Meditation: Round 2: Practice 3

For this practice (which is what we call the meditation session) there were only two of us with Corinne. The other person and I have been with Corinne previously so she decided, with our permission, to take a different approach. You know the "stress" I am under and the other person had just experienced a health emergency. She had to go through that ordeal herself and mentioned that the use of her Yoga Nidra techniques helped her through the ordeal.

In this practice, we decided to look more closely at emotions in addition to working our way through all 14 steps of the practice (you've seen the diagram previously.) During the Emotions part you observe emotions that are present (now that you are in a comfortable, relaxed state,) inquire about what these emotions are telling you, concentrate on the emotion and then on its opposite. The purpose of looking at an emotion from both sides is that emotions are in flux and one is on a continuum between the positive of the emotion and the negative of the emotion. Often during a practice, you notice the emotion and know that you do not have to deal with it right then. But you must acknowledge it and deal with it later if you do not want it to increase in intensity. This time we were going to concentrate on the emotions.

The emotion that came to me, again, was JOY. Its opposite, SORROW. If you have been following these Yoga BLOGs you will know that this seems to be a recurring theme for me.

When Corinne asked us to look at our Essential Self (that which we are in relation to the universe) vs our Essential Nature (that which we have become based on experiences, expectations, relations to others and society) in relation to this continuum of emotion I felt blocked. My life most of the time is so wrapped up with trying to be the best me I can be to support Gregory, and my guilt at falling short of my expectations for myself that for some reason when trying to look through the vail I am unable to see "the real me."

Then this visualization and verbiage came to me. Yes JOY is all around me (picture me in the center of embracing hands with the hands being JOY, my essential self is in the center of these hands but without Gregory as part of my life, I cannot see through to my essential self. It is as if our souls, our spirits are so closely joined that I cannot tell one apart from the other. It feels, as Gregory continues to disintegrate day by day, that my soul is being CLEAVED in two. Split. Torn. Cleaved as in cleaver.

Corinne proposed a series of images in which we could weigh the emotions we choose and each one was diminished in light of not being able to appreciate them with Gregory: a spring day, a child's toy, a beautiful flower, etc I was so sad and knew that I could return to my Inner Resource (Forest) for protection but I chose to stay with the difficulty of looking at the joy/sorrow emotion.

So most of the time, while I know JOY exists and I do see and celebrate it, I am mostly wrapped up in SORROW and the suffering it brings. Soon after we slowly came back to the witnessing of the experience/practice and slowly returned to the waking state at the end of the practice. As I took the eye cover off, tears streamed out of my eyes and down my face. I was not crying on the outside but my emotions inside had caused the flood. It was a strange feeling. It was as if my eyes were crying but I wasn't.

Am still analyzing the experience but it probably seems obvious that my love for Gregory, our 35+ years together in such a strong, respectful, supportive relationship has united our spirits so strongly into one unique spirit that with the Alzheimer's Journey which we are currently on, and the insidious nature of the disease, the untying of those spirits is no easy task and extremely painful. Yes, JOY but also SORROW.