The Mourning Of Our False Self

“In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing”

~Robert Ingersoll

When we lose someone close to us or someone who had great influence on us we typically go through a period of mourning. This period of mourning is a time of transition where we attempt to accept that a person is no longer physically on this earth and therefore is not available to us in the form that we had grown accustomed to. Mourning is commonly used to describe when we lose a person in our lives; however people mourn over the loss of many things, pets, homes, relationships, childhood, jobs, etc.

The period of mourning is recognized as a time when some people need the support of family and friends. We also recognize that mourning is a time where one may need solitude so that they can process the loss in their life.  Each of us mourns loss differently, however it is universally accepting that mourning loss is a process which people need to be allowed to have in order to accept what is and move on.

In my writings I often speak of how we must remember our authentic self and in doing so that we must let go of our false self. One may read some of my writings and say to themselves “well Mark you make it all sound so easy, changes my thoughts today and boom I will be filled with unbridled joy!” I know that change rarely happens in an instant. It is important to understand that almost all change is a process and that very rarely does change happen in the snap of a finger. Even as we change our thoughts, even as we discard our false self and allow our authentic self to resurface there is a process.

It is very important to be aware that in our transformation process that although we may have moments where our heart overflows with joy to the point where we feel we could burst with happiness that there are also times where we actually may feel worse than we did when we were unaware and living from a position of false self.

When we transform from our false self to our authentic self we must in a way die. We die while alive, that is we allow what we falsely believe to be our self to die. It is through the death of our false self that we transform and remember our authentic self. This death of false self is a death, albeit a conscious choice, it is still a death of what we believed to be our self. As with any loss or death, we may go through a period of mourning.

When we are mourning the loss of our false self, we are mourning what for some may be years of what we perceived to be our identity. It is during this time that we may feel sad, depressed, we may feel anger and denial and in the end we will feel acceptance and we will be thankful for all that we learned. This is the mourning process and it is a natural process for us to navigate through.

Being aware that we may go through a mourning process for our former self is very important for it is during this time that we may be tempted to believe that the false self is better than our authentic self. It is during this time that we may come to feel so much pain in the transformation that we may convince ourselves that we have taken the wrong path and that we should turn back. When we armed with the awareness that this is all part of the mourning process we are then in a position to understand all that we are feeling and most importantly understand that this feeling of doubt, this feeling of pain is only temporary. It is very much like the pain and doubt a baby must have as it exits the womb and takes its first breath of air and knows hunger for the first time.

Trust in your spirit, trust in your internal compass, be aware and listen and know that often times during transformation that our pain points are part of the transformation. These pain points are natural and our not signs to turn back, these are actually signs that you are on the correct path and that you should continue along your path of transformation.