Parinama

  There is much we are grieving now for ourselves, our country, for the world.  The loss of jobs, financial security, justice, health, safety, and trust mount daily.  So many things we relied on are now uncertain. It is worse for those who already lack so much.  While the grief in this time is acute, grief for what was always accompanies us through life.  As relationships, experiences, circumstances change, we are asked to let go of what we hold, to accept the new.   When I am in a season of grief, it is as if I have landed on a strange and foreign shore.  The usual comforts offer little consolation.  I feel so alone in this grief and so very sad. I become much more empathically aware of the losses of others. I feel it in my gut and am amazed at the human capacity to go on living and even thriving with these tremendous losses of beloveds, of health, of livelihood.  The grief slows me down and makes me very tender. But I also can feel anx...

It is almost impossible for us to comprehend death, our own death and that of our beloveds. We cling to the many things of this world in an effort to stave off death, things like our beauty, our relationships, our money, our children.  We try to secure a kind of immortality through the things we own and accomplish.  This gives us a sense of power and control over what is mostly out of our control, the illness, vulnerability, aging, and death. For a long while, satisfying the egoic self with these material things can be enough and moreso is what we need to thrive and come into our adult lives.  But as we transition into midlife and the losses, failures, betrayals and illnesses accumulate, the veneer of immortality will grow thin.  When the whole of our purpose and meaning in life comes from the accumulation of things or power or money, we become stingy, competitive, ungracious and even violent to protect what gives us our sense of self, our status, our power.   I...