Before the yoga class started this morning, I asked Heather to keep an eye on me and let me know if I was crooked. She had me turned to another student, Maite and had her mirror my posture so I could correct it. The postural change felt weird. Weird is good. That means there was a change.
I had my telephone appointment with Shelly scheduled for 10 am. I observed that I'm in less continuous grief than I have been for most of my life. A few months ago, I worked on resolving a sadness I carried in my heart for as long as I can remember. I'm thinking that the weight of grief is cumulative. If the loss of Mike had been added to my historic grief, it would be more difficult to bear. As it is, I'm only experiencing moments of sadness, and they are never debilitating. I also have moments of joy, thinking of talking to Mike, and sharing my life with him now. I know, without a doubt, that if he can be watching over me, he is. He won't tell me how he's doing except to say that he's okay if I'm okay.
I have been reading C.S. Lewis's book A Grief Observed, a little bit each night before I turn out the light. His situation was very different from mine. To begin with, he experienced two devastating losses in his childhood. His beloved dog died when he was 4, and his mother died when he was 9. Before her death, he was homeschooled. After her death, his father sent him to a boarding school. His loss record is impressive. He remained single until he was 57. He had sealed himself off from any possible pain by adopting the life of an academic bachelor. He had known the woman who became his wife for several years before the recognized his love for her. He was only pushed to take the plunge when she was diagnosed with cancer. She died four years after they were married.
Now I lost my father when I was 15, which certainly threw my psyche off course. Whether the deviation was ultimately an improvement or not, we will never know. The loss did motivate me to feel that I had to be a complete person, by some personal intuitive standard, before I could commit to a long-term relationship. I had to be prepared to be on my own.
I understand that it is not uncommon for people who have lost a parent as a child to feel the need to anticipate the death of a loved one regularly, even when there is no such threat on the horizon. Mike used to joke that I was always in a hurry to bury him. He also made such a comment in the first week he was in the hospital. However, I feel I am doing reasonably well now without him because I have been preparing for this moment for 45 years. Now that Elsa, my dog, and I have bonded, I've started the grieving process with her too. It's almost how I know that I care about people or animals: I started contemplating my life without them.
It may sound maudlin, but there are advantages. Since I did allow myself to invest deeply in Mike, the constant awareness that I might lose him at any moment made every moment precious. Nothing was taken for granted.
Lewis did not work to resolve his historic grief, and it was only the inevitable death of a woman he valued that shook him out of his protective cocoon. I dug myself out voluntarily. I dealt with the possibility of loss daily. I valued what I shared with Mike daily. Anniversaries and birthdays had little meaning in the context of our daily recognition that we had something valuable in each other. I loved having Mike in my life, and I was always okay if he was gone. Of course, gone in the past meant gone for a day, a weekend, most of a week when he was studying for his second Ph.D. at Catholic University when my mother and I continued living in Princeton, N.J. I was, and am, good with him and without him. He helped me become this person who can survive without him. I also have some weird feeling that I am also becoming more like him; I am filling the spaces he left empty with his death. He's not gone. He will never be gone. His impact on me is vast; I formed in these last 45 years in relationship to him, as he developed in relationship to me.
Today I also worked with my therapist on my ambivalence about wanting recognition for the work I have developed. I sat with the uncertainty and released anything negative about wanting that recognition and keeping anything positive or anything I still needed. And then doing the opposite, releasing anything negative about not wanting that recognition and keeping anything positive or anything I still needed about that. What came up was rage, supersized rage. It was scary. I worked on releasing my fear of it and waiting for it to change. The rage shot me out of the space I was in, and I was floating over a beautiful meadow. Shelly said I had a waking flying dream. I have never had a flying dream before. I have been aware that others do, and I didn't, but I haven't known the significance. I still don't. I wasn't wholly comfortable floating around. I kept on peddling with my legs as if I could control my movement doing that.
I remember reading once, I believe in a Shirly MacLaine book, that it is possible to die in one of those flying dreams. They were described as out of body experiences, and if the silver cord connected that floating self to the body was cut, the person could die. I asked Shelly to keep a good grip on the cord so I couldn't go too far. Again, I have no idea if there is really any truth to this, but I figured better safe than sorry.
I interpreted the experience of floating as the ultimate individualism. There was no one else in the picture. I was totally alone, disconnected from the earth, and from social commitments. In my early thirties, just before I met Mike, I hitched from Boston, where I was visiting a friend, to an undeveloped piece of property in Maine owned by someone I met in Boston. I stayed there alone for something like 3 to 5 days. I made a lean-to with tarps. I had never been so peaceful. I left knowing that I would have to work out my relationship with others, which scared me to death, but I also knew that I had a peacefulness inside of me when I was alone. What was scary was the degree of separation from others. I needed to feel safe. Being that alone seemed like a frightening prospect. I left with a deepened commitment to work it out. It seemed like the only moral path.
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Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.
I came across some papers on St. Ignatius's discerning process in the process of cleaning up' Mike's library. It starts out saying that there are good spirits and evil spirits. Good spirts make you happy, give consolation, and bad spirits create desolation, distress. In the beginning, this sounds like a simple process, and then it goes on to explain how difficult discernment really is. Feeling good can be used by evil to create false contentment, and feeling bad can be used by the good spirits to push us to change. He sees it as a most confusing process. The author and I totally agree. He says the key aspect is our commitment to do God's will versus following our own desires. Great! That solves everything, doesn't it? How do we know when we are doing 'God's will?
Discernment is the key to most of life when to zig versus zag. Every moment of our lives creates opportunities to do one or the other. Some cling to a commitment to God or the church or prayer or meditation or exercise, which serves to help them avoid real discernment. There is no secure standard of measure. How do any of us know if we are following the will of God, whatever that means? Let's say it means doing the maximum good for self and everyone else. As I read the description of being good, it generally focuses on others instead of self. I argue that the goal is the narrow path between what is best for self and others. That's the most difficult one. Ignoring self means ignoring others, and, conversely, ignoring others means ignoring self. If our well-being depends on the welfare of others, it logically follows that their well-being depends on ours. We cannot overlook self or others. If we focus just on self or just on others, we will be led astray.
I have devised a means of discernment that I use in my healing work, which I have had considerable success with. It starts with a person's intent. If someone comes to me declaring they want power over others, I'm not interested. However, I can appreciate that they feel they need more control over their own lives. Yet, if they only hold others responsible for the problems in their life, I'm not their 'man.'
Most discernment starts with two choices, good versus evil, or just good versus bad. The method I use offers three options, and it asks the body-brain to do the work, not the conscious mind. The choices involve what's bad, what's good, and what the person still needs. Introducing the last two elements is essential. First, it recognizes that someone may release a little of what is holding them back, but not all of it. It acknowledges their boundaries, their limitations without abandoning the ideal. It respects the person in the most profound sense of the word, not just their conscious intentions. None of us are only our conscious intentions; at least that's what I believe, and I'm sticking to it. Offering the three choices allows the person to release what they can and what they are ready to release. It doesn't propose an all or nothing choice.
The second aspect of the work is that it requires examining feelings from two perspectives: the desire to have something and the desire not to have the same thing, the fear of not having something, and the fear of having that thing. I find when I do a release on the less obvious feeling, I get the most significant release and the most valuable information as to the next move in the healing.
Overriding all the work details is the intent of the conscious mind; that intent has to be for the well-being of self and others, even someone who has done them harm. This does not mean they are working on being 'nice' to someone. Sometimes, we have to push people away simply because they are too toxic for us, and it may be the best thing for them. Being good to people does not always mean being nice, not even always gentle. As with all discernment, these are tough calls. All we can do is the best we can. Here intention comes in. The intention is what determines our course, followed by the prayer, "Lord, let me do no harm."
