Mirabai Starr – Caravan of No Despair

During your 12-module adventure with her, you will:

When your world has been broken, learn how to establish a holy place and plunge naked into the bright fire that is accessible to you.
Separate comfort from transformation.
Approach each of the five phases of grieving as a spiritual initiation, giving yourself enough time in each stage and returning as needed.
Rewrite the events of the day and write the ending you choose.
Reframe “denial” as a state of grace, and use your wrath as a spiritual weapon.
Cultivate compassion for yourself even as you repeat the events of the day over and again.
Stop attempting to mend your shattered heart and instead allow yourself to dwell and rest in the mystery.
Accept “what is” while without downplaying your loss.
Increase your capacity to treat your sadness, anguish, and yearning as partners on the path to blissful surrender.
Investigate the teachings of many spiritual traditions that affirm the annihilating power of love.
Determine the excellent qualities that loss pulls out of you (such as dignity, fearlessness, even humor).

Mirabai will lead you on a profound, delicate, and spiritual journey to help you through the stages of grieving more gracefully.

What You Will Learn in These 12 Modules

Each contemplation and teaching session will flow smoothly into the next, giving you a comprehensive, holistic grasp of the practices, skills, and principles you’ll need to navigate the phases of grieving in a way that allows for true spiritual growth.

Module 1: Taking a Seat in the Fire

(October 21st recording)

Grief is a natural reaction to the destruction of your life’s basis. The loss of a loved one is one of the most potent catalysts for significant interior transformation. However, loss can come in many forms, and each can serve as a catalyst for awakening: the end of a relationship and the circle of friends and family you shared, the loss of a job or career and the community that comes with it, financial security, a serious health diagnosis that reorders your self-image, infertility, innocence. Our civilization has conditioned us to avoid unpleasant experiences, but the wisdom traditions of the globe give us a deeper route, one that urges us to sit in the fire and allow it to shape us.

You will learn the following throughout this session:

Learn physical strategies for dealing with intense emotions that develop when we process our losses.
Separate comfort from transformation.
Investigate the teachings of many spiritual traditions that affirm the annihilating power of love.
Discover the concept of “disenfranchised grieving” and how to give yourself (and others) permission to grieve your hidden losses.
Begin constructing an altar for your deceased loved one(s).
Module 2: Desire for the Beloved (Recorded October 28)

St. John of the Cross, a 16th-century spiritual genius, invented the phrase “dark night of the soul” and produced a doctrine that teaches us how to surrender to extreme ignorance and allow ourselves to be stripped of all that stands between our souls and the Divine. Deep sadness, according to these and other mystics, is a huge spiritual benefit rather than a problem that must be solved. You will learn the following throughout this session:

Investigate the numinous quality that pervades your losses and use it as a conduit to your relationship with the Divine.
As a spiritual discipline, read mystic poetry with meditative intent.
Learn the love language from the Jewish Song of Songs and the Gita Govinda (Hinduism).
Surrender your desire to fix your brokenness.
Module 3: The Loss Landscape (Recorded November 4)

The pioneer of the conscious dying movement, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, realized that everyone grieves differently and that science crumbles in the face of the secrets of the heart. There is no road plan for the terrain of loss, no set schedule, no cosmic checklist where each thing checked off brings you closer to success. You will not be able to grieve your loved ones. You can’t go wrong. However, there are certain similar characteristics, and understanding the signposts might help you traverse the wilderness. You will learn the following throughout this session:

Learn about the five traditional phases of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Transform these levels into spiritual stations.
Make a chronology of your losses and search for patterns.
Learn about St. Francis of Assisi’s journey through grief and transformation.
Denial as Grace, Module 4 (Recorded November 11)

Denial is not necessarily bad. In reality, it is what keeps us from disintegrating when catastrophe hits. It is a biological process that flows through our brains and surrounds us in a protective cocoon. It can also be viewed as the grace that falls when something awful occurs, the angels that rush in to catch us as we fall into the abyss. Loss has the power to lift the veil that separates us from the holy, allowing us brief but transformative access to Reality. This session will teach you how to:

Accept the changed state of consciousness that comes with deep loss, viewing it as a chance to disconnect from the ordinary world and abide in a broader field of awareness.
Affirm the community’s ability to respond to a loss and construct a network of support for the grieving.
Determine the excellent qualities that loss pulls out of you (such as dignity, fearlessness, even humor).
Discover what recent science has to say about the consequences of trauma on the brain.
Isolation as Wisdom (Module 5) (Recorded November 18)

When we lose someone or something we care about, we prefer to retreat from the world in order to preserve our broken hearts. We require time and space to reflect on what has occurred. We may also realize that something holy is happening beyond the surface of our shock and anguish, and we are hesitant to be sidetracked by other people’s reactions to our loss. While the need for solitude can lead to negative isolation, it can also be an expression of self-care and a manner of respecting the sacredness of the experience. You will learn the following throughout this session:

Make a plan to spend a day alone and in quiet.
If you tend to isolate yourself too much, create a plan to sit down with a trusted friend and tell them the entire narrative of your loss.
Examine both the obvious and more subtle ways in which you check out of your experience when the emotions are powerful.
Learn about Kuan Yin and Tara and seek sanctuary from them.
Module 6: Protest as Anger (Recorded December 2)

Anger is a normal reaction when something we care about is taken away from us. Our entire existence screams in defiance. We may lash out and do injury in our desperation for a place to put the fire. When we approach this powerful emotion with loving awareness, we may claim the spiritual warrior’s ability to break through illusion and reveal the truth. Grief may be the first time we learn how to create appropriate limits! You will learn the following throughout this session:

Make a list of everyone you’re upset with because of your loss (es).
Complain to God in writing (or the Divine, the Universe, whatever Higher Power you relate to).
Investigate the Spiritual Warrior archetype throughout the religion spectrum.
Module 7: Problem-Solving Through Bargaining (Recorded December 9)

Bargaining can be one of the most difficult components of the grieving process. This is the stage where your monkey mind takes over and you continually replay the video of what happened in the hopeless hope of changing the outcome. But we can’t reason our way out of the dilemma of loss. No amount of righteous outrage, self-recrimination, or wistful “if only’s” will change the fact that reality is what it is. The constant mental monologue might make us feel nuts, but if we are patient with ourselves and remember not to trust everything we think, this process will take its natural course. You will learn the following throughout this session:

Rewrite the events of the day and come up with your preferred ending.
Practice self-soothing sentences that you may say to yourself while you’re kicking yourself in the shins.
Learn about well-known saints and mystics who, like you, lost their core.
Understand that simply understanding that this is a normal stage of mourning will not make it go away.
Learn to be kind with yourself.
Module 8: Surrender as Depression (Recorded December 16)

When all of our attempts to reach an agreement with the cosmos fail, we eventually fall, weary, and surrender to what is. And “what is” may be quite difficult to tolerate. But there is nowhere else to turn at this point, so we finally succumb to our emotions. We can be sad without the tale distorting our reality. We move our focus from the mind to the heart and relax there. You will learn the following throughout this session:

Learn what the term “Dark Night of the Soul” meant to the 16th-century mystic St. John of the Cross.
Identify occasions when you believe you have had a “Night of Sense.”
Let go of the need to know and comprehend. Accept the mystery.
Practice Pema Chödrön’s groundlessness meditation.
Stripped, Shattered, and Blessed (Recorded January 6)
“The anguish you scream out from brings you into unity,” Rumi says. Not only that, but “Your genuine anguish that seeks assistance,” he continues, “is the hidden cup.” Do we have the courage to believe this? Many mystical traditions believe that when we call out to the Holy One, we receive an instantaneous — almost quantum — answer. The Beloved yearns for us as much as we yearn for the Beloved. The human/Divine connection is one of mutuality. The fire of separation burns away the barriers that stand between our souls and our source, allowing us to recapture the power of desire.

You will learn the following throughout this session:

Read essential verses on the blessing of the Dark Night from John of the Cross.
Identify occasions when you believe you have had a “Night of Spirit.”
Investigate the relationship between human loss and aspiration for the Divine.
Learn about various mystical traditions that acknowledge the importance of overcoming intellectual constraints.
Acceptance as Integration Module 10 (Recorded January 13)

Acceptance is not the light at the end of the tunnel that heralds the conclusion of your mourning journey. It’s not about downplaying the significance of your experience. It’s alright if you’ll never be okay with what occurred! It is a question of confronting your loss head on. It entails taking yourself into your arms and forgiving yourself for being unable to change the way things are. We may lose a limb and it may never grow back, but we learn to establish a new center of gravity. You will learn the following throughout this session:

Determine how you have absorbed what happened throughout the entirety of your life.
Set your purpose to restore your wholeness by noticing where you still feel divided and broken apart.
Learn about saints and mystics who have suffered great loss.
Module 11: Moving
(January 20, 2019)

We are free to create a new, metaphysical relationship after we have accepted that who and what we loved in physical form is truly gone. This does not happen all at once, and it is not influenced by our perceptions of it. Our bond develops organically, often softly, and our responsibility is to become still enough to perceive the fruits of this love as they mature and fall into our hands. You will learn the following throughout this session:

Take part in a guided meditation to connect with your loved one(s) beyond bodily form.
Write a love letter to a loved one from a position of restored connectedness.
Use the power of your loss to propel you forward in life.
Discover Julian of Norwich’s perspective of Christ-the-Mother.