach to our depression. A sort of this is how I am now and there is no other meaning or purpose than this. We strengthen the sense of being separate and alone, detached from the world around us. We want to disappear, absorbed in the pain we feel and can’t escape from.

There is a way to get through this but it’s not easy. It’s the way of not escaping but turning toward. Turning toward the help and friendship of others. Turning toward the feelings of loss and disorientation. It”s okay to feel this way and even be friendly and kind to yourself. Know that nothing is permanent and it will change when it’s ready. Know that you are not alone or unique and many others are also dealing with this and even have more difficult situations than this, greater losses. Loss is baked in to how life works.

We inevitably loose what we build our life around and depend on. To cling to what we no longer have creates suffering and pain. This is what we do. So be kind to yourself and to others when they do this. Try to hold it lightly and allow it to change when it’s ready. Feel its texture and allow it to hurt.

Perhaps loss can be seen as change, as change is full of opportunity and potential growth. Life is change. We can always return to the truth that we don’t have to be any particular way. Then we will be free to participate in the creative present.

Please join us for morning Zoom zazen from 7:00 to 7:30 Tuesday and Thursday, and Sunday morning Zoom zazen and discussion of the topic for reflection blog from 8:00 to 9:00 Pacific Time. Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81161003357?pwd=M0gwRjBENHZDbndUcFRrK004NlQ5Zz09

Meeting ID: 811 6100 3357

Passcode: 278259

Gassho,

Futai