Faith III: Fear

I have posted here before about the concept of "Faith." I have found my views reflected and strengthened and improved by the book: Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience, by Sharon Salzburg.

This is my paraphrasing of what Sharon went through when someone she cared deeply for was dying. It reflects what I slowly learned during the twelve years Gregory and I walked the Dementia// Alzheimer's path. It reflects what I finally knew to be true and held my faith in during the four days during which Gregory was preparing to die.

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If we absolutely insist that things work out only as we want them to, our  hopes become strategies to avoid facing what is, then we have nothing on which to base either effective action or real peace of mind. We're in the hope/fear dilemma.

What one really wants is that the person dying not feel alone, that he feel sheltered and held, that benevolence surrounds him, that he feel loved. This has nothing to do with demanding a specific outcome.

The person is going into the unknown, into a realm none of us can control. That is hard to accept. We cannot go there with him and we cannot really find out what that realm is all about. We feel fear for the person and we feel fear for ourselves.

When one sits side by side with fear and acknowledges it, one can befriend oneself despite the fear and one's heart begins to open.

One is able to meet the unknown without a plan for controlling something that is not within one's power to control. With fear no longer dominating the mind, love can rise freely.

The power of love doesn't shatter in the face of change or disintigrate in the face of ones's own terror of lack of control. One is able to enter into the mystery.

One can hold onto one's faith in oneself, and faith in the person leaving. Faith allows one to relax into the vast space of not knowing.

One feels sorrow but one remembers that life is bigger than its constantly, sometimes drastically, changing circumstances. This is the power of letting go in the face of unexpected changes and doing so with love and peace of mind.

Faith enables us, despite our fear, to get as close as possible to the truth of the present moment, so that we can offer our hearts fully to it, with integrity.

We might hope and plan and arrange and try, but faith enables us to be fully engaged while also realizing that we are not in control, and that no strategy can ever put us in control, of the unfolding of events.

Faith gives us a willingness to engage life, which means the unknown, and not to shrink back from it.

To have courage, just as to have faith, is to be full of heart. With courage we openly acknowledge what we can't control, make wise choices about what we can affect, and move forward into the uncultivated terrain of the next moment.

Experiencing Gregory's death with faith instead of fear meant experiencing him fully as he was and as he continued to change and when he finally left me. It meant that even though there was little I could do, I could continue loving him and to stay connected to him.

For many years I continued to love him in ways not based on language skills, mobility, or even his staying alive. The closeness, the understanding, the devotion of love did not diminish in my letting go of expectations.

By revealing the grace of connection with qualifications, no matter what is happening, love releases us from our efforts to control life and strengthens our ability to just love and to be loved.

Chopin's Ballad No.1 Op 23

This was Gregory and my favorite piece: Chopin's Ballad No.1 Op 23. (You can click to listen below.)

Many years ago Gregory became enthralled with the piece and learned one page, doubting that he would be able to do more. I encouraged him to at least try to add a little bit at a time. Over five years, Gregory at his black, shiny, Yamaha grand piano and with me lying on the couch listening to him practice and practice and practice, he proceeded to learn the entire piece.

He would ask, "Aren't you bored with hearing me make so many mistakes (also called clams)?" My answer was always, "Never!" I used to tell people that to me the greatest feeling of home was hearing Gregory's piano music singing, dancing, and flowing through our house.

Eventually Gregory went on to perform the piece for our Gay Family at Chuck and John's house in Racine, Wi at the "First Annual Musicale," where family members performed, played piano, recited poetry, etc.

Not having much talent in this way and joined by Dominic, we created trays to carry around our necks and put on paper tiaras of sorts to recreate the image of a "Cigar Girl" from days earlier, who would circulate at the 50's supper club selling cigars and cigarettes. During intermission we distributed popcorn, boxes of candy, and soda.

When it was Gregory's turn to perform I had to leave the room. I was so nervous for him. He had a fear of performing for others that stemmed from his childhood. First, his mother Helen, while responsible for giving him this life long gift, also was the typical demanding, strict, piano practice enforcing mother. At one point Gregory, during college, stopped playing because of how badly his mom had "loaded" the piano experience.

While I cannot take all the credit for helping him return to the black and whites, I will take some. But I diverge, the reason I was so nervous was that Gregory always talked about how when during his childhood recitals he would be so relieved that the piece was almost over, he would inadvertently end it by hitting a glaringly wrong note in the last few bars.

You need to know that Ballad No.1 is a very athletic piece, played by people like Arturo Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, and Daniel Barenboim for an encore at Carnegie Hall! At the "Musicale" he played the piece flawlessly to a standing ovation from the group. You should have seen his face!

After Gregory slowly became unable to play piano anymore, he decided that it was time to sell it. If he couldn't play it well, why not let someone who could, have it. We found a young composer, recently returned from LA who purchased the piano after sitting in our home and practicing and falling in love with the piano.

Gregory in his usual calm, intelligent, loving optimistic way was not upset at seeing the piano leave our home. He was happy about its new home and he commented: "I can listen to as much music as I would like on CDs and that make me happy."

Share Chopin's Ballad No.1 Op 23 with me:

Letting go

Thanks Daily OM, you did it again. As I have been dealing with Gregory's illness and getting Hospice in place my horoscope shows up to reinforce (in my eyes) my decision and to calm my emotions. While letting go of Gregory is emotionally painful, I know that intellectually it is the right decision and that wanting him to be with me, at any cost, is only being selfish. When you love, you know you need to let go. I hope that Gregory is able to stay with me a while longer and know that it will be his decision when to leave, but I do not want him to suffer or disappear into a state of nonexistence without death if possible. Time will tell.

April 26, 2015 Ease of Letting Go Aries Daily HoroscopeYou could take things much more easily today, which may be because you feel like going with the flow. It might be that you are able to accept things in life as they are – perhaps because you know that the universe is taking care of you. Expressing your appreciation to the universe for everything that you have could make you feel an even greater sense of ease today. As you look around your life, you may want to assess what it is that you have. If you can think not only in material terms, but also in terms of the other gifts you have been given – family, friends, talents, dreams – you may see that there is nothing you really lack in your life. Understanding that you have everything and that the universe will always take care of you may help you to see that being grateful is a powerful way to let go of your struggles and simply reside in the abundance that defines your life. When we learn to let go of our effort to have everything in our lives, we will realize that we already possess all that we need. Being able to release these desires lets us go along with the things that happen in our lives; instead of feeling that we need to hold on to a specific plan or thing, we allow ourselves to exist freely and unencumbered. By appreciating the bounty you have today, your life will be effortless and harmonious.

Emotions and Living with Uncertainty

This post deals with difficult, crippling emotions which bring suffering with them: like anger, fear, pain, regret, sorrow. Other emotions like love, joy, happiness are a different story and do not bring suffering with them.

In My Stroke of Insight, the brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor’s book about her recovery from a massive stroke, she explains the physiological mechanism behind emotion: an emotion like anger that’s an automatic response lasts just ninety seconds from the moment it’s triggered until it runs its course. One and a half minutes, that’s all. When it lasts any longer, which it usually does, it’s because we’ve chosen to rekindle it. (Again, Ms. Taylor is talking about difficult, painful emotions.)

Acknowledge the feeling, give it your full, compassionate, even welcoming attention, and even if it’s only for a few seconds, drop the story line (past fears, experiences, or expectations) about the feeling. This allows you to have a direct experience of it, free of interpretation. Don’t fuel it with concepts or opinions about whether it’s good or bad. Just be present with the sensation. Where is it located in your body? Does it remain the same for very long? Does it shift and change?

The challenge is to notice the emotional tug when it arises and to stay with it for one and a half minutes without the story line. Do this once a day or many times throughout the day as the emotions arise. This is the process of unmasking, letting go, opening the mind and heart.

Before long you be able to use your emotions as a barometer, a measure of where you are, what you are thinking, what you are dealing with. As you unmask the emotions you will be able to work through them and get on with your life instead of letting the difficult emotions cripple you.

When difficult emotions arise; welcome them, bless them, sit with them briefly and experience the pure emotion fully. Then send them on their way; hopefully with a feeling of peace and eventually with the feeling of a new gained ability to live your life without the suffering that emotions can bring if you hang on to them, rekindle them.

(P.S. Another thing I sometimes do is welcome the emotions but let them know that I do not have the time now to sit with them, and invite them to come back at another time. You'll be amazed at how quickly the minute and a half passes without your being swept up in the emotions so you can continue to experience and enjoy the more important parts of your life. But do remember to invite the emotions back at another time instead of just postponing and avoiding them!)

(Taken in part from Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change by Pema Chödrön.)

Letting Go

When I run across something that speaks to me, I like to share it here on my Alzheimer's BLOG. Maybe it will speak to you, maybe not.

From: http://www.dailyom.com

March 7, 2013 Letting Go of Understanding Deeper Meaningsby Madisyn Taylor We don't always need to know the deeper meaning of everything that happens in our lives. All of us who seek to be conscious and aware regard our experiences as teachers, and we try to discern what lessons we are learning from the things that happen in our lives. Sometimes the lesson is very clear from the get-go, and other times we have to really search to understand the deeper meaning behind some event. While this search often yields results, there also comes a point in the search where what we really need to do is move forward. It is possible that we are not meant to know the deeper meaning of certain occurrences. Answers may come later in our lives, or they may come as a result of letting go, or they may never come. We are all part of a complex system of being, and things work themselves out in the system as a whole. Sometimes we are just playing a necessary part in that process with a result larger than we can understand. It may have very little to do with us personally, and while that can be hard to understand, it can also free us from overthinking the matter. Sometimes it is best to see it in terms of karma, a past debt we have been able to repay in this way, or as the clearing of energy. We can simply thank the event for being part of our experience and let it go. This completes the process that the occurrence has made possible. To make this letting go official, we can perform a ritual, make a final journal entry on the subject, or sit in meditation with the intention of releasing the event from our consciousness. As we do so, we summon it one last time, honoring it with our attention, thanking it, and saying good-bye. We then let it go out the door, out the window, out the top of our heads, or into the earth through the bottoms of our feet, liberating ourselves from any burden we have carried in association with it.