Very interesting indeed. Hmmmm. I'll start with the concept of process as an excuse not to change. I think I know what you mean--processing being taking no action because one is thinking. Yet, change is a process. It does not happen instantaneously and is often an incremental process of which thinking is a part. (I think your last stanza speaks to that change is a process in which we are constantly engaged).

Now, I'll move on to grief. I do not know that there is any purpose (growth or learning) in the pain of grief. Yet, my grief triggered my instantaneous spiritual awakening:

"Hello, I had hoped we would meet one day under different circumstances and write this mostly in the present tense. My name is Greg Maidman, I am a close friend and confidante of Lindsey’s. In fact, I love her. I am the person who went to the precinct and pushed and accompanied the police to check on her after they were being dismissive the previous day. I have never experienced such gut-wrenching sorrow as I did on that cold rainy street, but realize it is because I love her more than I know...."

...

"The wailing on the street was a sound that I did not know I could, nor how to, produce. It has emanated from me one or two times since. It cannot be purposely replicated. It is the sound of my soul crying out in pain. No, crying does not begin to describe it; it is the sound of unrestrained grief without any concern about the spectacle that I was for onlookers for an hour or more. Imagine having open heart surgery performed with a jagged and rusted scalpel without a drop of anesthesia; further imagine that it was at a frequency and wavelength that ripped a hole in space time and was heard across all eleven or more dimensions of the universe, not just then, but at every point in time. If you can close your eyes and feel the picture I just painted, maybe you will come close to understanding. If you can close your eyes and feel the picture I just painted, maybe you will come close to understanding my pain and my grief. And my Love, my Love, my Love.

The reverberations of the pain waves from the tearing out of my heart shattered the barrier between conscious and unconscious, and my soul emerged and filled the hole where my heart had been.

At that moment, I intuitively knew that I have a soul. (Before then I believed it--from that point forward I've owned it)

I experienced an irreversible spiritual awakening. The pain was amplified way beyond that which even someone who has experienced the here-one-second-gone-the-next can imagine because with awakening came the innate understanding that I had just lost someone after only 10 months in this life cycle that I have been in love with for all of eternity."

(comment continued in next)