You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘spirituality’ tag.
The task is not to live our life in which we never got our hearts broken. The task is to become larger with each heart break. – David Whyte
In a past essay titled Mountain Metaphor, I described Michael Brown’s brilliant metaphor about life choices. Click here for the original or below is a [paraphrased] excerpt:
Some people feel deeply drawn to the Himalayan Mountains, so much so that they might have a photograph of the mountain range on their refrigerator and they are happy with that level of appreciation. Fewer people might have a picture book of the Himalayas on their coffee table and they are happy with that. Even fewer travel to India to see the Himalayas in the distance and they are happy with that. Some will go to base camp at the foot of the mountains and they are happy with that. Still fewer will have to hike all the way to the summit. Going to the summit is not for everyone. It is important to hear this with no judgment, no right or wrong, no hierarchy. People merely have different needs and capacities during their lives, different soul plans in each lifetime.
Recently, a dear being died after a prolonged struggle with multiple sclerosis after living a life of deep contribution, especially to young people. Since our first conversation in 1990, she has been in my heart and just a few steps ahead of me in this illness curriculum. While in my 30s, she was the first person to affirm my greatest fear, that my subtle neurological symptoms were likely early signs of MS. There are worse things to get than MS, I remember her telling me knowingly, because she had been diagnosed a few years before. Somehow, it was easier hearing this from her, someone who was, part of the club to which she would sadly welcome me when I was diagnosed at 50, than a doctor who was emotionally removed and outside of the club I now had the dubious distinction of being an intimate part of. As her illness progressed, I observed her Grace as the fear of my future grew, exponentially. For many years doctors told me my concerns were nothing, that I should just get on with my life. If I had known then, that this was the most progressive form of this neurological illness they call MS, and that there was absolutely no treatment, I don’t know how well I would have lived my life. I eventually stopped going to doctors who were, many inadvertently, peddling false hope in the form of pharmaceuticals with scary, permanent side effects. It would be many more years before I could find my own Grace and eventually Gratitude for this arduous curriculum. Today I am grateful to my friend and others I have come to know who have blazed the trail for me. This essay will explore how friends and their beloveds can help each other through the most perilous parts of our journeys if we can be open to the changing forms.
When my husband who had been with me prior to my diagnosis, during my diagnosis, and after my diagnosis, left our marriage after we moved to a new home in a new state, I was emotionally devastated. He had always been a fixer and when it became clear that this could not be fixed, he moved on. Although I came to understand this as a necessary parting of our paths many years later, at the time I was devastated. (Did I say that already?) At the time, the thought of living alone in a big house, in a new community, with a degenerative illness was more than I could bear.
I was reminded of a powerful and effective intervention in my psychotherapy practice when an individual was presenting with Major Depression (acute depression that leaves the person unable to eat or sleep), because they were brokenhearted after their long-term partner had left them, if they were able to feel the grief deeply and let in the necessary support from others, they might realize that they, in fact, had been the one who left the relationship first, emotionally. With this awareness, their partner had no other choice but to leave. If this can be acknowledged, there is often an existential shift and the grief may disappear completely. The story of having been left shifts into a whole new story of having ignored one’s own needs which unconsciously set up the leaving in order to avoid being the one who leaves. Byron Katie, founder of The Work, a powerful process for decreasing suffering in the world, describes this as the turnaround. If you are not familiar with Byron Katie’s worksheet, check it out. It could change your life.
When I heard my friend’s husband had moved on, it triggered my own feelings of having been left. [Caveat: This is MY projection. I know her husband and he did not in any way move on or away from her. His commitment to her I found exceptional and I have told him so many times.] All of my feelings from ten years ago resurfaced as if it had just happened. With that level of grief, I knew I needed to speak to my friend directly, to go into deep meditation, not too different from what I learned in Gestalt therapy in my late 20s and that is exactly what I did. Whether one believes it was she who came forward, a projection of mine, a symbolic story, or a Guide speaking on our behalf, it doesn’t really matter; I know that the information I received was not in my awareness before this auspicious meeting.
I was able to hear from my friend something very personal that only those in such a club could share. She told me that we had agreed before we took bodies to go all the way to the summit, no matter what the cost. And she continued that we had actually left them, because we had to in order to get to the summit! She told me that our partners had their own paths they needed to follow and that we are all still connected exactly as we should be, despite what our consensus reality indicates. In the past, I remembered seeing a photograph of my former husband’s new partner playing lovingly and joyfully with my former grandchildren. At first I felt heartbroken, betrayed, and unworthy. Then, it occurred to me like a revelation (the turnaround) that I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing! With that realization, all of the grief disappeared and what was left was a sense of honor, dignity, and self-respect much greater than the grief I’d previously felt. I also experienced gratitude toward his partner for being able to be there for my loved ones I’d never gotten to know. My friend reminded me that she and I were, indeed, fulfilling our soul agreement and so were our partners.
During a time of self-doubt, Terri Daniel, an author, educator, and end-of-life advisor who became a dear friend once told me, Your life is an expression of the highest possible commitment to spiritual awakening. I am reminded of that quote by Donna Roberts ~A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words. Thank you Terri, you have been there when I most needed you.
In my heart of hearts, I know I had no other choice but to aim for the summit. She and I had gone to the summit and our partners supported us according to our respective soul agreements. Her husband had once told me that the three of us were in the same lifeboat together. He and I have had many soul-level conversations over the years for which I am deeply grateful. Perhaps she was telling me that we were in the same soul family and her husband used the lifeboat metaphor to express this. Friends – we just cannot do this in isolation, can we?
I am not special. Everybody has their own zenith they must reach at some point in their life or lifetimes. Perhaps our summit is indistinguishable from our eternal Home. Martin Luther King, Jr spoke of the promised land in his mountaintop speech. I want to end this essay with this speech that he tearfully, fearlessly, and prophetically delivered the day before he was assassinated fifty years ago:
Put a candle in the window… ’cause I feel I’ve got to move. Now I’m goin’, goin’… I’ll be coming home soon. Long as I can see the light. ~ Creedence Clearwater Revival
If you haven’t been to a cremation in Crestone and you feel so inclined, you would do well to go, even if it is 10° outside. The love, the intention, and the ritual of the community will keep you warm. I learned that last Sunday when I left the house for the first time in a year and a half. Confidentially, I’ve been afraid to die during the winter, because I didn’t want to put my loved ones through a cremation during the Crestone winters, before sunrise, when the fire threat in our high desert climate is reduced. My friend Marv just died and he and his family are giving his almost 90-year-old body a ceremonial sendoff. For the last few days of his life, his body was completely still, but clearly waiting for something unbeknownst to us. When his beloved grandson arrived from Japan, he took his last breath. Marv had his own perfect timing. He was then given the allotted three days to allow for his soul’s reorientation for his sacred Passage, his Pilgrimage, freedom.
I informed Lauren, my dear caregiver of nearly five years, that Marv had left his body. We stood in silence as she sensed a longing in me I had long since learned to suppress, due to the physical limitations that left my body immobilized from the neck down. Being close with Naomi, his wife and partner of a zillion years, someone who shared love, children, and laughed and cried with him, I felt the paradoxical combination of deep grief and relief she must feel. I had the honor to witness their deep, oceanic connection firsthand, during a concert performed in 2015 in my living room, by a few dear friends and brilliant musicians, who generously play for me, because I am housebound. That is the sort of community I live in. There were a few songs that elicited tears of grief and joy that revealed a direct channel between Naomi and Marv, the depth of which none of us could ever share, but was palpable and spread throughout the room as such feelings do.
I first met Marv a decade ago, after moving to Crestone from the New Orleans area after Katrina. Marv is someone you don’t forget; he makes an indelible impression with his colorful history of thirty-five years in the Hollywood music business, including being vice president of Columbia records. He had many stories to tell. Those days, Marv and I were getting around much better. More recently, we shared a particular experience of being at the end of our lives, which created a sort of connection in and of itself. As my life began to unravel shortly after arriving in Crestone, an experience shared by many Crestonians (knowing smile) and some initial resistance, I let go into facing an uncertain future alone, my greatest fear of my lifetime.
My former husband, while on his way out of our eleven year relationship, informed me that my horse Jasmine had a companion who loved her deeply and wanted to buy her. All I knew was her name was Elizabeth, she was the wife of a local Rinpoche (a highly respected Tibetan Buddhist teacher), and she would care for Jasmine, my elegant, billowy, chestnut mare, as I no longer could.
I suspected Elizabeth and I shared an auspicious bond. In the last year when she came to meet me, we coincidentally gifted each other photographs of horses. Her father, Marv and she had a deep connection with Jasmine. Although our lives were very different, there was a mutuality that couldn’t be understood in our three-dimensional reality, that horses tend to illuminate.
Naomi has been in my women’s circle for a number of years. (Don’t tell anybody, because it’s confidential.) One day Naomi came to visit me by herself. I wanted to show her my voice software that completely controls my computer, hands-free, thinking it might help her. We ended up talking for hours as she shared her life, her Dharma, perhaps one and the same, and her gratitude for my having reached out to her.
When Lauren sensed my feelings for the Mattis-Namgyel family, she naturally and innocently, in her own Lauren way, offered, “Do you want to go to the cremation? I will take you.” For a moment, I was speechless, because I had let go of the possibility of leaving the house long ago. After all, I am housebound and in hospice care! It was just too precarious for this frail body. Still, a moment later I replied, “Yes!” It was completely incomprehensible, but our intention was stated aloud, so we just needed to work out the details.
First, Lauren called Stephanie, the director of Crestone End-of-Life Project, to see if it was possible to logistically carry out this plan. After Stephanie realized from Lauren’s telephone call that someone had not died, as many of the calls to Stephanie portend, she was less in facilitator mode and more in exhilaration from our Vision that we still didn’t know could be actualized.
Next we called hospice to see if I really had lost my mind. I’ve been reluctant to even go in the courtyard of my home and hadn’t ridden in my accessible vehicle, since I realized my vestibular system and my connective tissue could no longer tolerate the movement. At the time, I felt like my internal organs would fall out of my body.
My hospice nurse said, “If you want to go, do what your soul wants.” With this encouragement Lauren and I both cried as we knew it really could happen! We had the blessings of Stephanie and hospice; I now had to inform Allison (drumroll). Allison is my primary caregiver, the one who holds my organs together, both metaphorically and quite literally, at times. Allison provides the voice of reason. If we had not considered the “what if’s,” she would provide them. Allison was scheduled to tend the fire at the cremation that Sunday, which would require her full attention. She is off on the weekends and I try not to engage her, unless it is an emergency. If I had not consulted Allison, it would have been an emergency of a different sort.
It was the day before the cremation, that Blue Rooster offered to play music for me and any friends and my living room was packed. I’m usually tired for three days after a concert, but the cremation was the next day and I didn’t have the luxury of a slow recovery! Waking at 5 AM the next morning to prepare for being at the pyre by 7 AM, would require nothing short of a miracle. Ironically, the musicians provided the necessary fuel when they dedicated the concert to Marv! My first request was the Creedence Clearwater Revival selection that is the title of this essay, my favorite request, which happened to be Marv’s as well.
The song transported me back to the concert with Marv and Naomi in 2015. The most common question I get when people hear I have MS is, “can you feel anything?” Often people with paralysis have no sensation, but the opposite is true for me. Sitting in my chair I felt a sensation I hadn’t felt in over a decade. Naomi, sitting across from me with constant loving communication of gratitude to me for providing this opportunity, Marv on my left, sitting unsteadily, yet joyfully on his walker, I suddenly felt a hand on my thigh and looked over and saw Marv’s sparkling eyes. His eyes sparkled with a combination of the innocent joy of a three-year-old boy and the dangerous joy of a sixteen-year-old. It was so dear, Marv, Naomi, and me, in this marvelous triangle of love together with the vision that only comes from an end-of-life perspective. It was both comical and deeply sacred at the same time.
At 5 AM, Lauren, Cindy, and Marie arrived for the Herculean task ahead of us. I have a back brace that we put on backwards with the hope of holding my organs in place and I took Dramamine for the inevitable motion sickness.
Lauren’s experience with me, Cindy’s practicality and confidence as an EMT and a sister in so many ways, and Marie’s wisdom to strategize with buckles, seatbelts and blankets – lots of blankets – gave us the confidence that we could do this, despite the knowing that, as with any encounter, this could be my last.
Everything fell into place as we got to the pyre at 7 AM as planned. Being at the site was like a dress rehearsal for me, as I had registered with CEOLP (Crestone End-of-life Project) many years ago. I saw Marv’s family sitting where my family will soon be. I had not been to a cremation in nine years and the site had changed considerably. It was now lovingly embraced by a meticulously crafted bamboo fence with copper finials. In such an intimate community, I knew the artisans and the committed team members who contemplatively orchestrated such a meaningful way to leave this beautiful life with our beloved family and community as witnesses.
The intimacy and generosity of Marv’s family for sharing this sacred time together was nearly overwhelming and just the miracle I needed and hoped for.
Hard times require serious dancing. – Alice Walker
No. I don’t have a pretty picture like a great ship sailing in stormy waters or an image of a physical body’s particles dissolving into eternal, ecstatic light. This is my latest injury. My right leg sustained yet another injury last Friday while transferring to the stationary bike. (I know it’s bad when the hospice nurse cries.) What will I do when my legs can no longer support any of my weight, when I cannot stand or ride my bike or even take care of the basic daily living skills? My body is known for healing quickly, but each injury is more debilitating and each recovery finds a new baseline with less ability.
The night before the injury, I slept ten hours which is nearly a record. My sleeping has been getting better and even my occasional naps are becoming longer. I’ve heard that as people move toward dying they sleep more. I believe we are given much preparation for our transition in our sleep, whether it is received consciously or unconsciously. The day after the injury I woke up from a dream that was partially autobiographical, but with dreamlike embellishments. I believe they – the Voice I’ve spoken of previously– wake me early some nights, because there is something I am needing to acknowledge and/or process that in waking hours I cannot access. In my dream, my former husband was becoming more distant from me with coldness and resentment. I tried to call him near, but he told me that he was closer to his new girlfriend’s family than my family. When he told me this, I cried desperately from the grief and fear of going forward alone with this illness. This was mostly biographically accurate, but I received it as a reminder to grieve. Being able to grieve is so important in our bittersweet, human lives and I believe it’s necessary to grieve well in order to truly feel joy. Since I began psychotherapy in my 20s and through fifteen years of Holotropic Breathwork practice and becoming a trainer, I have become more comfortable with grief knowing that joy is just on the other side. David was unable to process grief openly during the eleven years we were together. No one could navigate this curriculum without the capacity for grief/joy. I understand that this is an accelerated course in life and not for everybody. It is not a failing to be overwhelmed by my life. Believe me, I get it.
In her seminal book, The Hero Within, Carol Pearson, presents six heroic archetypes that exist in all of us. To access this best-selling classic with strong Jungian influence, click here. According to her teachings, we all have access to each archetype, or ally, and when made conscious they can elevate our self-awareness. The archetypes evolve developmentally as we evolve.
Suddenly in the dream, I slapped my face. Referring to Pearson’s archetypes, I realize that I have been avoiding the feelings of the Orphan archetype (vulnerability, innocence, fear of abandonment), wanting more the Warrior archetype (strength and physical persistence). This translates literally to my waking life. Authors like Carol Pearson and Michael Brown offer us so many tools to aid in our evolution.
By waking up 2 1/2 hours early, I had the time to explore the meaning within the dream. I remembered an earlier time when I sustained multiple injuries while I was avoiding the use of a wheelchair. If you know anyone with a progressive neurological illness, as the disease progresses and one’s equilibrium is affected, one may tend to wall-walk in order to stay upright. I became adept at wall-walking, that is, until I fell with my computer landing on my knee to avoid damage to my laptop. My kneecap cracked with the force. Still, I persevered and dragged myself onto the tractor. If will could have kept this illness at bay, I might have dragged myself up Mount Everest. Climbing off the tractor, I fell on my knee again and broke my patella in half! I have always minimized my injuries, that is until I couldn’t.
I required crutches and then a walker while the injury healed. Soon, I fell onto my computer desk and cracked my sternum! When I finally sat in the freaking wheelchair, I felt the relief of surrender. The dream last night and my time in contemplation allowed me to wonder if the series of injuries I’m experiencing now is an indication that I am needing to surrender once again.
The Orphan archetype, an ally that brings resilience and realism to situations through a willingness to feel vulnerable might be the exact medicine I most need now. Ironically, the illusion of abandonment is the pitfall of the Orphan when life is not met head-on. So it seems that these recurring injuries may be a message that I am needing to meet what is head-on.
Ultimately, letting go of my will means letting go of the illusion of control, an illusion we share as humans and seems to be a recurring theme in my life. Feeling the grief of what I am leaving behind is part of the work of moving from Orphan to Innocent to Warrior to Magician, to ultimately allow myself to be transformed, to be more of who I truly Am.
My dear friends tell me daily how courageous I am and what an inspiration I am for their lives. If you are reading this, you are one of them. I appreciate being received as inspiring, but I know everybody will be facing this level of surrender eventually in our lives. I am just doing it earlier than most, in slow motion, and reporting in real-time.
I am moving into the next level of this heartbreaking and joyfully sacred path we call life, which includes death. May I do it all with Grace and Gratitude. Namaste.
We are all beads strung together on the thread of life. – Amma
I was a determined willful child, not easy for a parent to raise, but with these qualities I developed the necessary skills for living life well with extreme physical challenges. In my household growing up, I wielded a lot of power which does not make for a happy child or a happy family. Parents who are secure in their authority teach their children surrender, a necessary skill to avoid becoming an egocentric adult. We often learn to surrender to a higher power when we have a masculine influence who is in right relationship with his/her authority – not dominating to create powerlessness in the child, but confidently guiding the children toward empowerment and respect. As this quality is modeled, the child grows up with self-confidence and self-respect. Our culture is confused about authority and healthy balance rarely evolves naturally. When a parent is unclear of their own power, the child must learn with surrogates to learn their ego is not the center of the world. In a culture where egocentricity is the norm, many different forms of addictions develop. Fortunately, there are many paths and programs to help individuals surrender to a power greater than themselves. Life has a way of dancing us into the rhythm of a spiritual life, whether it happens consciously or not.
I grew up Jewish, but I received my first holy Communion in a Catholic church when I was a tween. My best friend, Cathy, came from a religious family where many of her aunts and uncles were nuns and priests. She and her brother were adopted from St. Michael’s Children’s Home very early in life. We were inseparable during the summers where we lived at a lake. Her family recited Stations of the Cross every night and I knew the Lord’s prayer and Hail Marys by heart. I often went to church with them on Sundays. We went everywhere together and it seemed natural to follow her when she went to the front of the service for communion. When I realized not everybody was following us, I looked back at her family who looked shocked, but motioned to me to keep going. I received the host that day. There was no fanfare, but looking back at the many different initiations in my life, that was surely one of them.
During my years of exploration, I also received a Gohonzon, a sacred scroll in Nichiren Buddhism tradition, I received 2nd° reiki, which is an attunement of the heart for activating a healing technique that transmits Universal life force energy through the body, and, in my teens, I was confirmed in the Jewish religion.
Although I received these different initiations through my 20s, I refused to believe in a God that was imposed on me, externally. Having read some of the Old Testament, I refused to believe that God was a man in the sky with a beard who doled out punishments to those “he” felt deserving. I would not suspend my innocence for such a harsh teaching. At this point, my will overrode anything I deemed irrational.
In my 30s, I participated in a progressive psychotherapy community which involved attending three groups per week and five-day intensives at the Gulf Coast beach. Through this concentrated experience, I was able to access my own authentic understanding of what God is to me. As I looked around the group and felt the love and acceptance I had always yearned for, I realizing that I no longer felt the depression that had been with me my whole life. I realized in that moment that all everybody in my circle wanted was to be seen and feel loved. In this circle of beloved souls and while learning to resolve any conflicts that separated us, I learned that love was the medicine that drew out the poison of what ever ills were in the way of our connection to ourselves and each other. In that way, I understand what Ram Dass means when he says, “All sickness is Homesickness.”
With this realization, an internal shift happened and I had the felt-experience in my heart that God is love. In this circle of my Beloveds, I witnessed one person after another transform fear that might have taken the form of anger, resentment, or hatred into love. My whole worldview shifted in that circle and I have not deviated from that belief since.
Knowing that love and fear cannot occupy the same space and having experienced much fear in my life, I have become adept at seeing the many forms fear takes by understanding all the forms of fear I experience. When I feel separate from others, either through anger outwardly expressed or inner self-loathing, I notice there is always a thought that triggers separating behavior. Identifying the thought that precedes the reaction can be transformative and restore the desired connection. Once this is mastered, compassion just happens. This is not an easy practice, but a necessary one to restore love and compassion for self and others.
My willfulness served me well to find my own experience of God, the Divine, Source. I was not one to follow others blindly. I believe everyone must arrive at their own experience of God and this perception will change as we change. It is not something that can be imposed on another person, in my opinion. Arriving at one’s own sacred sense of the Divine is one of life’s greatest teachings and surrendering one’s ego to a power greater than ourselves, no matter what one calls this power, is the only way to true liberation.
By finding peace inside of us, one person at a time, we can come together as a collective in peace. That is the medicine that is so needed at this time. Namaste. I bow to you.
You are a drop and God is the ocean. Just allow yourself to fall back into it. – Michael Brown
Healing means different things to different people. For some people, healing means that the body ceases to have physical symptoms that were causing discomfort. Once they heal physically, they may choose to inspire others who are suffering. Healing on this level can bring physical and emotional relief and inspiring others can be a valuable contribution. Many of us experience this level of healing, frequently.
Some people who heal physically also heal mentally (thoughts) and spiritually. They often have a broader story of healing to model and to teach others.
Some Self-selected individuals may have taken on challenging curricula in order to heal personally and to accelerate their soul family’s journey, called soul contracts. (Many are not aware of this consciously, but that doesn’t negate the likelihood.) Often these people heal mentally and spiritually, but not physically. Myself and, I suspect, many people I know with progressive, incurable illnesses have chosen these rigorous paths while in Spirit. Not for the faint of heart, these distinct teachings can reduce the emphasis on of the ego in the physical world, if embraced with awareness. Our personalities are egocentric and limiting our identification with the ego can open doors to the numinous. In my experience, the more catastrophic my curriculum has been, the more liberating. Living this curriculum with grace can spread these teachings through the collective, to the seen and unseen worlds.
Occasionally, I come across others who appear to have similar curricula for whom I feel an instant kinship on an intuitive level. Marc Stecker, AKA Wheelchair Kamikaze, a fellow blogger, profound in his scope, humor, and development over time, is one such individual. If interested, you would do well to follow his blog.
Some healers who have healed physically, mentally, and spiritually have developed their own processes to help bring the collective forward in our development toward finding peace in our lives. One such teacher is Michael Brown, who I have spoken of in previous blog essays, because I find his work profound. Fellow psychotherapists/colleagues have used The Presence Process with their clients to deepen their therapeutic work. He has many YouTube videos along with his book to guide people through his teachings.
Michael often uses different parables and sacred Stories in his teachings similar to the stories disseminated by indigenous cultures. Here is one of my favorites:
He teaches about the three stories we tell ourselves. The first story, is of the “bad” one—about our damage, our victimization and how this shaped us—even how it might have driven us to doing some good things in the world, but how we were driven by the ghosts of our childhood or loss of parent figure [literally or figuratively, perhaps searching for the nurturing (mother) or direction (father) we’d never had], at some juncture, to enter the world in search of the missing parent in the external world. That’s the first story.
The second story is the flip side of the “bad”–it’s the “good” story of what we found on our search for our missing mother or father figure and how when we got down to the bottom of it—the details of the story dropped away and we met this energy inside, not outside of ourselves—and we felt a foundation of self-love at last.
The third story includes his spin on the word “Legend”—-he says after living the “good” and “bad” stories in a lot of fullness, we are completely freed from the history of those—we don’t carry the wounds in the same way, we don’t organize our waking moments around the same obstacles or false longings—and everything is different and we aren’t questing in the same sense—instead we just enjoy being as we symbolically stand on the ledge of our life, on the very end of the ledge of our life. And then we step off—and we live our own ” ledge-end.” We are free to define ourselves, our work, our resources, our abundance, our relations—in any way we want that serves this open-endedness we have stepped into.
When we are in our “bad” or “good” stories, there is work to do that can be grueling, because we must feel the grief of each story fully.
We each have our curriculum that is sacred and perfect for our lifework. From healing the issues with our mothers, or those who may be a surrogate for mother, we learn to nurture ourselves. From healing the issues with our fathers, we understand our perspective on God, the Divine, the Source of Universal Love. To do this, we must pass through the illusion of separation Stephen Levine described it well when he called it, “learning to opening your heart in hell.”
Whether we access this Knowing now or later in our development, our Beloveds have entered an agreement with us, soul to soul, for the well-being of all. And it is through this level of awareness of the soul, beyond the ego, that opening our hearts in hell is possible and finding peace can be a true reality.
There is a feeling we have sometimes of betraying some mission we were mandated to fulfill, and being unable to fulfill it. And then coming to understand that the real mandate was not to fulfill it. And that the deeper courage was to stand guiltless in the predicament in which you find yourself. – Leonard Cohen
People are usually surprised to hear how I really feel about living my life under such extreme circumstances: being unable to move from the neck down after being a competitive athlete my entire life, living in a body that can barely keep me alive, having difficulty speaking audibly when tired and barely being able to whisper. It just boggles people’s minds that I could live my life with so much gratitude for being, so much gratitude for having as much independence as I have, defying what our medical establishment is able to tolerate due to the excellent, compassionate, spiritually-driven circle of women and men who surround me and care for me. The paradigm we have co-created has allowed me to focus on what I truly value – connecting deeply with the people I love and helping them to allow more Love in their lives.
I live an interesting paradox. My body is in hospice, but my mind and my Spirit are experiencing the most joy I could ever imagine in life. How can that possibly be? I could never understand it without living it. It is true that I cannot move, eat, eliminate, without complete dependence on others, however, there is so much I can do that I would never have been able to with a fully, functioning body.
My life has always been about service–service through my psychotherapy practice, service through my interracial gospel choir in New Orleans, service through my nonviolent communication groups and my caregiving and women’s circles, not to mention service to anyone who enters my house, including the UPS man. There’s nothing that gives me more joy than helping someone recognize and allow more beauty and love into their lives, especially self-love which is from where all love emanates. It is only through love that world peace can be achieved.
With my body slowly dying from a neurological illness, the progression happens gradually; I lose one function, one ability after another. Everybody goes through this process during aging, mine is merely accelerated. To me, death will be an adventure when the time is right. After allowing myself many years of grieving, I began to see the brilliance of this curriculum. Suffering is minimal. I believe that grief only becomes suffering when it is not fully felt. My suffering has been mostly emotional. If I’d had too much physical pain to bear, I might be having a different conversation. Earlier in the illness, I broke many bones during accidents: sternum, toes, patella, femur, but they have all healed. Unlike most people with end-stage illness, I am fortunate to have little neurogenic pain. Everything is firing from the neck up, so I am able to strategize my circumstances to avoid pressure sores from becoming septic, aches from becoming chronic, my mind from becoming stagnant, and to free my heart to continually emanate and feel love.
When one is moving toward the end of their life, often dreams can become more vivid. Upon awakening, recounting the dreams of my sleeping state often reveal inner work that is yet to be addressed. Sometimes my dreams merely clear emotional material that is clouding my clarity; dreams are always regenerative teachers. Lately, I have been experiencing my dreams as a bridge to the Spirit world, perhaps to aid my transition.
In one such dream, I was painting columns of an antebellum home a particular color well known to Southerners – shutter green. Shutter green is the color many shutters are painted in Louisiana where I lived and raised my children for 30 years. I frequently dream of the turn-of-the-century home where I raised my family. The house in the dream was clearly a variation of that home and magnificent property. We lived off a highway called Military Road where confederate soldiers were rumored to have marched, thus giving it that name.
In the dream, I was painting these columns with the woman who owned the house. I knew her name clearly. It was Monique (or Monica) Marie Crane. I remember feeling that it was essential to me that the woman feel good about the work I was doing. Her husband would be home soon and I wanted the column he would see first to be meticulously painted. Doing a meticulous job felt almost like a spiritual calling. There was no duress, no external pressure.
I remember looking into a full-length mirror and seeing a very pleasant black man! I can remember moving my arms to see if the reflection would move with me. It did. I was clearly the man in the mirror. The love I felt looking for the man was profound. I can still feel it today as I recall the dream. There was no sense of time, no feeling of enslavement, no sense of victimization. Pleasing others with my craft was deeply satisfying.
After I woke up, I felt such love for this man that I told my friend who is a hospice chaplain about the dream. She affirmed its significance and offered her own perspective. She saw how this man’s life appeared to parallel my life, that I’ve lived life’s circumstances with much gratitude and no feelings of enslavement, despite the lack of freedom of movement. As she described this, I felt the kinship with this man. I felt deep love that I cannot understand cognitively.
We live many lives in one life and perhaps we live many lives in many lives. The I who is, is constant. The I is forever.