The Bitter and The Sweet

IThe duality of things in life has developed an esoteric component to it that can be difficult to truly internalize and embody for many of us. We almost can't help but focus on whatever it is our mindset causes us to focus on. And wherever our focus rests is what becomes real to us. But it is in the acceptance of this duality that we can really practice transcendence in the form of things like gratitude and unconditional love. The most traumatic and difficult experience I've had in my life was watching my mom suffer through the battle of Alzheimer's Disease. If you've had to endure the battle of watching and caring for a loved one deal with this, you know that after a point they are unaware of what is going on and all the suffering is internalized by you. The physical and emotional toll is nothing short of extraordinary. This ordeal was the only time in my life I battled glimmers of losing all hope in maintaining optimism because the load was so severe at times. After a four and a half year toll, my mom transitioned and it took time for me to mourn her now physical loss as dementia forces you to start to mourn someone emotionally. But I have been able to come to a point where I can look at this traumatic experience as also being one of the most valuable ones in my life. Physics tells us that positive and negative always exist. One cannot exist without the other. The bitter and the sweet always exist in unison. Our minds, and mindsets, play a big role in orchestrating this experience in us. For example, when we are in love, we are incapable of seeing flaws the person has, but the flaws were always there in plain sight. The neurochemical love cocktail of neurotransmitters and hormones effectively changes what we feel thus it changes what we expect to see. When the 'chemical cocktail' subsides, flaws are now able to be viewed that were always present and depending on the individuals and the dynamic in relationship, can create problems between two people who were once very much in love. The ability to practice presence is not an innate quality. It takes awareness then desire to develop. When we are present we can experience things in a way that are almost unbiased. The fears of our past and anxieties of a future that doesn't exist are not in play. These mind hucksters are kept at bay by gratitude. When we can practice gratitude for a present experience, it opens up in us a portal where we can experience unconditional love, the optimal growth and healing state. For almost five years I practiced presence with my mom in her struggles and along that journey developed a practice of gratitude I never performed before. This opened me up to be able to experience unconditional love on a level that was previously foreign to me. Although I could not see it while it was happening, there were positives in my struggles with dealing with my mom's illness and subsequent passing. When we take time to create space between any stimulus and our chosen response, we can in fact weigh the bitter and the sweet and if we can practice presence and gratitude it will bring us to unconditional love.