Why Mourn with Me?

At the heart of this whole concept, or calling, is the Mourning Meditation, a live stream on YouTube and this website. The meditation is guided in and out. The comments are disabled to remove distractions. This website acts as a hub and key signposting to resources, blogs, and the possibility of an online community.

This is about raising awareness of the deterioration of our rites and rituals around death and loss in general. The rites that support us as we touch the pain of finality: They're gone, it's irreversible, this has to be acknowledged. It's very simple, devastatingly so. But it is this acknowledgement that allows healing to begin. Mourn with Me is a response to what's happening in our funeral industry, and for all that we don't grieve in our personal lives - our unrealised dreams and aspirations, our lost relationships, our children, the destruction of our ecology and the global meltdown.

Grief is rightly becoming a buzzword as people realise they are in grief, in its many guises. But what do you do with that? This is an online platform and community intending to be present for personal and collective mourning. It doesn't have a religious, political or cultural agenda, and it can signpost you to help.

There is a saying that it takes a tribe to raise a child; it also takes a tribe to witness and support those losing loved ones and personal identities. And with current western practices (not catholic or Orthodox countries so much) potentially gravitating toward a disposal service, we need many more people to help hold, to witness, to just be together. The collective energy of grief in the world just now needs to be stated and acknowledged. How we honour our dead is fundamentally important to our survival as a species. Not honouring is a slippery slope and speaks, to me at least, of the unfurling of humanity at the point of death. If we don't honour what is painful and uncomfortable, then we may start to lose touch with how fundamental interpersonal relationships are to our very identity as human beings. We are already seeing trends in AI uploading personalities after death, to carry on relationships, and that too can bypass the point of pain, that they are dead and they are not coming back. The pain of this scours the heart but eventually brings us back to love, even if you had a difficult relationship, there is the possibility to reclaim rejection and hurt. Life can be reclaimed, but it has to be acknowledged first. That is what our rites and rituals do.

Grief is often a restlessness, a not knowing what to do, especially if grief is not addressed or is complicated (see resources). During the meditation, you are invited to sit with what grieves you, or what you need to mourn. Take half an hour to just sit with nothing to do other than attend to your grief. Here is a simple ritual or mindset to centre you, and a talk-in and talk-out meditation. Have a notepad nearby to record anything that is helpful, and the resources signpost you, helping to reveal and work with that kernel of grief. The world appears chaotic, unstable and metaphorically dark. The work we do on our inner darkness brings clarity and light. Maybe slowly at first, and you might need help, you might need to gather personal resources to help yourself, people to speak to, and professional advice. But you can start with yourself, start with acknowledging your own grief. Come and sit with others in real time. It is a palpable experience, it is a known phenomenon, group meditation, even remotely, has an accumulative action - the intention of personal liberation is greater when more than 1 person meets with the same goal. And in this technological age, we have a greater power to harness energy towards a more conscious society and personal transformation.

If you sit with your own stuff and acknowledge that there is another person out there who is in similar grief, then the connection is made. If we pray for a single person or thing, we concentrate our energy and can use it to help.