Mindful Mourning

I enter mindfulness. At first it feels like a denial of the depression that’s begun to float above my head since my husband and I separated six weeks ago. I would call that time between ending a marriage and actually living separate lives ‘the end of the end’. The end of the end for us unfolded perfectly in synch with nature’s slowing down. A few days after Samhain, just beyond the harvest as the Earth begins to swallow her energy to turn inward and while the extravagant burning that is bonfire night illuminates all in early November, our marriage ended. And then he moved out as life began to bud again in February. When you find yourself in your home as the only adult living at that particular address, the tone shifts into something more final. You graduate into the unpopular point known as ‘the end’. Except it is also, and as much, a beginning. This is a time between times. A liminal space where the wheel pauses and hasn’t yet begun to spin again. It’s a void. A place we all desperately avoid. The only choice we’re left with in that middle-of-the-night darkness is to begin a new cycle. You realise that whatever human plant your identity had grown into, has now died. And yet, you also find that you are now deep in the ground buried as a seed. You can’t help it, this is happening. You find yourself in a new life that you never planned but which has spontaneously arisen and opened with possibility. Much like that first daffodil who bravely journeys out of the darkness with its audacious bright yellow face, opening under an overcast and still cold sky at the end of winter, here you are. Except of course it’s not just the end of winter. It’s also the beginning of spring.

And now it’s spring and the story of this separation has been a dark cloud following me around, making me believe it’s still winter. Occasionally it rains and I cry my eyes out but then it parts like a curtain to reveal the sun, warm on my salty cheek which has been so hungry for that special kind of sun-kiss that only spring can offer. Often I find far underneath that cloud, in the depths of my being, is a joy that wants to rise like a spring gushing out of the ground, unapologetically excited to be alive. 

To enter mindfulness, we must first remember that the present is right here - a state of peace and acceptance lives at our fingertips. At first this remembering feels like I’m forgetting all my problems. It feels like an escape. The cloud whispers in my ear as I attempt to shift my awareness onto the beautiful colours of the room I stand in. It says how dare I. How dare I find peace in the middle of all this. The cloud descends a little to hug my head forming a misty crown, dropping thoughts directly into my consciousness - but what about me? How can you be peaceful while a storm is over your head? How dare you. This is all well and fine until I begin to believe what that cloud is telling me. When I don’t believe the cloud, it’s just a cloud. It all begins to become clearer here in the mindful space. The cloud gathers its power from my attachment to the past. There is grief here, yes, and I can tend to it with as much care as I’m giving to this page. I breathe. 

A full conscious breath arrives in the depths of my belly and then it goes again. If I were to hold that breath for fear of it leaving me, I’d suffer and soon be starving for oxygen. But I have learned, through the forty years that this body has been breathed, a breath will always come and a breath will always go. That is simply the nature of breathing. Breaths are no different to waves kissing the shore and then leaving her for the ocean. The shore surrenders to the process like the body surrenders. Surrendering is precisely what I’d like my mind to do too.

Paying attention to the glorious pink mug next to my journal (which is more of a ceramic bowl with a handle), is surrender. Another breath arrives. Belly full. And then the easy contraction follows, belly and lungs now empty. 

The pink cup contains coffee. The most holy of the holy waters. That first sip on any given day is an experience of heaven. 

I feel the weight of the full cup in my hand, holding focus there on that sensation and not on the goal of getting it to my mouth. I watch as my arm knows what to do, gracefully executing a slow movement, pivoting at the elbow. The cup is coming closer to my face. I feel my lips parting in anticipation - they act free and untamed, operating without instruction to do what they’re now doing. 

The creamy coffee, dressed in a fine garment of oat milk, arrives at the gates of my mouth. The warmth of it flowing to every crevice, its movement bringing my awareness to the caverns and tributaries of this mouth that tastes. Now the throat swallows the coffee and I witness a brief tightness giving way to a warmth that spreads down across the width of my chest. It seems to hold my heart briefly, offering a softness in its passing before it moves again through the rolling landscape of my body. This coffee is a hot river of pure life-force.

I watch as the grace brings the cup away from my face now, slowly moving it through space. It lands on the white desk, next to a lit candle. My eyes fix onto the flame and then follow a trail of tiny brown letters printed around the curved glass beneath the miniature fire:

Everyday a soul remembers the stillness
somewhere becoming present in the now
secret place with flowing energy all around

This is a secret place. One must surrender thought and bring awareness to the reality of things as they are. And then without a key, without a door or threshold of any kind, mysteriously the secret place opens to receive you. It’s revealed to you. Right where you are, wherever you are. Just as you are, exactly and however you are. The secret place opens and wraps its arms around you and you arrive in the truest home you never knew you were missing.

And the cloud - it lifts. Without being rejected or resisted but rather through an invitation of acceptance and a simple surrender to what is. All on its own, just like the breath and the waves - its gone. And if it should come again, your feet will be planted in the ground of Being. You will be anchored to this stable home of the secret place. And you will have the grace to welcome the cloud, to say hello, to ask what whispers it wants to share. And you will hear all of its messages but you will know better than to believe them. You will practice deep listening. You might even wrap your arms to receive it, offering it a sense of belonging. You may allow its rain to trickle out of your beautiful eyes. And you will feel it all, all those feelings that want nothing more than to be felt. All of them belonging to this moment as much as you belong. As much as life belongs. And when the moment unfurls again in its endless coiled dance between death and birth, from coming and going, you will see life so perfect as it is, possessing nothing but its own grace as it flows through you and around you. And because it knows that nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to it. When you know this too, the world also belongs to you.

I place my palms together in front of my heart, and I smile to the flame. I smile to the great mystery that contains the light of a billion suns. I smile to the mystery that holds me here. I smile to life. I breathe.

Image credit: Stellar by Ignacio Torres