Overcoming Grief
Exploration of the journey from Darkness to Light guided by a powerful Egyptian myth
Once upon a time, the kind King Osiris ruled Egypt alongside his devoted, beloved Queen Isis. Osiris was big-hearted & righteous like King Rama of Ayodhya and quick to forgive like the ascetic Shiva from Mt. Kailasa. Isis was deeply in love with her husband from the time that they shared a womb together. Isis, Osiris & Seth were siblings born to the Sky Goddess Nut & the Earth God, Geb. And as such, they were divine, powerful beings.
Seth was the God of Divine Chaos. Mortal beings are scared of Chaos. They do not understand it. That’s where their folly lies. In attempting to understand it. Mortals prefer orderly, predictable functioning of the Universe so that they can construct pretty Mathematical formulae and devise beautiful theories of Physics to go about plundering the Earth and destroying each other. So when Seth acts fulfilling his duties as the agent of Chaos, they label him as '“jealous”, “vengeful”, “evil” and so on. They only see his actions from their lens & can only justify them when they label negative traits onto him. Labeling him thus makes them feel good about themselves, creating more space in their beings for their preferred sins of lust, greed and gluttony.
So then, some mortals say that Seth was '“jealous” of the deep, loving relationship between Osiris & Isis. Some others say that Osiris had fornicated with Seth’s sister-wife, Nephthys, so Seth felt “vengeful”.
Seth was resigned to a life of being misunderstood & never feeling fully seen for who He was. But Seth was a God & he did not share the mortal’s desire to be seen, understood & appreciated. He lived a life aligned with his Dharma of Chaos. So there wasn’t really a sense of resignation in him.
So then, Seth was jealous of Osiris & Isis. One day, when on a brotherly hunting trip together, Seth was overcome with jealousy & murdered Osiris, leaving him to bleed out in the deserts deep in the heart of Egypt, with no man or God to be found for miles in all directions.
Osiris did not come home to Isis that night. Nor the next.
Isis pined for his loving presence & sensed that something was amiss. Now remember, Isis was a Devi–a Goddess. Using her Shakti, she was able to locate Osiris, get to him & nurse him back to life & health with her tender love.
And then all was great again! Osiris & Isis frolicking in the depths of love. Osiris, as he was known to do, forgave Seth right away and continued ruling justly over Egypt. We were back to being always sunny in Egypt 🌈
But wait, what’s that! Hark! Jealousy be creepin’ into Seth again! Murderous intentions take root again!
Seth threw a big feast in honor of his brother and the prosperity that he had brought to Egypt. He invited all the noble, divine beings from all around the world including King Rama & Queen Sita from Ayodhya1. Isis suspected foul play & asked Osiris to not go. Osiris loved feasts & opportunities to play. Besides he had already forgiven Seth. All of that was in the past. He decided to go.
It was a lavish feast, with platters of ambrosia, accompanied by divine music. And then Seth unfurled his gift for Osiris to roars and claps from all the attendees. King Rama was a bit confused when he say the gift and whispered into Sita’s ear.
“Why is everyone so jubilant about a coffin? It does look really pretty but makes for an odd gift, no?”
Sita Ma whispered back.
“Here in Egypt, coffins are considered as the chariot that takes you on the most important journey of your life, from this life through Death onto the afterlife. So it’s the best gift anyone could receive.”
Osiris was besides himself with joy! Never had he laid his eyes on a coffin so beautiful. Exquisitely crafted with African Mahogany from Senegal, lined with delicate gold & encrusted with fat, glistening Burmese rubies. He couldn’t wait to die!
Seth saw his brother’s eagerness & winked at him.
“Go on then! Hop in & try it out!”
Osiris jumped right in & was admiring how spacious…
Seth deftly shut the coffin, hammered it close & set it adrift the Nile, before the aghast crowd. Rama asked Sita, “Is this an Egyptian custom too?”. Sita shrugged & they flew back to Ayodhya.
Osiris did not come home to Isis that night. Nor the next.
Isis sighed, summoned her Shakti, spotted the coffin floating on the Nile, brought it back to the palace & resurrected Osiris. Osiris breathed. The moment he took a step out of the regal chambers, Seth appeared out of nowhere, whisked him away to a nearby oasis. This time, Seth decided, will be the last time. Seth killed Osiris & dismembered him into 14 pieces. He scattered these all across the vast expanse of Egypt2.
Isis heard about what happened & she was distraught. She had barely stolen a brief kiss from her beloved, before he was snatched away. She was also ovulating & was looking forward to a passionate night of lovemaking to create a baby. But she was determined & resilient. She journeyed far & wide to collect all the pieces. Shortly, she was able to collect all. Except one.
Try as she may with all her Shakti, she could not locate his phallus. His cock. But Isis was unfazed. She assembled the rest of him on the banks of the Nile. She then fashioned a cock out of clay and caressed it onto her beloved’s assembled body.
With the cry of a Goddess in heat, she mounted him right these, channeling all the creative, sexual energy of her yoni into his being with every thrust of her ride; channeling all the love she nurtured in her heart for him, into his heart; and breathing her prana into his lungs, till he orgasmically shuddered alive, planting his seed into her womb. The seed that would soon turn into the great King Horus.
They got up & lovingly embraced each other, melting into the warmth of their heart-connected hug, dissolving time & space into nothingness.
Suddenly, Seth appeared again! He moved to plunge his dagger into Osiris’ heart. Osiris stopped him with a raised hand.
“Brother, stop. No more killing. I understand you want me be gone. My beloved wants to always be in my embrace. I love you both. I will address both of your desires”.
Thus saying, Osiris gently disintegrated into smaller & smaller pieces. Each piece merging into each atom of the Nothingness that holds the cosmos & is the stage for the divine play (leela) of life. Seeping into the underlying fabric of everything, becoming one with the One, so he was gone from the physical plane & forever embracing every part of his beloved, Isis for eternity.
From Darkness to Light
When we are sad, when we grieve, get angry, get frustrated, we experience the Dark. We typically don’t enjoy being there. We crave for & long for the Light–not unlike Isis’ pining for Osiris.
There’s a beautiful Sanskrut invocation3 which goes as follow. I've also attached a recitation of the invocation. It's really soothing to recite.
असतो मा सद्गमय | तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय | म्रुत्योर्मा अम्रुतंगमय | ॐ शांतिः शांतिः शांतिः ||
These four lines contain the blueprint for bringing accessing everlasting peace. Bliss. We will address the first two lines here.
असतो मा सद्गमय |
Lead me from what is not to what isAllow yourself to be led from the False to the Truth. Once you see the Truth, you’ll see the Darkness. Inside you. No longer will you expend energy getting triggered by what you see outside. Shaming & blaming others. You’ll recognize these as parts of you. Because ultimately you are the Whole. You can only get triggered by something outside when you have that in you but are afraid of looking at it. So every trigger is a gift to connect even more deeply with yourself. That doesn’t mean you go hunting for triggers, that might not be very kind to your state of being, but when triggers float into your environment, use it as an opportunity to go inwards to locate those neglected parts in you that have always been yearning for your attention and this trigger has provided them strength to cry out even louder hoping that you’ll finally listen to what they’ve wanted to say to you instead of wasting your energy blasting the external source of the trigger.
When faced with Darkness, we want to turn away & try to stay connected to the Light that seems to slip away from our grasp in those moments.
Last fall, I was canoeing in the lovely, pristine waters off the Amalfi coast in Italy. The sun was slowly setting behind a hillock jutting out into the bay.
I felt the usual longing I’ve experienced the past year as I’ve observed what moves in me as the sun sets. A longing to not lose connection with the Sun. A fear of the coming Darkness of the Night. Instinctively, I paddled backwards facing the Sun, as it drifted downwards behind the hillock, so I could continue seeing more of it. Till I realized that if I truly wanted to stay connected to the Light, I should be furiously paddling towards the hillock, around it, through it and other obstacles that stood in the path engulfing me in the Darkness of their Shadows.
तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय |
Lead me from Darkness to LightSo the path to full, blazing radiant Light is through the Dark. Inside the Dark. All dualities are false. The Light is the Dark. The Dark is the Light. Within every atom of the Dark, is embedded the Light ever since Osiris seeped in.
Numbing agents like alcohol, tobacco, weed, sex, food, binging Netflix may give you a momentary respite from the arduousness that the Dark can sometimes bring with it. But note that the arduousness is not a trait of the Dark itself. It’s a trait of your resistance of being in the Dark.
Sit with your grief, your heartbreak, your sorrow–just be with it–without expecting anything from it. Not pining for its change. Not being upset about its presence. Fully accepting it for what it is. Holding it tenderly close to your heart like it was your baby. Because often times it is your baby. It’s your wounds from a pre-verbal age that are crying out loud like a baby would for its mother or father for attentive love. You hold it and nurse it with love, the way Isis nursed Osiris with love. Then as you look around to your present environment, suddenly everything seems radiantly bright. The trees, the flowers, the breeze, the empty plastic water bottle, the peeling off paint in your hostel room. There’s a magical beauty to it all. Just like Isis, you realize that you are forever in the embrace of the Light. Because that’s where the Light is hidden. In every little speck of the Dark.
My Personal Journey
In Nov 2022, I did a powerful exploration of the spirit of Ancient Egypt guided by Jasmeen Hana. We sailed along the river Nile from Aswan to Luxor exploring ancient temples, hearing the mythology and feeling the spirits of ancient Egyptian Gods channeled ably by Jasmeen. I received this powerful myth of Osiris and Isis through her. I had heard it once before from her at the ISTA training in Granada, Spain. Once you hear it from her, you’ll be begging her to tell it again every time you cross paths. That’s exactly what happened on the Egypt journey. When Jasmeen narrates the myth, one can feel the presence of the Goddess Isis speaking through her. I’ve attempted here to channel that to the best of my ability. Plus a few embellishments4. Myths are living entities. They desire to come alive in the bodies of the listeners and then transmit further. This is a particularly powerful therapeutic myth and I feel lucky to have hosted it in my being and to transmit it to you now.
Through 2022, I processed intense grief. The best analogy I’ve come to describe what it’s like to recover repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse follows. Imagine you suddenly discover your son, who you’ve known all along but he suddenly tells you that the people you trusted the most raped him. And he is crying and bawling all the time. And you begin to question everything about your childhood. There’s an image, a story, a myth of your childhood that you had been carrying till then. That myth gets suddenly replaced by a much darker myth. It’s like losing your son to Death and then also finding another son who lives perpetually in the horrified state of being currently raped, another who lives in the shocked state of being abandoned without being cuddled after the rape, another who is perpetually angry at having being unable to protect both of his brothers and so on. So understandably, after processing all the accompanying Rage, there’s mountains of Grief. It’s been quite a journey sitting with it. Everything I’ve shared about being with Grief till you see the Light comes from this experience.
म्रुत्योर्मा अम्रुतंगमय | Lead me from Death to Immortality ॐ शांतिः शांतिः शांतिः || Peace, peace, peace.
I remember vividly one time where I was extremely distraught. Everything inside me was pitch black. I just paused and breathed and comfortably sat in the Dark as I had practiced. Suddenly it felt like every little particle of Dark was about to flip around into Light with every other particle of Dark that was my entire Universe at that point. If I had allowed it, I’d have been blazed with the Light–it almost felt scary. It felt scary because, the Dark I had gotten so comfortable with would have been swiftly killed by the Light, had I allowed it at that point. My fear of Death made me pause. I wrote a poem that night.
Forever for now in juicy pursuit Of all the forbidden knowledge that the Universe holds. Often blissfully unaware of why this Knowledge Desires to stay hidden in the first place. Careful where you tread on the journey to connect with your soul, Lest it take you to places that are so Dark that no Light escapes them. Until it does from every pore of the Dark, And blazes you with scary Ecstasy. The delicious ecstasy of biting into the juicy flesh of a ripe apple. I thought I was afraid of the Dark till I saw how scary the Light can be. I wonder then Is there really a difference between paralyzing Fear and wild Ecstasy?
He did not invite the ascetic Shiva. The ascetic was known to ignore the requests of the host & usually showed up drunk before the party, arrived covered in ash with terrible dreadlocks, with a snake around his neck and surrounded by a ragtag bunch of disfigured ghouls, ghosts & criminals (ganas) even though he was only invited with a +1. Thankfully, for Seth, Shiva’s wife Sati did not hear about this. She did not take kindly to her husband not being invited to major parties.
This is where the myth holds parallels to the myth of Shiva & Sati, his first wife. Her father, Daksha, conducted a major fire ceremony–a yagna. He did not invite Shiva, for similar reasons as Seth. Sati heard about the yagna and was confused as to why her father would not invite her husband. Believing that it must be a mistake–Shiva tried to convince her otherwise, sensing the real story, but she was adamant–she showed up there only to realize that it was intentional. Filled with anger against her father, she could no longer stand to live in a body that she had gotten from him. So she raised her Kundalini and discarded her physical body and left the physical plane. Shiva arrived at the yagna, saw Sati’s dead body and was distraught. Shiva had lived a fully ascetic life before meeting Sati, after penance on her part for eons. So his love for her was boundless. He was filled with grief and rage. The rage left his body and took the terrible forms of Bhairavi and Bhairav–who along with Shiva’s ganas wreaked havoc on the yagna. Meanwhile grief-struck Shiva carried Sati’s dead body with him and wandered around, beginning to dance his grief away. Thus began Shiva’s great dance which was destined to bring destruction wherever he went. Seeing that, Vishnu, chopped up Sati’s body into 108 different pieces and scattered them all over the great continent of Jambudvipa (India), so Shiva could resume his duties as a God. The 108 places where pieces of Sati’s body landed became pilgrimage spots for devotees of the Goddess–each called a Shaktipeetha. The Egyptian story is similar but the masculine & feminine roles are flipped.
A chant that seeds an intent inside you as contrasted with a prayer that is sent outwards towards a deity.
Some very experimental like the honorary guests Rama & Sita–which I feel quite shy about somehow. It felt appropriate to me to introduce them to explain some of the nuances of Egyptian culture to an Indian audience. The exact number of times that Seth attempted to murder Osiris varies and the nature of the attempts also varies. I tried to look up authoritative sources, but they were so dry that I could barely get through the first two lines. The nature of the world we live in is such that most authoritative sources are unfortunately balding, old white men who live disconnected from their bodies.
Fuck such authority.
If you do come across a source where the myth feels alive and could improve the story I’ve presented here, please do drop a comment here.