Mirror in the Mirror

Meditation Experiment #8: Grief + Wisdom

Dear reader,

Jack Engler, one of my longtime mentors and a pioneer of transpersonal psychology, once said:

“The entirety of the spiritual path is a path of grief.”

Jack wasn’t being morose. He explained it like this: In the early stages of the path, we grieve the harms we’ve received and the harms we’ve caused. But at the deeper end of the pool, we grieve something even subtler—the loss of the self we once thought was real.

The path is not just about healing the wounds of this life. It’s about surrendering the illusion that there was ever a separate "I" to begin with.

Each grief we encounter along the way has its own palette, its own weather. But for me, the deepest heartbreaks—the deaths, the betrayals, the dissolutions of identity—bring me to my knees not simply in pain, but in a strange and holy awe.

Susan Piver, in her beautiful book The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, captured it perfectly:

"Although it is tremendously disorienting on one hand, on another, you will never see as clearly as you do when your heart is broken."

Today’s meditation experiment is a slightly different take. It isn’t a guided meditation or a prompt from me; it’s a piece of music that I often listen to as meditation.

The song is called Spiegel im Spiegel, a composition by Arvo Pärt, whose title means “Mirror in the Mirror.” (I tried to get Midjourney to capture that idea—of a mirror in the mirror, in the image above)

Like all true art, it doesn’t dictate meaning; it invites your consciousness to complete it. Its simplicity hides its genius: slow, luminous piano scales paired with long, yearning cello notes, unfolding like a quiet breath through eternity.

Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pärt — about nine and a half minutes long.

When you listen:

• Sit or lie down comfortably.

• Feel the earth underneath you.

• Let your body rest.

• Breathe as you remember to.

• Let memory, grief, tenderness, and even flashes of joy pass through you without resistance.

As my sponsor once said:

"Let each breath be a love note to yourself."

Let the stillness of presence make space for all of it—the griefs named and unnamed. Let your sadness link you to its superpower, as Susan Piver describes it: the channel that connects us more intimately to the living world.

Earth grounds and steadies.

Metal clarifies and discerns.

From that simple rooting and refining, the open field of feeling becomes possible.

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On Sadness as a Superpower

Susan recently shared a story that stays with me.

When the journalist Gloria Steinem was asked if she was depressed after the death of her husband, Steinem replied:

"I’m not depressed. I’m sad. In depression, you care about nothing. In sadness, you care about everything."

That’s the difference: sadness, genuine sadness, cracks us open. We feel our own suffering and the suffering of others. It hurts—but it also connects. It awakens compassion.

In her essay Sadness Is Your Super Power, Susan writes:

"When you look out at this world, what you see will make you very, very sad. This is sensible. You are seeing clearly.

Genuine sadness gives rise, spontaneously, naturally, completely, to the longing to be of benefit to others."

But because sadness is uncomfortable, we often try to mutate it—into anger, despair, or numbness. Meditation, though, teaches us to stay. To stabilize the heart in an open state—not retreating from sadness, but letting it become the gate to compassion.

“Despair is what happens when you fight sadness.
Compassion is what happens when you don't.”

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Why It Matters

Spiegel im Spiegel has taught me more than words ever could. About love. About letting go. About how the Earth holds us even when everything else falls away. About how clarity (Metal) comes not from thinking harder—but from breathing softer. About how grief, when honored, becomes a path—not a prison.

The losses I've known—of a dharma brother, a beloved dog, a radiant niece, a spiritual father, and a once-sacred marriage—have left me raw but somehow more alive.

When I let grief have space, life kisses me even as it flies.

And this is the deeper dimension the Five Elements invite us into: They are not merely seasons of Qi or channels of energy. They are movements of Spirit. Movements of loss, of letting go, of reawakening love.

So, cue up Spiegel im Spiegel.

Sit down.
Breathe.
Feel the earth.
Listen.
Let your sadness be holy.

You are not alone.

With steady warmth,
Josh

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