Article Highlights:
- This year I lost 2 friends
- When misunderstanding is the cause
- 4 things that help me through
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Earlier this year, I lost two treasured friends and I confess that I’m sometimes hurting from it still. We might have the idea we shouldn’t hurt over such things – or not for long anyway. We think we should be more “spiritual” than that, not taking it so personal.
When a friend dies we give ourselves a bit more latitude, though we still think we should move on sooner than we might. But when we lose a friend to acrimony or when one stops being a friend without explanation, we may not give ourselves enough time for grieving.
We try to normalize right away. Some of the ways we do this are rather unfortunate. Feeling afraid of what the former friend might say to others about us, we move to get others on our side. We gossip about the friend that hurt or left us, making us right and them wrong, for instance.
When we turn others against them we feel oddly better – but mostly because it serves to help us avoid pain. It’s small-minded and petty, but we’ve all done it. It doesn’t feel good though, it niggles at our conscience because it’s actually a very out-of-integrity thing to do. We have to go unconscious to do it – which is part of the reason we do it.
Losing friends sucks. It hurts, it can be confusing, frightening, create a vacuum of loneliness where they used to be, cause us to pull back and not trust. In other words, it’s a real thing. We need to experience it in an authentic way, taking time to more fully understand our relationship with them, what we miss, what we liked and didn’t like.
We also need to be very kind – in our own head – with them as well as ourselves. Over-analyzing, finger-pointing, blaming and justifying are really not helpful. These things stop grieving. Resist them, they endanger your peace of mind. Instead, feel what is there without overthinking it. Feel it and let it pass as all feelings do. Let anger, if it’s there, be experienced instead of reworked and reworked. Let pain be felt as it passes through. It only stays if you grasp onto it.
Let your fears and pain come forward to be known to you. If there were unhealthy patterns observe them but, again, loosely, with kindness, and without over-thinking. Be prayerful and be honest in your prayers. And allow the time needed. There’s no hurry.
Grief comes and goes, as we all know by now. Let it come. And go. Allow it without grasping on. Grasping on happens when you get into the story. Let the story go – feel the missing, the sadness, the fear instead. It all passes. Experience the feelings in your heart center, where they will be honored and released.
The mind wants the story, so does your ego, but your heart deeply understands the story already. It understands the story as part of being human, part of what happens in life. It has a lot of compassion about that. Allow yourself this compassion for the difficulty of losing a friend.
Yogananda had a dear friend, someone he entered the ashram with at a young age, a lad he developed with spiritually, shared confidences with, was best buddies with. They were so close that when Yogananda got the the assignment to go to the United States and open the west to meditation, he chose his closest friend to go with him.
Sadly, that friendship suffered with the success Yogananda had. Jealousy and acrimony developed. The friend even ended up suing Yogananda for the work and ashram.
Yogananda was so deeply hurt and disillusioned by this that he had a spiritual crisis. He left the US and went back to India, wandering around seeking peace of mind for many months before he could even face going back to the ashram where he and his friend had been so happy together, where his Guru still was.
Ultimately he found more balance and went back to the US to complete his work there – where, by the way, the difficulty with his friend continued. He no doubt grieved and struggled with this for some time. These things are not easy, even when enlightenment is there.
Losing friends is hard. But losing friends is also common. Some friendships last long, others are short and a few are lifetime friendships. And all friendships change in one way or another. We all have quite a lot of experience with this. It is a fact of life, part of living.
When it’s happening to me, there are 4 things I’ve found that help with loss of friends:
1) Allow the grief rather than fighting it with rampant storytelling. Grieve instead. It’s ok to hurt, it won’t last forever, you’ll make it through. In fact, it is the way through.
2) Recognize that your story about it is just a story. Let yourself tell the story a few times to yourself and to only one or two close friends. Listen to what you’re saying – you’re telling yourself about your pain and fear. After that, begin to leave the story alone and instead feel the sadness and loss – they are more authentic than the story and they take the experience to your heart instead of your mind. The heart can handle it all, the heart will help you through.
3) Losing a friendship is about surrendering it. Surrendering it in an act of willingness at some point in your grieving will help you let it go. Surrender it to its best moments, feeling gratitude for its gifts. And forgive both you and your friend for your confusions and misperceptions. This is the path of surrendering a friend by choice. It may not come right away in your grieving, but you can do it when ready. It takes the sting out of abrupt or painful partings.
4) Accept that losing friends is sometimes part of having them. Losing friends is part of life. It’s part of the risk of growing close to someone, which is such an uncontrollable thing. Maturing in life means realizing this and knowing that you know how to care for yourself and heal from hurt, knowing you’ll be ok if it happens. Losing a friend doesn’t mean you are bad or wrong, it doesn’t mean you are better than they, or worse. Losing a friend just means you’re human and open and willing to love and to risk loss.
As I said, I’m still grieving my loses of earlier this year. But I’m ok with that, it’s a process of healing. Sometimes, however, those losses remain unfinished in us. Perhaps now is a good time to make a list of lost friendships that still sting.
Then create a moment to remind yourself of the 4 suggestions above. Take action on numbers 3 and 4: surrender the unfinished ones now, willingly, and bless the friendship for what it was, however imperfect it may have been. Then accept the loss as part of being human. You’re ok, you know how to heal from life’s losses. Now surrender the story, let it go, don’t tell it anymore.
It’s been good, I think, to discuss this difficult reality of friendship together today: Losing Friends is something we all have in common. Next time in this series, we’ll talk about a more fun aspect of friendship: Making Friends.
Until then, I’m thankful for friends old and new. As well as friends lost and gone. Each has added dimensions of wisdom to my life and I bless them all.
Much love today, dear one,
~ X♥️Mayet Ma Hulili Leilani
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