The passing of Queen Elizabeth II, grief and dealing with change.
12th September 2022
As the UK and the world come to terms with the death of the Queen, many questions are being posed, and discussions circling around a range of subjects related to royalty. Some of the questions concern the impact that Queen Elizabeth has had across the last 70 years, the situation regarding the new monarch and more widely, the role of the monarchy in the constitution and country moving forward.
Although important, I am not interested in these questions here. My focus is not with the events themselves, but how people are responding.
There is a palpable and prolific sense of grief throughout the country and beyond. As one of my colleagues observed rather beautifully last week – ‘whether a royalist or not, a nation - and beyond - mourns. No perfect being, she was a beacon for many. Take care of each other, play kindness forward, and start it whenever you can.’
Attending a recent Mindfulness Network, meditation session, I was struck by a form of words used by the individual leading the practice. This referred to a crowd of mourners standing in the rain outside Buckingham Palace and suggested that a source of the shared sadness, was the stark realization that ‘things had changed’. The length of the Queen’s reign and the seeming permanence of her tenure, of course adding to the magnitude of the loss. There are likely to be very few people alive who remember a world without Elizabeth and many commentaries have observed how much change has occurred throughout her reign and contrasted this with the constancy she provided over such a long period.
For sure, increasingly it seems, we are living in a world of change. And this is challenging. We do not like change. Especially when we think it is for the worse and often, we crave, or desire things to be different. This desire for things to be otherwise, when we do have not power to make it so, can cause great sadness and suffering. This of course, is the message from Buddhist philosophy that observes that tanha (craving) is a root cause of dukkha (suffering),
In addition, the negative effects of change can be confounded if we react or respond in an unhelpful fashion. The occidental, secular mindfulness process and practice we are familiar with ( greatly derived from the work done by John Kabat-Zinn et al. at the UMass Memorial Medical Center) highlights that if we seek to reject or avoid painful experiences, we are likely to aggravate the situation.
So how can mindfulness help when we are forced to face unwanted change and the effects of this? In simple terms, mindfulness helps us to deal with change.
Teaching and practicing mindfulness, one is continually reminded of the impermanent, changing nature of the world. The lesson is that change is inevitable and is, in actual fact, happening all the time. In the body scan practice, for example, we are encouraged to notice and be as comfortable as possible with, the ever-changing sensations and feelings in the body.
We are also invited to draw an analogous comparison between clouds moving across a blue sky, or images playing on a cinema screen; with the transitory nature of thoughts in our minds. We are encouraged to be aware of the fleeting nature of even the most persistent or ‘sticky’ thoughts, and that thoughts are not (always) facts.
As we learn to relate differently to facts and understand the transitory nature of existence, it is then suggested that we approach and ‘move towards’ difficulty, rather than seeking to deny or push it away. As the poet Rumi recommends, in The Guest House, we could meet difficulties ‘at the door laughing’. In meditation practice and in everyday life, we can use awareness of changing sensations in the body and associated feelings and thoughts, to notice what is present - not trying to change anything but seeking to be open to whatever comes up, from one moment to the next.
This represents good advice at any time but especially so at times of great challenge and change, such as in the present moment. Whilst not seeking to diminish the emotions being felt by so many currently, it is worth considering that (however counter-intuitive it may seem) an alternative approach to the deleterious effects of change can be of real benefit, not only at times of great difficulty, but also across all of our lives.