By Deepak Chopra™ MD, Brian J. Fertig, MD and Jack A. Tuszynski, Ph.D., D.Sc.

Medical research enjoyed a major breakthrough over the past decade when two factors were isolated that link almost every major disorder: inflammation and stress. Neither came as a total surprise. Inflammation was long known as a paradoxical process in the body. Disease and injured tissues need an added supply of oxygen and immune cells in order to heal, but taken too far, as in the case of severe burns, and inflammation can lead to shock and even death.

Stress is more clear-cut, since it has always been associated with harmful effects in the body and is linked to many disorders from depression and anxiety to hypertension and lowered immunity. But a breakthrough occurred when it was suddenly realized that the culprits in disease and aging were not acute, dramatic instances of inflammation and stress. Instead, the damage to the body is low-level and steady, a chronic condition that does its damage slowly at the cellular level. It turns out that aging and chronic disease actually begin almost invisibly at the cellular level long before any symptoms appear, over a span of years or most probably decades.

Shadow work is the process of looking at the wounded parts of ourselves with compassion, love, and understanding so we can transform them. So those parts of us no longer keep us stuck or in pain. 

When you do your shadow work, you set yourself free from the parts of you that have been hidden or that you’ve refused to look at. And as a result, you become more authentically YOU. 

The shadow self is born from the grief, guilt, shame, and pain that has accumulated throughout your life and has become ingrained in your patterns. Deep within you, beneath this conditioned self is something greater – something which you already are but which you haven’t been able to freely show or experience. This is your Divine uniqueness. 

Eastern religions do not have a tradition of "grief" as it is understood in the Western world. Nevertheless, many Eastern religions have practices that help people in their grieving process.

The process of grieving is similar in all cultures, but the meaning of grief is different. In Eastern religions, a death does not represent a single event, but a life “cut short” at some point along the continuum of time.

Below we explore how Eastern religions generally view grief, along with their philosophical teachings.

Buddhism and grief

In Buddhism, the ultimate goal is to free oneself from the cycle of suffering, and grief is seen as one of the many manifestations of this cycle.

Welcome, 2021!

We have so many hopes pinned on this new year. It will take us a while to process and implement the vast need for social change and healing illuminated in 2020. Maybe in the past we’d say “that’s it” for last year and be quite glad to see it in our rear-view mirror. But this paradigm shift will require us to pause and take a deep respectful breath of hope knowing there is still a lot of patience and work still ahead as we traverse the in between time from what was to what will be.  

The old way is being dismantled and  being cleared away, and even if we’re not 100% where we hoped we’d be, we are still making room for more love, creativity, courage, compassion, hope…and joy. This and that will be true! 

And, if there is one thing I know for sure.

How we consider and integrate the past has a huge impact on how we experience our future. “If we do what we did we’re gonna get what we got!” 

You and I are a part of a process that’s going on in our culture at this moment.

And to that extent we are conscious of that process, it’s easier for us to let our acts support that process while simultaneously holding the confusion we feel because the process is leading us in uncharted ways into feelings we have not had before. It seems to me we are all traditionalists, we are all modernists, and we are all ‘cultural creatives.’ To the extent that you bring it all into consciousness, you can feel the way it affects all of it. I often feel like Kahlil Gibran, the prophet: “Speak to us of love, speak to us of pain, speak to us of child rearing…” all of the aspects of life that he taught about.

To the extent that you bring each aspect of your life under scrutiny, there is an opportunity to have that aspect of your life be something which supports transformation.

I mean a lot of people are incredibly generous in the world, but with their family, they are very, very tight, and yet they’re bringing offspring into the world. Many people have greed in one corner of their consciousness and philanthropy in another corner of their consciousness. I’m not knocking them, but just to be conscious about it, to cope with it, to be with it, that’s the first thing.

I’m not arguing for everybody to give up everything, It’s not gonna solve the problem.

In healing my own heart, I’ve found that there’s an evolutionary process that occurs as I move from awareness to appreciation. I’ve broken this process down into nine steps so that you can recognize where you are currently and then see where you can move to. I will be using my own life experiences as examples of how you can use these steps to open up, ask for help from the Archangels, and allow healing into your heart. By witnessing my journey from beginning to end, it is my hope that you can take what fits for you, relate it to your own present or past circumstances, and reach a place where true healing is realized. This is my process of self-love and forgiveness.