Finding your path after pet loss

After pet loss, when you are grieving the death of your beloved animal companion, you might feel an emptiness, helplessness and lack of meaning in your life. And you wonder how to move on – or even what to do with your life. Before, your pet was so much a part of your life. Now, you are faced with the choice of what to do next.

If you are confused about what path to take in life and you are wondering what tradition, technique or system you should follow, then you are not alone.

Following a tradition or finding your own way

Among people who have a desire to change or grow, there often seems to be discussions about whether to follow a tradition or not.

If you should follow a certain tradition or not is very individual and cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. In the beginning stages it is often a help to use techniques that have been proven to work. The basic cleansing process of beginning stages is hard work and needs to include your whole being, that is: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Otherwise, it is practically impossible to stay grounded.

If you find a tradition or technique that works for you, that’s fine. But stay open, because the work is never really done, and there is always something new to learn. We are all looking for answers to the big questions, sometimes so hard that any credible answer may be accepted or adopted. I have found that searching and asking questions often just open just opens up to a number of new questions. The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know. It is like having lived on a little island your whole life and believed that this was all there was and then suddenly find out how vast the world actually is. When you open your mind and your heart, you find an infinite universe of possibilities and experiences.

If you are working on yourself with dedication and diligence you might find at some point that your path is your own path, and that you don’t fit into one single tradition or set of techniques. In fact, everything and everybody around you is, in a sense, your teacher. Use your intuition and be discriminating in your search.

Only you can make the decision; nobody can do it for you. The decision cannot be made by using the intellect alone. More valuable is what you learn by using your intuition. Remember those times where you just felt something was right or wrong, but you did not have any explanation for it? Intuition and the power of discernment are cornerstones of any spiritual path.

You can get great help and support by bringing the love and devotion of your deceased pet into your spiritual practice. It will be so much easier if you aspire to be all that you can be so you can honor your pet and bring his or her lessons and love out into the world.

Reading inspirational literature can also be of help – but reading and knowing many things intellectually will not make you a realized person. True knowledge and wisdom comes from doing and from personal experience. It may be a long and winding road with many obstacles, but hang on. It’s worth it.

But where do you start?

You start the only place where you can start: right here, right now. By allowing yourself to be in the present moment.

So many of our problems and struggles come from resisting the now, and you can get far by simply practicing being in the now. And when you start doing that, you will most likely notice that a lot of the time in your daily life you are anywhere but in the now; instead you are wishing to be some place else, doing something else, or thinking about a “future” moment (or a past moment), and you may notice you are thinking the same old thoughts you have thought a thousand times before.

Try to remind yourself during the day to be in the present, to let go of resistance and open up to what is now. And notice what happens.