Refocusing One's Grief

I have been thinking about this lately. And today's DailyOm, which it often does, caused me to sit down and put my thoughts into words.

The closer we get to Christmas, the more I have been grieving Gregory's death, the sadder maybe even depressed I have been feeling.

I know that this is only natural and one will be told by everyone else that we should expect this on firsts: First Thanksgiving. First Christmas. First Anniversary without Gregory in January which would have been (or should I say will be) 41 years together?

But I also know that Gregory does not need me to grieve, the universe is not benefitted by my grief, God (if she exists) does not need me to grieve. I am the one who needs to grieve but if it makes me sad, unhappy, and possibly depressed; maybe I do not need to grieve as much or in the way that I am doing so.

My Grief does not make Gregory's life any more or less meaningful. My Grief will definitely not bring him back to me for even a moment or two in realtime. My Grief will not being me joy, or cheer, or good feelings, or help support my health. So I continue to question Grief.

It is as if Grief gives me permission to wallow in my sorrows, my loneliness, my "what if's," my "if only's." It is as if I allow Grief to slow me down, feel tired, feel lethargic, to not accomplish those things I want to accomplish. I allow Grief to cause me to be poor company to friends and family.

So I continue to question grief. If I can turn my Grief into a more productive activity, I will be served. Gregory will be served. The universe will be served and God (if she exists) will are served. Family and friends and my two cats, Emma and Gigi, will be served. So I continue to question grief.

I believe that if I want to believe in something, then it is true. At least for me. So I continue my conversations, my dialogues with Gregory or with Gregory's Spirit although they at times might seem like monologues. But sometimes I hear Gregory's answers. At least I hear them in my head. At least they may be coming from him, from beyond, or from my 41 years of knowing what he would say, but none-the-less they come.

And I feel at times that Gregory, or Gregory's Spirit, is sad that I am sad, unhappy that I am unhappy, misses me because I miss him. I hear him telling me to try not to be so sad because it makes him feel sad as well. And that doesn't serve Gregory in whatever his next set of adventures and spiritual growth may need.

So I have been trying to grieve less. Grieve yes but less. When I feel sad I try to change the thoughts to ones of joy. When I feel lonely, I try to remember the good times and to be grateful for them. When I feel depressed, I sit with the feelings then tell myself to move on.

By allowing myself to stay sad, stay lonely, stay depressed, I am allowing myself to wallow in my grief instead of celebrating not only Gregory's life but also my own. I am seventy years old, I have much to celebrate and will have much to celebrate yet. By grieving less I will not be wasting those precious moments, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years I have left.

So enjoy, not grieve. Laugh, not cry. Celebrate, not mourn. Sing and dance. I tell myself. And most of the time it works. And when it doesn't, I allow myself to sit and wallow but not for more than fifteen minutes at a time. Then I continue on continuing on.

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December 20, 2015 Raise Your Vibration Focus on the Goodby Madisyn Taylor There are many ways to raise your vibration including thinking positive and uplifting thoughts. Everything in the universe is made of energy. What differentiates one form of energy from another is the speed at which it vibrates. For example, light vibrates at a very high frequency, and something like a rock vibrates at a lower frequency but a frequency nonetheless. Human beings also vibrate at different frequencies. Our thoughts and feelings can determine the frequency at which we vibrate, and our vibration goes out into the world and attracts to us energy moving at a similar frequency. This is one of the ways that we create our own reality, which is why we can cause a positive shift in our lives by raising our vibration. We all know someone we think of as vibrant. Vibrant literally means “vibrating very rapidly.” The people who strike us as vibrant are vibrating at a high frequency, and they can inspire us as we work to raise our vibration. On the other hand, we all know people that are very negative or cynical. These people are vibrating at a lower frequency. They can also be an inspiration because they can show us where we don’t want to be vibrating and why. To discover where you are in terms of vibrancy, consider where you fall on a scale between the most pessimistic person you know and the most vibrant. This is not in order to pass judgment, but rather it is important to know where you are as you begin working to raise your frequency so that you can notice and appreciate your progress. There are many ways to raise your vibration, from working with affirmations to visualizing enlightened entities during meditation. One of the most practical ways to raise your vibration is to consciously choose where you focus your attention. To understand how powerful this is, take five minutes to describe something you love unreservedly—a person, a movie, an experience. When your five minutes are up, you will noticeably feel more positive and even lighter. If you want to keep raising your vibration, you might want to commit to spending five minutes every day focusing on the good in your life. As you do this, you will train yourself to be more awake and alive. Over time, you will experience a permanent shift in your vibrancy.

Last Night's Message

When I last visited with my intuitive, she described the pain I feel at loosing Gregory to Dementia/ Alzheimers: "Michael it is as if a great hole has been torn in your chest. and that hole is real and it is painful. No one has the right to try to fill or take that hole away from you. Not even God. It is a sacred place where you and Gregory can still be together."

Last night as I was meditating, the message I received said to me: "When Gregory passes, his spirit will fill that hole and he will continue to live in you. It will help to make you whole again. It will continue to ache but over time it will be replaced with much joy.

The Spirit Has Returned

As of today the Christmas spirit has returned, we got down all the banker's boxes filled with holiday fare and decorated the condo. Looks great.

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.