Following our Calling
Periodically, it serves all of us to ‘step back’ a little from the preoccupations of daily life, and listen into the subtle whisperings of our heart. What is it that really calls to us? What is it that we have a genuine passion to do? What is it that makes us feel truly alive?
Over 30 years ago, I heard such a clear, unequivocal calling to dedicate myself to living yoga, meditation, and spiritual life, based at Mandala Yoga Ashram. Saying ‘yes’ to this calling heralded a deeply transformative period in my life, gifting me with a new and invaluable direction, one that has become the living and breathing foundation of my life ever since.
Arising from this core foundation, over the last several years, has come an additional calling to embrace the fields of death, dying, loss and grief. This may sound paradoxical. After all, don’t we search for joy, aliveness, and happiness? I certainly did for many years to varying degrees of ‘success’. Yet in more recent times, there has been the dawning realisation that joy, aliveness, and meaning arise not through bypassing, but through honouring, the experiences of grief, death, and the shadow[1].
‘Enlightenment arises not from searching for Light, but from making the darkness conscious’ - Jung
I have known of the above quote for many years, appreciating it’s wisdom. Yet it was only when I started training as a death doula, and joined a residential retreat with Alexandra Derwen in Snowdonia, that the above quote came into sharp relief for me. As part of the training, we engaged in simple rituals to open to our shadow sides. We were encouraged again and again to be honest with our feelings, including the difficult ones of grief and loss. Rather than seeing grief as a problem, something to be avoided, we were asked to honour it as the other side of love. Grief and love come together. Opening to love also opens us to grief, at least in time. Likewise opening to grief, however challenging, offers us the gift of healing of the heart and thereby opening to love anew.
The training with Alexandra also heightened my awareness of death as a teacher, or as a guide. I had many previous experiences of working with death. These included my own near-death experience when young, being taken through death into what lies beyond via the profound practice of yoga nidra, and many helpful teachings arising from the regular 10-day retreat on Facing Death, Embracing Life at Mandala Yoga Ashram. Yet the death doula training took this to a new level – a recognition that death was one with life and furthermore, death could become a teacher for how to live wisely.
Thanks to these trainings and experiences, I feel that I can now offer a more open-hearted welcome to whatever feelings, griefs and emotions need to arise within and pass through me. If tears need to come, let them come. If grief needs to express, let it do so. This also allows whatever joy wishes to arise to do so freely. I feel more human. Less and less needs to be left out of my experience. Gradually, a greater courage and confidence has arisen to be able to face whatever needs to come. As my teacher put it, true strength arises from facing one’s vulnerability.
It is the depth of my own experience that now calls to me to be of service to others who also feel their own need to say ‘yes’ to grief, death, dying and loss. Normalising grief, and death, and finding ways to express it healthily, feels like a core need of our time, and one that I feel will only grow stronger over the ensuing time. I feel my calling come alive when I can offer the depth of my experience, and open-hearted presence, to those facing the reality of death, dying, grief and loss.
There are currently four ways this is manifesting:
Independent Funeral Celebrancy – I was given the opportunity to train as an Independent Funeral Celebrant under the experienced guidance of Dinah Liverside. It would be a privilege to facilitate a funeral service, or celebration of life, for anyone who is drawn to what I offer.
Grief Circles – I co-facilitate grief circles in the Brecon area, offering the space for people to gather to honour the grief they are carrying, and to find mutual support and upliftment.
Death Cafes – In addition I also co-facilitate periodic death cafes, giving people the chance to come together over a cup of tea and openly talk their own experiences, thoughts and fears about death and dying.
Both the above two events hope to help bring both grief and death back into the mainstream of daily life, rather than being relegated to the shadowy margins as they have been over several generations.
Death Doula work – finally, following my completion of my training, I am also available as a death doula, supporting individuals and/ or families who are experiencing the dying process. Being there for the person, offering practical and more subtle levels of support, to help skilfully navigate this once in a lifetime experience of dying.
Contact me for more details of any of the above. May you also find the time to listen into what truly calls to you in this transient life and find the courage to simply say ‘yes’.
[1] The shadow encompasses all our experiences that we were unable to resolve at the time, especially childhood, and therefore pushed down into the subconscious mind - out of the light into the shadow.
