Thursday, September 30, 2021

THE CURE

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

This may be one of those times.

The likelihood is that the bacterial infection I have spreading in both lungs stems from the open-heart surgery I had in 2019. No one can say with certainty. It does not affect the treatment plan. I guess the mind does seek the resolution that comes from thinking we know the origin of something.

The reality is that I will never know.

The nodules that began in one of my lungs were discovered by accident. My knowledge of the nodules was also given me by accident, a year after they first appeared on a CT scan for something unrelated. It was presented to me as most likely a case of lung cancer. That in fact is not the case. It is an apparently aggressive and hard to treat bacterial infection that has spread now to both lungs. Though measurably spreading it has remained almost completely asymptomatic. I was sent from a pulmonary specialist to an infectious disease doctor. That physician suggested that we wait another six months before deciding when to begin the actual treatment. As an additional CT scan showed continued growth the doctor advised that I needed to begin a fierce regimen of antibiotic therapy that would most likely take a year or more to arrest the infection. He advised that if I did elect to begin treatment it would result in permanent damage to my lungs.

The caveat (one of them) in all of this is that the cure is reportedly much worse than the symptoms I was not actually experiencing. My ID doctor prophesied that when I began treatment I would be cussing him as I would feel much worse as a result of the treatment than I did as an effect of the disease.
,br> Great.

And so, I am in my third week of three different antibiotics taken at three intervals throughout the day. I decided at the onset that I did not have to live into the prognostications of how I would feel as a result of the treatment. I come from a long line of “power-through” survivors. I rarely have side effects from any drug. I began actively blessing the medications from the very first dose. And it truly seemed to be having a beneficial effect.

And then…

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

It started with a slight queasiness that was pretty easy to move through. Then it progressed to a noticeable level of brain fog, followed by what seems to be an increasing experience of fatigue. I had a couple of hours yesterday when I literally was not really able to function.

From asymptomatic to paralyzing reaction, all in the name of cure.

Really.

Let me be clear for those of you still reading that it gives me no satisfaction to report on my physical challenges or the distasteful results of my treatment. While I am aware that I may not be at my best for quite some time I write not to explain or defend that. I write solely in service of what I find to be a meaningful comparison, and in hopes that my transparency may benefit someone else. I do not expect that anyone else will care about my fatigue or more than usual brain fog.

It took me quite a while and more than a little confusion to recognize that in terms of spiritual awakening the cure can seem far worse than the disease.

I did not come to my current path of spirituality asymptomatic of struggle and emotional suffering. I was in a great deal of pain. I was self-medicated. I was drowning in victim consciousness and bound tightly by projection and blame. I was caught in a web of my making, yet I had no clue that it was true. The effects of my life were largely a mess and getting worse.

After a far too brief honeymoon period of surface high the cure began to kick in with shocking intensity.

The cure felt far worse than the disease.

I now know that my primary spiritual practice was about allowing the Love and Light to expose all the causations of what comprised my self-torment. I had lived at the effect of what I did not know I did not know. My own unconsciousness was what was fueling my unskillfulness. I was always looking through my own lens of consciousness and then blaming what I saw for my pain. I tried to treat symptoms without ever going to the cause. I deceived myself into thinking everyone else was the problem, when all the while it was me. My victimhood had gone viral, and I was the only one who didn’t know.

And so, I thought my life was going to be awash in pink and rainbows and flowers and maybe even a few unicorns. I was shocked that I did not realize the prosperity, perfect health, and boundless greatness.

What I got was more of a mess.

By grace I was able to recognize the increasing pain in the context of healing and integration. I was led to the perfect teachers and teachings that let me know the increased messiness was in service of eventual clarity and wisdom. It made the cure bearable, knowing it was part of the healing of the disease. I trusted that if I did not try to power through and avoid what was arising, that a far better way of living was emerging for me, from me.

I knew experientially that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. And I was willing to stick with it.

Did I like it?

No way.

Did I want to change my mind and fall back asleep in unconsciousness?

Yep.

And have I chosen to see it though?

Gratefully, yes, I have.

There are no permanent effects in consciousness. While the body does not always heal consciousness is forever malleable and transformative. Regardless of how long we have identified with erroneous beliefs they can always be changed. Chronic thoughts are both viral and contagious. And they cannot withstand the Light of pure Presence. And that is what healing is all about. Allowing the Light of pure Presence to shine within our Being.

I type these words with a feeling of queasiness in my stomach and more than a little fatigue and fog. I am aware that it is time to take my next dose of antibiotic, the strongest of the day.

Do I feel like taking it?

No.

Do I know that it is in the best interest of my body being cured of this bacterial visitor?

Yes.

My treatment plan is lots of prayer and inner presence, while also complying with the instructions of those way smarter than me about these matters. I have not and will not make this condition an enemy to conquer. I have been told that the drugs have a cumulative effect, and I lean softly into that potential while also not making it a fixed and inescapable reality. While physically I feel far less than well, I am knowing that the cure is indeed in service of my wellness. I love and trust my doctors, and I am choosing to love myself through this unpleasant stretch of road in my adventure in physicality.

Just as was the case and continues to be the case in my spiritual awakening there are many uncomfortable moments in the process. There is pain. There is resistance. And there is clarity. There is insight. There is an overall sense that everything is in service of my becoming.

I am applying the same truth to my current physical reality. I am not pretending I feel well. I am not allowing the symptoms to totally use me. In fact, I am using them as I write these words.

Sometimes it seems that the cure is worse than the disease.

That being said I know that this state of discomfort will pass. I know not when. I choose not to lock into resistance to the symptoms or to how long they last. As long as I need to experience this I will. Fully. Freely. I will continue to do what I need to do and to also apply supreme self-care as I do it.

Queasy. Tired. A bit fogged in. And yet not lost in those symptoms.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Or at least it seems to be.

I am knowing that this current state of being is in service of my overall sense of becoming. I trust it. I lean into it. I let it be.

Just as with my spiritual awakening this current discomfort is in service of a greater knowing. A greater state of health and wholeness.

Even queasy I am knowing it is so.

Thursday, September 23, 2021

ONLY

This only for the sake of this.

Now only for the sake of now.

Here only for the sake of being here.

What an incredible liberation.

For most of my years everything I planned, thought about, did, achieved was always for the sake of something else.

Education was for the sake of what I would do with it later, when I was finished with school.

Working was for the sake of what I would do with the money, especially after work, on weekends, and on vacation.

Time was generally spent dedicated to ensuring that one day I would have more time to do what I really wanted.

Relationships were largely for the way they made me feel when they were going well. Otherwise, they were for the sake of fixing the way I didn’t like feeling. You were a way of achieving a perceived inner rightness. Unless you made me feel wrong. Relating was indirectly a means to an end. When I didn’t like the relating the interacting would end.

Youth was spent wishing I was older. I perceived that being older meant I would get to do what I wanted. Being older meant freedom.

Being older began at least by wishing I was younger so that I had the stamina and energy to use the freedom I finally obtained by indeed becoming older.

Then I saw how much of my life had really been a means to an end.

And I wept.

The weeping was not to get or be or do something else. I didn’t weep as a prerequisite for some other experience. It was a raw kind of weeping simply for the sake of weeping. Simply for the experience of allowing the tears to clear my eyes and mind of the compulsion to live for “when, then.” Weeping to wash away any notion that there was a better moment than just this moment. That there was a better place to be than actually being here. That there was something better to be doing than what I am doing now. Weeping not for a purpose. Yet in simply allowing the tears a purpose was in fact fulfilled.

I realized my life is not a means to an end.

I also realized my spirit-life was not a process of fixing what was broken. I found that I will never be more spiritual than I am right now. That realization allowed me to really experience it.

I realized awakening was not about changing what I am or how I am wired, programmed, conditioned. I realized that awakening is really just knowing all of those things and being absolutely, completely, unconditionally okay with myself just as I am.

Now.

Not when this happens or that gets fixed or I have more time, money, friends, education, awakening. Not when I am somewhere else with someone else being something different than I currently am.

Now this.

As is.

This only for the sake of this.

Now only for the sake of now.

Here only for the sake of here.

Writing these words only for the sake of writing these words.

My life has radically simplified with the editing of one two letter word.

I have moved from living in “if only.”

To “only.”

No longer if.

Only.

Only.

I am free.

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

GONE TOO SOON

She is gone too soon.

In saying that I also recognize that I may be attempting to write this too soon.

My friend Bonnie died Saturday evening.

I seek not to soften that reality by using words such as passed, crossed over, or transitioned.

My friend Bonnie died Saturday evening and she died too soon.

She is gone too soon.

I seek not to soften the raw reality of the too soon experience with spiritual by-passes and lofty ideals.

I know that in the Absolute the Essence of the person I knew has gone back into the quantum and lives on as eternal Spirit. I do not need to be reminded of that by those unable to sit with me in this devastating loss. I know that the spirit goes on. I know that at a level the spirit is still here. It is not the spirit that I grieve. It is the person. The spirit is here yet the person, the friend, the wondrous human that was Bonnie is now gone. And it is the person, the friend, the wondrous human that I am just beginning to grieve.

The person, the friend, the wondrous human is gone too soon.

Too damn soon.

My friend Bonnie was really and truly one of a kind. She was a complete original. As authentic as anyone I have ever known. She was real. Really real. Refreshingly real. Probably for some unnervingly real. You did not have to wonder how she felt about something. No pretense. Upfront. Right there. Caring yet unflinching. Tender yet appropriately tough. If it needed to be called out Bonnie called it out. She was all about right and wrong. Not that she decided those factors for others. But what she saw as right and what she saw as wrong she spoke to. Especially in regard to inequality and injustice. Bonnie had a well-defined sense of justice, and she devoted her life to defending and serving what she saw as just. What she saw as equal. What she saw as humane and true. And she did not stop at speaking about it. She put her time, her resource, her energy, and passion into it. Her words and her actions were congruent.

Bonnie was brilliantly smart. Wickedly funny. Fierce. Loyal. Loving. Caring. Compassionate. Honest. Fiery. Faithful. Forgiving.

Forgiving.

The realness of Bonnie was what made her so available to forgiveness. She did not pretend that things were alright when she clearly did not think that they were. She spoke out. She often spoke up to speak out louder until she knew that she was heard. She allowed the fire in her to rise and to flame, and then she let that fire be the light that led her into the avenues of forgiveness and mercy. Bonnie was not afraid to get messy. To be messy. To splash around in the messiness. To invite others into the messiness for the sake of inner clarity. Even when she doggedly thought she was right she was willing to be wrong. It was not ambiguity. It was an assertiveness and bravery to pursue what was true whatever the cost.

Talented, passionate. Articulate and adventurous. Generous and giving. My God, Bonnie was generous in every, every way.

Bonnie was incredibly strong in spirit. And Bonnie was often weak within the flesh. While her health might have slowed her down it never stopped her for long. She would rise again, pursuing her passions and embodying her values. When others would have given up Bonnie chose to give even more.

I write these words with as much clarity and conviction as I have ever put into words: The world is a better place because Bonnie lived.

The world is a better place because Bonnie lived.

Lived.

And my friend Bonnie no longer physically lives.

She is gone too soon.

For all my years of meta-physical knowing I am personally not ready for Bonnie to be gone.

I risk speaking this raw yet relevant truth in a public forum: my heart wants her back.

She is gone too soon, and I want her back.

That is what is true in my heart today.

A mutual friend told me that she was not done with Bonnie. I so get that. I will never be done with Bonnie. Never.

It is too soon for platitudes so please spare me those.

I am sure of a few things in this oh so early stage of engulfing grief:

My friend Bonnie has died, and she is gone too soon.

The world is a better place because my friend Bonnie has lived.

I am a better person because my friend Bonnie was indeed my friend.

I already see ways in which I can be a living memorial to her memory. I can be more authentic, real, compassionate, caring, uncompromising, fiery, feisty, bold, generous, outspoken. I can amp up my game for a more equal and just world. I can go even more deeply into the muddy messiness for the sake of uncovering the something greater.

Bonnie is gone too soon. Yet she lives on and forever in all she gave during the relatively brief tenure of her years. She lives on in the countless people she helped and served. She lives on in her brilliant and accomplished sons. She lives on in her equally incredible husband. The impact she and they have made humbles and inspires me. I love her. I love them. I will always love her. That will never become past tense.

I love you, Bonnie, and you are gone too soon.

Though she was a much better writer than I, I also know she is watching with love as I tearfully fumble with these words. It was, indeed, too soon to write. Yet I needed to begin to express the cascading feelings that are pulsating through me. I needed to say out loud:

She is gone too soon.

I will forever love you, Bonnie.

Forever.

Saturday, September 11, 2021

SPECIAL EDITION: TURN ON YOUR TV

“Turn on your TV.”

I can hear and feel the words as clearly today as I did those twenty years ago.

I remember it as a stunningly beautiful Tuesday morning.

I recall an especially deep, beautiful, profound extended practice.

I remember seeing the rhythmic flashing of my voicemail indicator and literally thinking to myself that whatever this message says I get to meet it from a spacious and freshly awakened place.

“Turn on your TV.”

I fumbled for the TV remote at the same time as I hit redial on my telephone. If there is onea gap in my memory of that September morning experience it is as to whether I heard my friends voice first or whether it was the horrific images I saw. They seemed to and perhaps they did happend simultaneously.

We spoke very few words. We did not need to. I could hear and feel his breathing as if it were my own. To this day I know in fact it was my own. For all of the stunning and traumatizing images we would see it is the shared breath that I so clearly remember. It was the connection of that shared breath that was my sustaining force and stability as I watched our world forever change.

Three ways calling allowed the gathering of we two to become the communion of we three. The shared breathing and almost wordless spaciousness will forever be the context from which I experienced and remember September 11, 2001.

I had no sense of time as we breathed together and allowed the breath to be our prayer. An indescribable gasp from one of us escaped as the first tower began to rumble down to the ground. Was it me who gasped? Was it her? Him? It felt as if it were the gasp of humanity. I believe it was.

“Turn on your TV.”

How could such a perfect, splendid morning have devolved into this? How did my always highly tuned energy system not perceive that something so dastardly was happening until I heard those words:

“Turn on the TV.”

We three prayed our way through the falling of the first tower. Prayed our way through the collapsing of the second. We prayed wordlessly through image after unspeakable image. Replay after remarkable replay. Commentary after narrative after speculation after prognostication. Words, words, words coming out of that TV.

I do not remember how much time elapsed before I quietly yet resolutely said that we must call our community together and share in a collective energy of prayer. I knew that we must face this together as a faith community. I knew that we much turn off the TV and turn on the shared prayer.

As my then Interfaith community was meeting in a private high school we were asked to wait until the parents of the students had collected their children before we met at the facility. By 3:00 that afternoon we were gathered in a circle of sharing, praying, crying, communion. I still feel the rolling dynamics of that time together. I still feel the power of the connection. The heightened emotional intensity, and also the amplified vibrational luminosity. There was an unmistakable triggering of trauma. There was a floundering in how to meet that. What to do with that. How to meet each other in that. And there was a level of support and compassion that we had never had to call upon before. We had never needed each other that much. We had never needed shared prayer that much. We had never needed community that much.

I knew before reaching home from that communal experience that the almost perfect contemplative morning I enjoyed was the context I would need to meet what was going to occur. I needed to be centered, strong, stable to be able to prayerfully lead the community that was in my charge. I would need increased stamina to draw people together in multiple arenas of prayer in my own and in the greater community. I needed to access an abundant Source of energy to do what I knew was mine to do, while also personally and intimately facing the devastation of what had occurred. I know I needed to find a balance between staying informed and saturating myself with replays of unspeakable evil and tragedy.

I met the events of September 11, 2001, within prayer.

I am meeting the twenty-year-old memories of September 11, 2001, within prayer.

While I know there will be much coverage and televising today of those historic images there is no voice within me advising me to turn the TV on. I do not feel called to replays and commentary.

There is, though, an internal voice that is leading me to keep the prayer energy flowing. I am praying with every memory. Praying with every Soul lost. Praying with every survivor. Every hero. Everyone affected by those images. I am hearing and feeling my every breath just as I did on that day.

I have been blessed to visit that hallowed ground that became known as Ground Zero. I have seen the one tower built to replace and I surmise redeem the two. I have prayed at the memorial site. I have read the names and I have cried my tears. I have heard countless times the echoing words of “turn on your TV.”

Today my television is off.

Today my memories are on.

Today my heart is open.

Today my prayer is vital and flowing.

I have grown strong enough since that fateful day to meet my experiences with a transcendent faith that is fueled my prayer. It is not that my faith may not waiver. It is that my faith always returns to center. I always breathe and I faithfully return to prayer. I know firsthand the power of sharing prayer. Especially but not limited to times of trauma and sorrow.

So, every time I see and hear the words “never forget” I know I never will. I will never forget those images. The suffering and the loss. The towers falling and the spirits rising. I will never forget how I chose to meet those events. With whom I chose to meet those events. What we contributed together as we met those events.

“Turn on your TV.”

Those words ushered in a whole new reality for me. And I, like our world, have never been the same.

Thursday, September 9, 2021

THIS IS IT

From my earliest recollections I knew this could not be it.

When I say I knew this could not be it the “it” I am referring to is the world I was being handed and interpreted by my then authority figures. Reality as it was being described and explained made no sense to me what-so-ever.

No sense what-so-ever.

I had a dream when I was six or seven that an Indian chief came and kidnapped me from my bed and carried me a long distance, laying me face down on a desert of very hot sand. Though I had been carried quite a distance I could faintly see the outline of my family in the direction from which I had been carried. It was more a revelation than it was a dream. I can still to this day feel every aspect of it. The huge hands around my waist. The sensation of the chief running and carrying me. The heat of the sand. The looking back. Way back.

I awoke with a start and with a deep knowing that I would never fit within my tribal system again.

And I never did or have.

I have had a similar sense of prayer and praying my entire life. I have always suspected that this could not be it. That the religious exercise that I was taught was as anemic as it was unfulfilling. And it was as ineffective as it was unfulfilling.

The ways of praying that I was taught as a child were left behind me when I was carried away to what I now know is a desert of greater possibility. The prayer of my tribal system was mental, bargaining, pleading, outlining, and downright arrogant. I was told inadvertently to describe my problems in detail to an up and out God, and then tell “him” how and when to fix them. I remember the sensation of squeezing shut both my hands and my eyes for greater emphasis. I also recall it feeling vague and vastly empty. The old praying “to-for” was dissonant from an early age.

I knew this could not be it.

That Indian chief carried me away to a place I now know I was born to dwell.

It was never about rejecting my “tribe.” I am clearer than ever that my family and culture were the perfect container for my Soul-unfoldment. I also know I needed to move far beyond yet in sight of those systems. The contrast was and remains highly useful. That includes the religious tradition I was born into. While I see and experience it in radically different ways at this point in my journey there is nothing adversarial in how I view it. I needed it then. I transcended it by including it. Archetypically it is still highly useful.

And I knew it could not be it.

I am grateful to report that while I discovered that there is indeed far more to life than what I was taught I do not reside in a fixed state that thinks I somehow now know. I am blessed to live within an openness regarding an ongoing evolution in perspective and in prayer. I remain curious and permeable. I do not fear the possibility that one night while asleep an Indian chief will once again pick me up and carry me further from the tribe and the culture that I now inhabit. I not only do not fear it. I welcome it.

Praying for me is no longer mental. It is void of bargaining, pleading, and outlining. If there is some sense of arrogance left, I am not aware of it.

Praying for me now is felt, intimate, uncontrolled, and vital. I have a far greater sense that prayer is happening in me than I do that I am somehow managing a process. I engage in praying by keeping my non-negotiable appointments with my “prayer-chair.” I drop into my heart. I breathe, I align, I attune, and I come into entrainment with the frequency of my Source. I not only do not tell “God” my problems or how I think they should be fixed. I do not tell “God” anything. I simply steep. I simmer. I let be.

I simply steep, simmer, and let be.

Nary a word. An indescribable state of expectancy. Variable yet also stable. I seek to change nothing about it or me. I simply show up and let prayer happen.

Vastly different from the prayers of my initial experience. Different, even blasphemous, I guess. Yet also deliciously intimate. Moving.

I guess you could say that long ago I got carried away. And it is still happening.

And while there remains room and openness to go deeper, I know that my Indian chief took me to where I was meant to be. Where I was meant to abide. Where I am meant to dwell.

There is finally a place within me that prays and knows beyond knowing that this is it.