The other day my friend's dog died. She came to me distraught with grief. I sat with her, letting the conversation drift as she would have it do so, sometimes talking about the dog, sometimes about other things. I knew that, painful as it was for her, it was a process for her to go through, and hopefully she would get to the other side of it eventually.

We hear a lot about transformation and about things "transformative" these days. Just what is transformation? In the way we at TCM and SPT look at it, it is a PROCESS that causes change in a part of ourselves. To get a haircut or hair restyling is a transformation for that part of self. To engage in physical labor or an exercise regime that over time builds up muscles is a transformation of that part. So is the long term effort of a professional such as a jeweler to become expert and exacting in things of very small size and great precision. Any and all things practiced over a period of time as a process, to cope with a situation, or to achieve goals, that strengthens and grows certain archetypal parts of the self over others, is transformative.

Transformation can be a process of death and rebirth. Indeed, in the Jungian view, ALL transformative processes are of death and rebirth of some part of the self.

Ultimately, physical death; and rebirth, whether by resurrection, by reincarnation, or whatever, is a kind of transformation. As such it is celebrated, symbolized, preached in some way by all major religions. It was symbolized by tribal societies in puberty rites, which saw death and rebirth as a process, and in ritual believed than in them the boy died, and was reborn as a man; the girl died, and was reborn a woman. In such rites they declared their belief in the process of death and rebirth; wherever and however in nature it took place. The rites served a deep and universal human need.

Modern day states and mores have propagandized about the backwardness, if not the evils, of such tribal societies and rites. The need however is served at one level by literature. Beginning with the Bible, the story of Abraham and Issac is, in a way, that of male initiation; for in it the boy Issac dies and is reborn as the man Issac, dedicated to serve God. THE WIZARD OF OZ is actually the story of female initiation in allegory. Death as a transformative process abounds in literature; in Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH the poignant scene where Tom Joad's mother says goodbye to her son is a situation where both son and mother know that Tom's physical death is all but inevitable, and necessary to the survival of the rest of the family; but Tom talks of how "I will be there" as his family's community works, plays, and struggles for their lives and their rights.

In Hegelian philosophy all reality is process, or change; and combined with Jungian philosophy all change that is transformative, changes or reforms an archetypal part of self, is death and rebirth at some level.

Living with the loss of a loved one

Many experts have described the grief process in its various stages, but what is significant here is that it is a process. All we know of another person, or a pet, is our PERCEPTION of him or her, which is a part of ourselves. And so the grief we feel at and after that loved one's death is really the death of that part of ourselves. This is not to belittle our loved ones; that part which is perception is not merely a part in the sense of being limited to part of our ego, but rather of our Greater Self, shared with our loved one and with everyone else. Even as Tom Joad began explaining to his mother that what was significant was not merely his soul or anyone else's soul, but rather a "big soul" of all; so it is that your perception of the loved one is one with all other perceptions of the loved one and the perception by the loved one of himself. But the process will include, and is completed by, rebirth. We won't know in advance what that rebirth will look like, but we can be assured that it will come: rebirth of that part of ourselves, even as he or she who has died will be born again in some way.

Copyright (c) 2009 Dave Smart