Caravan of No Despair – Mirabai Starr
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Learn key principles and practices for turning the heartbreaking stages of grief into portals for spiritual awakening and transformation.
Advance on your path of integration with loving guidance and the support of a conscious community.
If you’ve been through a heart-wrenching loss, you know just how hard it can be to navigate your way through the stages of grief. Waves of sadness, anger and depression can buffet us for months and even years.
Meanwhile, there’s often pressure from family, friends and colleagues, who try to force “normalcy” before you may be ready. They may want to “cheer you up” and help you “get back on your feet” rather than meet you as companions in the dark and scary places that arise when you’ve had a profound loss.
This can lead to deeper feelings of disconnection and isolation. It may seem that there are few people who have the time, wisdom and patience to help you navigate your loss in a way that really respects what your soul needs and provides you the safe haven in which to transform your heartbreak into healing.
If we try to avoid or abort our natural grieving process, we derail what can be a journey of profound healing, spiritual opening and transformation.
Working our way, step by step, through tragic losses can play a central role in our spiritual life, since grief tends to crack us open to the depths of life in a way that nothing else can.
As we engage grief in a transformational way, we get much more real about what truly matters. We clarify what we believe in. We commit to loving more deeply. And we engage more in making a difference.
Our heartache can turn into what St. Teresa of Avila called the “beautiful wound,” a kind of pain that actually connects us with the Divine. The wound, even while painful, can give rise, eventually, to the serenity, love and even joy that comes from feeling deeply connected with the Source of all life.
Seen through a spiritual lens, grief is thus a profound opportunity for our evolution — both a deeper embodiment of life as well as a greater connection to Spirit.
It’s no accident that many of history’s most renowned mystics were catapulted into their path of illumination and service through profound losses, tragedies and heartbreak. Such events have a way of bringing us humbly to our knees, willing to face whatever truths and emotions that stir within us. This, in turn, can open us to real surrender.
The “move on” mentality that pervades our culture can thus deprive us of a profound opportunity to experience more compassion, sacred connection and a better understanding of life’s meaning.
That’s not to minimize the loss itself, of a loved one, for example. But our grief can be a portal to a deeper, wiser and richer experience of life, when consciously engaged as a spiritual practice. In this way, the path of loss becomes a journey of redemption and healing.
In fact, each of the five traditional phases of grief, popularized by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, can be experienced as a spiritual initiation. For example, feeling the burn of anger FULLY can eventually open us to our inner fire to create change and feel passion for life again. Allowing ourselves to cocoon within ourselves for awhile can help us shed false images and goals.
Ultimately, grief and loss offer the potential for an alchemical journey in which the darkness and suffering we face can turn into the gold of a deeper life and connection to God.
But we need guidance and support to create a container in which our painful emotions can be metabolized and we can safely enter the heart of the fire to be reborn.
And that is where this 12-module virtual program comes in, a profound opportunity in which you will be guided in navigating your own losses as an alchemical path of transformation.
The course title, Caravan of No Despair, comes from a Rumi poem in which he writes, “Ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again, come.” It refers to an attitude of welcome, which is ultimately the path of surrender to what is.
Despair comes when we have given up all hope, which is all too common in the journey of grief. Instead, we are offering a sanctuary in which you will be compassionately guided through the natural stages of grief and loss so that you can open to redemption, healing and the promise of a richer life, without feeling rushed through each stage.
Indeed, it’s vital that we absorb the initiation that each stage of grief offers. Each wave is clearing us out for new possibilities to arise.
The Importance of a Seasoned Guide
Your teacher and guide for this spiritual journey through grief is Mirabai Starr, a beloved spiritual teacher and someone who has faced grief at a profound, soul-wrenching level, including the sudden loss of her daughter in a car accident.
For Mirabai, the loss was both a crucifixion and a journey into deeper spiritual realization. Mirabai has thus walked through the full journey of grief and intimately knows its true, alchemical potential.
Mirabai has also written many acclaimed books on women mystics, including St. Teresa of Avila, and she has walked a path that includes Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist practices — all woven together in a deeply honoring way.
This course is her offering to your heart. Mirabai will guide you to a powerful reclamation of the path of grief as a way to harvest the “soul lessons” loss unearths, enabling you to live your life more deeply.
In the course of the 12-module journey with her, you’ll:
- Learn how to create a sacred space and enter naked into the luminous fire available to you when your world has been shattered.
- Discern between consolation and transformation.
- Approach each of the five stages of grief as spiritual initiations, giving yourself the time you need in each stage and circling back as required.
- Rewrite the script of what happened and create the ending you prefer.
- Reframe “denial” as a state of grace and engage your anger as a spiritual warrior.
- Cultivate compassion for yourself even as you replay the story of what happened again and again.
- Stop trying to fix your broken heart and instead let yourself reside and rest in the mystery.
- Accept “what is” without minimizing your loss.
- Expand your ability to befriend your heartache, pain and longing as allies on the path of ecstatic surrender.
- Explore the teachings from multiple spiritual traditions that embrace the annihilating power of love.
- Identify the positive traits that loss draws from you (such as dignity, fearlessness, even humor).
Mirabai will guide you on a profound, tender and sacred journey designed to help you navigate the phases of grief with more grace.
What You’ll Discover in These 12 Modules
Each contemplation and teaching session will build harmoniously upon the next, so that you’ll develop a complete, holistic understanding of the practices, tools and principles you’ll need to navigate the stages of grief in a way that opens you to real spiritual transformation.
Module 1: Sitting in the Fire
Grief is a natural response to the shattering of the foundation of your life. One of the most powerful forces for radical inner transfiguration is the death of a loved one.
Yet loss takes many forms, and each can be a catalyst for awakening: the ending of a relationship and the circle of friends and family you shared, the loss of a job or career and the community that goes with it, financial security, a serious health diagnosis that reorders your self-image, infertility, innocence. Our culture has conditioned us to get away from painful things, but the world’s wisdom traditions offer us a deeper path, one that invites us to sit in the fire and allow it to transform us.
In this session, you will:
- Learn somatic practices for being with strong feelings that arise as we explore our losses.
- Discern between consolation and transformation.
- Explore the teachings from multiple spiritual traditions that embrace the annihilating power of love.
- Learn about “disenfranchised grief” and how to give yourself (and others) permission to grieve your hidden losses.
- Begin to build an altar to your loved one(s) who are gone.
Module 2: Yearning for the Beloved
The 16th-century mystical genius, St. John of the Cross, coined the term “dark night of the soul” and developed a teaching that shows us how to surrender to radical unknowing and allow ourselves to be stripped of all that stands between our souls and the Divine. These and other mystics see deep sorrow as a great spiritual blessing, rather than as a problem requiring a solution.
In this session, you will:
- Explore the numinous quality that infuses your losses, and access this as a portal to your connection with the Divine.
- Practice contemplative reading of the poetry of the mystics as a spiritual practice.
- Learn the love-language from the Song of Songs (Judaism) and the Gita Govinda (Hinduism).
- Surrender the impulse to mend your brokenness.
Module 3: The Landscape of Loss
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, pioneer of the conscious dying movement, came to see that everyone grieves differently and that science collapses in the face of the mysteries of the heart. There is no map for the landscape of loss, no established itinerary, no cosmic checklist, where each item ticked off gets you closer to success. You cannot succeed in mourning your loved ones. You cannot fail. And yet there are certain common features, and knowing the signposts can help you navigate that wilderness.
In this session, you will:
- Learn the classic stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.
- Reframe these stages as spiritual stations.
- Create a timeline of your losses and look for emerging patterns.
- Learn about how St. Francis of Assisi walked a path of loss and transformation.
Module 4: Denial as Grace
Denial is not inherently negative. It is, in fact, what saves us from imploding when tragedy strikes. It is a biochemical process that washes through our brains and wraps us in a protective cocoon. It can also be seen as the grace that descends when something terrible happens, the angels that rush in to hold us up as we are hurtling into the abyss. The force of loss can part the veil that separates us from the sacred and grant us fleeting yet transformational access to Reality.
In this session, you will learn to:
- Yield to the altered state of consciousness that accompanies profound loss, embracing it as an opportunity to detach from the everyday world and abide in a larger field of awareness.
- Affirm the power of community to respond to a loss and weave a web of support for the bereaved.
- Identify the positive traits that loss draws from you (such as dignity, fearlessness, even humor).
- Learn about what current research has to teach us about the effects of trauma on the brain.
Module 5: Isolation as Wisdom
When we lose someone or something we love, we have a tendency to withdraw from the world to protect our shattered hearts. We need time and space to turn inward and assess what has happened. We also may recognize that something holy is going on beneath the surface of the shock and pain, and we are reluctant to be distracted by other people and their opinions about our loss. While the desire for solitude can turn into harmful isolation, it can also be an expression of self-care, and a way of honoring the sanctity of the experience.
In this session, you will:
- Make a plan to take a day of complete solitude and silence.
- If you have a tendency to isolate too much, make a plan to sit with a trusted companion and tell them the full story of your loss.
- Inventory both the obvious and the more subtle ways in which you check out of your experience when the feelings are intense.
- Learn about Kuan Yin and Tara, and turn to them for refuge.
Module 6: Anger as Protest
Anger is a natural response when something we value is torn from us. Our whole being rises up in protest. Desperate for a place to put the fire, we may lash out and cause harm. Yet when we approach this powerful emotion with loving awareness we can claim the power of the spiritual warrior to cut through illusion and lay the truth bare. Grief may be the first time we experience the ability to set healthy boundaries!
In this session, you will:
- Make a list of everyone you are mad at with regard to your loss(es).
- Write a letter of protest to God (or the Divine, the Universe, whatever Higher Power you relate to).
- Explore the archetype of the Spiritual Warrior across the faith spectrum.
Module 7: Bargaining as Problem-Solving
Bargaining can be one of the most vexing aspects of the grief experience. This is that phase where the monkey-mind takes over and you endlessly replay the tape of what happened, in the futile hope that you can make things come out differently. But we cannot think our way through the problem of loss. No amount of righteous indignation, self-recrimination, or wistful “if only’s” will undo reality. The relentless internal monologue can make us feel like we are going insane, but if we are patient with ourselves and remember not to believe everything we think, this process will run its natural course.
In this session, you will:
- Re-write the script of what happened and create the ending you prefer.
- Practice self-soothing phrases you can say to yourself when you find yourself kicking your own ass.
- Learn about well-loved saints and mystics who lost their center, just like you do.
- Understand that even knowing that this is a natural stage of grief does not make it magically go away.
- Learn to be compassionate with yourself.
Module 8: Depression as Surrender
When all our efforts to strike a deal with the universe fail, we finally collapse, exhausted and surrender to what is. And “what is” may be really hard to bear. But at this point, there is nowhere left to turn, and so we sink into feeling our feelings at last. We get to be simply sad, without the storyline obscuring the experience. We shift from the head to the heart, and we rest there.
In this session, you will:
- Learn about what the 16th-century mystic St. John of the Cross meant when he coined the term “Dark Night of the Soul.”
- Identify times you feel you have experienced the “Night of Sense.”
- Release the need to know and understand. Embrace the mystery.
- Practice meditation on groundlessness from Pema Chödrön.
Module 9: Stripped, Shattered & Blessed
Rumi says, “The grief you cry out from draws you toward union.” And that’s not all! “Your pure sadness that wants help,” he goes on to say, “is the secret cup.” Do we dare to believe this? Many mystical traditions affirm that the moment we reach out for the Holy One there is an immediate — almost quantum — response. The Beloved longs for us as fervently as we long for the Beloved. The human/Divine relationship is a reciprocal one. The fire of separation burns the boundaries between our souls and our source so that we can reclaim the power of desire.
In this session, you will:
- Read key passages from John of the Cross on the blessing of the Dark Night.
- Identify times you feel you have experienced the “Night of Spirit.”
- Explore the connection between personal loss and longing for the Divine.
- Learn about other mystical traditions that affirm the necessity of transcending the limitations of the intellect.
Module 10: Acceptance as Integration
Acceptance is not light at the end of the tunnel that signals your grief journey is over. It’s not about glossing over the power of your experience. What happened may never be okay with you, and that’s okay! It is a matter of looking at your loss face to face. It involves taking yourself into your arms and forgiving yourself for being unable to make things be other than they are. The loss may be amputation and that limb may never grow back, but we learn to find a new center of gravity.
In this session, you will:
- Identify the ways in which you have integrated what happened into the fullness of your life.
- Notice where you still feel fragmented and split off, and set your intention to reclaim your wholeness.
- Learn about saints and mystics who have lived with profound loss.
Module 11: Relocation
Once we have come to accept that who and what we loved in physical form is really gone, we are free to cultivate a new, metaphysical relationship. This does not happen all at once, and it is not subject to our ideas about it. Our connection unfolds organically, often quietly, and our task is to grow still enough to recognize the fruits of this love as they ripen and drop into our hands.
In this session, you will:
- Participate in a guided meditation to access your loved one(s) beyond physical form.
- Write a love letter to someone you have lost, from a place of renewed connection.
- Harness the power of your loss to move you more fully into life.
- Learn about Julian of Norwich and her vision of Christ-the-Mother.
Module 12: This Beautiful Wound
Teresa of Avila spoke about her longing for union with the Beloved as a “beautiful wound” that seared her soul, and yet from which she would never wish to recover. This burning yearning blessed her life. In this age of spiritual cynicism, we are conditioned to repress the devotional impulse and deny the validity of ecstatic experiences. As we integrate our losses and embrace our life, let us reclaim the power of ecstasy as a path home to our true being. From this place of devotion to the Source of all Love, we may find the energy of the heart to help alleviate suffering in this world.
In this session, you will:
- Learn about the “Transverberation” of Teresa of Avila.
- Embrace the fire of grief as your connection to your loved one(s), rather than as an ailment to be cured.
- Make a plan of action for one way you intend to be of service.
- Compile a list of grief poems, music and films to use as a resource for yourself and others.
- Complete your altar to your loved one(s).
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