Abe: Death and Spasmodic Grief

Q: My girlfriend's mother just died -- suddenly, about a month ago. And she goes through these periods of overwhelming grief. How can I offer comfort? How can I best comfort her -- when she does not want to be steered to, well, just think happy thoughts? She gets focused on the loss and loneliness.

Abe: Well, you cannot buck her current, and it really doesn't serve her, or you either, to try to ask her to feel differently than she feels. So soothe yourself by saying, "As time passes, this will soften." Soothe yourself by remembering who your girlfriend is and by remembering how stable she is and by remembering her love of life and by remembering how easily she feels good. And by acknowledging that she feels good much of the time anyway, and by acknowledging that there will be trigger points that will make her feel the loss more. By acknowledging that it's getting better and better.

And so you have to decide who are you? In other words, are you going to commiserate in her sorrow and `disempower' yourself as she is choosing to do (even though she doesn't know she's know she's choosing to do it because it feels like it's just overtaking her)? Or are you stronger than that? Are you able to stand there in a better-feeling place? Are you able to acknowledge that death is not a bad thing but a joyous thing and that is something that everybody's going to do?

We think it's a really interesting thing how you all fall apart at the idea of death, when all of you are going to die. We do not think you are practicing death in a very powerful way. Like we were talking earlier -- our friend was talking about how... he's going to quit smoking in six months, and even if the world comes to an end, he's still going to do it. And we say, think about what you've been doing with the subject of your personal death. Every time someone dies, or nearly so, so many of you look at that as something really, really not wanted. Death, after all, is a synonym for punishment. And we think that when someone dies it would be very good right now to begin practicing what you now know about death: it's this inevitable new step into a new perspective. It is the continuation of who you are from a more powerful vantage point. It is awareness of All-That-Is from broader view. It is energy that now still has clear view of all that is you.

Your girlfriend does not need to separate herself from her mother. She has more opportunity to experience the energy and the clarity and the knowledge of her mother now than she has ever had because her mother is part of the equation that's in a place of pure, positive energy. And we certainly understand that feeling of loss, because you cannot behold her or smell her, you cannot participate with her in the way that you once did. But, oh, the relationship can be more than it has ever been now that she has re-emerged into pure, positive energy.

So we would begin saying things such as, "I do not believe your mother is gone. I believe your mother is like us -- I believe your mother is eternal. I do not believe your mother is away from us. I do not believe you can receive her right now in your agony, but I believe that is aware of us."

Just relax in all of it and tell yourself that this, too, shall pass, this discomfort will fade and the relationship will continue.

Usually, the greatest discomfort that we feel physical beings feeling around the subject of death is a feeling of I should have done something more, I should have said more, I should have completed something. And we say, nothing is ever finished. There is no finish line. It's like a football game that has unlimited time -- you can still score another touchdown, you can still run down the field some more. There is no ending place in this eternal life that we are all about, you see.

The beginnings and endings that you call birth and death are more about helping you to focus than anything else. But they really are illusions. You are eternal beings. And when you re-emerge into nonphysical, you do not become less-than. You don't become some nebulous, unfocused energy that just swirls around in nothingness.

You assume that perspective of all-knowingness. You remember all that you are, not just the personality that you were.

But as your daughter or someone who loves you recalls that which you were and approaches it from a positive vibrational standpoint, you can reconstitute that energy and be, for a moment in time, that focused energy, and it is very satisfying to someone who's made their transition into nonphysical to take all of that power and clarity of nonphysical and then have it re-summoned by someone who's focusing from a pure, positive place.

It is delicious to talk to our live friends from our dead standpoint. We all enjoy it immensely.

Los Angeles, CA, 2/1/03