On Healing: Part 2

purple cornflower 3
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

You can know it in the mind
But if the cells don’t know it, attention will be pulled there
Because everything seeks to wake up – every single piece of us.
That’s why attention is drawn to that which is unawakened.
Adyashanti The Omega Institute, July, 2007. (CD8:3)
(On Healing: Part 1, is here)

The doctor insisted that I not drive home.
When I protested, she pointed out that I could not even get from the chair onto the exam table.
I saw her point.

She presented options – drugs, transportation.
What did I want to do?
I was appalled to discover I could not even form a sentence.
I watched myself, sitting limply, head down swinging gently.
I tried to think things through but the mess was just too tangled.
From a distance I heard the doctor mutter “Ah, cannot make a decision.”
Then firmly, “Call a friend. I will be back.”

She left me in the white noise of the examination room.

It was then, I saw exactly how I move through life armored by my wit,
my clever mind,
my repartee.
I use them all to keep the world at bay.
And when intellect is stymied, I have a body that can turn and exit.
I’ve even thrown a punch or two and whipped boys three years my senior.

Clever mind and strong body, these are my carapace.
And at that moment, I was left with neither.
Gone.
Stripped defenseless.
I felt like some little anemone without one bit of shell – naked, exposed,
and totally unable to defend myself from a world I Do Not Trust.

I struggled not to give into shear terror.
And gradually, I backed away from the abyss.

OK. Accept it. Just go along with what the world wants. This seemed my only option.
I called a friend.
She came and wheeled me home.

Once safely in my bed, I turned on the CD player
and just happened to come across these words of Adyashanti.
They are a continuation of the discussion I shared earlier:

Student: Another aspect of what it [illness] is doing for me… in terms of my striving in life with my work…I’m afraid not to strive.

Adya: So feel the fear of that.
If you don’t face the fear, then you’re just going to strive again…
The fear of course is based on separation…
Anything we’re striving to be, somebody. It is always because we’re compensating for perceived separateness.

Student: Striving to feel like I have enough money to pay my bills…

Adya: Right! Which comes from fear of survival…and that will have a world view of its own…that sees the world as slightly threatening, something that you’ve kind of got to struggle in to take care of yourself…
It comes out of those deep survival impulses.
Again - separateness – that the world will not take care of me.

And it does.
You let it.

I’m not suggesting that it means you sit on your couch and let the riches roll in. But, I’m saying it’s amazing.
Let it.
It does take care of you.
But, you have to meet the fear…

See it. Digest it. Take it in.
Cause then it doesn’t have to keep giving it to you through a negative means, through sickness…

Feeling the fear is the entry point.
A lot of people are pointed to feeling the fear… and through that, if it’s not too traumatic a fear, there’ll be a release… the fear dissipates.
The problem with that is although it’s a quick fix, it’s usually not a real fix.
Because [while] entering an emotional state fully can cause it’s dissipation,
usually the cause is untouched.

So, open to the fear, but as a means to get in touch with the story of the fear,
the voice of the fear, the belief structure of the fear – cause that’s what’s causing the perception of separation:
“Life’s not safe.”
“You’ve got to struggle to make it in the world.”…

You start to feel that belief, that my beliefs, that have an unspoken promise to help me get by and protect me in the world… when you examine them through your mind and your body – your body starts to recognize
“It’s not true!”

The very beliefs that tell me they’re protecting me are hurting me…

It has to be connected from the inside of your head to letting your body feel it.
You’ve got to go slowly and step by step so each thing is felt.
If it is not felt, it’s analytical.

Then, you’re just a person [whose] gone to therapy for 20 years…
and they know how neurotic and totally screwed up they are.
They can tell you why.
They are experts, but experts who are a mess.

Why is that?
Because there is no connection between what they know and what they feel.
They haven’t let the knowledge reconnect them with experience.

The knowledge has been a means of hiding from experience.

So, connect it. Feel the belief…
And when your body feels it …the body will drop it…
Boom! It’s gone right out of your system.

This is actually classic Byron Katie inquiry.
If you’d like more support in being able to do this I recommend her teachings.
There is also a bit more to this discussion which I’ll share in Part 3.

A Promise (of dubious worth)

Canvas 6
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I have sat down with the promise to myself of “just write” and post whatever.
Whatever. It was been a quiet (strange?) whatever kind of week. My difficulty with writing has continued.

For one thing, I’ve kind of given up on thinking – though my mind is filled with thoughts. I find “intellectual activity” (and yes, that is actually behind most of these post) – intellectual activity in the form of thought after thought has become at times unbearable.

Why? Because I cannot stand how all the thoughts seem to pull me out of myself and away from the knowing discovery that “feeling” can provide. Driving into work the other morning (just about the only morning I made it into work last week) I saw quite clearly how thinking pulls me up and out of myself. I didn’t like that and was looking at the phenomenon closely. Then, I realized, “Well, at least that makes it very clear – You are not your thoughts.” Of course, this s a philosophical belief of mine, but just that moment, belief gave way to direct experience.

Thoughts are like these skyrockets I send up from the Silence of myself. Skyrockets are great fun and colorful delights. But, they are no more “me” than my body is. Though I (whoever that may be) do live in close proximity to both thoughts and physiology. In fact, we intermix.

I didn’t stay at work for long that day. My body has had its own struggles. Last Saturday a bunch of old friends and I went for a kayak float down a river in north Georgia. It was a perfect day. The river carried us along and required little work. We linked kayaks up in continually shifting combinations and caught up on each other’s lives. We picnicked on a gravel bank, floated pass turtles sunning by the dozen, gazed up into the blue, blue sky and inhaled the greenness of the trees. After seven miles of these delights we got out, dried off, and regrouped at Pod’s house overlooking a lake just outside Atlanta. I haven’t had such a good time in months.

The next morning I woke up with a migraine; too many nitrates in the potato salad? I don’t know. (Well, yes, in part it was the nitrates.)

But, I was also suffused with Silence, apparently absorbed from all that Nature and enlivened by all the happiness and laughter. The Silence sickened me as much as any migraine. For below all the muscle, blood, skin, and bones, my body was also composed of Silence and my insistance upon moving, thinking, focusing on task painfully torn into it and ripped the Silence into shreds. “One layer up” my inner body energetically became a silence scream. A layer up from that was a “migraine” of sorts.

I called in Monday with the migraine excuse. Though none of the drugs I took relieved the symptoms: low grade headache, nausea, trembling, poor balance, eyes not working. It was enough of a migraine to use as a somewhat honest excuse. But, it was something else too. My consciousness was wide open. I spent a lot of time sitting on the back deck, watching two robins tend their nest. I also caught up on cleaning and laundry, with naps freely interspersed. When I slept, there was pure wakefulness. When I went to work, I couldn’t understand my protocols – the instructions for my experiment. I would reread each sentence, moving my finger along below the words for emphasis, but nothing would compute. I couldn’t figure how to do things I have done several times before. Meanwhile, continually shredding Silence became a roar of jangled, chaotic energy. I soon had to return to my bed.

As long as mind is associated with the object, so long as is it experiencing mind; but when the object of experience has diminished to the point where it has disappeared, the mind ceases to be experiencing mind. Conscious mind becomes consciousness. But during this process of transformation, it first gains the state of its own individuality…
The verse does not speak of the mind but of “thought” as being steady. The Sanskrit word is chitta, which signifies that aspect of mind which is a quiet and silent collection of impressions or seeds of desire. Chitta is like water without ripples. It is called manas, or mind, when ripples arise.

When the mind gains the state of chitta… It holds its individuality in the void – the abstract fullness around it – because there is nothing for it to experience. It remains undisturbed, awake in itself.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, On the Bhadgavad Gita, a New translation and Commentary. Chapter 6, verse 19.

I think that physiologically my body/mind was ready to sit quietly. However, I live in the world. I have a 9 to 5 job. And so that which would melt silently … “Imagine a silent wave on a silent ocean, ready to merge into the silence of the deep” (MMY) – imagine taking a stick to that water and whipping it into a frenzy. That’s what moving in the world felt like all week. That’s what forming thoughts coherently into writing feels like just now. It nauseates my body and sets everything to trembling.

So, OK. Enough for now. I’ve kept my promise.
I have this one thought, RE: Why bother doing this?
I hope that this chronicle might be of use to someone, somewhere, someday.

Adya says if the question is occurring to you, then you also know the answer. So, when I ask myself, “What is going on?” I look to see.
And, I think I see. I think I understand. And so might someone else. But, the answers often seem so outlandish that doubt arises. Doubt is weakening and we don’t need that. So, from time to time it helps to discover that someone else has passed this way. And perhaps, this is the path... and then thorns and brambles don’t matter quite so much.

Dizzy

Italian Street Painting Festival, San Rafael, CA 6/9/07
Originally uploaded by Montereybaydiver

I only do this until I get dizzy & then I lay down on my back & watch the clouds, she said. It sounds simple but you won't believe how many people forget the second part.

StoryPeople


Another StoryPeople that I like,
Intuitively.
I can’t explain it exactly. But you know
Liking is enough.

I’ve had to cut way back on my blogging of late.
November was a tough month.

Today I saw a neurologist,
And tomorrow I have an MRI.
He doesn’t seem to think they will find too much

Not too much brain. (That’s good)
And
They have managed to remove most of the pain.
Day Six pain free…
But,
I’d really like to be able to use my eyes normally again.

And think – thinking normally again would be sooo nice.

In lieu of that,
In lieu of that…

Just saying, Hello.

And I can also offer these snippets
collected before November became “impossible”:

Some would suggest that the migraine aura is actually the brain apprehending its own subroutines in consciousness. The fact that there are natural equivalents to drug-induced experiences suggests the possibility that in some sense, a sufferer is observing what's going on in the brain. The drugged or migrained brain is a cranked-up biochemical computer capable of picturing the self-organizing behavior and nonlinear dynamism at play within normally staid reality.

Borourke, everything.

I believe this may be true.

Though migraine certainly doesn't explain all her visions, many experts, including Oliver Sacks, have suggested that many of the religious paintings of Hildegard von Bingen, or Saint Hildegard (1098-1179), reflect the effects of “silent migraine,” a type of migraine attack that doesn't include a headache.

I believe this may also be true.
But then, I am a geneticist and used to using mutants (pathology) to reveal normal metabolic pathways.

He had awakened with the dastardly sudden flash of light before his eyes. Then the following nausea. Then the sharp cleavage of vision and the temporary dimming of sight, and then the accursed one-sided headache...
Diodorus, writing about Aeneas, the father of St Luke