We Woke Up Like This
We Woke Up Like This is the podcast where sacred meets science and awakening gets real. Each week, Joya, and sometimes guests, explore resurrection consciousness, quantum spirituality, our superpowers as multidimensional beings, and how life's greatest breakdowns become your most powerful breakthroughs. This is embodied awakening for souls ready to stop seeking and start BEING the light they came here to share.
You can find Joya everywhere social @vibologie and at vibologie.com
We Woke Up Like This
Mystical Grief: When Loss Becomes Your Teacher
Grief arrives like a wrecking ball, shattering not just our hearts but our entire constructed reality. Everything we believed about safety, control, and our future suddenly makes no sense. This is what I've come to call "Mystical Grief"—when the most devastating loss becomes the doorway to profound spiritual awakening.
Society has conditioned us to view grief as a problem to overcome so we can "get back to normal." But those of us who have faced profound loss know a deeper truth: there is no going back. Life is permanently divided into before and after. The self I thought I was, the life I thought I had, the future I imagined—all shattered when my son Weston left this physical plane. Yet in this devastating space, I discovered that grief and grace can coexist. Pain and peace. Sorrow and beauty.
What makes grief "mystical" is how it thins the veil between worlds. When we're broken open, mystical experiences often begin happening—feeling our loved one's presence, receiving meaningful signs, experiencing dreams more real than waking life. These aren't delusions; they're what happens when grief shatters the walls between seen and unseen realms. In my experience, Weston has provided more guidance since crossing over than I received from years working with coaches and spiritual teachers. He's teaching me to stay present, trust myself, and stop seeking outside for what I already am.
The formula I discovered early in my journey was this: Pain × Resistance + Wishing things were different = Suffering. When we accept what is, even while it hurts, we can begin exploring the new reality and discover that love transcends physical form. We are never truly separate from what we've lost—at the soul level, we are one. Your heartbreak creates a space that divine love rushes to fill, if you allow it.
If you're walking this sacred path of mystical grief, know that your pain can become a bridge not just for your own transformation but for everyone around you. Download the Soul Luminous Activation Meditation at vibologie.com to begin experiencing yourself as the multi-dimensional being you truly are, beyond this physical form.
You are listening to we Woke Up Like this and I am your host, rev Joya. This is a show dedicated to embodied spiritual awakening and we love to talk about the messy magic of living a soul-led life. A true spiritual awakening is not all unicorns and rainbows and on this show we are not afraid to talk about it. Your awakened frequency is the frequency that will change the world. Enjoy the show. Hello, beautiful souls, welcome to another episode of we Woke Up Like this. This week.
Speaker 1:I want to dive into what I am now calling mystical grief and yes, I'm trademarking that. And it's mystical grief when loss becomes your greatest teacher, because this is an important conversation to have, because so many people are in grief and we live in a society that pathologizes grief like it's some kind of problem to get over and you just need to get back to your regular life, as if life before, whatever it is that you're going through, will ever be the same again. And I know for me, my life will never be the same again. There will always be a demarcation line forever in my life a before and an after. So I want to share this episode with you because if you're also in the midst of this kind of loss, or even if you've experienced another kind of loss that's triggered profound grief in you. There's something happening to us that no one talks about, and especially now, with the energy and there's so much awakening happening on this planet, and so going through grief then becomes a powerful initiator. It's a massive initiation, and I want to talk about first what grief or mystical grief rather is not. It is not spiritual bypassing, it is not toxic positivity.
Speaker 1:Grief does not automatically mean that you're going to awaken or step into mystical experiences. It doesn't mean that everything happens for a reason. And it's not spiritual bypassing, where we pretend like pain doesn't exist. Because if there's one thing I know, it's being very spiritual and being on a spiritual path and being a lifelong mystic does not preclude you from experiencing the pain of being human While we're in these bodies. We are human beings or we are being human beings, and I know and I really believe that those of us who are way showers, who are carving this path through the wild wilderness and the wild terrain of awakening, are doing it not just for ourselves but for the collective conscious, and that as we awaken and we go through these kinds of intense initiations that rip you wide open and instead of crumbling, instead of distracting or numbing or destroying yourself, you turn toward it and you feel every single bit of that pain that we transmute it.
Speaker 1:So I'm well aware that my whole life and the things that I went through and the things that you went through, the abuses, the traumas, the suffering, it's all so we can transcend our ego. Every single bit of it is to transcend the ego, because even the most enlightened of a soul can come to this planet in a body, and if you don't have any hardships, you have no reason to stop living the life that you're living for your ego. But when we're in pain, and particularly in grief, there's nothing else for the ego to do but surrender. And especially because in the initiation of a death, going through the death of somebody that you love, somebody that's very close to you, you are automatically surrendered to the illusion that you have any control over reality. The only thing that you can control is your own inner response to what happens outside of you and, yes, outside of you also reflects your inner reality. But we are also in relationship with other human beings who have the same rights and free will as we do. So everything is not happening to you or for you.
Speaker 1:This drives me crazy in the spiritual community when I hear people saying that. I'm like what about the other people involved? Do they not have free will? Maybe you're happening for them. And ultimately, when we return to source and we get out of this illusion of separation that we're in, ultimately there is no separation. I am you, you are me at a soul level, but from a human perspective, we live in these human bodies and we have human experiences and some of them really hurt, some of them are unbearably painful. So when Weston had his accident and he left the planet, my life was literally unplugged that day and everything about my life before that very day before just was shattered. The self I thought I was, the life I thought I had, the way I thought things were going to go, all of it shattered. But in that shattering, as I've shared before, I was also hurled into this space where grace and grief were existing together, and the most devastating loss of my life became the doorway to the most profound spiritual awakening I've ever had. And this is what mystical grief is all about. It's that liminal and space, it's grief and grace, it's pain and peace, it's sorrow and beauty.
Speaker 1:Because one thing I know for sure about grief is you don't heal it. It is not a problem to be healed. You become through it and some people get stuck in it because of that inner battle that happens when we're in grief, especially in loss of someone we love, that we just so desperately want them back, of someone we love that we just so desperately want them back, and that feeling of them being gone. For me, I could feel it right now in my body, just saying it, and it feels like a punch in my gut. But we don't heal through our grief. We become something new through it, and when I posted that on Instagram, a lot of people resonated with it, because we have been taught that grief is something to get over, that we move through it, that we heal from it. But some experiences aren't meant to be healed. They're meant to transform us.
Speaker 1:So I want to share what I've learned about how grief becomes a catalyst for spiritual awakening. So when the profound loss hits you, it doesn't just break your heart. This is more than a heartbreak. It breaks open your entire constructed reality, everything you believed about safety, about control, about what your future is going to look like, about what you expect about how life works. All of it just all of a sudden makes no sense. And this is the first stage of soul awakening that I talked about in my last episode, the shattering.
Speaker 1:But when it comes through grief, it's particularly intense, because death forces us to confront the biggest mystery of all, and that is what is real, what continues, what matters. And for me, this suddenly meant I was having conversations with my son who had crossed over and keeping it to myself because I was like, oh my gosh, people are going to think I've lost my mind. And it meant receiving guidance that was clearer, more clarity than anything I've ever experienced. And it meant understanding that consciousness does not die, which I knew from a rational level, a rational point of view. But to really go into it and to believe it, to feel it, to experience it, to live it, to know it, is a different experience.
Speaker 1:And one of the gifts of mystical grief that I really really have come to appreciate is I have a zero tolerance, bullshit meter, because when you're in the raw space of loss, pretending just is not possible. You don't have the energy for it. The masks fall away. I don't want to wear masks anymore and pretend to be something I'm not. I'm not going to laugh at something I don't think is funny. I'm not going to say yes when I want to say no. The strategies that we used to use to help navigate life just feel hollow and meaningless. Use to help navigate life just feel hollow and meaningless.
Speaker 1:But this is really actually a sacred work happening, because grief strips away everything that isn't truly you so that who you really are can emerge. And it's not like you're all of a sudden born. This new self pops up and it's like hi, I'm here, I'm your true self. That's not how it happens at all. Life is a revelation. There is no one true self, there is no solid sense of self to say this is me, this is who I am, but rather it's a daily revealing of who I am through what I choose to do with myself and how I choose to show up in life. So that's another big thing that grief has stripped away. Is this searching for self, this searching for who am I in the world Now? I'm just who I am today, and that's true of all of us all the time.
Speaker 1:Anyway, we just don't know it. We live in this illusion that we're controlling some false sense of reality, some construct that's nonsensical. And I realized in my own journey and I shared it that I was giving to hide. I was so good at sensing what others needed and meeting those needs so I could control how they saw me and I could stay hidden away behind my giving, my giving nature. And it really is through the process of mystical grieving this clarity that I have not only for other people's BS but my own which is where it's more important, by the way of seeing like, oh my gosh, this is not coming from an authentic place, it doesn't feel good in my body.
Speaker 1:So when you're broken open by loss, you just can't perform anymore, you can't manage your image, you're forced to just be raw, real, authentically you. And in that authenticity though, your soul finally has some room to breathe because you're done playing the roles, you're done taking off the masks. And this is why, in grief, like in the beginning I realized it immediately it's so important to just turn toward the feeling and let it wash over. Sob cry, do not tell a story about it. Sob cry, do not tell a story about it. Just let the feeling come and let the feeling go, and then it doesn't get trapped inside the body, and that gives your soul room to breathe, because you don't feel like you need to hold it in, you don't need to perform, you don't need to pretend you're fine. You're really giving yourself permission to be as you are.
Speaker 1:And here's what I want you to know, if you're in grief right now, is the veil between worlds is thinnest when you are broken open, and this is when mystical experiences often begin happening. It could be you're feeling your loved one's presence, or you start receiving signs that feel too meaningful to be coincidence. They're synchronicity, they're not coincidence. And maybe you're having dreams that feel more real than your waking life. Maybe you're suddenly knowing things you couldn't possibly know before. And this is not your imagination, this is not wishful thinking. This is what happens when grief shatters the walls between the seen and the unseen worlds.
Speaker 1:Boy, I questioned myself for such a long time in this, even though I'm coming up on six months here, which isn't very long but I've been allowing this process to take me and I've had help from the other side, and when I trust it and listen to it and follow it, my life is led, and it's just amazing what can happen in that. So, in my own experience, weston has given me more guidance since he crossed over than I received in any of the years he's been here physically and in any of the work I've ever done with any other coaches ever, and my spiritual teachers, because he's teaching me to stay present, to trust myself, to stop seeking outside of myself for what I really am. He's given me a process that I've been following, a process for mystical grieving which I'm writing in a book to teach people because it's so profound. And when everything external falls away, when the world you knew is no longer making any sense to you, you're forced to develop your own inner navigation system, because that's how our brain works. There's a lot of science behind this too, by the way, but I don't want to dive into the science about how your default mode network gets unplugged and all these things. That's a topic for another episode. But you do develop a new inner navigation system and you start learning to trust what you feel rather than what you think. You begin following intuitive nudges rather than logical plans. You follow synchronicities because they make sense. This is a profound spiritual training. Grief is teaching you to live soul first instead of mind first, which is how we're supposed to live our lives.
Speaker 1:I remember in those early months after Weston passed that I would ask for guidance, literally about the simplest things, just to see what would arise. Should I go to the store? Should I go left? Should I go right? Should I eat this? Should I go to the store? Should I go left? Should I go right? Should I eat this? Should I eat that? Just to feel inside of my body what the response was.
Speaker 1:Because it's so important to be embodied, because we have two other brains again with science. We have a heart brain, which we know has neurons, and we have a gut brain, which also has neurons. They're just not thinking thoughts. They're different processors, different places for different processing of different energies, frequencies, intelligences that come into our body. And so we're learning how to use our other brains because our main brain has been unplugged. And here's the mystery of mystical grief the deeper your pain, the more available you become to grace. It's really like your heartbreak creates a vacuum that divine love wants to rush into fill if you let it. And that doesn't mean that the pain goes away.
Speaker 1:I still have moments where I miss Weston so intensely it takes my breath away. I had one yesterday. I was working out and I just had the thought of I'm never going to work out with Weston or see him over there lifting his you know, pumping iron on his biceps. He just loved to work out. And I burst into tears and then I felt that boil up into a rage and I just let out a scream and then I went back to working out Because simultaneously I know he's around me and I feel more connected to the sacred and to him than I ever did before. I feel more guidance, I feel more love, I feel more presence, I feel it flowing through me and especially as I'm in this process and the steps that Weston has given me this month, is surrender. And as we're ending July here, I've really been practicing surrender and I've also had it revealed to me all the ways I'm not surrendering and I could feel that clenching, that forcing, that clinging, that tightness in my body.
Speaker 1:So grace doesn't erase the grief at all, but it transforms it into something that serves not just your own awakening but the healing of everyone you touch. And I hear that a lot from people now and it's very humbling because I don't feel like I'm doing anything except being who I am where I am in the moment surrendered, and apparently that's enough who knew I didn't have to spend all the money on all the books and all the hours and all the time and all the coaches and all the things that were trying to help me find out who I was. It's right here all along, and one of the most profound realizations I've had through this is that my personal healing through grief is medicine for the collective, and so is yours. When we do the brave work of letting grief transform us rather than destroy us, we become bridges for others who are walking similar paths, and it makes it. I want to say. I don't want to say easier, because it's not easy, but I want to say more. What's the word I'm looking for? I'm picturing unobstructed. There you go. There's less obstructions because there's a path. Energetically, it allows for possibility to happen much faster. It allows for possibility to happen much faster.
Speaker 1:Your willingness to stay open in the midst of loss and to receive the gifts that grief offers, to let it awaken you rather than embitter you, to let it open you rather than close you, impacts everyone around you and you become living proof that consciousness survives everything, even death. You become evidence that love is stronger than loss and that connection transforms our physical form. Our soul cannot be destroyed. So if you're in the midst of mystical grief right now, here's what I want you to know Trust the process, trust the waves, trust the guidance that comes, trust the signs and the synchronicities. Trust the mystical experiences, even when your mind says they're impossible, even when it doesn't make sense, because while your grief is a loss, it's also an initiation. It's your soul's calling you home to who you really are. It's life stripping away everything that isn't essential so that what's essential in you can shine.
Speaker 1:Stay present with whatever you're feeling and let yourself be held by mystery. Know that on the other side of this shattering is a totally different version of you that you could never have imagined. I don't even know what that is for me yet, but I could feel it coming online and it's just someone more real, more present, more quiet, more connected to the source of all life and to the people that I'm around. Because once you're plugged in and connected to the source of all life and you realize that this body, this life, that separation is just an illusion, that at the soul level you can project your consciousness into a blade of grass, into the dew on a leaf, into a cloud, into a cat into a dog, into each other, and know exactly who that being is. We're all one. It's all one.
Speaker 1:Mystical grief taught me that I am not separate from what I lost. I'm one with it. And it taught me that I am not separate from what I lost. I'm one with it. And it taught me that love doesn't end with death. It expands beyond form. It taught me that my greatest devastation could become my most profound awakening. And it is so. If you're walking this path, know that you're not alone, know that your grief is sacred, know that you're being held by something so much bigger than your pain truly, and know that you don't have to heal your grief but you can become through it if you don't get stuck in it. And to help you not get stuck in it, I will repeat the formula that I figured out immediately in the first week.
Speaker 1:And Tara Brock, a Buddhist psychologist and teacher, taught, or teaches, that pain times, resistance equals suffering, and I realized that in grief, it's pain times, resistance plus wishing things were different than they actually are, that creates suffering. Accepting that our loved ones are not here physically anymore is painful, but it's true, and when we can do that, we can disentangle ourselves from that longing, from that wish, from that heart's desire to go back and have it be different, because that's not possible. But we can move into. Okay, I've accepted it. Can move into. Okay, I've accepted it. Where are they now? Can they hear me? Can they feel me? Can I feel them? Can I communicate with them? Are they communicating with me? How? Show me.
Speaker 1:Let me see a sign from you that I will know is directly from you, that I cannot question and I guarantee you that you will see one. I've seen many, many, many, many, and I keep a little journal of them so I don't forget, because our mind likes to go back and ruminate and go back into skepticism and doubt and fear and all the places that the mind likes to go. But don't let it. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:Beautiful souls, I know this was a heavy topic this week, but I'm sending you so much love. Wherever you are on your journey, we are never alone and, as always, I invite you to go to vibologycom and download your Soul Luminous Activation Meditation to help you begin to step into the multi-dimensional being that you truly are, beyond this body. This body does not contain you or define you. It's your vehicle for living on planet Earth. And with that, I wish you a beautiful week and I'll see you next week on the show. Many blessings, bye. Thank you for listening to we Woke Up Like this. Your likes, comments, subscribes and reviews are deeply appreciated. If you're interested in being on the show, please send an email to podcast at vibologycom. And until next time, remember your authentic frequency is the frequency that will change the world.