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Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced. ~ Marquis de Sade
Dispelling the Cultural Phobia Around Death
When faced with the inevitable challenges life brings, I have tried to meet each trial head-on, once I was able to tap into the hard-earned resources I have acquired through the years. The diagnosis of progressive multiple sclerosis in 2003, presented me with the greatest ordeal I would have to face in life. Mysteriously, when the symptoms began in the late 80s, I instantly grasped the profound level of disability that would eventually evolve from this illness. This resulted in the greatest fear of my life, yet I slowly began to move forward with the willingness to simply not know.
I and my family are coming to terms with the shortening of my life that used to be an abstract concept, but has become very real recently as my organs are beginning to shut down. Little did I know when the symptoms began, there was no treatment for this neurological disease. Meeting my death at 64, has presented my greatest challenge as well as my greatest opportunity. There may be no treatment for many of the these devastating neurological illnesses, but we ARE developing options to meet an inevitable and sometimes premature death, with more compassion, awareness, and humility. As our culture begins to meet death with greater acceptance, we are better able to care for ourselves and for each other. In doing so, we will be better able to meet our final transition with Grace and awe, knowing we are coming face-to-face with the Sacred.
Meeting the Unknown
When I recently realized my organs were shutting down, it took a while for my mind to grasp the significance. My modus operandi for meeting each physical challenge has been to just keep moving forward. Most of the acute obstacles to moving forward were in the form of injuries that had to be addressed immediately. Concurrently, there was the constant background noise, the signs of a continual downward trajectory in functioning. Injuries were easier to manage, because they had: the initial injury, a recovery time, and then finding a new baseline. Functional decline was more difficult to deal with. I was continually strategizing: being vigilant to avoid further injury, listening deeply to my body to what was wanting to be heard, and attending to the changes required. Due to the efficacy of this strategizing, I, and my beloveds, had become lulled into a form of denial that somehow strategizing could actually keep my body going, ad infinitum.
At this sacred time of shutting down a vibrant, generous, and loving life, I have begun my life review, which is a common practice once the shock and grief abate. Looking back, I am aware that I have lived a good life, yet as with any life well lived, I have also made many questionable and downright poor choices along the way. However, with this broader perspective, I am realizing that there really are no mistakes. Each supposed mistake was a learning experience that provided an opportunity for acknowledgment, forgiveness and led to more educated choices in the future. For me personally, it is about discerning how to live my life with greater integrity, authenticity, and grace as I move toward the doorway we call death.
It was merely ten days ago when it became obvious that my digestive system could no longer process foods as it had. Concurrently, my appetite plummeted and it was clear where I was in the trajectory of my life – that I was facing my death. I began to grieve acutely, revealing an understandable level of denial. I am aware of the many times I told clients that some denial is necessary during times of great change. I recognize that I could not have lived such a regenerative life without this ability to compartmentalize. My body was no longer wanting the fuel that would sustain it, so I knew my days were being drastically shortened and that I needed to consider my options carefully.
The Many Options Open to Us Now
Since Colorado passed the end-of-life options act last November and I had gone through the arduous process of securing the prescription, I had the comfort of knowing I had the safety net it afforded, should I begin to suffer needlessly. Another option would be to do V-SED – voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, a process my body had already begun. Although not eating felt voluntary on a certain level, I knew in my heart of hearts that if I were to live in full integrity, it would mean following the direction my body was leading. MAID and V-SED are both viable options, but they just felt too abrupt for this body at this time, given my lack of pain and suffering, at least at this time.
I knew my soul was ready to go and I wondered what it would take for the rest of me to let go and follow. My body was already beginning the process of letting go, but my mind had been strategizing for many years in order to live alone with this condition that demanded continually being in survival mode. Rejecting food appeared voluntary on the surface, but what I knew internally and was afraid to admit, was that it actually was involuntary and I felt to force it would be out of integrity. I knew my soul was ready to let go, to move on to my next adventure of going Home, but I felt conflicted, because it would cause others so much pain. Was I betraying my beloveds? Was I betraying my body? How could I possibly share this with others and feel their grief along with mine, when each of ours was so raw?
As I am sitting with the predicament, a new option has appeared. I could eat and drink only when there was the desire and open to my body’s natural timing. I could find the courage to completely let go of control, and see how this new way of being could serve me (and also serve others). Taking this option meant suspending any sense of knowing and opening to my loved ones’ love and generosity when I am the most vulnerable! This meant that I had to fully embrace being the recipient of so much love that it would stretch my remaining feelings of unworthiness that I knew I still harbored. To me, receiving love and not feeling deserving represents the last frontier of my arduous and sacred Work.
It is essential to clarify that this slow moving illness that is accompanied by very little physical pain is extremely unusual. If I had unbearable pain, acute cancer, ALS, or if I had less support or fewer resources, I would choose MAID in a New York second, as we said in New Orleans.
Given my propensity to struggle with letting go, I decided to write a love letter to my body/mind in the hopes it can finally relax and let go. Although it is very personal, I graciously want to share this with you, my devoted readers. Thank you for your unyielding support over the past months and years.
Love Letter to My Body
My dear loving body/mind, my precious vehicle for this lifetime,
You have served me well. Thank you for being a body with so much endurance and so much forgiveness. I am humbled at your service.
You have taken so many insults, so much abuse, and you have met it all with so much grace. You have had your bones broken, twisted, forced to go beyond your capacity, but you have served us well.
You grew two of the most amazing children I can ever imagine. And from them came amazing grandchildren and perhaps there will be more. I, Aliyah’s soul, will be watching, listening, ever giving my two cents, but always loving.
You have weathered quite a curriculum to teach me how to better love and that I am worthy of being loved. The former, I came wired with the ability, but the latter was more hard earned. I guess that is why it’s called a “curriculum.”
You have fulfilled your Sacred commitment to me with generosity and grace – I release you with loving gratitude. You are free to do what bodies do. You have served me to the utmost and I can’t imagine any better body to carry me through this life.
I will not force you to eat when your system does not want to digest. I will not trick your body with medications, I will let you shut down with as little struggle possible. I will help you let go, if your mind pushes you beyond your limits due to the guilt from perfectionism that has plagued you, or an unrealistic belief that you are necessary to lessen others’ grief. I will not abandon you. I will help you let go of needless suffering with whatever resources I have available to me with the same generosity you have afforded me.
Your mind has served me well. It has helped me be the first person in my family to have an advanced degree and use that in service to others. What better joy in life can there be? You have helped me to strategize an impossible curriculum with impossible circumstances. Without you I could not have accomplished living alone unable to move from the neck down for as many years as I have, touching so many lives. I learned to receive love and the greater challenge was I learned to ask for help.
Without my body and mind, I would have left long ago. We did really really well!
It is almost time to completely let go, to scatter joy to the earth, the air, and water, especially the water. We can know that we did what we came here to do. We can let go and let Love!
Weekly, Crestone’s Threshold Choir comes to sing a cappella at my bedside. Here is an example of one of their songs:
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. ~ Anaïs Nin
Much has been written about The Shadow, originally described by Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, a pioneer of Depth Psychology, an approach to psychotherapy close to my heart that includes the exploration of the unconscious and transpersonal aspects of the human psyche. The Jungian construct of the shadow involves those parts of the Self that we deem as flawed and unlovable, often due to early trauma, and therefore, relegate them to our unconscious. Eckhart Tolle describes it as the painbody, a semi-autonomous psychic entity of old emotional pain not faced, accepted, and let go of in the moment they were experienced.
Encountering the Shadow
Often these traumas have roots in our childhood, transferred by the unexamined (shadow) aspects of those in our family of origin whom we most trusted. Delivered as criticism or rejection, we learn to deny these injured parts to avoid further pain and, ironically, end up attracting to us exactly what we are trying to ward off.
Our shadow reveals our deepest wound, which also holds the key to our greatest healing. Our unexamined pain accumulates and combines with that of others’ to form a collective shadow. Wars have erupted due to our unconscious collective shadows. I believe by working to bring these aspects to consciousness, one person at a time, we can not only lessen the conflict in our own lives, but ultimately achieve world peace.
Robert Bly describes the shadow as the bag we drag around behind us through our life and when aspects of ourselves appear that create discomfort, we throw them into the bag as unclaimed, unlovable parts of our persona. The bag becomes heavier and heavier until we develop the courage to begin to take each dissociated part out to bring it into the light of consciousness.
In shamanism, the shaman, or healer, is seen as one who can walk between the human and spirit worlds to retrieve our discarded parts in order to restore balance to the soul, whether the imbalances are caused by fear, loneliness, addictions, or other ills.
Dancing With the Shadow
If we are courageous enough to enter into long-term, committed relationships, it is likely we will encounter the proverbial mirror that forces us to see our shadow projected onto our beloved. Discerning what is ours from theirs is the crisis and the opportunity of deep intimacy. For me, it took a series of divorces to realize who the common denominator was. During my first and most tumultuous marriage, it was easy to shrug off any criticism as his projections, but when I encountering similar criticisms during my second marriage, I began to recognize recurring patterns.
I don’t believe my rigorous life path of learning through relationships has been arbitrary. I believe it was specifically designed for me to learn and teach others self-love through the healing power of intimacy. As a psychotherapist, being of service has been a large part of my mission and doing my own personal work has been an essential prerequisite. I remember asking my former mentor, “Do I have to experience everything in order to be of service to my beloveds?!” Not everybody needs to experience a curriculum as extreme as mine, but as a psychotherapist, you can only take other people as far you have already gone.
From another former mentor, Werner Erhard, a complicated but significant leader of the “human potential movement,” I learned that in order to truly have a relationship, you must be willing to not have that relationship. To me, this meant that in order to truly have an intimate relationship with another person, I needed to be willing to risk it for my own Truth. This is not an easy principle to follow, especially when the ego is invested in maintaining status quo at all costs, but it is a tenet I have learned to follow more and more as I have matured spiritually. As Maya Angelou eloquently stated, “When someone knows better, they do better.” Choosing our Truth over our egos’ desires is the difference between feeding our shadow or feeding our authentic Self – choosing Love over fear.
Opening to the Teachings
From this end-of-life perspective, sitting still twenty-two hours a day, I have opened into what could be called my life review. Those who have entry into what some call the bardo or the life between lives, either through dreams, meditation, or visions, are able to begin a broader process of self-reflection over their lifetime and begin to identify the themes the soul has come in to work on. My many years in non-ordinary states of consciousness through Holotropic Breathwork, both as a practitioner and a facilitator, has helped me to access these healing states.
Throughout my earlier life I struggled with feeling victimized by energies outside of myself over which I felt powerless. This common pattern is often an imprint from the family of origin. My mother was my initiator in this journey of duality (drama). I was terrified of her and then of my teachers and went on to attract relationships that affirmed this worldview.Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer are three different expressions of victim in the dramatic triangle. (For more information, see the Karpman Drama Triangle – three faces of Victim, a must for psychotherapists and addictions counselors!)
Drama vibrates at a low frequency and like attracts like. To maintain a low vibration, which serves to keep vulnerability at bay, a victim can only draw a persecutor or a rescuer, which then always switch roles. Shadow Work involves bringing each role to consciousness to allow vulnerability and intimacy, a high frequency.
Breakthrough From Drama to True Self
During my breathwork visions, for years I was a Jew in a concentration camp. However, one day, to my shock I suddenly became the Nazi – feeling the power/control of oppressing, enslaving, and murdering others. (This collective shadow, by the way, is the core of racism, or othering, a fear prevalent in the world today. A critical mass must be reached to bring this hatred out of the shadow, one person at a time.) I let myself marinate in these excruciating feelings until I felt the energy complete itself. I didn’t know what to think afterwards – feeling shame mixed with horror that shifted into empowerment, and even liberation.
For me during breathwork, as in life, the most arduous part of the process is learning to stay with uncomfortable feelings. I learned firsthand that it was much more comfortable to experience Victim than Persecutor; the latter forced me into shadow of the motherwound. However, by avoiding the pain, I suppressed my natural fire energy – creativity and passion (joy). I was so afraid of being my mother that I couldn’t fully be me! After this breathwork retreat, I knew my life would be different.
Staying in drama temporarily lessens anxiety, but the cost is one’s true power. The role of Victim (the one down position) was familiar to me. When people emulate the childhood abuser who appeared to have more strength and power; the Persecutor becomes their go to persona during conflict. The Rescuer (the one up position) feels the illusion of safety from the messiness of intimacy, by staying above the fray. Feeling less than was my shadow and Persecutor was the shadow of my shadow. Only when I allowed myself to fully experience this repugnant role, replete with abuse of power, shame, and fear, could I liberate myself and experience Wholeness. In that way, I was my own shaman.
Integration
During this sacred time of life review, I want to honor the teachers in my life of which I have only mentioned a few. I especially want to honor my mother who chose to play this role with me in this lifetime. Mother, I know you are with me and I look forward to dancing with you soon with less fear and more joy.
When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe. There can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are made for. – Clarissa Pinkola Estes
When I was a young girl, my father had a 1923 Ford Model T antique touring car that had a crank on the front that needed to be turned to start the engine. I’d heard you had to be careful it didn’t jerk your arm out of socket when you cranked it, it had quite a kick! The purpose was, in my seven-year-old understanding, to create a spark for the engine to start.
In looking back over the 40 years since completing my masters degree to practice psychotherapy, I recognize that I have played that same role with the people I served, to create a spark to get their psycho/spiritual engines going. This is neither a responsibility I take lightly, nor has competency come easily. It is a sacred task so deeply-rooted in my being that I believe I must have agreed to it prior to incarnating. My desire to serve has been just that pervasive throughout my personal and professional life and the joy I experience when their metaphoric engine gets running is profound!
Learning to hear the call of this sacred assignment began while I was still in single digits of age. In order to be effective, however, I had to reach a level of confidence that was not easy to come by. This journey toward self-love was wrought with many challenges, but I came into this world with a fierce desire to serve and I came to realize that in order to serve others, I first needed to heal myself. With this awareness, I started a life of seeking that led to many teachers and disciplines to help overcome my limitations. I’ve spoken before of my greatest teaching – to learn to trust my inner authority, which I believe is the only way to truly know one’s power. The experience of learning to drive a manual transmission in the late 60s served as a useful metaphor for understanding and developing this teaching.
Our parents and our older siblings serve as our first authority figures to help us practice vital lessons of personal power. When my brother was 21, he became my instructor and his 1968 GTO with a clutch that was about to fail became the instrument of my education. He knew the clutch could fail if handled recklessly and, believe me, he let me know it. What a set up for high tension. I knew if I didn’t learn fast, I’d be in serious trouble with my brother. What a perfect metaphor. My lack of confidence in life manifested as a fear of my own power (acceleration). Engaging the clutch unskillfully would immobilize the engine abruptly and infuriate my brother. Immobilization (shutting down) was my go-to strategy for warding off anxiety. My brother amplified the voice in my head creating reluctance, (fear). He taught me about the friction point, the point where the clutch and acceleration meet for forward motion. When met with accuracy, there was no damage to the clutch. To add to this tension, I was learning to drive a manual transmission in the hill section of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Engaging the clutch with your left foot on an incline could cause the car to roll requiring quick use of the brakes, also with your left foot. If there were a car behind me, catastrophe could ensue. The tension was great with the potential for collision with another car. You get the picture.
This mirrored a conflict that I refer to frequently in my life – immobilization versus empowerment, clutch versus accelerator. Applying the brakes offers more control, but I only have two feet! As I became more proficient at driving a stick shift, I felt less immobilized in life, less afraid of my power (acceleration). This has served as a good example of meeting my fears at the exact point where acceleration is required, to avoid stalling in the middle of traffic, to avoid a collision with fate, or my brother’s rage.
Another powerful metaphor was learning to waterski on one ski. Learning to ski on two skis was elementary growing up on a lake, but learning to slalom demonstrated the next level of proficiency. Learning to slalom, one needed to be able to shift one’s weight from two skis to one. This required shifting one’s whole equilibrium from two points of contact to one point of contact. Having the tendency to lose myself in relationships, the kinesthetic sense of balancing over my own center of gravity reminds me of learning to slalom. I often felt this shift after a divorce. After processing through the stages of grief, I always felt empowered when my center of gravity shifted over one ski, my ski!
And there is the snow ski metaphor when you have to lean forward as you ski downhill in order to navigate through the snow without losing your balance. Intuitively, we lean backwards to compensate for the downward slope. Leaning into issues sometimes means going against one’s intuition and one’s comfort zone. Thank you for indulging me in exploring these teachings.
Having spent most of my life in my body learning kinesthetically (in motion) to be still and listen deeply has been a huge gift that my ego would never freaking have chosen. Nevertheless, it has served me well. This carnal (physical) curriculum is not for the faint of heart. If my heart were anymore faint, I could never do terminal illness nearly as gracefully. As I live this end-stage form of neurological illness, I can see things in slow mo. My life force is growing exponentially as my body is weakening. My identification with this blessed vehicle is shifting to a greater me, the part of me that is more aware of other dimensions. There are times when my perceptions and my sense of love is so heightened that I know that transition to Spirit will be a minor step. Each time I experience this, fear of the unknown diminishes.
In their published work, James Lawley and Penny Thompkins assert that “metaphor is an active process which is at the very heart of understanding ourselves, others and the world about us.” I have much gratitude for the teachings that surround us when the intention is self-reflection that leads to empathy. After all, teachings that lead to having greater compassion for ourselves and others is the essential work of this time. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes so beautifully reassures us to not lose heart, because We were made for these times.
Feeling good is not the point – it’s being connected so that the highs and lows don’t matter. You spend less time at the mercy of all those heavy negative thoughts. – Krishna Das
My brothers were born four years apart and five years later I was born. They slept in a bedroom together and I slept alone. I don’t know when the terrors started, but I had a very hard time getting to sleep. In the new house where we moved when I was three, I was on the opposite side of the house from my parents. I would call to my mother, sometimes frantically, and she never came. I cried myself to sleep every night and sucked my thumb until I was eleven. I didn’t like being alone every night in that solitary room, where the lights from the traffic would shine across my wall and keep me awake.
One time my father came to my bed and asked me how I was feeling. I talked to him about how my legs hurt and he told me they were growing pains. I shared my deepest secrets about how afraid I was of the teachers and how I could not go to sleep at night. He taught me a self-meditation technique to help me sleep; I still use it to this day. Although he came to me only one time, I remember it like it was yesterday. I wonder if they consciously considered whether to talk to me or let me learn to self-soothe. I doubt the latter, because there was little conscious conversation in my home growing up. They just didn’t have the capacity. My fears escalated along with my anger.
I began to refuse to go to school; my teachers were too scary. My mother pretended to call the truant officer to report me, so I reluctantly went. Tough love. My mother was tough and distant, emotionally. It wasn’t until my 50s when she was dying that I actually realized she’d always loved me. Some people never know, so this is not a complaint or a tragedy, it’s just what often happened growing up in the 50s.
Being born in July had its advantages; we lived on a natural lake during the summer. It was a simple, intimate lake, before it became a resort area. I was happy there and so was my family. However, being born in July when the sun was in Cancer meant I had the potential to be hyper-sensitive, moody, and overly dependent/clingy. A clingy child and a touch-me-not mother created quite a challenge for compatibility and connection. The casual lifestyle at the lake nurtured my more positive traits: spontaneity, athleticism, in a community that loved nature. I didn’t fear being alone in my bedroom at the cottage, but when we moved back to city life each year my whole body contracted. The isolation, the inactivity, the stark school with the scary teachers were overwhelming.
My pillow was my transitional object and I kept it until well after I was married. During my early life, I avoided being alone at all costs, and the costs were dear. I clung to unhealthy relationships much too long. I did, however, experience a great deal of self-love when I finally had the courage to leave. Finding the courage to leave unhealthy situations seemed to be the edge I needed to meet what some call the Great Aloneness. There is an expression – we come into this world alone and we leave this world alone. That used to sound sad to me, but once I was able to hold grief long enough to fully feel it there was a shift and I was able to finally feel safe and to begin to love myself, deeply. I see that only by feeling everything, instead of feeling good, can self-love really be acquired. One must grow into it. I certainly had to.
It was only through experiencing the Great Aloneness that I began to understand that in our core we each want the same thing, to feel loved, and when we mature spiritually we begin to know that we are loved. If we follow this thought and are able to stay with it, our Awareness grows and we find that we are Love. When we internalize this, we open to the Knowing that we are all one. I was working at a community mental health center in Louisiana when this awareness began to take root. I remember the timing clearly, because my supervisor asked me to propose a password for the state computer system. I offered, “Allone,” imagining that in our area of the state of Louisiana, at that moment in time, everybody would be using Allone as their password to enter the mental health system! I love that irony/synchronicity. Don’t tell anybody, but this is still my password, or variations of the theme.
The moments I have felt most connected to my heart, connected to my Beloveds, connected to the Universe, have been the times that I Know that we are all inextricably linked, all one being, and that we are only separated by the belief, a mental construct, that we are separate. Many people fear loneliness, but loneliness is never about another person. It is and has been only through the felt-sensation of Oneness that I know this to be Truth.
I don’t for one minute believe that one has to be facing the end of their life to enter this Knowing that we are all one and we are all in this together. Crises can accelerate this awareness. They have a way of cracking open the defensive hardness that appears to separate us. By practicing empathy and forgiveness of the self, the boundaries of protection fall away.
Then, all that is left is Love. And, it is love, that we truly are all in together.
**This essay is dedicated to Kirsten Schreiber, my dear friend, sister of all ages, who nudged me to finish it.
“Our holy grit… it’s the sandpaper in your psyche that rubs you raw until you make it conscious.” – Jacqueline Small, on Shadow
Lake Winola
Karen turned sixty this month.
I grew up on a glacial lake at the end of the Endless Mountains in Pennsylvania during the summer months. Karen lived with her parents and three brothers in the cottage next-door. My best friend, Cathy, rented the cottage behind them, at least her parents did. The circumference of the lake was approximately three miles, so children knew each other for long stretches that were walkable from their cottage. The lake was a friendly community where families looked out for each other and their children.
Being born in July, this lake was my first home. Sometime during the 60s my home became a state lake and everything changed. But prior to this, the lake was serene, the people familiar and it was a safe, aesthetically beautiful place in nature to grow up.
Our neighbors became extensions of our family. Karen lived next door and since we grew up together, I didn’t notice the developmental delays. Karen was mentally disabled, but we all thought she was odd. From a child’s perspective, there was just something different about her, damaged, maybe. Children were unkind to her, but not her brothers. Karen always liked me. One day, however, I joined the heartless descent as she walked in front of the trajectory of the swing I was on. I didn’t stop abruptly as I could have. I knocked her down. Fifty years later I remember that moment and I cry with so much shame. Perhaps I can understand the other children’s cruelty by understanding my own. Karen was an external manifestation of the damage I felt inside of me, the damage the other children must have felt, as well. Christians might call it Original Sin, Jungians call it Shadow, the unlikable parts of ourselves we hide until we have the inner resources to heal these parts and integrate them into a more forgiving personality.
Cathy’s family was very religious. Her mother, Lucy, told me children like Karen were sent here by God and reported back to him about how others treated her. Now, from my perspective, I can believe some of Lucy’s story/parable. Karen and her sacred curriculum was a mirror for people to look at themselves through. Not everybody liked what they saw.
Soon after that, Karen no longer lived next door. She came home on visits and loved to go for a boat ride with me. Karen never held a grudge. Her older brother became a minister and I worked with disabled children for a couple decades, as a teenager and an adult.
I wonder if Karen knows how much she affected the others around her or how much she taught people something about themselves, that they probably didn’t want to see.
Karen turned sixty this month. Happy birthday Karen. From my end-of-life perspective, I now understand the careful selection of the costume you chose for this lifetime and I know you are what some call an angel and I know, without equivocation, that you were my and many other children’s sacred teacher.
**One of my very favorite books on the subject is: Expecting Adam – A true story of birth, rebirth and every day magic by Martha Beck.
“Joy is something deeper than a feeling. Joy is a gift deep within. It cannot be rocked by the sound of an alarm clock or by pain.” –Elise Charbonnet Anglette (Casey’s beloved childhood friend fiercely confronting aggressive breast cancer with her husband and 6 beloved youngens. Google her, she will change your life.)
5 Days in the Life of an Addict:*
Day 1– I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I feel lost… I feel helpless. It isn’t my fault! I’m not responsible. It takes forever to find a way out.
Day 2– I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I and I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I’m back in the same place. But it isn’t my fault. I don’t feel responsible. It takes a long time to get out.
Day 3– I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in… it’s a habit. But my eyes are open, I know where I am. It is my fault. I am responsible. I get out very quickly.
Day 4– I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.
Day 5– I walk down a different street. This parable is profound when we take it in deeply. I will discuss this more later. ~Author unknown
*Note: Addict, to me is anyone who is in a human body. My favorite definition of addiction is anything that is between you and God or Source.
by Kathryn Green Brady
In the afterlife and near-death experience communities it is almost cliché to talk about life review, but for the initiated, life review is an essential part of returning to the Spirit world, our true and eternal Home. For those who have had near-death experiences or NDEs life review is a way of integrating the work of the lifetime just completed. It is a time to assess the work done, how it was done, what is still to be learned and more. During this time, our guides and ascended Masters meet us in loving collaboration. During that time, from what I have read and experienced in meditation, there is no judgment. The only judgment we experience is our own internal remorse that we may carry. From what I understand, there is only unconditional love at Home. It is coming to this Earth school in human bodies where judgment is experienced.
Having this long-term, intractable illness has allowed for an elongated process of life review for which I have received much assistance. I have gratitude for all the support I have received throughout my life which has allowed me to be of help to others. Receiving help and helping had gone hand-in-hand. I have much gratitude for my helpers along my journey, both incarnate and discarnate. Without the assistance and my openness to that assistance I would have been much less helpful to others. So for my helpers, my openness and helpees, I am deeply grateful.
The hole represents a questioning of whether this illness was necessary or whether it caused needless harm to myself and/or my loved ones. Just entering the latter thought makes my stomach turn with grief and anxiety. That is my hole. In a totally open, vulnerable moment in my life I acknowledged to a beloved teacher, while practically on my knees in a proverbial sense, that, “I want to give more than I take while in this life.” I had never consciously thought about this, but it came from the deepest part of my heart and soul. Likewise, it reveals my deepest vulnerability, that perhaps I did not fulfill this prayer, this deep yearning.
This inner questioning has provided an opportunity to explore the value of this illness in my life. It has stimulated a deep exploration that has required much meditation and dreamtime; this process has yielded much benefit. I cry with deep gratitude as I describe this sacred process. And this is what I have learned thus far:
One of my newest helpers, a shamanic practitioner, while in trance acknowledged that I, in fact, did not have to have this illness which triggered much emotional material for me to grapple with. Ironically, I found myself in the very hole the author described in the parable above. I was humbled to see that the hole is still a vulnerable place for me. I was both appreciative and humbled to have this opportunity to revisit this vulnerability, mostly because when I leave, I want to be as complete as I am able.
Not much is in my way of a conscious, liberating transition into Freedom. That is what I am going toward; that is what we are all going for. In my opinion, any vulnerability can be an obstacle toward this freedom. And obstacles are places where deeper self-love can be cultivated.
In the parable, it occurs to me that this illness afforded me the opportunity to become adept at traversing Day 4. I can now see the hole and perhaps even walk around it. Maybe I have not walked down a different street, which may represent a life with perfect health, but a lifetime perfecting Day 4 is pretty damn awesome. I can know that I will no longer get lost in this hole of my ego’s creation. How liberating it is that?!
So thank you my Beloveds, my helpers, my helpees. As I tell my children, I will still be connecting and sharing. You just have to become better listeners.
“Having progressive MS isn’t enough, you have to have THAT, too.”–Sage Brown
Sage is one of my closest friends here in the community. My friends don’t just spout superficial pleasantries to merely make me feel better, they go right where I am and feel WITH me. That’s just the way it is here in Crestone, in this community of compassionate souls.
People never die of multiple sclerosis; they die from the complications associated with multiple sclerosis. Secondary infections like pneumonia are a major culprit. Hell, Christopher Reeves died from bedsores that became septic. My decubitus has cleared since I began riding my stationary bike a few times a week. You have to die from something, right? But really, guys, a hemorrhoid?!
Everybody has got their issue and many of them are where the sun don’t shine. Why is it that so many people have trouble loving their bodies and for many, it is the southernmost regions? Is it our cultural toilet training methods? Is it just where our self–hatred is housed?
There is an expression, “God is the wound.” I have seen so many people dislike their bodies until they begin to fail. Mine began to fail while living in the deep South. This is geographical, not biological. I began a rigorous program of reclaiming and reconnecting with every part of my body. It was like a wave of love and care that continues to this day. Is that part of the design? Does one’s body have to scream to get our attention?
North, South, East or West, Love is what it’s all about to me. Whether the entry point is through nature, a Beloved or THAT, as far as I’m concerned, whatever it takes.
Songs from the Labyrinth 