Episode 33
Between Worlds: How Loss Reshapes Our Reality
Grief is an intrinsic aspect of the human experience, one that we all encounter in various forms throughout our lives. Throughout our discourse, we delve into the multifaceted nature of grief, emphasizing the necessity of acknowledging and processing our emotions as a means to navigate through the pain. Acceptance, we assert, does not equate to forgetting or diminishing the significance of our loss; rather, it is a pathway to reconciling with our reality and honoring the lives of those we have lost. We will explore the profound implications of grief, touching upon the ways it alters our existence and how it can lead us to question our very purpose in life. Join us as we embark on this introspective journey, examining the Pillars of Grief and their potential to guide us towards understanding and healing. The episode provides a thoughtful exploration of the various dimensions of grief, commencing with the assertion that grief is a universal experience that reshapes our reality.
We delve into the disorientation and disconnection that often accompany grief, acknowledging how it can alienate us from our social circles and alter our interpersonal dynamics. The discussion extends beyond the death of a loved one, recognizing that grief can arise from myriad forms of loss, including relationships, careers, and even existential crises. Throughout our conversation, we reflect on the emotional turmoil that often accompanies grief, characterized by a sense of abandonment and isolation.
We stress the uniqueness of each individual's grieving process, advocating for a compassionate understanding of the varied expressions of grief. The episode culminates in a revelation that grief necessitates deeper inquiry into one's own existence and purpose, challenging listeners to confront their emotions and seek meaning amidst the chaos. This episode is not merely an examination of sorrow; it is an invitation to engage in a deeper dialogue with oneself, to transform grief from an experience of despair into a catalyst for personal transformation and renewed purpose.
Takeaways:
- Grief is an intrinsic aspect of the human experience, manifesting in various forms throughout our lives.
- Awareness of our emotions during grief facilitates acceptance and progression through our pain effectively.
- Acceptance of grief does not equate to forgetting, but rather signifies a reconciliation with loss and its implications.
- Honoring our departed loved ones can provide a meaningful way to navigate our grief journey, celebrating their lives.
- Grief can significantly alter our reality, leading to feelings of disconnection and disorientation from those around us.
- The complexities of grief extend beyond death, encompassing a myriad of losses that influence our emotional and psychological well-being.
Links referenced in this episode:
Mentioned in this episode:
Between Worlds Journey
Between Worlds Journey
Transcript
Grief is a natural part of life and we all experience it at some point.
Speaker A:By becoming aware of our emotions in the process of grief, we can begin to accept and move through our pain.
Speaker A:Acceptance doesn't mean that we forget or stop feeling the loss, but it allows us to come to terms with it.
Speaker A:And finally, we can choose to honour our loved ones by celebrating their life and finding meaning in our grief.
Speaker A:Join me me as we explore these Pillars of Grief and how they can help us navigate the journey of grief.
Speaker A:We will explore this journey together and you will hear from experiencers, experts and researchers.
Speaker A:I'm Joc Brokis and this is the Pillars of Grief.
Speaker B:Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, my friends.
Speaker B:Welcome to the Pillars of Grief.
Speaker B:No, grief changes our reality.
Speaker B:This is something that I've spoken about a lot, changes our reality.
Speaker B:We get disoriented, we get disconnected.
Speaker B:It can alienate us from friends and family that we still have here.
Speaker B:But also remember that grief doesn't also just mean about death, you know, can mean loss in all different avenues, different ways.
Speaker B:And that disconnection, although it's a different expression, it can be just as the same.
Speaker B:We often lose our way in life through grief.
Speaker B:And even now, you know, as we come past these holidays, even now, I can feel the burden of grief still through all the losses that I've had.
Speaker B:And so it's normal to feel disconnected, it's normal to feel disoriented, it's normal to feel the way that we normally feel when we lose a loved one or lose anything in life.
Speaker B:But then something happens.
Speaker B:We start to question.
Speaker B:We question our own mortality, we question life.
Speaker B:And so grief becomes this bigger expression.
Speaker B:It's not just about the loss of a loved one, you know, whether it's your mother, your father, your sibling, you know, a relation, a friend, a pet, even a relationship, a job.
Speaker B:There's so many different expressions of grief that affect us in so many different ways.
Speaker B:And the questions start off emotional.
Speaker B:It starts off kind of feeling more about how we are disconnected, how we are lost, how we've lost touch with that individual or that loved one, and how we feel abandoned.
Speaker B:And so we have so many emotions that run through us at any given time.
Speaker B:There's no really kind of any stage in grief that we can go through in a linear form.
Speaker B:And I've talked about this before and I probably should do maybe another talk about this, but there's a loneliness in not having our questions answered.
Speaker B:We tend to think, well, I've got so many questions, but I might feel that I Can't express them because I might feel judged.
Speaker B:I might feel that it's not the right question.
Speaker B:Or maybe there's an element where I'll feel silly and people will have an expectation of me.
Speaker B:And that expectation is not in line with what everybody thinks that you should be doing or how you should be experiencing your grief.
Speaker B:And remember that everybody's expression of grief is entirely unique.
Speaker B:It's entirely different.
Speaker B:And so often what happens is we then find, you know, we'll go to a counselor, right?
Speaker B:And then we'll come in a community is fantastic.
Speaker B:But if it's the right community and it's the right thing that you're, you're, you're connecting for and the right, you're there for the right reason.
Speaker B:But we go to communities or we read books or especially if we've lost a loved one and it becomes very much comfort oriented.
Speaker B:But you got to remember that that comfort is temporary, right?
Speaker B:It doesn't last as long as what you think.
Speaker B:And so even in a community or even if you're in a group and you're dealing with maybe psychotherapy or any kind of other psychotherapy, or you're talking to a counselor in some way, again, it's about the relationship that you have with that loss and that grief and, and how you can cope with it and how, how, how it really affects you in your life emotionally.
Speaker B:Looking at it from a psychological point of view.
Speaker B:But the reality is, is that grief is so much bigger than that.
Speaker B:It's, it's, there's so much more that it can often kind of change the whole ontologic.
Speaker B:You have like an ontological shock or an ontological shift.
Speaker B:That means that your, your, your meaning or your, the way that you feel in the world, your, your on, okay?
Speaker B:And you then can go into, potentially, it can become an existential crisis.
Speaker B:It's no longer just about losing that loved one.
Speaker B:It's about your role in life, where you're going, your direction.
Speaker B:And you have to remember that grief is a domino effect, right?
Speaker B:Grief can lead to so many other things that I kind of want to, I want to talk about that in a minute.
Speaker B:Things that I've seen from just the loss of one loved one or the loss of something, what actually can happen.
Speaker B:And so our whole reality, our whole meaning, our whole way of being in the world can change through grief.
Speaker B:And again, we look beyond that grief as loss in all sorts of forms.
Speaker B:But the comfort, you see, it's, it's a temporary thing because when you go to that counselor and you Sit down and you speak with them, or you're in that group, in that circle that you talk about.
Speaker B:It's comfort in that moment.
Speaker B:And sometimes it doesn't carry on because triggers exist out in the world, in the real world, triggers exist.
Speaker B:And those triggers can then cause us to go into shock again or had to have that existential crisis again.
Speaker B:I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute.
Speaker B:It spreads to all avenues of your life.
Speaker B:And even when you get reassurance, people try to reassure you or try to connect with you and tell you it's a temporary thing.
Speaker B:And this, we understand what you're going through.
Speaker B:Nobody can really understand you other than you.
Speaker B:We can have an idea of a framework about what grief actually would maybe mean.
Speaker B:Nobody really.
Speaker B:The way that you feel it, your expression is completely unique to you.
Speaker B:So grief becomes something bigger.
Speaker B:It's multitudinous in its expression.
Speaker B:And just because you lose a husband or a wife or a relationship or something, it can domino into this.
Speaker B:And this is what I want to talk about.
Speaker B:What I've seen over the years.
Speaker B:I have seen grief not only cause sadness and shock and disruption in someone's life and to change their whole direction or their whole purpose, or even to completely alienate them from everything in life, but I've also seen grief then cause the loss of a career.
Speaker B:And I'm not talking about.
Speaker B:There's an expression in grief that we feel.
Speaker B:We can feel grief in many other ways.
Speaker B:Like I've said, losing a career can cause us to feel grief.
Speaker B:Losing a relationship can cause us to feel grief.
Speaker B:Losing property and a disaster can cause us to feel grief.
Speaker B:But think about this.
Speaker B:Losing a loved one could also domino effect into you losing your job.
Speaker B:Because you get so disconnected, you feel so alienated, you feel so disoriented that you lose passion for your job.
Speaker B:You lose passion for the service that you're doing.
Speaker B:And so what happens is that you.
Speaker B:Then you start to suffer in your work, in your career, and so that becomes a threat.
Speaker B:And then at the same time, the relationship there at, in the workplace, that can also cause disconnection, distance, feeling, you know, feelings of alienation.
Speaker B:Because of, you lost a son, you've lost a daughter, a mother, a father, and now it's affecting you in your career and that relationship.
Speaker B:Then you become distanced from those around you.
Speaker B:You can't really communicate.
Speaker B:You don't know how to communicate.
Speaker B:You don't know how other people act.
Speaker B:And so we live in a world that's completely filled with different types of People, different races, religions, creeds, everything.
Speaker B:And so we don't know how to cope with that, and they don't know how to cope with us.
Speaker B:And people will say words gleebly, right?
Speaker B:They'll give you platitudes that you don't want.
Speaker B:And so again, this creates a bit of distance.
Speaker B:And then what happens is you feel so lost that you now want to leave your career, or even the worst case, you get fired.
Speaker B:And then you go home.
Speaker B:And maybe you go home to your husband or your wife, right?
Speaker B:And let's say you're a lawyer or something, or your executive, you're in a position of power and maybe you're leading people.
Speaker B:Now you go home and that loss that you've experienced, that loved one you've experienced has now.
Speaker B:You've lost your job, you now go home, and then you've got other problems that exist in there.
Speaker B:So what happens is now your own home life is beginning to get threatened.
Speaker B:So it's not just the loss of the job now your home life, your relationship, maybe, maybe it's even gonna head towards divorce, separation.
Speaker B:Then you've got children maybe involved, and then that creates another problem.
Speaker B:And then you've got your whole environment, your friends, your family.
Speaker B:So this one loss that you've experienced can actually cause a multitude of changes, a multitude of things in your life that seemingly are negative and cause disruption and cause disconnection.
Speaker B:And then you start to find.
Speaker B:You start to question your own meaning and your own purpose in life.
Speaker B:And you're trying to find meaning out of this loss.
Speaker B:You're trying to find a new purpose for yourself.
Speaker B:Patterns are continually changing.
Speaker B:Patterns are continually then repeating as well.
Speaker B:So you've got changing and then you've got repeating patterns because you find yourself locked in a prison that you've created.
Speaker B:So how do you cope with this?
Speaker B:That's the difficulty.
Speaker B:How do we actually move forward?
Speaker B:Well, then grief becomes a big threshold in your life and you go into an existential crisis.
Speaker B:You go into a spiritual crisis.
Speaker B:Nothing to do with religion or anything.
Speaker B:Anybody can go into a spiritual crisis because of this.
Speaker B:And you start to question your very own reality.
Speaker B:And here's the other thing.
Speaker B:I have seen people that I have worked with, I have did sittings for and families and organizations.
Speaker B:And whilst I say that this domino can affect in your life and everything else, I have talked people, I'll give you a story.
Speaker B:I talked to an individual who was suffering.
Speaker B:I had a reputation for military people and special ops people and things coming because of how I was very confidential Very quiet.
Speaker B:And I had experience in different fields within the military and other areas.
Speaker B:And I had a person many, many, many years ago come to me who had a connection there, but also their father was connected in another foreign organization who was responsible for many atrocities, many things.
Speaker B:Now, I'm not talking about him, but this then, this grief that he was experiencing from loss of his job, loss of his brothers and sisters in the field, this loss had exacerbated, caused him to go into this spiritual crisis, a spiritual shock, an existential crisis, and everything in his life.
Speaker B:And he sat in front of me, I remember him, and he said he actually didn't want to come and see me.
Speaker B:But the first words out his mouth, and I'm not going into any psychological evaluation or anything, but was after he'd been attempting, he'd considered taking his own life and that he was still considering that and he didn't actually want to be with me.
Speaker B:He was brought to me for a reason, and that after he sees me, nothing was changing.
Speaker B:He was eventually going to take his own life.
Speaker B:That's what he said.
Speaker B:Now, whether you believe that that was true or not, clearly the person was reaching out.
Speaker B:But clearly this grief from his relationship with his father and the position that he had and the positions that he held and what he had been involved in, this loss that he experienced, which was a culmination of losing loved ones and also the culmination of his position and the culmination of the disconnection and loss of meaning, he went into a spiritual crisis.
Speaker B:Now that spiritual crisis, that whole rupture in his life, changed the whole trajectory.
Speaker B:And it could have been disastrous.
Speaker B:Thankfully not, and I'm not going to go into that.
Speaker B:But it gives you an idea that grief goes way beyond, way beyond just that one experience.
Speaker B:Some of us just cope with loss and we can cope with it and we get through it.
Speaker B:A lot of us want to find more.
Speaker B:We want answers.
Speaker B:And in this silence, because we're terrified to ask the questions, or we're terrified to go into inquiry deeper, to feel deeper for ourselves, we tend to then just take a level that's just comfort.
Speaker B:It's just a level of comfort.
Speaker B:And this comfort passes.
Speaker B:So I've been had a lot of experience over the years dealing with people in positions, positions of power and leadership, and also family members and people who have lost loved ones through crime and also through illness and separation.
Speaker B:But then, of course, I've dealt with a lot of people who have experienced grief and many other different expressions, not only from the battlefield, but different expressions in relationships.
Speaker B:And at the moment, I have a case where there is a problem with grief that is expressing itself within a family unit and nobody's passed, but the grief is just as real because of disconnection and loss and everything else.
Speaker B:So I decided what I was going to do is to create a journey, a transformative experience with me.
Speaker B:And this is what I'm announcing today.
Speaker B:This is the between worlds transformative journey.
Speaker B:Not just looking at the elements of the afterlife, not just looking at the elements of losing a loved one and how to understand grief, but looking at every aspect of how it affects you in life.
Speaker B:Tackling those really deep existential questions that in the silence, never get answered.
Speaker B:And I'm not talking about just questions about do we have a body in the afterlife?
Speaker B:I mean, I have a few episodes that I talk about this kind of stuff.
Speaker B:But this is deep, this is transformational.
Speaker B:This is understanding grief, every facet in your being and how grief impacts the world and impacts you, and the difference between understanding the spiritual crisis and a pathology, your psychosis or schizophrenia, anything like that.
Speaker B:Not to challenge religion or belief systems, but to give you enough information on culture to give you a deep look into the reality of disconnection and the psychological building blocks of your reality.
Speaker B:To learn how to trust yourself and how to recognize your inner power and how not only you can connect, reconnect with yourself, but also reconnect with those outside of yourself and also to connect with your loved ones on the other side.
Speaker B:There is nothing that exists like this because every course is a kind of short course, or it's something that's temporary.
Speaker B:It's something that is really about comfort and, you know, just getting you to cope with grief.
Speaker B:This is different.
Speaker B:This is a full transformational journey that you will go on with me each month for a whole year.
Speaker B:We're going to be starting in the end of January, small cohort, very small cohort of people.
Speaker B:And every couple of months I'll open it up.
Speaker B:But in that cohort, you're going to go through 12 modules over the year.
Speaker B:Each module has got different lessons inside of it, four to six lessons in depth, but you can take it at your own time.
Speaker B:And then once a month, you'll connect with me live.
Speaker B:We'll have a talk, we'll have a chat, we'll work with each other.
Speaker B:We'll be in this little cohort where you can ask your questions safely, where you can talk to me about your challenges.
Speaker B:You also be part of my private community in a very private aspect to that community where you can actually connect with me directly as well and ask questions.
Speaker B:And there'll be things that I'll get you to do to.
Speaker B:To take on board, maybe exercises or things that you've got to go out and challenge yourself with to understand your psychological patterns, your behavior, to understand other people as well, to look at your whole life and not just the aspects of loss, look at everything in your life.
Speaker B:It's important that we do this because there's a lot more to the grieving journey than just losing a loved one.
Speaker B:Because that loss can, as I said, it can be that domino effect that goes into all aspects of your life.
Speaker B:And I want to give you the tools and the strategy to not only integrate grief, but to let it become a superpower in your life.
Speaker B:So this is a transformational journey that I'm inviting you on.
Speaker B:It's called Between Worlds, Understanding the science of the Afterlife.
Speaker B:Understanding.
Speaker B:So the science of loss in the afterlife.
Speaker B:And that name could change, the sub name could change.
Speaker B:But it's a journey that you're going to go on with me for a whole year.
Speaker B:And so I'm inviting you, if you have got deeper existential questions, if you feel that you want to be challenged and do something, understanding your loss, whether it be your loss of your father, your mother, your brother, your brothers in arms, your sisters on the battlefield, whether you're in a leadership position, but you really want to go through this and challenge yourself and become a better person for you and a better person for humanity to be able to serve greater in the world because of your experiences of grief, then this journey is for you.
Speaker B:And I'm inviting you to come on this journey with me.
Speaker B:Below you're going to find the link to the sign up page on my website and that'll tell you everything you need to know about the course and what you're going to go through and the journey.
Speaker B:Sorry, everything you need to know about the journey.
Speaker B:And then you can fill in the form to pre register.
Speaker B:You don't need to pay anything at all just now.
Speaker B:Just pre register so that we can get the small cohort going.
Speaker B:You see what you're up against, what you would like to do, and end of January, we'll begin.
Speaker B:So if you've got greater questions, if you feel you want to challenge yourself through your experiences, to really transform yourself, your environment, your life and impact others, then Between Worlds is for you.
Speaker B:God bless.
Speaker B:Hi there.
Speaker B:Grief often raises deeper questions about life.
Speaker B:Not just because it hurt, but because it changes every aspect of your life over the years I have seen how few spaces exist that really only are about comfort, and comfort is temporary.
Speaker B:There isn't really anything that explores grief in a journey.
Speaker B:It doesn't help you to push the boundaries to integrate grief into your life.
Speaker B:That's why I created Between Worlds.
Speaker B:It's a year long journey with me personally that unfolds month by month for people who have got bigger questions, who questions that can't be ignored, that want to go beyond the comfort and to learn more about their journey.
Speaker B:The work is held in small contained cohorts.
Speaker B:It's got a space for reflection.
Speaker B:You have a monthly live call with me and you can use this time to transform your life.
Speaker B:If this resonates with you, you can learn more through my site, jockbrokers.com.
Speaker B:Thank you for tuning in to the.
Speaker A:Pillars of Grief with me.
Speaker A:If you found this podcast helpful, please consider subscribing so that you never miss an episode.
Speaker A:Also, leaving a review can help others find the show and receive the guidance they need on their journey through grief.
Speaker A:I appreciate your feedback and look forward to hearing from you all.
Speaker A:Join my free online support community.
Speaker A:For those grieving and connect with others.
Speaker B:Who understand what you're grateful going through.
Speaker A:I offer you a spiritual blessing and hope you will join me on the next episode.
Speaker A:Till then, open your mind and allow.
Speaker B:The power of the divine to transform.
Speaker A:Your grief to spiritual realization.
Speaker A:God Bless.
