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- Herausgeber: tredition
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
This book is intended for those who have lost a loved one and find themselves in mourning. "Love lives on in grief" - the pain bears witness to the richness that was present in life. The book is also beneficial for those who wish to comfort others but struggle with thoughts and words. It's about fear and mourning, about anger that can mingle with grief. How can we live well with the memory of the beloved deceased? How does grief become bearable? This book is intended for those who have lost a loved one and find themselves in mourning. "Love lives on in grief" - the pain bears witness to the richness that was present in life. The book is also beneficial for those who wish to comfort others but struggle with thoughts and words. It's about fear and mourning, about anger that can mingle with grief. How can we live well with the memory of the beloved deceased? How does grief become bearable?
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Published by
www.elisabeth-lukas-archiv.de
© 2024 Elisabeth-Lukas-Archiv gGmbH Dr. Heidi Schönfeld
Nürnberger Straße 103a D-96050 Bamberg
This English edition was originally published in German as In der Trauer lebt die Liebe weiter Butzon & Bercker, 2021
Elisabeth Lukas, Love lives on in grief
Translated from the German by:
Dr. David Nolland, Oxford
Cover, typesetting, layout and image editing:
Bernhard Keller, Cologne
Print and distribution: tredition, Hamburg
ISBN: 978-3-384-21037-1
Elisabeth Lukas
Love lives on in grief
LIVING LOGOTHERAPY
A publication series of the Elisabeth-Lukas-Archive
Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
Title Page
Grief is More than a Feeling
Grief is a Reflection of Wealth
Can Love Die?
Remembrance That Leads to Freedom
Resurrection from Grief
Tolerating Ignorance
Release from Fear
Reparation for Guilt
Pacification of Anger
Acceptance of Incapacity
Creation Does Not Lose Its Dead
A Living Relic – in a Poet's Words
Living in Readiness for Departure
Works Cited:
Living Logotherapy
Love lives on in grief
Cover
Copyright
Title Page
Grief is More than a Feeling
Works Cited:
Love lives on in grief
Cover
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Grief is more than a feeling
Grief is by no means simply a feeling, even a feeling of misery. Feelings can be produced by artificial means, for example with the help of drugs or psychoactive substances or by electrically stimulating certain parts of the brain. Feelings can be dampened or even suppressed by means of desensitisation, routine, or manipulation, or by the cutting of neural pathways. Feelings are inner states that come and go, sometimes in step with external events, sometimes not. Experiments on animals show that a chicken in a cage can be made to feel angry, hungry, sleepy or sexually aroused within fifteen minutes by administering the right stimuli. Humans could be made to respond in a similar way.
Grief is different. It lies deep in the heart, at the spiritual centre of the person, and cannot be either summoned or driven off. It is much more than a feeling, it is an awareness of something valuable having been lost. Nothing can erase this awareness. Even sedatives cannot prevent this awareness from being present in every waking moment. Likewise, nothing can undo the loss. Attempting to replace the person who has been lost with anything else only serves to emphasise their irreplaceability. Nothing can make the lost treasure less precious.
The pain of loss burns the value of what has been lost into the consciousness. The awareness of loss accompanies the bereaved person through life, like a whispering voice that may sometimes be louder, sometimes less loud, but which cannot be silenced, always speaking wistfully of what used to be so precious.
Yes, the griever is aware of much. But strangely this inescapable awareness of loss can be the key to coping with the resulting suffering. It opens a series of doorways to new dimensions of awareness. By passing through these doorways, the griever is changed, and so are his or her emotions. Grief is a journey towards a new, more clear-sighted mode of human existence. In this book we will follow this pain-induced journey step by step.
Grief is a reflection of wealth
The first gateway to be crossed, after the immediate awareness of loss, is the realisation that there has been something of great value present in one’s life. This immediate insight in the face of tragedy already contains a grain of consolation. One’s life has not been empty – one has not languished in solitude. One has lived in relationship with others, and the most interesting of these relationships have been ones of love. It is good to remind oneself of this and to reaffirm it.
Why is it good? Another important realisation: we humans have a problematic tendency to take wealth for granted – even inner wealth. As soon as someone precious enters into our life: a romantic partner, a friend, or a child, we get used to treating them as a possession to which we have an automatic right. Soon, we no longer even notice how much our existence is enriched and intensified by these people to whom we are bound. We only remember their value and significance when they have departed. Grief puts a red pencil through all these absurd ideas of entitlement. Everything is on loan, everything is a gift – life itself is a gift up to the moment of death – this is what is written in the place of all our deleted fantasies of possession. But grief also tells us: Look! You were one of the lucky recipients. These gifts were bestowed upon you for years. Now this is the price you have to pay. The more intimate your love, the happier you were, the more bitterly you will weep over the loss of the joy you were granted.
Once, at a scientific conference in Dallas, I took part in a sightseeing tour for foreign speakers. The bus tour took us past some of the most magnificent gardens and the most expensive houses in America. The tour guide told us how many millions of dollars had been invested in each of them. When he enthused about a particularly impressive mansion with gutters made of pure gold, I made the succinct remark:
"But this is all just on loan." The tour guide looked at me with annoyance: “Are you trying to scare me?”
It was not at all my intention to scare him. But I felt sorry for him that he was so shaken by this comment. Life will eventually run its red pencil through his fantasies as well…
Wealth does not consist of an overabundance of things that will have to be left behind. True wealth consists of a full life – a life of devotion to many wonderful treasures. The loss of these treasures will have to be grieved when they are taken away. Grief is a reflection of wealth.
Those who are truly poor are those who have nothing to grieve over. They have nothing to lose because there is nothing that quickens their heart. These are the poorest people of all.
Can love die?
