Many years ago, when I was on my first personal retreat with Ram Dass, I shared with him about an accident I had seen in Puerto Vallarta in which a little girl was killed playing on a jet ski with her mom and cousin.

The incident was traumatic for me, and deeply affected me mentally, spiritually, and even physically. It was before the period of time that I can’t seem to shake right now, where death seems to be my constant companion.

I remember being so disoriented, so unsafe feeling, so preoccupied with the feeling of what that mother must be experiencing. I was having a difficult time moving out of that state and I brought my worry to Ram Dass, thinking he would have some kind and wise words to help me.

He listened to my story, then sat silently and shook his head slowly from side to side. “Well,” he said, already in the slow deliberateness that marked his speech following his stroke, “That’s just in the flow, Molly. It’s all in the flow.”

And then silence again, holding my gaze, as sunlight streamed through the full-length windows of my little cabin on his Maui property.

I remember thinking, “And…?” hoping he would say something else, that he was not just going to leave me with this simplistic thought, this reduction of something so unbearably tragic to some kind of a spiritual truism.

As we sat there in silence, Ram Dass was in his zone, just taking me in, but I began to fume inside. I wanted to get up and leave, maybe tell him off on the way out. What a load of “love and light” crap. As if saying “it’s in the flow” would suddenly make everything alright, when it so clearly was not.

I could hardly look at him while feeling so unsatisfied, offended, and most of all disappointed. He was just like the rest of them. Love and light…everything is fine…look for the good, we are spiritual beings…blah blah blah. I had hoped and believed Ram Dass was more than that. But in that moment, as I sat in his space and shared something so painful, to hear such an easy response made me think that he was not. He was just another white dude given some spiritual authority by wannabe yogi types.

We sat together in silence. The sun streamed in, he held my gaze, and I shifted uncomfortably, thinking of how I could leave the retreat.

We made it through that session, and I continued my retreat and my daily meetings with him. As the days went on, and I got to observe him more, and understand his teachings more, especially post-stroke, I began to soften. And in that softening, I began to understand and see the totality of what Ram Dass was teaching me. And I began to know that he was not wrong, but that his words and teachings had been misunderstood and misused by people far less evolved and less discerning and deep than he.

Because here’s the thing: it is all in the flow.

This life is like a massive rushing river, and everything is contained within it. All manner of joy, all manner of heartbreak, all manner of life and death, every single living thing and every single possibility all just part of this ever-flowing river of life.

We are a part of that too, and yet we don’t always see it that way. We stand on the shores and watch that river as if we are not rushing along in it too, as if every bad thing we see or experience is somehow wrong, something outside of reality, of how things “should be.” We cannot bring ourselves to believe that this too—whatever the tragedy or trauma of the moment might be—is simply part of a flow. Nothing special, nothing “wrong,” nothing to wonder why, why, why about—it just is.

What I learned about Ram Dass and life and the flow (and the part we get wrong when we try to think about life in this way) is that there is a parallel stream, a parallel flow, in which grief, trauma, reaction, reordering, are also a part. We were made to experience these things, we were built to mourn and to survive after unthinkable loss. This is also part of our capacity in being human. But we need time. Grief moves in its own time. Trauma becomes integrated and resolved in its own time, in its own flow.

And this was always a part of the truth.

We get it wrong when we forget this part. When we insist, to ourselves or others, that because we know, for example, that death is part of life, that we should expect it, accept it, and not get too caught up in grief and the yearning and suffering that accompanies the loss of someone we love.

Such a strange and unhelpful notion. Because there has always existed this parallel stream, the stream of grief, of suffering, of longing, of eventual integration of that loss. One does not negate the other. The fact that I know that I will die and so will everyone around me does not make it easier. And to deny that is also to deny part of what it is to be alive, to be human.

When I shared that first story with Ram Dass all those years ago, my grief and trauma were actually on behalf of someone else, someone I didn’t even know. I was offended on her behalf, and wanted Ram Dass to be more compassionate. To offer her, and me, something to go on. And the teaching about the flow just didn’t cut it at first.

But it’s been a long time since that teaching. And my life has been marked by loss upon loss upon loss, to the point where I’m sometimes proud of myself just for getting up in the morning and believing I could have a great day. I have lived in this flow of grief and confusion for almost 10 years now, and I know it is just the way it is. That this is what life is. That it really is all in the flow. And that thought has made it possible to forge forward.

But only because it is accompanied by the knowing of the parallel stream. I know that grieving is natural, that feelings of emptiness and despair are natural, that anger and rage and depression and anxiety are all natural responses to catastrophic loss—they are part of their own natural and flowing stream. And when I know for myself, and for the friends and clients I support, that this stream also has its own natural rhythm and trajectory, only then am I able to relax into it and know that someday, some way, I will be okay. I will survive this.

Yes, it was in the flow, but so is my grief. To suggest one stream without the other is to perpetuate harm and isolation to the already bereaved, and it is to deny the totality of this teaching.

The river of life flows. The river of inner human experience flows alongside it. They are both real and they will both find their way in their own time. And so will you…so will I. And so will the mother of that little girl. And we can love and lift each other up when we feel like we are swirling, like we are being pulled under by that powerful current of grief. Not by saying we have to accept it, or that it was always going to happen, or that death is just a natural part of life, but by acknowledging and holding grief as its own process, its own flow, as natural as any other experience.

We are all in this together.

~