My take on Science

 You aren't meant to change anyone. That's the theory of living peacefully on this Earth. The argument goes, 'how much success do you have changing yourself, so good luck changing anyone else'. This is so.

The interesting aspect of a long marriage is that you would be pretty remiss if you didn't notice patterns emerge. I have indeed noticed patterns - good and bad. I try to be subtle about the bad ones but sometimes I go just for broke and state my opinion with no expectation I can effect change. I know I cannot effect change.

There are many times to be in 'bardo' - in the gap, in some intermediary state - in life, and sometimes in my marriage, I feel I am in bardo, just watching someone commit all those crimes against living a long life.

It's so interesting to me that intelligent people - let's call them educated people - can focus beautifully on their diet, their supplements, medical tests and all those 'adding on' elements of maintaining good health, but possibly fail to notice that they go through life as if a saber tooth tiger is chasing them.

Can you even begin to imagine what sort of damage a routine fight/flight response does to your nervous system? The heart, the brain can't possibly be saying, 'oh super, lots of supplements coming my way, plenty of kale, so that should protect me against the fact that the human body in which I reside is in a constant state of threat and angst'. I don't think so.

If you have ever seen a baby being born as I have several times, you know that they come into the world with only one thought: where's the lover of me?

If you have ever seen a person leave this world, is it not the very same thought?

Yes, things need to be done in a day, often very important things. We need to jump hurdles. We sometimes need to do a sprint. Once that's done, returning to a state of homeostasis, of equanimity is incredibly important. 

Here I am. Breath in, breath out. Sound of a truck far away. Sound of a bird close by. Alive, aware, awake. Happy to be so.

We can get caught up about our health as if it's somehow not about the body attached to the head; as if what we put our nervous system through isn't involved; as if we can deny the bleeding obvious - sleep at night, get up in the morning and get sun in your eyes, move daily - and not pay the price.

I wonder if -aholics are refusing to acknowledge their own behavior. If, for example, the workaholic knew what he was doing to himself, and to the partner and family,  would he re-evaluate? I am not sure he would. The nervous system has been disrupted - what they often call PTSD now - and until that is addressed, it's just more of the same.

I think that's why Bessel Van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score) puts so much credit on a yoga practice; it's an opportunity for mind and body to get back in sync and for equanimity to arise quite naturally.

I am all for the benefits of science, but a science that includes a doctor asking a patient about the way they conduct their life, and most importantly their inner life. Without that, you are just shooting darts at a board.

Meditation

I am home from a meditation retreat where we spent considerable time in silence and in a meditative pose. It wasn't the same experience for me this year and I was grateful for that. Last year I felt overwhelming emotion consistently; trying not to weep, holding back tears, finding my voice breaking when sharing. I had sometimes been unable to prevent tears pouring down my face when in meditation or on the day when we visited the group who sang sacred music. It was a private meltdown.

I suppose the good news story of last year is that I returned to my life in a still, private space. I felt that I had somehow gathered strength for those parts of my life that were raw and painful. I had been confronted by the intense pain of other people and I had been softened by it; opened up. It felt like a good thing. I felt like I had found my tribe, the walking wounded; those who knew that something had to be done about their emotional damage before they were annihilated by it. On some level perhaps I understood that more emotional pain was to come and I was grateful for the shoring up of reserves.

If left to my own devices I would not have attended again this year, but my friend had been onto me for several months, wanting me so much to be there with her. There came a point where there seemed no choice and I made the necessary preparations.

This year there were so many more sick people. I was affected by it, no doubt about that, but I also took it somewhat in my stride. I think I had developed an understanding of the reality of the situation. People are prematurely dying from cancer from the way they live and think and from unresolved damage of their past and present experiences. It was inevitable that at a meditation retreat, unlike a health resort, there were would be many sad stories to hear.

The first conversation that stood out to me was that of a middle aged local woman; by that I mean she lived in New Zealand. She had had a double mastectomy several years ago. Recently, she had discovered a lump in her neck and would return from the retreat to hear the results of tests; whether the primary cancer was located in her breast region or in a gynecological region. Either way, her prognosis was dire. She already had the news that she was terminal.

I asked questions about the support in her life. Fortunately she had been helped with a little counseling to deal with her anger and fear but any further help she could get would be useful. So, I pointed out her situation to one of the 'teachers' and received a very odd response. The woman had to come to her, she told me, and she wouldn't be doing anything about it unless she did. It felt like a slap across the face and I immediately closed down, merely offering that she was a woman with little support and I felt it wouldn't hurt to be aware of her situation and keep a watch on her. As if this 'triggered' her in some way she said that if she wanted specific advice she should attend a cancer workshop not a meditation retreat..

This made me incredibly angry. It felt heartless. Don't ever make the mistake of wholly trusting spiritual people, as if they are people without triggers and flaws of their own. We are just people who sometimes act well and sometimes not. Of course, I took the matter further in a subtle way and she did receive some one-on-one counseling from my friend. By the end of the week she seemed much lighter, smiled often.

At the end of the sacred singing this year, a deeply moving experience, we talked a little. There came a moment when I felt a need to move closer into her inner world. 'May I hug you?' I asked. She nodded yes. We embraced for several seconds and I stroked her hair. Now my tears escaped. 'It has been wonderful to meet you,'  I said. 'You will be all right.' I didn't mean she would live, because I don't think she will be alive for all that long. What I meant was that she would find the strength to die well.

Rightly or wrongly, I said as few 'goodbyes' before I left on the shuttle bus for the airport as I could. I had given all that I had to give. I had held in my own sorrows. I had been kind and supportive and good company. Now, I needed to go, as quietly and as quickly as possible.

The retreat is in a remote location and so I stayed overnight at the hotel airport on the first Friday, before I caught the shuttle bus that would transport me to the retreat. It was there when I turned on my phone that I received a message from my doctor's office to call them. I have been trying very hard to get a handle on my stress response over the past year but this message terrified me. I had recently had a battery of blood tests and prepared myself for the news that a cancerous state was indicated.

In fact, the news related to an elevated cholesterol count and I immediately researched, whilst I had access to the hotel's Internet, what to do about that. I love cheese and of course I determined immediately that it was another food to eliminate from my diet. I wrote a list of foods to focus on, flax seeds that I could soak overnight and add to my porridge, for example.

But, I knew in my bones that I had to work harder to resolve the significant stress that I was living with; stress being a significant factor in elevated cholesterol levels. My needs have not been, and are not met, and living with someone who can't process that has been stress provoking.

On the final morning one of the participants was asked to say a 'thank you' on behalf of the group to the 'teacher' who is retiring. She shared that when she met him her mind was a living nightmare. Her relatives being Jewish had been through the concentration camps and many of them had ultimately taken their lives. She had deemed that perhaps this was the only way out for her too. But, the teacher had taken her under his wing and instructed her to meditate consistently. Although she sometimes felt nauseous doing so she had kept up the practice until, day by day, the freakish nightmare inside her head started to lose its hold over her sanity.

It was Kate's comments that truly reached me. There has been a nightmare going on in my head and changes must be made. Time on my cushion must be increased. A sense of peace will come from the inside out. My job is to sit with myself in silence until then.

Tapping into wisdom

When change happens, perhaps a cancer diagnosis of one member of a relationship, there will be a wave of emotions. Each person is riding the waves of their own emotions before they can come together to ride the waves together. It is a 'sink or swim' time as each person deals with their own fears.

It was Kubler-Ross who many years ago laid out the five stages of grief. In my earlier days I thought  Kubler-Ross's model of loss applied only to death and dying, but I've come to understand that the model applies to all types of significant grief and loss in one's life; perhaps the loss of good health, or the breakdown of a relationship. There is going to be denial, anger, bargaining, depression and ultimately, acceptance. It's just the way the brain works, it is thought. I have linked to an article here that does a great job of explaining the stages of leaving a toxic relationship and the justifications one can make of remaining in such a union.

Whether it is a diagnosis of ill health or the breakdown of a relationship, or a significant issue of a family member under your care perhaps, the thing is that it didn't just occur overnight. It wasn't just a wrong step here or there but multiple missteps and flawed thinking processes. The question then becomes, 'You are where you are. What are you going to do about it now?'

In the case of cancer, medical science tends to consider the body as a piece of apparatus. The body developed a problem, so let's get rid of the problem; slash and burn. Medical practitioners rarely have time or interest in looking at the reasons why your particular body developed this particular problem, but they do have some ways to assist and that's what they'll offer. It's always worth hearing what they have to offer.

It's interesting though that we know a lot now about how the body responds to stress, to emotions, to good nutrition or the lack thereof, to sleep or a lack of sleep. We also know a lot about hope, and how vital it is for the brain to develop a positive approach in the light of a  serious challenge. This material can make a real difference, potentially a life saving difference, especially when medical practitioners can't necessarily offer a satisfactory solution; when they offer next to no hope.

We are even coming to learn that not all tests ordered by the doctors to diagnose problems are necessarily safe. It happens in every life time that what was thought of as safe is sometimes later determined not to be safe, so it makes sense to have some healthy skepticism. For example, microwaves may not be nearly as safe as we once thought, nor are the dyes in some X-rays necessarily non toxic. We've taken a lot for granted in this modern world and now it's time to start rethinking the game. What is the wrapper around your hamburger actually made of? It's not just one little thing like a wrapper that matters but all the bits of a modern world that we inhabit that may not be good for our health or peace of mind.

Worrying about this won't solve anything but awareness of what we do and how we live will. We need to supersede the denial and the bargaining and so forth with action that matters. If, for example, one is given a cancer diagnosis, the important thing to do first is to stop and process. If it took years and years for your body to get out of whack and for a cancer to form, do you need surgery tomorrow morning?

It's not that I'm saying 'don't trust the medical profession' but rather 'put a little faith in your own body and your own self' to aid in the healing process.

Consider these options or additions to any plan devised:

1) Get rid of all the junk food out of your diet immediately. Eat plenty of colored fruits and vegetables, whole and juiced. Get into vegetarian cooking with plant based proteins such as quinoa in the recipes. Make sure you have plenty of garlic, ginger, pomegranates, and citrus. You'll find endless advice on the Internet about the best foods to heal cancer. Dark green leafy vegetables are wonderful.

2) Reduce the stress in your life. Focus on living your life in the Now and put the issues in your life into perspective. Rather than worrying a matter, see what you can do to take action to make the situation better. For every action there is a reaction. Choose wisely.

3) Meditate every day even if for just a few minutes. Get to know your own mind and what thoughts are trundling through it. Remind yourself you are not your thoughts and go home inside yourself to the peaceful soul that resides inside you. Giving your ego free rein is not going to work. Get in touch with your inner peace.

4) Maintain a positive attitude. Those people that beat cancer are those that believe that they can beat cancer, even visualizing cancer cells being broken down as they go through the healing process.

We've reached a stage where, thankfully, we have stopped dream walking through our own lives and giving the responsibility to other people to do the right thing. We are beginning to take responsibility for our own health, our own behavior and the consequences of foolish decision making.

It feels like we are at the precipice of accepting responsibility for our own behavior in countless ways and calling out those people when something doesn't make sense or doesn't feel right - economically, spiritually, financially, emotionally. We're learning to trust in our own judgment and that's always a good thing. We all have an inner wisdom. We just have to tap into that.