The Lebanese poet, Kahil Gibran, understood well the inevitable suffering that comes our way, perhaps many times in this life. He beautifully describes what many have realised after the worst of their grief has subsided: that there is a point to it all, something to be gained from the ashes of our great loss. He wrote:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell
Which encloses your understanding

That is, if all goes well, we will have a deeper understanding of who we are and our life’s purpose once the hard shell of our existing beliefs and assumptions has been cracked open. Certainly we’ll have more compassion for others whose destiny brings a great loss to their door.

We have only to look at the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, His Holiness the Dalai Lama the exiled spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, to see this process in action. From his sanctuary in India he has witnessed the occupation of Tibet and the subjugation of its people and culture. With each passing year he demonstrates to the world ever-higher levels of wisdom, kindness and compassion. He never speaks badly about his homeland’s oppressors except to say that their behaviour is clearly wrong. His own personal suffering has, it seems, brought him into contact with deeper levels of innate understanding, establishing him as one of the greats of human history along with Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Abraham Lincoln.

But how are we to detach sufficiently from inconsolable grief – the breaking of our ego, the shell – to focus on this inner revolution? Most of us get so caught up in the waves of sorrow and suffering precipitated by great loss that we can barely find the strength to go on living, let alone give attention to the gaining of wisdom. It’s as if we are getting burned by drawing too close to this flame whose light is meant to guide us through the changes that are coming.

We can develop some ‘distance’ or detachment from our feelings of grief and loss using a simple form of self-enquiry. The method was first made known to the West by Paul Brunton in his book ‘A Search in Secret India’ after he spent time meditating with the sage Ramana Maharshi at Aranachala.

The reasoning behind the enquiry unfolds in the form of a series of questions that we ask ourselves, followed by the irrefutable answers. It goes like this:

Am I this body?
How can I be this body?
When I say, “This is my handkerchief”, it is a statement of ownership. I cannot be that which I own. I am separate from the handkerchief. Similarly, when I say, “This is my body”, it is obvious that I own the body and am separate from it. I am not this body.

Am I these thoughts?
These are ‘my’ thoughts. I own them, therefore I am separate from them. Furthermore, I am observing these thoughts which come and go. I do not come and go. I remain, unchanging, observing these changing thoughts.
I am not these thoughts.

Am I these feelings?
These are ‘my’ feelings of pain, grief, sadness and loss. I own them. I cannot be that which I own. Furthermore, I am the one observing these feelings, their rising and falling, coming and going. I do not rise and fall, come and go. I remain, unchanged, observing the changes. I am not these feelings.

If we agree with the above reasoning we can now observe our grief with an increasing level of detachment. The strength of feeling remains the same; it’s just that we are now standing back from it, like moving away from the source of a sound.

To develop such detachment we can ask ourselves, “Am I this grief? Who is observing this suffering? I am the one doing the observing. So I am not this grief.”

The beneficial effect of this form of self-enquiry can be enhanced by using yet another type of reasoning. It’s called, ‘I am the screen, not the movie.’

When we go to a movie theatre we see in front of us the blank screen. It remains there, day and night, unchanging. Then the movie starts, with forms of light projected onto the screen. If the movie depicts a flood, the screen does not get wet. When a raging bushfire is shown, the screen is not burned.

In the same way we, our true unchanging Self, are like the screen. Life is like the movie, with all of its thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, activities. The movie cannot exist without the screen, yet the screen is not affected at all by the movie. That is, the movie of life is not affecting the screen of ‘I’, the Self, that which is unchanging. So we can say with full conviction, ‘Grief and anxiety can never affect me’. We are still aware of our emotions but remind ourselves that we are the screen, not the movie.

By not identifying ourselves with our grief, its impact on our lives is reduced. We can say, ‘I live in a body which is grieving but the grief does not affect me.’