By Day 6, I was getting into the groove of meditation. We all were. They were still gruelling days to be sure, but the main group meditations were getting easier. The level 8 or 9 pain didn't reach me until the end of the hour-long meditation.
I was now starting my days with a new affirmation. It had been given to me by the One Who Observes, as he had watched me during that moment of holding Kirsten in the waves as she talked about not having anything to live for anymore.
The day will come when I am with you soon enough. But that day is not today, and until that time, I choose to honour my love and memory of you and live every last day to its fullest, just as you would have me do.
I was saying this to Finn, strange concept probably for some, but as a desperately grieving parent, believe me, you need to believe that when you speak to them, they can hear you.
This affirmation sat very well with my new feeling of calmness. My assuredness that I had come out of the dark night of the soul. I was looking forward to trying to deliver daily on this affirmation. To live every day to its fullest.
Before the camp started, we had been hanging out with some of the other students and Kirsten told a story that felt relatively poignant at the time. It was of Ram Dass, aka Dr Richard Alpert, a famous author on spirituality who spoke about a mosquito landing on his cheek, and him observing it inject the poison, suck blood for a few minutes and then wobbly fly off with its payload. A fully bloated bloody sack. All without a single flinch.
I was about to have my first Ram Dass moment. If you don't know who Ram Dass, and you're reading this far into the post, do yourself a favour and look him up. He's my guru, and he's actually pretty damn funny too.
By Day 6, I was still quite sick, feverish and with a head cold. 10 minutes into the 8am to 9am group meditation, I felt a globule of snot collect at the tip of my nose. It was a welcome distraction, and exactly in the Anapana range of focus. Whether it was me or the One Who Observes, I couldn't tell who was in control, but I felt content to separate myself from the sensation of wanting to react and wipe it off my nose. The globule gradually grew big enough to start its drippy wet way down through the upper part of my lip. Prime Anapana lip focus area. I imagine the snot droplet now weaving its way down through the stubble on my upper lip like a penny bouncing down through a Plinko board game. Randomly being assigned a new route based on the stubble of hairs like the wooden pegs on the Plinko board. Eventually, the snot landed on the top part of my lip and dropped a salty tear into my mouth. Now that it had forged its way there, the snot was freely flowing as a small rivulet from my nose directly into my mouth. I observed all of this with a detached sense of amusement that I was having a similar experience to that of the great Ram Dass. My Ram Dass awakening moment was snot dripping into my mouth, and observing it without judgment.
How fitting.
The rest of the session was pretty standard. The girdle of liquid fire wasn't being put on until at least 40 minutes into the meditations now, giving me only the last 20 minutes where I had to dance shifting quietly to give relief between the different pain centres. All with the same dialogue of each pain centre calling in their respective pain levels, while I or the One Who Observes quietly obeyed so that we could make it through the meditation without opening our eyes or moving our legs. It was happening, and even on Day 6. I felt ahead of the curve since the teacher told me most students do this on Day 8, not Day 6.
While walking out to the lotus pond that afternoon, I wondered how on earth the dragonfly could give a different message today. Two days ago, the dragonfly sat stationary for 6 hours, all day without moving. That's what I needed. The next day, after I had felt love in my heart for the first time since Finn had died, the dragonfly formed a heart-shaped mating dance with a partner. A sign of love. What on earth could the dragonfly possibly show me today? It must be out of ways to communicate messages.
Walking slowly around the pond to find a new message, I came across a dragonfly with a juvenile right next to it.
New beginnings.