It took me a while to come at yoga. What finally got me into a yoga studio was something my friend’s yoga teacher had said. It was in the depths of a cold, wet Melbourne winter and the yoga instructor counseled against attachment. She said it is desirable that we not yearn for summer, or see winter as a sort of second rate summer. This totally got my attention and I’ve been doing yoga with that teacher ever since. I loved her idea of not attaching to the ways things have been, and accepting, even enjoying, what is.

Life occurs in cycles and cycles, by definition, entail loss. We are able to feel a much more resilient peace, and more enduring happiness, when we can accept life’s waxing and waning, when we are sufficiently spiritually agile to shift from the flow to the ebb, knowing that we will be flowing again soon.

When we brush up against death we feel we will never flow again. Our left brain tells us things will never, can never, be the same again. And in one sense this is correct. The person who died will never walk this earth again. But all the things we love about the person, are eternal, unchangeable. They are always available and ever present. They just come in a different form.

The morning after my father died I was in church and they played the very hymn that he used to sing us to sleep when we were little. I started to cry hard as I thought of all the tenderness, love and fun I would no longer have with my father gone.

Then all of a sudden I heard a voice in my head. It called to me:

“Eileen, Eileen! Why are you crying? You are crying because you think all the beautiful things your father gave to you have gone. But they are still with you. They now just come in different ways.”

I immediately calmed down and listened. I thought about it and realized this was profound truth. My father’s deep and unconditional love, his humor, his complete acceptance and non-judgment, his peace and wisdom were all still available to me. They just flowed to me through different channels, mostly through my husband, my friends, and my children.

I stopped crying and I never cried again. I knew that if I became so busy looking back at what was, hankering for what had already past, I would not be able to see what was in front of me: all my future peace, happiness and fulfillment.

Everything we need we already have. It just may be, for the moment, behind a temporary veil of perception. We can only penetrate that veil with the understanding that love is eternal and so we are always cared for and have what we need, and with a deep and abiding acceptance of what is.

Eileen McBride
Eileen McBride is the author of Love Equals Power 2, a spiritual seeker and teacher. This article was published on June 26, 2014.