“The moment you accept what troubles you have been given; the door will open. Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade. Joke with torment brought by a friend. Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets that serve to cover, then are taken off. That undressing and the beautiful naked body underneath is the sweetness that comes after grief. The hurt you embrace becomes joy.” – J.Rumi

Wow. The embracing of the hurt with open arms and total surrender allows for the acceptance. Joy will follow with a new beginning. Surrender to pain and sorrow in private. That’s where the power of calm, peace and strength morph from the tears and cries you shed to light and acceptance. For Christian believers this is so brilliantly made when Jesus goes alone to the garden of gethsemane with two of his disciples and told them to sit here while he went to pray alone. Then He *said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.

Buddhist believers’ point that makes sense that we should allow ourselves to go through the full grief process and arrive at acceptance. Acceptance doesn’t mean we don’t still hurt, and it doesn’t mean we’ve decided our loss is no big deal. Acceptance is about facing reality.

Other religious and spiritual practices use different analogies, yet all echo the same need for solace alone to feel every dark, sad emotion, lament every deep hurt, cry, torture of the soul. then lay in the exhaustion that encompasses your physical being and enlightens your internal life force and allows you to feel the sweet joy that overpowers the hurt you embraced and can now accept.

We cannot ever go back to the person we were before the Door opened. But why would we? We wear our scars of the pain/sorrow deep within us allowing us a choice to extend grace, love, & acceptance to others. We now are ready for the Joy so complete and strong that tears of Joy instead of tears of sorrow overwhelm our presence. Our light can shine with true love and acceptance for ourselves which flows effortlessly from presence to others.

In times of pain & sorrow words often fail to capture our painful experience. Music transcends this limitation.

Beautiful lyric from Dido’s song; See the Sun

“And you probably don’t want to hear tomorrow’s another day. Well I promise you you’ll see the sun again. And you’re asking me why pain’s the only way to happiness. And I promise you you’ll see the sun again.”