Exploring the Importance of Grief

Alara Sage (00:03.256) And welcome to another episode of the Ecstatic Woman Podcast, where we activate and inspire women in their power, in their authenticity, and in their bliss. I'm your host, Alara Sage, the founder and creator of Creator Consciousness, and here today to bring our special guest with us. And we're here to talk about a very impactful topic, in my opinion. We speak about bliss. We speak about a lot on this show. And the important thing to always remember is that the human experience has all of the emotions. It has such a plethora of sensations and experiences. And all of them need to feel safe within our bodies for us to really be in our power and in our bliss. And prior to the recording, the weeks leading up to the recording of this episode, there's been some very intense happenings in the world that have brought a great deal of grief to our planet and you know grief is always happening, right? It's happening in our own spaces individually. It's happening in our communities. It's happening worldwide and it's a very important conversation to have and perhaps something that we could all deepen into an understanding for ourselves. And so our guest today is here to help us bring deeper perspective and absolute wisdom. I have no doubt. to this conversation. Katriana Reid has been leading trainings, workshops, and retreats for four decades, four decades, guys. We've got some beautiful wisdom coming to the space here today. She integrates and bridges Zen, Vipassana, and deep ecology guided by her personal passion in integrating authentic spirituality. Caitriona Reed (01:29.732) Mm-hmm. Alara Sage (01:54.292) with the real world, with our everyday lives. So important to have this bridge, so important to have this connection. And she works with business owners, artists, creatives who know that their success is an inside job. Katriana, thank you so much for joining us here today. Caitriona Reed (02:14.55) Thank you, Lara. It's a pleasure and an honor. I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you. Alara Sage (02:20.884) I'm definitely excited about our conversation. I feel like this topic isn't necessarily available for everyone to discuss. So I was really delighted when you brought up the conversation of grief. Katrina, how do you perceive grief? Caitriona Reed (02:40.534) Well, first I'd say that the culture that we live in, the dominant culture, Western culture, white culture, European culture, post-scientific enlightenment culture, post-Christian culture is averse to grieving. The Roman Catholic Church banned it at some point very early on, banned that tradition that you still see when somebody dies in villages in... In Greece, the Roman Catholic Church didn't have reach there, but also in other Western European countries, you see an outpouring of grief. In some indigenous cultures, you just let people droop indefinitely. Grieve, get drunk, you take care of them, you put a blanket over them when they collapsed in the street. And there's an acknowledgment that grieving is a part of loving, of praising. of the ecstasy that you're so good at talking about, Alara. It's the flip side of the coin, but it's more than that. Someone we admire very much, Martin Prechtel, talks about praise and grief as another flip side. That when we grieve, we're praising. We're not consumed by our own loss, but we're celebrating. We're praising what's gone, what's lost. And when we're praising, there's a hint of grief in there. And as you mentioned, at this time, when we're seeing events play out in Gaza and Palestine, Israel, it's almost more than I and many people I know can really hold. It's the accumulation of decades, of nearly a century of events that are not fully acknowledged, not grieved. And when we don't grieve, it's like trauma. When we don't grieve, we're traumatized. And then that trauma re-emerges later so that we become perpetrators. Having been victims, we become perpetrators. Caitriona Reed (04:53.906) One other thing I mentioned to you when we chatted the other day, what I'm becoming aware of more and more prevalently among native people of this country, of North America, is that their work is to heal the perpetrators. Their culture is such that they deal with their grief, they deal with their loss, and so much of the work. And it's why so many native people are really working with non-native people Caitriona Reed (05:25.462) posture of prayer, of forgiveness, of joy. Because I feel that if we fully accommodate our grief, we naturally come to joy. If we bury our grief, we become what? Confused, neurotic, busy with our capitalist adventures. And yeah, so it's very present and prescient. for me in general, we've lost so much. The same person I mentioned, Martin Prechtel, is still worrying about the end of the world. The world ended long ago, as it did for so many cultures, so many species, so many languages, so many people cut off before their time. And to somehow hold that. And it's not. for polite society, it's not for conventional polite society to even address this. So how then do we create a community, let's say, where it's possible to wail? And I mean, we live in the country, we live far away from other humans, and it's partly, I won't say it was intended that way, but I've discovered it's now possible to go outside among the trees and wail. for the lust of our planet, for the lust of integrity in our culture, for the lust of stomach. Alara Sage (06:51.815) Mmm. Alara Sage (07:01.156) Yeah, feeling that loss. I think sometimes we think grief is solely like the loss of another person or of a loved one, but we absolutely need to grieve ourselves and grieve our communities. Or as you mentioned, grieving our society, grieving lost culture. There's so much, grieving Gaia herself and her pain. There's so much. to grieve. And I love how you said that it's a prayer, because it's always how I've felt it in my heart, even in the immense pain. It has always felt that grief simultaneously in the pain is also like a reverence to that which is being grieved. It is the flip of the love, right? And so it is because we cherish something that we Caitriona Reed (07:43.979) Yeah. Alara Sage (07:54.78) grieve it that we even feel grief right because we don't cherish if we don't love it if we don't adore it if we don't rever it we won't really feel that grief and so i think it's always a beautiful realization to bring our awareness to our hearts and notice that pain is reverence and i also love how you i love how you mentioned that the persecutors right because it's one thing that's always really hit me Caitriona Reed (08:16.015) Yeah, I like that. Alara Sage (08:23.6) is that our society just locks people up. And it's perhaps a touchy conversation, but to me, it's been something I haven't fully understood because what I see and feel in those people is deep pain. And like you said, when we push the grief down, when we don't really allow ourselves to feel it and to really move through the process of grief, we become the perpetrator. Caitriona Reed (08:28.43) Mm-hmm. Caitriona Reed (08:54.131) Yeah, I like that you say lock people up and on so many levels we lock people up. We don't think about restorative justice in any formal fashion. And you're putting me in mind of something that somebody wrote, getting who, after 9-11, he spoke about the system they used in the Babembe. Alara Sage (09:02.156) Yeah. Caitriona Reed (09:20.706) communities of Southern Africa traditionally, where a perpetrator of any crime would be brought in front of the whole village, maybe hundreds of people. And they would start by telling that person, reminding that person of all the good they'd done in their life. It could take a day, it could go on for more than a day. They'd just tell him, praise him, they'd praise him. And then when that was finished, when everyone had spoken, Alara Sage (09:44.812) God. Caitriona Reed (09:48.222) then the community went away and the perpetrator went away as it were, let's say, forgiven or redeemed or re-assimilated back into the community. And she said Alice Walker was the person who wrote this. She just reflected on how would it be if we could do the same with Osama bin Laden? I mean, the thought is, you know, we were ready to bomb. We were prepared before the attacks to go out and bomb. It's so beyond our construct, our conception as a culture. And listening to all the discourses from Palestinians and Israelis, especially on the Israeli and American side, the accusations and the demand and the determination for retribution. And interestingly, I was listening to something this morning, Palestinian speaking, and he said, may Allah give us patience. Alara Sage (10:36.308) Yeah. Caitriona Reed (10:45.942) He wasn't asking Allah for a favor to stop the bombing, because that's probably redundant. He was simply asking, may we be given the patience and the forbearance to understand what's being called forth from us in this situation, not prayer as an act of asking God for favors, but really a real sense of humility and surrender to the circumstances and... A sense also of gratitude, which comes from that. And from the gratitude, of course, joy. Because gratitude is only one step on the way to the embodiment. Back to your theme song of ecstasy. It's joy. We can skip gratitude right away if we truly practiced it and be embodied in joy. And I think grief is a huge part in that, because we're traumatizing ourselves if we don't have the context. Alara Sage (11:29.313) Yes. Yeah. Caitriona Reed (11:43.686) or the personal willingness or ability to, I like to say to wail, because it sounds like wailing and it's so good to do that, to give ourselves. And you can't do it alone. You need someone to help you, to hold your hand, to give you some tequila if need be, to help it on its way and to wail. So yeah, it's part of a continuum. It's part of a way of being that we've so nearly lost. So as I say that, I realize more and more I know people Alara Sage (11:49.045) Mmm, it does. Caitriona Reed (12:13.582) who, as you do, feel the lack and feel the need and feel the welcoming call of a fully embodied, receding what we experienced in our bodies and expressing it appropriately without fear of offending. Yeah. Alara Sage (12:34.208) Yeah, or without fear of feeling. I think that's a lot of times, for me, when I think of these emotions and energies that are very intense, our instinct is to tense up against them, tense away from them. And that tension is what creates the pain. It's when we relax, when we surrender, and when we work with the wisdom of our body. I love how you're using the word. Caitriona Reed (12:38.195) Exactly. Caitriona Reed (12:51.819) Yeah. Alara Sage (13:01.056) whale because I actually do that a lot in my sessions when I'm channeling energy from my clients. A lot of times whaling will just start happening and I adore it whenever it happens. It's not up to me but when it happens, I just like sink into the whaling and it literally feels and sounds like whaling and it's almost like a beautiful song that is emerging again because of the grief and it My whole body lights up and my whole body, you know, sings that song of, of grief. It's not just coming from my throat. It's coming from deep from my womb. And it's, and it, it connects ancestral Lee to, you know, all of the wailing and all the different lineages of, of grief. It's such a powerful, powerful process. So I love that we're speaking about it here. And I just really hope that the audience can. Caitriona Reed (13:41.217) Yeah. Alara Sage (13:58.432) bring this in of when you're feeling grief, or really any feeling that you feel like you really wanna just go and make that sound, nature, just going out into nature, going into a place where you just feel safe to do so, and just giving yourself permission and really surrendering into that process, so deeply healing. And I just wanted to bring also forward what you said about... perpetrators in the tribe and bringing them forward and telling them all the good things I mean as I'm saying that right now bliss is moving through my body and as you said it I was so lit in bliss because Alara Sage (14:39.892) Oh, it just hits my heart so strongly to think about how that would change our reality if we brought perpetrators in front of us and we told them how much they're loved, how much we see them, how much they are to the community, to humanity, right? Like that they are this puzzle piece and look what they have done. I mean, for one, instead of closing our own hearts, it opens our hearts, right? To, to appreciate another person and to recognize another person in that manner. Just opens our hearts, right? And then it, it opens their hearts. Right? So now the entire community is vibrating in the energy of love and joy and bliss rather than in shame and guilt and denial. and rejection and all of those other energy. I mean it's a complete other side of the coin that I just wow I had never heard that and I just really appreciate you bringing that into the space because I truly felt that. Caitriona Reed (15:38.092) Yeah. Caitriona Reed (15:46.522) As you speak, I'm put in mind of how much work it takes. You know, we work a lot with family systems constellation work, which is for people who aren't familiar with it, it looks like psychodrama, but it's very different because we're drawing on what we call the collective field of energy. And it's always shocking to me how easy it is for people to draw information out of that field. And in so doing, provide information, ancestral information. And based partly on my experience in that work, the rage, the grief, the sorrow, the loss is something we hold out of loyalty, out of unconscious loyalty, we hold for generations to pass. And it's good to see in what's happening in Gaza. This is a pattern that goes back at least three or four generations and of course, much further. And so how it needs a lot of patience and a lot of humility, because we might be ready to grieve, we might be ready to express forgiveness, but that's not necessarily true for others. And it's a slow progression through, I mean, that's what restorative justice is, modalities are is to really take the time necessary. I mean, I don't think change necessarily, whether it's societal or personal, has to take a lot of time. But I'm acutely aware that, I've only just learned actually, that what is obvious to me isn't necessarily obvious to everybody. And of course we meet people where they are, and we don't have long. Excuse me, we don't have long to wait. I mean, we have no time to wait whatsoever. And yet, to be humble, to be patient, to learn to listen, that's all part of that dynamic of how we express our joy, of how we express our willingness to yield so that we can accommodate, as you say, the perpetrator or the imagined perpetrator. I think of what was enacted on people of the Americas, Caitriona Reed (18:09.438) in the late 15th century. And we can think that those people who came from Spain, those people who came from Britain or Germany or Scandinavia, were really enacting externally the grief they couldn't express. Because a travesties enormity, an enormity of travesties has been perpetrated for generations, for centuries. so locked into the rigidities of society in those days. What can you do? Just find another continent and kill everybody. So it's not a short-term prospect here and it continues to this day. You know, I hear about white folks in Oklahoma or Kansas or the Dakotas. There's huge amounts of racism that go on in violence and a desire to eliminate, to destroy. It's so woven into the cultural tapestry who live in a, let's call it a liberal environment, we live an examined life among others who live an examined life. And sometimes we dodge, we avoid, easier for people of color, but for folks who are white, it's easy to go straight to bliss and do whatever spiritual bypass is necessary. And I know that that's not what you or I or anyone I know, propose. And yet it's often easy to interpret, easy for others to interpret it that way. We're looking for a holistic solution. And we're speaking about grief right now, I suspect, because it's a hole. It's a blank space that isn't addressed enough. So we addressed it. Yeah. Alara Sage (20:01.44) I love how you bring in the big picture, right? Because to me, that's always how I'm seeing things as well. We're so quick to point the finger at the perpetrator. And again, understanding that the perpetrator was perpetrated and just the generations and the generations far beyond our written history of what has happened to humanity and within humanity and how that gets passed down and how we're saying that the unresolved grief turns into Caitriona Reed (20:10.891) Yeah. Right. Alara Sage (20:31.708) more perpetrating. It's such an important thing to understand because it is about inclusion, including all of the pain and all of the sorrow and all of the different sides for there to be wholeness. That's what inclusion is. It's not saying that they're the bad ones and we're the good ones. That's not wholeness. We have to be willing to see all perspectives and really feel each other. I think it comes back down to the feeling and the willingness. Caitriona Reed (20:31.798) Yeah. Caitriona Reed (20:44.138) Yeah. Caitriona Reed (20:50.942) Yeah. Alara Sage (21:01.744) to feel the pain and for whatever reason what's coming through right now is you know also understanding that the land holds pain you know grief the energy of grief can be held within the land the amount of times that have gone to places and channeled so much grief through my body and had all these images and visuals of all that happened on that land that you know I didn't have any direct connection to. It was just the willingness of my body to move that energy. And the intensity of how that energy can really sit in a specific place and absolutely influence the people who are living there and the different experiences and events that are happening. And that too is unresolved grief. So the truth that the unresolved grief is I mean, ultimately, it really is our channel to bliss. It is our channel to joy. When I've experienced those really immense sensations, my higher self has always guided me in just let go. Just surrender. Relax your body. Relax as much as you can. Just let it move through your body. And Over them happening several times, I've learned that the more relaxed I am in my body, the more it can just move through me. Like I said, if I tense in any way, shape, or form, or try to resist experiencing it, it actually causes myself more pain. But if I really let go into it, and almost delight in it, really available to the sensation, the grief, the suffering really causes states of bliss in my in my womb and in my heart and that's been one of the teachings that I personally have gone through is that they are two sides of the same coin and that when we're available to the entirety of the coin that's God right that's the truth of love is the entirety is that when we surrender into grief we experience or have the potential to experience that bliss and that it is Alara Sage (23:15.904) based in the wholeness, not the bypassing and the just only attempting to feel good and the rejection of that which feels uncomfortable or we have deemed negative. What has been your experience with that in you or in the people around you? Caitriona Reed (23:33.514) Yeah. Well, I have a few thoughts, and based on what you just said, can we not say that it's really the same thing? It's not even two sides of the same coin. It's really the same thing to be to be whole. And what also comes to mind is a metaphor from Mahayana Buddhism, where compassion is expressed as the body. Alara Sage (23:46.526) Yes. Caitriona Reed (24:01.406) of Avalokitesvara or Kuan Yin, the Buddha embodiment of compassion, who naturally in response to the world weeps, weeps to myriad tears. And from those tears as they drop to the earth, a being is born. And that being is known in Sanskrit as Tara. And Tara emerges out of the earth dancing. So from our tears comes that dance. It's the dance of life. It's the play of life. It's the energy of empowerment, the energy of more life. Because I feel there's only one rule in life, and that's more life. And whatever way it can, it will find that. Well, since you asked, my experience is just what I say, really, that it's not two sides of the single coin. And I'm in grief a lot of the time. And people keep telling me, how come you're so calm and joyful? So clearly something is integrating there. But this also puts me in mind as we contextualize this within the culture of which we're a part. I'm delving into some really interesting reading around how I won't get complicated with this. But the distinction through more recent research between the left and the right brain. The left brain is connected to the right hand, which is used to grasping, to doing details, whereas the right brain is more traditionally wired to see the big picture. So we protect ourselves from predators. There's a distinction that they function in a similar way. And there's a distinction there. And how the person who's psychotic or an autistic person, oftentimes, or someone who's had right brain There are certain tendencies. It's not a generalization, but in general. There's a focus on details. There's a polarization. There's an argumentativeness. There's an inability to see the bigger picture. There's a lot of nuanced tendencies that the left brain out of hand. It's all about bureaucracy and detail. And the person, Ian McGilchrist, who I'm reading, Caitriona Reed (26:28.246) is one of his themes is how much as a society we're collectively acting like a psychotic person who hasn't lost their mind. On the contrary, they're very much in their mind, but it's a left brain mind focused on detail and difference, and you disagree with me and you're wrong, and I'm on being right too. And how much, you know, in the old days when I used to teach Buddhism, I, this is the way you do it. and this is how the brain works and this is how the mind works. And honestly, I couldn't you couldn't put a gun to my head and make me talk like that anymore. You know, I think it was William James who said truth long ago at the end of the 19th century. Truth is what is useful. And that's, you know, there are problems with that, too. However, it's a very useful rule of rule of thumb. especially working with individuals as you do, as we do. Truth for you is what is most useful. And that could involve letting go of certain fixed ideas, of letting go of perceptions that limit your innate human values. Resentment, revenge, anxiety. That's another piece that's very typical of what the left brain does to the body. if it's left to its own devices. I mean, ideally, they balanced left and right, and the corpus callosum, which sits between them, which does a lot of censorship. And it blocks more than it joins, because there are things we don't want the left brain to get into on the right side, and vice versa, in order to maintain that balance of, oh, it's the joy of bliss. I mean, that's the balance, isn't it? But that includes a lot of other things. So I digress slightly. But it's become a filter with which I feel as I watch things on TV and I watch people giving talks, especially people who are filled with rage or filled with propositions that they believe are true. I see how much they're getting caught in very limited logical processes. That even 10 years ago, it wasn't as I perceive it, wasn't so. Caitriona Reed (28:52.386) pronounced. I mean, we can look at our own Congress, and it's insane what's been going on in the political sphere in this country for the last, well, for the last eight years mostly, but, and longer. And it's like a kind of madness. It's like a psychosis, a cutting off from the experience of life, which as you describe when you're in the experience, offers so much space. So much inclusion. Yeah. So that's in response to not quite my experience but my thoughts, at least, around all of this. Alara Sage (29:34.356) Out of curiosity, do you have any perspective as to why that madness has increased or seems to be more prevalent? Caitriona Reed (29:47.942) Well, I think the why goes back a long way. It certainly goes back to Aristotle, but more particularly, it goes back to Cartesian thinking and turning science or scientism. We attribute truth to science in ways which insult science, actually, because scientific methodology is beautiful. But we'll take some conclusions, some research and make it truth. We watch that. with all the polarization that was taking place during COVID. Oh, this research is true. It's only just come out now that there are problems with the vaccine. And the FDA is kind of wondering whether they should announce that more publicly. But the point isn't whether or not there are problems with the vaccine. The point is how strongly people got behind one point of view or another because we're afraid, because the conditions of society lead us to more and more fear. the majority of people in this country are struggling economically in a way they weren't in our grandparents' and parents' day. And I think the more we're pushed into a corner, the more we clutch at intellectual, existential straws to give us some justification for our own personal madness to continue. I don't really know why. I think it's many, many causes. Caitriona Reed (31:15.246) I notice just in dealing with DMV, dealing with getting some new windows, the bureaucracy has increased. People have more and more paperwork to do for no good reason. And it's just part of the trend, part of people avoiding getting sued. Caitriona Reed (31:38.346) and the fear of terrorism and the fear of difference. Caitriona Reed (31:45.726) Yeah, we're all getting quietly hysterical. I hope you're not, and I hope I'm not. But I see it around me and the faddishness that this will change your life. My methodology will increase your income by this much, and this methodology will make you happy forever and make you perform sexually and fulfill your dreams. Well, examine your dreams. Are your dreams fostered by a capitalist worldview that you think is going to be a good thing? Alara Sage (31:45.89) Yeah. I Caitriona Reed (32:14.058) really sets you apart from others and doesn't serve anybody, not even you in the end. It's very, it's amazing. Most of the time I'm in grief, but equally I'm in a sense of awe at four and a quarter billion years to come to this predicament in the way we live on the planet and the way we deal with each other. Alara Sage (32:33.676) Hmm. Caitriona Reed (32:42.474) It's a miracle. Who would have thought that four and a quarter... I mean, it's a billion years of life, but it's four and a quarter billion years of planet. So let's say a billion years of life, complex life forms, and this one species has come to this strange, strange point of existence. And it's beautiful in so many ways. But what we've done societally is beyond my comprehension. So when you ask why, I'm not sure I know. some of those things I mentioned, but in general, it's so odd, given how beautiful every day can is and can be. You know, I look, you can't see it because it's so bright, but I look past my monitor to the mirror on my wall to look out at trees and grassland and hillsides. And this is my body. This is my life. And this is why we live here, actually. And to go back, if I may. Alara Sage (33:17.013) Yeah. Caitriona Reed (33:41.39) to what you were saying about when you get onto the land, you have this capacity both to release, relax, feel into the wholeness more deeply and to sense what was perpetrated there. And I feel we have become isolated from, there are no insects in most cities anymore. There are less and less birds. I have heard of a Lakota man who doesn't go outside of his house anymore. It's too painful, there are so few birds now. The birds have gone. Alara Sage (34:02.753) Mm-hmm. Caitriona Reed (34:12.338) And are we noticing? We live in cities where it's almost impossible to notice. So, yeah. Alara Sage (34:19.284) Yeah, outside of the pigeons. I, as you were talking, what I was hearing a lot of, and not to say it's the, you know, the one reason or anything like that, but I was hearing a lot of, you know, avoidance, right? And that's kind of what we started this conversation with was the avoidance of feeling the grief, the avoidance of processing the grief, the avoidance of seeing another perspective, the avoidance of opening up. our minds, the avoidance of curiosity, the avoidance of beauty, the avoidance of pain. There's a tremendous amount of avoidance. I mean, even to the point of there being political correctness is what we can and can't say. Avoid saying this, avoid saying that. And it's just this constant avoidance that just, if you allow it, I feel like people just shrink inside of it, because they're avoiding everything, because they just get smaller and smaller and smaller. Caitriona Reed (34:58.302) Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Alara Sage (35:14.376) And thus that avoidance becomes larger and their feeling becomes less and their experience becomes narrower. And so does their perspective and so does their heart and their ability to have compassion and to see the bigger picture, absolutely. Caitriona Reed (35:33.386) Yeah, yeah. It's such a pleasure when I run into somebody with whom I can disagree and we can have a hot argument and still love each other or respect each other, but really strongly disagree. And it's like you say, it's getting rarer and rarer. Alara Sage (35:41.689) Yes. Alara Sage (35:46.466) Yeah. Alara Sage (35:50.02) Yeah, it's really delicious to go through that with somebody and again, be fully present with it and have that strong play. It's playful, actually. It's very, very playful. But it can also be very intense and strong energy, strong passions coming together. I love personally the energy of passion because it's so profound and moving. Caitriona Reed (35:53.078) Yeah. Alara Sage (36:16.596) humanity through expansion and it's, you know, what revolutionizes our planet is our passion. So I'm all for people having passion, have passion, whatever, just be passionate. Please be passionate. Like I don't care what you're passionate about. It doesn't have to be what I'm passionate about, but please find your passion and feel it and express it and live it. Caitriona Reed (36:26.118) Yeah, yeah, yes, absolutely. Yeah, you know, to go back a step, that tendency to have to be really careful what you say is based on this tendency of the left brain to go back to that model. The left brain thinks it's right, which is connected to how we have fundamentalist going on with really bad science to support it. By bad science, I mean not fully peer-reviewed research. So I'm right. Nothing you can say, I'm right. Shut up. Don't talk to me. I'm right. And there's so much of that goes on. We have no empathy. Yeah. Alara Sage (37:19.624) And also what I'm hearing, you know, it's so much about expression, isn't it? And we go back to the conversation of like the wailing, right, like we, sometimes I feel like we underestimate the power of our expression and what happens when we limit the expression of our pain and of our emotions and how our society is so fearful of expressing and like wailing and screaming with rage, you know? Caitriona Reed (37:47.99) Yeah. Alara Sage (37:48.712) and letting it out, whatever you're feeling. And that's one of the things I always talk about. I've taught my boys that, hey, if I just turn and start screaming, you know, it's just me expressing energy. And they've known that. They know that I express my emotions. And so what happens when we start to suppress that and that wailing, that's just a beautiful energy, that goes into all of our expressions or we don't feel safe in all of our, in all the different ways that we express. All of a sudden we're having to Caitriona Reed (37:57.014) Yeah. Alara Sage (38:18.476) be careful and not be too much of rage or of, our society is deeply fearful of rage. It surprises me, not even rage, I'm just anger. We don't even know how to handle, people get angry. It's like, oh my God, that person's bad. That person's negative. That person needs to be put away or taken away. And same thing with my boys. I'm like, yeah. Be angry, you know, throw tantrum, like not tantrum so much as like a childlike tantrum, but kind of like scream rage, like feel, feel my love, feel. Caitriona Reed (38:52.714) Yeah. Caitriona Reed (38:56.062) Yeah. And you can't save it for later. Rage has to happen now. Not, oh, stuff it down and I'll do it later. Yeah. And with passion in general, passion in general. I thought, you know, I grew up in the UK and I thought, oh, I come to the US where everything's loose and groovy and expressive, but it's so repressed. You know, you experienced like, wow, it's an amazing day. And it's like, what's wrong with that person? You know, tone it down, tone it down. Alara Sage (39:00.957) Absolutely! Alara Sage (39:05.12) I'll do it later. Alara Sage (39:23.043) Yeah. Yes. Alara Sage (39:30.028) You're scaring everybody. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, and you know, bringing it back to the energy of the grief, for a while I was an animal communicator and just came naturally to me. So I kind of ran with it for a little while. And you know, I spoke to a lot of the beings after they had passed and their owners that were experiencing the grief. And it was just such a beautiful. Caitriona Reed (39:32.094) You scared the horses. Alara Sage (40:00.104) learning process for me, you know, how much I learned through kind of talking to both sides, even though again, it's not sides. But then I had my own experience with my dog who she was 16 years old, you know, I'd had her whole life and it was time for her to go and long story short, she passed and she immediately like we were driving away and she came in and all this gratitude and love and she was just like Caitriona Reed (40:06.082) You're right. Caitriona Reed (40:25.612) Yeah. Alara Sage (40:26.212) just filling me with love and I just started crying. I hadn't even cried yet. I was just like, because I was crying and love and just like, oh my gosh, you're such a precious being. And she was loving on my partner. And then she stayed in my field. It was like we were hugging for a couple of hours. And I was packing as we were moving. And then all of a sudden, I heard this voice say, she's going to leave now. And I kind of like turned because it was coming from behind me. And in my mind's eye, I saw Indigo and all of a sudden, so much bliss as she was fully returning to her Indigo body was my understanding of it. And the amount of bliss was something I couldn't even handle in my body. My body couldn't even take it all in. Caitriona Reed (41:17.551) I love that, yeah. Yeah. Alara Sage (41:21.992) And it was so interesting to me because I'd had so many of the animals talk to me about that where how it is that you know going back into the reconnecting to the soul or however you want to call it is this bliss state and from their human perspective their humans were often like oh my god are they okay i'm so sorry and you know they're telling me now i like they are just pure light and they're emanating this light to me and i'm trying to tell their owners no Caitriona Reed (41:41.879) Yeah. Caitriona Reed (41:46.098) Yeah. Alara Sage (41:51.404) They're not in pain. They're not judging how you were as an owner. They're so far beyond that. It was kind of my, I took that on as to try to help them understand that. And some people could and some people couldn't. That's OK. But it was such a gift from my love, my being that was my dog in that moment to feel that energy. And yeah, to. Caitriona Reed (42:11.446) Yeah. Alara Sage (42:19.444) I think my point being is that there's so much energy, there's so much sensation that, yeah, our bodies can't always hold it all. Caitriona Reed (42:30.138) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. I love the way you're such a bliss puppy. It's beautiful. You know, I just heard something the other day. It's apropos to what you're saying. When somebody, I'm just giving this out as general advice, when you have to get, you know this, I imagine. But when you have to get your pet euthanized and you take it to the vet, you stay there. Alara Sage (42:38.446) That's funny. Caitriona Reed (42:58.954) You let your eyes be the last thing your dog, your cat, sees when they close their eyes. Because some people so often, as with grief, I don't want to deal with it. I'll deal with it. Got to send my dog to sleep. You stay there. You hold their gaze. They want that. And that will further the bliss, as you describe it, the release, the ease. To be left with a stranger, to be euthanized is not good. Alara Sage (43:29.224) I really love that you bring that up because apparently that's a really big deal. I've spoke to some veterinarians who say that a lot of people drop their animals off because they literally can't, you know, or they think they can't because that's not true. Right. Like I don't even believe that we can't we perceive that we can't again, hold that energy, hold that pain in our body. And oftentimes it's because they're they feel guilty or they feel that they've wronged their animal or they've done something wrong. But. Caitriona Reed (43:33.26) Yeah, I think so. Makes sense. Caitriona Reed (43:56.779) Yeah. Alara Sage (43:57.476) Yeah, it's so important to be present there for both of you. Caitriona Reed (44:01.642) And it goes right along with this inability to grieve. It's this inability to hold death, to be with death. Death is not to be discussed and people don't think about death. Fortunately, we learn to consider our own death every day. It's part of any spiritual practice, I feel. Carlos Castaneda told Don Juan in those books years ago that we read. Alara Sage (44:05.161) Yes. Alara Sage (44:08.468) Yes. Caitriona Reed (44:30.038) You know, always keep death, your own death, sitting on your left shoulder. Of course. And that way we don't swallow our grief and let it eat us up from the inside, unexpressed. Alara Sage (44:44.452) And also the reminder to, you know, to be present with what is right now, right? Because we don't know when we're going to die and that transition. And so I think keeping grief on our left shoulder does allow us to be fully present. There was always this beautiful exercise that was brought into my space where, you know, you take like, okay, what if you had two years to live? Caitriona Reed (44:50.516) Yeah. Alara Sage (45:09.668) How would your life change? What if you had one year to live? What if you had six months to live? What if you had three months to live? And if you sit with those different time periods for yourself and how it radically changes from, OK, I don't know when I'm going to die. I'm not even thinking about it per se to, wow, I have three months to live. I have six months to live. Every single moment, every single moment is fully available. Caitriona Reed (45:09.686) Right. Alara Sage (45:39.916) How am I going to be in this moment? And so I really love how you say keep death on our left shoulder, because I think that is such a profound way really to live, which is the beautiful paradox of consciousness, isn't it? Caitriona Reed (45:55.906) Yeah, or just today, just today. Imagine today is your last day. You'll never see another dawn again. How do you be with that? And it's not morose. Oh, it's so depressing. You know, I think of words my mother might've said had I suggested such a thing. Oh, it's always so depressing. It's not depressing at all. We have a long time to be dead. We might as well get prepared a little bit. Alara Sage (46:01.698) Yes. Alara Sage (46:08.226) No. Caitriona Reed (46:26.747) by soaking in this life, this light, the air. Alara Sage (46:33.992) Yeah, again, it's something that when we when we think of it that way, it excites me because it's it changes the perspective and it really asks you of this moment. What is available to you? And like really, what do you desire? Like that's really what it comes down to is what do you really desire and all the excuses that we've made and all the reasons we've given ourselves and all the bullshit that we've said no to our own like innate. desires as all falls away and there's only the yes. Caitriona Reed (47:06.638) Well, that's a good question right there for people listening to this. What is it you want? What do you really want underneath that and underneath that? I mean, maybe you could end up as, Hey, I want life. I want, I want safety. I want, I want to, they're pretty basic things that we want. When we, when we hone it down, a lot of people say, I want more money or I want a partner here, is that really the bottom line of what you want money or a partnership, something deeper that. Alara Sage (47:22.252) Yeah. Yes. Caitriona Reed (47:37.058) that you may carry more already in seed within you that's more accessible than money or a person that doesn't exist in your life yet. What do you really want that you can just tap into right now as a sense that you come back to that word of joy and bliss? Joseph Campbell used to ask that question, what is your bliss? It's the same as saying what is it you want? What is your bliss that brings you into life? And it's not about doing or having, it is about being. Caitriona Reed (48:12.674) but not about becoming, it's about being now. Yeah. Alara Sage (48:18.328) Another thing I'm hearing right now as we're talking about this, which is really quite beautiful, is again, wrapping it back around to grief, that the unprocessed grief does dampen, does hide, does suppress our passion. Sometimes when you ask people, what do they want? They say, I don't know. And what do you mean you don't know? You don't know what you want. And I talk to people a lot about what really lights you up. And sometimes they don't have that answer. And it is about that unprocessed grief. And when we. And again, for the listeners, if you're not feeling passionate, if you're not feeling that you have connection to those desires, and in this moment, in the awareness of how they already exist within you now here in your beingness, then the question would be, where do I have unresolved grief? Where am I carrying unresolved grief? Caitriona Reed (49:09.098) And that's in direct proportion to this epidemic we have, this mental health epidemic of anxiety and depression. It's directly in proportion to unacknowledged grief and our capacity to be joyful when we allow ourselves to bear witness, the phrase I like a lot, to bear witness, both to your own life, but to the global. Alara Sage (49:18.841) Yes. Alara Sage (49:25.642) Yes. Caitriona Reed (49:38.514) as well as the individual to bear witness. What is being done in my name? I can't do it. I can't fix Gaza, but I can bear witness. And I can speak appropriately where I'm called to do that, about climate change. What can I do as an individual? I can do a few things, but not much to address the whole. But bearing witness shifts the collective consciousness. And I can only bear witness. If I'm open to those feelings I hold, which are both the confusion, the frustration, the rage, the fear, and the grief. All those good human emotions that allow us to, as we ripen them, to come into our best expression of creativity and joy. Yeah. It's just fun talking about these things. So I. Alara Sage (50:41.253) I love the terminology, bear witness. So my love, where can people reach out to you, find you? How can we highlight you right now in this moment, support you? Caitriona Reed (50:53.494) They can find us on our website, which is 5changes.com. Five spelled out as a word, changes, without any spaces, 5changes.com. They can reach out by email or phone, actually. 5changes is also on Facebook and also on Instagram. And we deliberately don't keep so busy that we aren't available. You could just randomly call us. And we probably won't pick up because we won't recognize your number, but we'll come back to you. And we do retreats here. We work with individuals. We do some, I say here, we're in Southern California in the mountains of Northeast San Diego County. We're in Los Angeles. We do workshops in Los Angeles. And we work a lot on this land. People come here. Yeah. Fivechanges.com. Alara Sage (51:50.42) and to be able to find the workshops and everything on your website. Caitriona Reed (51:53.534) Yeah, yeah, a lot of word of mouth. So it's best if you're in touch with us directly. We don't put everything on the website. Most things. Alara Sage (52:02.768) Mm, OK. That's good to know. Wonderful. OK. So let's move into our activation today and see what arises. So as always to the listeners, I say that, of course, if you're driving, keep your eyes open and you can always come back to this and experience it more deeply when you have the space and the time. But even if you're driving, you can engage in this process. And remember that there's nothing that you have to feel during any of this. What you are feeling is perfect to you. Whatever you are experiencing is perfect to you. So be with that. Give yourself permission to feel and experience what you feel and experience period. And that is perfection in and of itself. So let's go ahead and close our eyes. And let's just start by. Taking some nice deep breaths in through our nose and out through our mouth. And just feeling, feeling your breath, feeling the movement of your breath through your body, feeling how the breath is always present, the breath is always there. Feel the fluidity of its movement through you. Just allowing it to naturally be. Allowing it to naturally be present. Allowing it to naturally move through you. Excellent. As you're breathing, just giving yourself permission through your intention. Giving your body permission to feel. Giving yourself permission to be with your breath and with your body. Alara Sage (53:49.816) Perhaps you are feeling joyous today. Perhaps you're feeling numb today. Perhaps you're feeling resentful. Perhaps you're feeling grieving. Allowing your breath to guide you into your body. Allowing your breath to guide you into the truth of what is right now, into the truth of what you are feeling. And dropping your awareness down to your pelvis. Breathing all the way down into your pelvis. Feeling your pelvis, feeling what you're sitting on, feeling the subtle gravitational pull towards our mother, towards Gaia. And as you exhale, just allowing yourself to let go into that pull. Exhaling, letting go. into that gravitational pull, letting go of any tension, letting go of any resistance, allowing yourself to soften, allowing yourself to soften and to open, opening your body, opening your chakras, opening all of your bodies and expanding them more in this moment. as you breathe into your body. Wonderful. Now we're gonna bring our awareness to our heart. I want you to remember that whatever you feel is perfect, my love, whatever you feel is perfect. And we're calling here now of the heart. We call with deeper reverence and deep honoring to the heart, to the heart space now, that any and all unresolved grief be shown per the higher good of the individual through their process, be allowed to move through their body, to be allowed to move. Alara Sage (55:56.056) through their breath, to be allowed to feel it throughout themselves, in their hearts and in their bodies and in the entirety of their being. And feeling your breath in your chest now as if you're breathing in and out of your heart alone. We're gonna start to activate the heart here with gentleness, we're gonna start to activate the heart, breathing as if. You're literally breathing in and out through your heart chakras and through your heart. With each inhalation, we're creating space here with each exhalation. We're giving spaciousness for releasing, giving spaciousness to feel and to release, to let go of any grief that we're experiencing. And I'm going to start bringing in some sound. So doing your best. to hold your awareness at your heart space, breathing in and out there. If your mind wanders, simply bring it back. Alara Sage (57:04.099) allowing. Alara Sage (57:10.068) your heart. Alara Sage (57:24.464) Yeah... Alara Sage (57:36.726) You Alara Sage (58:12.904) nice deep breath stay with your heart Alara Sage (58:30.394) Yeah Alara Sage (58:49.104) Yeah. Alara Sage (59:30.3) Nice deep breath. Ah la shiva, ah la ngarava. Ooh, dharai, ngarave. Nice deep breath. Ah, let it out through your mouth. Ah, ah, let it out through your mouth. Express. Ah. Alara Sage (01:00:02.54) Couple more breaths. Being fully present with yourself. Alara Sage (01:00:16.176) Once again, just making sure you feel your body, feeling your pelvis. Alara Sage (01:00:24.184) Ah, feeling what you're sitting on, feeling that support, feeling that presence of your body on that support, feeling that gravitational pull towards Gaia, towards our mother. Once again, just relaxing. Ah. Alara Sage (01:00:47.616) beautiful. When you feel ready, if your eyes are closed, you can open them back up. Orange yourself back to the room. Alara Sage (01:01:03.164) Ah, Catriona, my love, it has been such a delight to share this space with you. Deeply honored for your presence here today, for your wisdom, and for all of your perspectives and insight. Thank you so much for joining me here today. Alara Sage (01:01:36.344) Thank you, my love, for being here. Caitriona Reed (01:01:39.01) Thank you. It's a pleasure. Thank you for the work you do. Alara Sage (01:01:46.81) Same, definitely same. And to all the listeners, please remember to share this episode. Absolutely reach out to Katrina and check out her website. Check out all of the information. Call her. I'm going to call her if you feel called and be sure to come back for the next episode of The Ecstatic Woman. As always, so much love. Caitriona Reed (01:02:02.826) Yeah. Alara Sage (01:02:27.012) Okay, my love. Caitriona Reed (01:02:29.398) Good.

Exploring the Importance of Grief

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