What nobody tells you about grief and loss (my healing journey)

In this heartfelt video, Aaron Doughty recounts the sudden death of his mother and the ensuing week of intense grief, family connection, and spiritual awakening. He describes the moment he learned of his mother's passing, the denial and confusion that followed, and the vivid experience his clairvoyant sister had of spiritual guides comforting their mother. Aaron shares how the family gathered in a neutral hotel room to collectively mourn, reflecting on his mother's final supportive messages about group meditation and world peace. He weaves in philosophical influences—Eckhart Tolle, Marcus Aurelius, the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda from Autobiography of a Yogi, and David Hawkins' Letting Go—to frame grief as a transformative seed where the ego mourns loss while the spirit rejoices in reconnection. Personal anecdotes about his mother’s marketing talent, a past dog‑court saga, and his grandfather’s esoteric teachings illustrate the deep personal and spiritual roots of his healing practice. Aaron concludes that grief is love, urging acceptance of emotions, the power of family unity, and the ongoing guidance he feels from his mother beyond the physical realm.
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A very powerful quote says that the ego weeps for what it has lost while the spirit rejoices in what it has found. And when I read this quote, I heard it on an Eckhart Tolle video when I was desperately looking for comfort about a week ago, soothing the inner resistance that I was feeling. And when I heard it It made me cry. It made me tear up. I was on a flight going to Las Vegas where I was born and raised, and it was me trying to hold everything together. And last week was definitely one of the most challenging weeks I've had in my life. Um, it was also a very transformative week for me. And I believe that many times the most challenging things that happen in our life, we have the ability to allow it to be a seed of transformation, a seed of the spirit rejoicing in what it has found. So this video is gonna talk about that, of the power of grief, the power of acceptance, the power of connection, the power of understanding what this reality may really be at a more fundamental core level from a spiritual perspective. And it all stemmed from last week, about a week ago from me recording this video, when I got a call, which is really interesting to me. I was on the way home from my best friend's house, hanging out with him and his family, and I'm driving home literally contemplating death, not like a suicidal thing. Like I'm literally, like I go through these meditative experiences where what I do is I literally just contemplate certain things. Like I've been into like Marcus Aurelius, you know, the Stoic principles. Like meditating on death is a very powerful way to live more. And I'm on my way home, literally driving, contemplating, wow, This is such a short life that we have on this planet. It goes by so fast. Like a year or two ago, I was dreaming of the life that I would have now and where I would be, and now it's here, and now I'm like projecting myself into the future, and it's like, wow, this time goes by so incredibly fast. And what happened is I'm on my way home, I get home, and I'm honestly just so grateful for my life. I love the house that I live in. I love the friends that I have. I love the people in my family. I love everything about my life. The purpose I have, the clarity that I've been getting. Literally, like, I've been in, I went through like last year, I went through kind of like a couple dark, like, weeks of the soul, I guess you could say. Is everything feels like it's such on this cloud nine. But then what happens is as I get home, I get a call from one of my mom's friends. Who I knew the moment I saw his name that it was something serious because he would not normally just call me out of nowhere. And when I pick up the phone, he tells me that my mom, they've tried to, she's in the hospital, they tried to revive my mom and they failed. And in that moment, I couldn't understand what he was saying. Like he was saying the words that it was extremely clear what he was saying, but I could not comprehend or understand what he was saying. He said like revive or they couldn't revive her or resuscitate her. And I literally didn't know what that, I know what it means, but I couldn't, I was like, what does that mean? Like it means, Maybe they're like trying to revive her and she's still alive. Like there was a complete denial over the situation at first. And then what happened is I tried calling my brother and my sister who were there with her in the hospital, who this person said was with her. So I'm calling my brother and my sister and there's 3 or 4 phone numbers in my phone of each because they've kind of changed their number a few times over the last couple years. So I'm like, can't think straight. I'm like, go and try and call each of them so I can get ahold of them so I can ask them what the hell's going on. Kind of like not knowing for sure what happened, I called my brother that lives in New Mexico and I talked to him and he's like, no, I'm sure it's exaggeration. I'm sure everything's fine. There was like definitely this feeling of like, I'm sure everything's fine. It's probably just exaggerated. Maybe she just, it's like a heart attack scare or something like that. But nonetheless, then I finally get ahold of my brother and sister who are there with her and it's just complete, chaos. So emotions are running high. I will say one very beautiful thing about it is my sister is extremely clairvoyant. She's younger, much younger than me. She's been able to— this is— I mean, whatever, I don't care anymore. She's been able to see spirits since she was a little girl, and she always would try to like suppress it and hide it and we've always kind of known she could do it. We used to live at this one house that was kind of outside of Vegas and she would see like Native American spirits. One of her spirit guides was Native American and it's like something she is afraid to even share with people. She's not doing it for attention. She hides it if anything, but she's always had this ability. And as I'm on the phone with my sister, and everyone's crying and my brother is going through a very big process that's there, she's expressing to me and explaining to me what's happening. She said that my mom left her body and was hovering over her bed and that there were 3 spiritual guides there with her, like big tall angelic beings, and that she was looking back and that she was having this conversation with my sister and saying, I'm okay, everything's gonna be okay. It's gonna be challenging for you, it's gonna be even more challenging for Alex, my brother, but everything's gonna be okay and you're gonna make it through this. And as it's happening, my sister's on the phone with me, my brother's having a process in the background, there's nurses, and a whole bunch of people, like 9 people around her apparently. I was on the phone, so I learned about this later. As my sister is just documenting to me what she's seeing with my mom. And that for me was a very transformative experience of, it was immediately I started crying, I bursted out into tears just listening to that because there's a part of this denial, but there's a part of this like feeling that I'm connecting listening to my sister and feeling what she's saying is genuine. And what ended up happening is after that, I flew the next day to Las Vegas. I spent about a week, about 5 or 6 days with my brother and sister. I got us a hotel room outside of the house where it happened. And I spent a week connecting with my brother and sister, had my other brother come out as well. So there were 4 of us staying. I got us a nice hotel room that we could hang out in that would like be this neutral spot to where we could really connect and grieve. And over the next 4 or 5 days, we all connected in such a powerful, beautiful way, more so than ever before. It brought us all together. And in many ways, my mom's passing was something that I believe at a higher level was somehow chosen in a weird way. It was crazy to think that just 3 hours prior to this experience of her passing away, she texted, she sent me a text message on WhatsApp. We talk on WhatsApp because I like to send her voice notes, and I was considering voice notes 'cause she didn't have an iPhone. And I've been toying around even with my business and everything of like, making, doing live events, and she's always, my mom was my biggest supporter. She was always talking about my videos. She was so proud. She was always sending me videos and insights and things I could make videos on. She'd watch every video of mine. My brother Alex and Kayla were telling me that she'd be in the garage all the time watching my videos. And I've been toying around with like knowing that part of my purpose is to be doing these live group guided meditations. There's something about them that just changes the collective consciousness. And anytime we do it, it just has this very powerful effect on the people that do it and on the planet. And 3 hours at 6:45 PM on December 3rd, last seen at 6:48 PM, which is crazy that I could see this. She sends me a video that says, 'Can group meditation bring world peace? Quant physicist John Hagelin.' She sends me a quote that says, 'There is far more evidence that group meditation can turn off war like a light switch than there is evidence that aspirin reduces headaches.' That's a quote. She sent me this 2 hours before she had the heart attack that allowed her to leave this reality. And I can't help but think that at some level, this has so much meaning to me, this one post that she sent me, that it was something that just seeing every time I look at this, I get kind of choked up. And I've spent the last week grieving more than I ever have in my life, 100%. And being with family, you know, I think everyone has a different way of grieving. Everyone has a different way of processing emotion. And ultimately, one thing that I've realized about life, about death, about the way that I view this whole thing is as sad as it is for the ego that no longer has my mom, I feel like my spirit is rejoicing in the reconnection with my mom. In the spiritual guidance of my mom. My grandpa, who many of you know that watch this channel, my grandpa's my mom's foster dad. He died about 2 years ago. And is it 2 years ago? No, 3 years ago maybe. So it was 3 years ago 'cause it was during COVID And when he died, my mom had a very close relationship with him. He was a very esoteric thinker. He did like Tai Chi. He was like 80 years old. He was, he's the one that introduced me to some of the more esoteric teachings that I share on my channel. 'Cause he, when I started on YouTube, he started recognizing my videos and he was like, wow. He basically, I grew up with him and then we didn't talk for a while, but then he saw my YouTube channel as my mom was talking about it and stuff back in 2017 when I started. And then he realized that him and I had a lot in common with what we were into. And the last 2 years of his life, we would, we'd meet up, we'd talk, he'd come over my house, we would talk about esoteric spiritual things. He used to work for some type of secret thing where he knew things that a lot of people didn't know about when it comes to different hidden projects and stuff like that. But one thing he told me to do was to get these meditation CDs that he said would change my consciousness. And then those meditation CDs have powerfully impacted my meditations that I do, the live event footage that I— like, basically all my teachings have been influenced by this. But when he passed away, my mom felt even more of a connection to him, and I believe he was there with my mom when she passed away. And I believe my mom is reunited with him in many ways, but I believe that this life is a very temporary human experience that we're having, and we forget that when we come here. I found a lot of comfort in going back to that of chapter 43 of Autobiography of a Yogi, which is all about that of Paramahansa Yogananda, who wrote the book. Enlightened master who, when he passed away, he like just was going to give a speech, then he just left his body. Apparently that's one of the doorways to where you don't have to come back anymore, is you could just consciously leave your body. That's what Paramahansa Yogananda did. But in chapter 43 of Autobiography of a Yogi, it's my favorite chapter, he's in meditation. His guru died. His guru was like Master Sri Yukteswar, passed away. He's in meditation and then he literally physically has this reconnection with Master Sri Yukteswar who explains to him the afterlife, explained to him this thing called the spheres of Hira Loka, which is these different spheres of astral realities that we experience after we pass, where it's equal to our vibration, where we get to learn things. It's a very divine heavenly realm. We're able to connect with past loved ones. We're able to connect to past loved ones from even different lives because we understand, because at a higher level, we are just a speck of this larger consciousness that we're all connected to. And in that chapter, it explains just what reality is, what the causal plane of reality is, this body, physical flesh, what part of reality is, but nonetheless, there's this connection that we have to reality that is, that when we forget, it gets very scary. And reading this chapter for me is just so healing, and reading different chapters of the book "Letting Go" by Dr. David Hawkins has been so healing. And at the ultimate level of the healing comes a certain level of acceptance. An acceptance that that's life. Life is quick. Life, I say that and some people say, you know, it's a limiting belief. Life, whether you live 150 years, it's quick in the larger scheme of things. You're an eternal spiritual being. But also the acceptance and the reminder in a way, like part of it for me is like the missing feeling that I have for my mom. Who I get my personality from many ways. My spirituality comes from my mom, definitely influenced me. I get that of my sense of humor from my mom. I never realized how much of my mom was characteristics of myself up until she passed. But my sense of humor, my goofiness that I have, if there's an inner child goofiness that comes out around certain people and in certain situations, Spiritual, my mom's ability to hype things up, such a hype beast. I hype up things when we're going somewhere with friends, I'm like, we're gonna do this, this'll be freaking awesome, blah, blah, blah, blah, hype it up. My mom was the same exact way. My mom was an incredible marketer. I'm a good marketer with these, you know, with sharing. Marketing is basically like sharing ideas and getting people hyped up about things. Just naturally it's part of my identity. And my mom was able to do some pretty incredible things, like by setting her mind to it. I remember one time I had an ex-girlfriend that I was breaking up with, and there was this situation that happened actually where one of the things that like started the breakup was there was this, there were these dogs that she had, and I was going to this park, so that I could watch the dogs so that we could get the, 'cause she had 2 pit bulls. And I was going to the dog park to watch these dogs because she had to be there for a walkthrough of the house because we weren't actually supposed to have the dogs in Vegas. It's very hard to get and rent a house in Vegas if you have pit bulls. So I'm at this park with these dogs and their leads, they have leads, not leashes, which means like if they got tangled up, like the leads fell off. I wasn't comfortable going to the park, but I had to do it kind of so that we could get this house walkthrough. Basically, these dogs got away and they ended up attacking this little kookapoo. And I went through this whole entire process where I was trying to get the dog's mouth off this dog so that this dog could live, and it ended up like slicing my finger. I had to go to the hospital. The dogs got taken away and put in animal shelter. And it was this very dramatic thing that happened. I ended up getting stitches. It was a lot of adrenaline. It was definitely a trauma shock response. But nonetheless, with my ex-girlfriend, it was like her dogs, her babies were gonna be put to sleep because they attacked this little kookaburra, and the kookaburra ended up living. It was missing an eye, but it was living. And then we had to go to court so that we could let, to put in a petition so that the dogs could live. We're like, they're normally not angry. And that's true, they're normally not angry. They normally weren't like that. But for some, I think they were picking up on my fear because There was one of them that would only listen to my ex because that was like her dog. So I was like kind of like fearful they'd get away. The other one would listen to me. Anyways, long story short, I have to go to court thinking that we're just going to go plead our case, go to court, and the guy shows up with his dog and is fighting for the dogs to be taken down. And the dogs in these 2, 3 months going to court were in this little shelter where the dogs were, basically like in a jail where they were starting to change. You could tell that they weren't eating, they weren't fed well. It was just like a very traumatic experience to watch them go through. Nonetheless, we go to that of this process of like petitioning for the dogs to get taken away. And basically the guy fights for it. And what the judge says is, no, the dogs are still getting put down. So then we had a date, we had like a couple weeks until the dogs were being put down. And what happened is there was nothing we could do about it. Then that 2 weeks I broke up with my ex, moved out, moved back in with my mom. And my mom somehow with her amazing marketing ability, her connection to like, she had this connection to some certain news people. Somehow what she was able to do is she had some strings pulled or something like that. And somehow, she got those dogs back. I don't even know how she did it to this day. But I remember my ex, it was like, I felt like she was gonna resent me forever if her dogs did get taken down and I could totally understand that. But I feel like in a weird way, the dogs, that situation was also a seed that was planted so her and I were to break up because we weren't supposed to be together anyways. And then literally within a couple days of breaking up, my mom, Got these dogs free and then she came over and she got her dogs and she was so happy. And that was like an example of just how my mom is. She would do anything for anyone else and she has this pit— she had a pit bull mentality where she would get things done and she would fight for people. Especially she'd fight for the underdog or she'd fight for people, you know, she fought for animals. She loved animals. She loved Great Danes. We always had a Great Dane growing up. She was very connected to Great Danes. And my mom just had such a playful, fun, loving energy that has, you know, I know on my channel you hear a lot about my ex-stepmom, completely different person, but my mom is an incredible person, incredible human that I miss very much, that I love very much, and that I'm just very grateful to have been her son. And I believe that this grieving process, a lot of it is about acceptance. It's about looking at the guilt, becoming aware of the energy. 'Cause then what you do is you look back and you're like, okay, I could have said this differently. I could have had more conversations over here. My brother that was with her feels certain ways because he was there with her. And it's like so interesting how much the mind will use all these Jedi mind tricks to try to like, to try to, you know, make you feel guilty. But being aware of it is always the first step and accepting. Life is short. Accepting that these things happen, these attachments we have, the beautiful moments, the part of my, it feels like in a way part of myself, like my mom missing, there's a part of myself that feels missing, but that grieving is love. It's a constant reminder of the love that is there and the happy memories. And me sharing this on my channel is really just me vulnerably, authentically sharing the process that I'm going through, because I can't just go back to making content as usual without mentioning this, without sharing some of this. And I'm not saying this to everyone comments below and says, I'm sorry for your loss and all that stuff. I don't know why that, it's all people say. You didn't do it, it wasn't your fault. But I appreciate the love and I appreciate the support. And just know that whatever, if you're ever going through the grieving process, accept what you're feeling, Even if you can't accept the death yet of somebody passing, accept and allow yourself to feel what you feel. Don't feel shame or guilt for feeling it, or even if you do, let yourself feel that. "Letting Go," the book by David Hawkins, is very powerful. Chapter 43 of "Autobiography of a Yogi" is very powerful. And nonetheless, it's very powerful for us to remember that this is a temporary dream that we're living in, and that even when people pass on to the other side, that other side is connected to us right now. I believe in dream state I'll be connecting with my mom more and more. I believe that my mom will help me in many ways in my life, guide me through this process of healing, of love. I believe at the end of my life my mom will be there as a spiritual guide waiting for me. And I believe that it's something important to remember for all of us, is just that that grieving is love. And it's something that I plan on taking with me and continuing to learn through this process. So anyways, that's it for today. Just wanted to share the power of love, the power of grieving, the power of acceptance. And that's been really the key through this whole— and the power of family, connecting to my brothers and sisters. This has brought us closer than anything ever. And I really believe that's what my mom would really wanted. So there's always beauty in every situation that happens to us. Things are the meaning we give it. Right now I'm working with my brother and sister to help them give positive meaning to this, knowing that it's gonna help them transform and help them become who all they were meant to be. And that meaning will give a different result, different reality. So with that being said, thank you for being here. Peace, much love, and namaste.
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