This week I share with you the beautiful forward Michael Bernard Beckwith wrote for my book Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief: A Comprehensive Guide to Reclaiming and Cultivating Joy and Carrying On in the Face of Loss. The release date for the book is January 19, 2021, and it is available now for preorder on Amazon.
Forward for Loving and Living Your Way through Grief by Michael Bernard Beckwith
Oftentimes when a loved one dies, its sting can catch and hold us in a web of grief, loss, and even despair. As we tend to feel emotionally, soulfully, and even physically connected to our loved ones, these relationships often provide us with a profound sense of intimacy, comfort, and stasis, and can become the very foundation of who we believe we are. So when they die, it can feel like pieces of our very identity has been snatched away, and the sense of loss is felt at the core of our being. Such feelings of loss often engender variations of the questions: Why did this have to happen? Why did they have to leave? Who am I without them in my life? How am I supposed to live without them? What will I do? Although such inquiries are typically borne of grief, when understood within a spiritual context, they can provide the opportunity for intense inner reflection and contemplation, and ultimately, transformation.
You see, not only is it possible to live happily and thrive after a loved one transitions, it is required of us as the eternal and expansive beings we actually are. Many of us have been conditioned to experience our earthly lives and relationships through our physical senses, to what and whom we can see, hear, and touch, so we are attached to this as the ideal experience. However, limiting our ability to feel and share love, intimacy, beauty, and bliss to only that which we can see, hear, and touch, literally blunts our awareness of our innate cosmic connection to our supernal reality in which these conditions actually exist.
It would support us immensely to remember that while the terms of our relationship with our loved ones may change, the nature and reality of it doesn’t, as Real Love, in its eternality, can never “die.” To grasp this, we must rethink and process how we relate, how we love, and what actually constitutes an unconditionally loving relationship from within. Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief can be your trusted resource and guide through that process back to recognizing Real Love. Emily is a living example of someone who, instead of merely coping with her grief and sorrow, transcended those experiences to live an authentically peaceful and joyful life through spiritual self-discovery.
I met Emily through her husband and my good friend, Rev. Ron Threatt, when they attended Agape International Spiritual Center while living in Los Angeles. I saw Emily’s spiritual growth through her right use of spiritual principles in a very powerful way. When Ron passed, you could simultaneously see her sadness and loss while embracing the spiritual principles that ultimately pulled her through. Through her spiritual practice and self-realization, Emily was able to ultimately alchemize her sadness into a deeper awareness of Love, earning her invaluable revelations, insights, and the wisdom that comes with spiritual transformation that both allows and calls her to minister to and support others who are grieving from the loss of not only a loved one, but loss of any kind.
Study this book and utilize its practices. It will support you in taking back your mind, heart, and life from merely coping and getting by after loss, to living and loving—freely and unconditionally—as you you’re meant to. As Emily says, “By approaching this process with an open heart and open arms, we can all learn, love, share and be the best that we can be.”
Peace & Richest Blessings,
Michael Bernard Beckwith
Founder & Spiritual Director, Agape International Spiritual Center
Author, Life Visioning and Spiritual Liberation
Pre-order my book Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here.
Sign up for my free Zoom class: Writing Together Through Grief by clicking here.
