Guest guest Posted February 17, 2005 Report Share Posted February 17, 2005 creative_energies , " Yael Haran " <harans@z...> wrote: Although I appreciate John's posts on positive thinking - and all the accumulated wisdom cited and uncited by him about the health- bringing advantage of good attitude and optimism, I disagree deeply on the issue of grief and bereavement. When a loved one dies - you can not " turn off " the grief that comes forward and avoid suffering. You can indeed, adhere to a postive, optimistic attitude, which is the foundation on which we accept the feelings of loss, anger, sadness and finally love. There is a grief process involving certain tasks which is quite similar to the death process. Those tasks need to be done in order for us to move forward. The first task is acceptance - which included acceptance of all the negative emotions that come forward. What John described in his previous post sounded a little more like denial. When someone close dies, they are dead to us. Completely. We cannot hug them, see them, smell them, kick them. Our physical emotional interaction with them is closed. They leave our social structure and they leave a gap. To grieve their loss is to honor them. All cultures have grief rituals - in one way or another. Actually, most cultures are far more observant of grief processes as a society than America. Sorry to take the glory out of the positivity rocket. Death is a great definer and a profound educater. Many wise men have advised us to spend some time contemplating our mortality. This is not to be morbid. It is to make the light of our life in the physical dimension shine brighter still. Warmly Yael --- End forwarded message --- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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