Soul Tracking #2 - 10.24.19

Today's photo...

After writing my last blog entry, I followed a link I received to the Sphere Being Alliance YouTube channel. It is a video about serving self vs. serving others, and it was very well written and caused me to look at the ways my behaviors have been and sometimes are self-serving.  The premise is that during these ascension times, those who are serving self more than 51% of the time will end up bifurcating off onto another low frequency timeline; and those in service-to-others mode will bifurcate into higher realms of being.  Now whether or not this is actually what is happening remains to be seen, but I embrace the concepts and have been evaluating and changing my behaviors accordingly.

The service to self strategy is tricky because in the dualism of this 3D world, you are either the perpetrator or the victim, and both positions lead to self serving agendas.  Yet, by coming into life with an agenda to serve other people, humanity, the planet and/or God, is the only way to escape this deeply entrenched duality.   Some of the questions become, How am I serving the world by taking care of myself?  When I desire something, is it just for me, or also for others?  When I perceive life, is it from a viewpoint of how can it serve me, as opposed to how I can I serve it?  These are great points of self-inquiry.

I then watched the Star Trek Next Generation episode, "Lessons" (I guess I'm on Season 6, not 5).  This is the episode where Jean Luc falls in love with a crew member newly arriving to the Enterprise.  She captivates him with her musical prowess, and they shared several touching moments playing music together.  That's what I like about Star Trek--the writers allow for the subtler nuances of emotion to play large in the scripts.

I went to bed after this episode (around 1:15 AM), and lay there quietly for some time re-hashing  and sorting through an unexpected pile of emotions that were unearthed.  I felt lonely and isolated--as if a lover had left, or died--no doubt a hangover from losing Shay, my long-time partner, housemate and lover.  There was considerable grief still lurking around these ideas and emotions, and I was a little surprised there was still so much there, after all the processing I've done on the loss.  But more than that specific event, I once again acknowledged that while  I enjoy, or require, a lot of solitude, I'm also a "partner person".  Now living as I am, alone, and basically with no social circle, other than online and the weekly phone call from my brother, I've isolated myself in a way that. although I'm liking the aloneness, there's a definite longing for companionship, and that is what the STNG episode pointed out quite poignantly. It was, in fact, Jean Luc's conundrum: being the captain of a starship, responsible for 1000 people, and how an intimate relationship might affect his judgment, should there be an existential catastrophe. Prior to this time, he had chosen NOT to pursue intimate relationships for that reason.

I explored the feelings for quite a while before my usual bedtime ritual of being my own DJ, listening to music. I enjoy mixing the tunes so that they flow stylistically, with some tracks pointing at the next track in unexpected and satisfying ways.  It's the fading and transitioning between tracks that I find entertaining and fulfilling.  If I don't watch the time, I can easily go for 2-3 hours doing this.

Since I had a possible appointment at 1 PM, I cut my listening down to an hour, hunkering down under the blanket and falling asleep quickly.  I proceeded to dream--not about Star Trek, but about Donald Trump--another celeb dream.

Lori Ann Lothian

I think what triggered it was an article I read from a Facebook post by Lori Ann Lothian.  It was a psychoanalysis piece of Trump using archetypes.  Her observations had him tagged as an "High Chair Tyrant", and her scathing analysis was pretty on point, at least based on media coverage of the man.

My dreams were almost entirely of me following him around, and then him following me around just doing random activities, none of which stuck with me after I awoke.  Yet, it was an all night affair, with that energy infusing all my sleep.

I do remember another encounter with Sekhmet as I was drifting back to sleep after a pee break at 7:33.  She was closer to me this time, and rather than averting her gaze as before, she was looking directly at me, and there was a gentle, bluish light emanating from her eyes and staff.  I felt a deep allowance of me--a wave of love that felt wide open, with so much space that by comparison it seemed I have been living under a table my whole life. I then recalled the YouTube video, noticing that when I considered doing something from the space of serving the world, I felt much more free; as opposed to a central focus on what I can get from the world, which now seems so confining, in some inscrutable way. I then noticed my pain levels went down a point and current concerns faded, and then I fell asleep.

I woke up again at 10:43 and checked my messages as I was expecting to hear from my client whether or not we were "on" for recording her podcast at 1 PM.  There was a message saying that what I thought was the person she was going to interview saying she "wouldn't be able to make it", and then a message from my client, Janet, saying for her to enjoy her day.  I was prepared to fully get up if the appointment was "on", but now it seemed it wasn't, so I went back to sleep.

I woke up again at 1:03, and as I picked up the phone it started ringing.  It was Janet.  "Well, are you ready to record?"  I was really groggy and confused.  It turned out the message I received was because I was in a group message list, and the person messaging was someone else--not who I thought it was. Janet was confused, too, but we finally got our shit together, and we managed to pull off doing the podcast with the actual guest, albeit a little late.

Janet Barrett

Janet is one of those people who lives with one foot in this universe, and the other in mysterious realms that I can only occasionally get glimpses of, bless her heart.   We usually do the dance of reaching across timelines and universes to finally meet at a common moment to do our work. So, the dance today was par for the course.

Her podcast, Journeys Into Enlightenment, was a conversation with Mmatheo Motsisi, a medical doctor, healer and shaman from South Africa, and the subject was living in Ubuntu, or Unity, in the cosmic sense.  It's a deep concept in African cultures, and after the hour-long conversation, Mmatheo was in tears attempting to communicate the depth of her feeling about this concept.  It was very sweet and moving.  Since I had just revisited some of those emotions the night before, I was particular empathetic and was right there with her.

The day proceeded routinely, other than an inquiry from one of my customers about why she couldn't find the CDB Hemp Oil on the site.   I had to tell her that due to PayPal's regressive policies about the sale of "marijuana" online, I could no longer offer it, and that the "half off" sale I was running 6 weeks ago was ended, but she could still purchase some--I'd just send her an anonymous link for payment.  I didn't hear back, so I guess the combination was a deal,-breaker.  Paypal suspended me back in August for a week when they noticed I was offering the hemp oil, which apparently was against their policies.  I'd had it on the website for over a year...

Well, it continues to rain lightly here, and the temps have definitely leveled out at a new low. It only got up to 46 today, with highs in the 50s for the rest of the week.  Oh, Kansas, you represent the seasons so well!

At this moment, I am left with a new-found allowance for my pain and the way my body is transforming.  My ego responses before have been reactions of fear, insecurity, and dread around my "condition" and "situation".  Now there's an over-arching feeling of nurturing and a level of "okay-ness" I haven't had before.

Soul Tracking #1 - A New Project of Self-Inquiry

Intro

This new blog project is intended to be a platform for reporting and then reflecting upon my life in the hopes it will assist others in their explorations of self.

I use the word "tracking" in the context of Toltec Shamanism, where the aspirant, or Nagual, "tracks" what it is he desires, where the journey created by the tracking through time reveals sub-conscious motivations that may be hindering spiritual (and mental, and physical) progress.

In this case, I'm tracking the Higher Self, or colloquially, The Soul, or the Cosmic Being of Self.  It is the big ME that is having its being throughout physical incarnation, and multiverse existences.

Mostly, this 'big me" is a big mystery, hence the desire to track its motions and machinations. From down here "on the ground" of 3D physicality, MOST of what's going on in the cosmic field of identity is frustratingly unavailable to my current way of perceiving.  So, I officially begin this tracking project, intending to make this a daily report, without doing what I normally do to "enter a headspace" for writing. So, we'll see what happens.

10.23.2019

For the past month or so I've been attempting to overcome longstanding de-hydration, which I suspect has been going on for 20 years or so.  As the aging process has inexorably ground on (I turned 67 in September), this de-hydration has created high levels of pain mostly in my arms and knees. 

The RE-hydration process is trickier than just drinking more water, because the body has adapted to low water intake and will expel water that is more than that low level.  It's as though it got used to being dry, and has set up several "systems" and strategies to protect itself from absorbing more than it has become accustomed to.

That said, during my sleep time, I've been waking up at 2-hour intervals to urinate. This is not the frequent urination of a swollen prostate--this is full-bladder peeing, so the kidneys are working overtime to expel all the "extra" water I've been drinking. I'm up to about 68 ounces of intake over a 24-hour period, with my target set at 95 oz. (the body weighs about 190 lbs, so the conventional wisdom is to drink half your body weight in ounces of water). 

Anyway... I turned out the light to go to sleep around 2:30 AM, and woke up at 3:33 AM to go pee.  As I came around to waking consciousness, I heard the word "Sekhmet" repeated over and over. In fact, I recalled dreaming the word that was like a mantra repeated under my dreaming.

At first, I thought, "Isn't Sekhmet an Egyptian form of Satan?"  Which kind of alarmed me, as if maybe there was somebody, or some entity cursing me with a dark agenda.  When I finished peeing, I looked up the word--Sekhmet is the Egyptian goddess of healing, depicted as a woman with a lioness head, toting a wand used to direct energy. "Set" is the Egyptian version of Satan, so I was way off on that one!

It's interesting that I had Sekhmet confused with Set, and it occurred to me that throughout my life I've been suspicious of all healers, so that a benevolent construct such as Sekhmet would take on a negative connotation.  I spotted that this extreme suspicion arose from an incident where I suffered an operation to remove a needle from my knee that I had accidentally driven into the right knee between the kneecap and femur from crawling around on a rug where my mom had carelessly left a needle she was using to sew a credit badge on my Cub Scout uniform.  Further exacerbating my fears of medical incompetence, when they wheeled me into the operating room, the doctor took a look at me and said, "You're not Suzie!" He laughed, "You almost had your tonsils taken out." 

The 4-hour operation was not successful, but my parents decided NOT to tell me that it was. I didn't find out until some 20 years later that the needle was left in my knee.  It never really caused any problems later in life, so I never went into any serious blame game around it.

Once I had identified the true identity of Sekhmet, I immediately received an intense download of energies.  An image of Sekhmet (similar to this one), appeared in my mind's eye, and she was waving and directing a long wand that was shooting an energy wave out of it into my body.  She was keeping her distance, as if any physical contact would be destructive.  This went on for just a few moments, and then she stepped back, but remained in my space.

Shortly, I was back asleep for another two-hour cycle, except this time, I woke up at 6:13--almost three hours--different than the usual 2-hour window.  When I woke up this time, it was from an interesting dream where the Queen of England was interviewing Barack Obama in the setting of a TV studio, and I was some sort of technician that was supposed to provide tea for both of them.  I apparently took my job very seriously, I stumbled into the middle of their on-air conversation carrying a huge cup of tea which I placed on a coffee table over which they were talking. They stopped, politely acknowledging me, but I knew it was a gaff of some kind.

Last night, I had a dream about Bill Clinton--I can't remember what it was about, and then another where I was advising Hillary Clinton about something.  I rarely have celebrity dreams, so three dreams in a row like this is weird.  Not sure what it means.

Since the two-hour sleeping routine has been going on, I've let myself sleep as long as I seem to need, which has been about 9-10 hours for the last 7-8 months.  Usually, the sleep is heavy with a lot of dreams, or I'll wake up feeling like I had just laid down--not remembering any passage of time. 

I do love to sleep, since it's the only activity I do that doesn't cause pain. It's difficult for me to wake up, and even more difficult for me to actually get up from the bed, due to extreme pain in the knees and arms, usually around an "8" or "8.5" (out of 10).  I procrastinate around doing anything physical--such as going to the store, shipping stuff at the post office, housework chores, or taking out the trash. 

I have limited my Ibuprofen or Aspirin intake to twice a day, as any more than that increases discomfort.  It usually takes 3-4 hours to notice any difference on Ibuprofen, and about an hour on the aspirin, but it lasts half as long.

I have tried A LOT of non-NSAID alternatives to the standard options, with nothing working with the exception of Ashwagandha.  If I take a couple of grams of it with Ibuprofen or aspirin, it decreases pain by another 20% from just Ibuprofen or aspirin alone, and on its own, will remove the "sharp" part of the pain, turning it more into an ache, which is more tolerable. 

I did finally lift myself out of bed to be officially "awake" around 2:30, after spending about an hour on my phone, doing email, and social media.  I have an online business, so it's necessary to "stay engaged", and luckily, it doesn't require moving around a lot--until I need to do some shipping of products, which has been frustratingly rare lately. 

I fixed my standard "breakfast" of eggs mixed with leftover veggies I steamed the night before, making a sort of "pancake" out of the mixture and then spreading plain yogurt on it.  I'll also fix a cup of coffee, and chow down. 

I've been taking the following supplements:  2-4 grams Vitamin C (with bioflavinoids); 2-4 grams of MSM; 4000 units of Vitamin D; 100 mg. Zinc; 2 grams fish oil; 1 gram Black Seed Oil; 1 gram mineral complex; and 500 mg B-complex.  I also take ionic minerals, extra magnesium, silver and 8 drops of Lugol's iodine. 

About 3:30 I hear a racket outside that sounded like a truck with a bad muffler, combined with some sort of compressor.  I sat wondering what the hell it was, finally getting curious enough to pull myself up to go to the front door and look out. 

It was a good ol' boy running a stump remover, to take out the last remnants of the 100-year old tree that was removed yesterday.  It had gotten struck by lightening and a huge branch (about half the tree, actually), fell on the porch roof, crushing it down about 18 inches.  The tree was rotting, so it really was a hazard, especially in Kansas weather, but I was sorry to see the old girl meet such a undignified end. 

That said, the extra sun will help keep things a littler warmer this winter--but then there's gonna be more heat in the summer.  Oh well, no biggie.  I might just plant another tree in its place for fun.

I did the rounds on social media. I've got a routine that seems to get some responses, although I'm never sure if I'm doing myself a favor, helping the business, or getting direct sales.  It, at least, keeps me engaged, and keeps me from worrying so much about whether or not I'll meet expenses for the month.

I do some posts on my Facebook profile. I've been doing cartoons I think are funny, or funny memes. I used to post spiritual nostrums, but NO ONE would "like" them, but when I post a funny cartoon, I'll get 20-30 "ha-ha's".  If I post a cute animal picture, I'll get 30-40 "hearts" and "likes". If anyone has to read any more than a short paragraph, they won't.  Such is the state of literacy in society these days.

I also have 3 FB pages, and 2 groups I post to, but I use Hootsuite to automatically post groups of postings I upload every month or two.  I participate in LinkedIn, Alignable (2 accounts), IBOToolbox, ReferralKey, ApSense, Minds.com, Patreon, and The Wellness Universe; and I've got four Twitter accounts I am active with daily: @pureenergyrx, @boydmartin, @broadcastmystic, and @djancient33. To do my daily input takes about 4 hours. I then spend another 3-4 hours inviting people to my profiles. 

I send out mail to my opt-in "active buyers" list on Mailchimp twice a month, and then do the amazing Quantum Health Newsletter twice a month, too.

Once a week I update the playlist schedule on Mystic Broadcast Network Radio at radio.co; and occasionally add content there.

And that's pretty much my daily "work".  I spend 2-3 hours in the evening watching very selective TV on my HDTV.  Currently, I'm on Season 5 of Star Trek Next Generation and plan to go to all the seasons of Deep Space Nine next.  I also watch new episodes of "Bull" on my CBS All Access pass; and "The Good Fight" is pretty good; and "Strange Angel"--mostly as a social anthropologist.

My news sources on YouTube are Jordan Sather; Edge of Wonder; Sphere Being Alliance; and very occasionally RT.  I like to watch Bill Maher replays and watch him squirm in delight to the bizarre antics of the current President. 

OK, so it's past time for dinner.  Tune in tomorrow!

That Bias Against Not Knowing

 

If you've lived long enough, there is a deeply transformative event that has probably happened to you. I call it "breaking open". It's when your worst fears, your deepest separations, and the destruction of your most cherished beliefs, lead you to such a deep despair, you begin to question everything you knew to be true. You realize you just don't have ANY answers--you have NOTHING to offer, and a survey of your life reveals no value whatsoever.

The first time this happened to me, I was in a difficult marriage riding alongside an existential mid-life crisis. I didn't know what to believe anymore. I didn't believe IN anything--certainly not myself. I felt like there was no "me" there anymore. What finally returned me to a functional ego was a book by Dr. Gerald May, The Dark Night of the Soul. In it I found a sort of spiritual rock to cling on to while I rode out the existential storms of my life. In time, I found comfort in the embracing of that dark night, as it revealed to me the depth of my feelings, the breadth of my not knowing, and the cosmic panorama of who or what I might be.

The second visit to the dark end of the street, was the loss of my partner. Her death broke open my heart, where I could see all the ways and hidden recesses of my resistance to loving, and the terrible regret I now had that I never truly shared myself with her. It hit me much harder than I had expected, or I should say her death was not what hit me so much as the realization that I never let myself love her the way she loved me. The further shock was seeing how I lied about it, and denied my own heart. Why was I seeing this NOW after she's gone! I cried, I writhed in the remorse, and I went deep into the grief of how I had lost my own heart.

These two journeys laid me out spiritually, prostrate on the rocky shore of the threshold to divine communion--a kind of ego destruction where nothing is important, and yet it all seems to have impact.

What got me reminiscing about these adventures was a talk by Miranda MacPherson called, "Ego Relaxation". She describes her own "breaking open" of her spiritual practice that reduced her to an extreme state of not knowing. Not knowing who or what she was, not knowing if she had anything to offer the world, or herself.

She finally came to an awareness that these profound states of not knowing are also part of who we are. And, in fact, are a gateway to our own divinity. As corporeal beings living in this dualistic world of opposites, we form biases in favor of knowing. We avoid and fight our own ignorance, and take definitive steps to transform our ignorance into knowledge. Culturally, not knowing has negative consequences, and is all twisted up with trust issues and existential security.

We diligently seek "answers" when we don't know something, and mistakenly carry over that habit into our spiritual life where there is a whole other thing going on. We get confused between ego knowing and the awareness of self.

The ego says it knows what and who we are--it knows what we've done and why. It knows what love is, and is certain about its own potentials and purposes. These are all ego constructs, and they are the solid basis upon which we build our sense of what is real, and what we are willing to experience.

The conflict arises when we attempt to connect to the Universal. We don't reference ourselves as being everything, because then there is no individual-ness, no point of reference between who we are and God. MacPherson points out that this is where the real spiritual work begins. We can begin to acknowledge and relax all the ego constructs, we can begin to seek to de-construct all those decisions and choices about who and what we are, admitting the Truth that we are everything, and yet are nothing. Our life is created simply because we exist, and yet what we are is an ineffable single point from which all things proceed.

By laying out the ego and allowing it to be just as much a part of our being as the rest of our life, allows us a transcendence of the dualities of living. Our identity can be more truly seen as a loved and loving character, an avatar if you will, in this game we have gotten so caught up in.

Your identity is loved. Who you are at any moment is loved. And through that love is the eternal connection we all have to each other.

Finding Your "Shool"

 

Those of us who deal with pain on a daily basis, I believe are greatly hampered by language when it comes to incorporating well-being into our lives. I have noticed over the years that there is actually no word that describes a non-pain state, without using the word pain: PAIN-less, no pain, pain free, pain relief, etc., etc.

When we are in the throes of pain, the immediate cessation of it becomes all-absorbing, with our attention focused--stuck, really--on the experience of the pain. There is no "go to" concept we can focus on that is "not pain", other than focusing on what doesn't hurt, which, again, includes pain in the desire of it. It's no wonder it is so easy to get caught up in the "pain cycle'--the more it hurts, the more it traps your attention, which then leads to more of it.

Last week, I got into a fascinating discussion with a local Native American "medicine man", Jake, who asked me, "How is your 'shool'?"

After observing the blank look on my face, he continued. "Have you ever heard of the idea of 'loosh'?" Yes, I had, actually. Loosh is the energy of suffering--the low frequency energy of pain and agony, and it is said that it's an energy that vampiristic beings feed off of to increase their own energy.

"Yes," Jake continued. "We just turn that concept around, and what you have is a word for your sense of well-being. We like to use it to describe a spectrum, where low shool is where it is difficult to spot anywhere on your body or your life where something feels good; and then high shool, is where you feel fantastically alive and high vibe."

I nodded, suddenly realizing he was answering this question I'd had for years.

"When there is pervasive pain, usually the first thing we do is try to get rid of it, when the healing thing to do is to acknowledge with gratitude where in your body there is no pain. We call it 'finding your shool," he gazed at me and I realized that although my shoulders were aching and my knees hurt, my lower back felt really good.

"Yes, concentrate on that. Give that your energy and attention, and it will expand," he added right after my thoughts.

As Jake left the room, I was elated to have a wonderful tool with this shool thing. In Manifestation 101, we learn that what we put our attention on expands. This is the problem with pain, so we turn to external chemical means--analgesics, NSAIDs, and such nostrums, to just get our attention off of it. This is why the shool concept is so valuable. We can now rest our attention on those areas of the body that feel good, or at the very least, don't hurt, and by turning our attention thus, those good feelings can expand.

Jake also advised that we can increase our shool where there is pain, by noticing that there is some part of that painful area that feels okay, or even feels good. He said that in order for pain to exist, there has to be its opposite present--and that's shool.

Our sense of proprioception is greatly affected by pain. Limping is a good example. We change how we feel movement in our body by avoiding the movements that trigger pain. In the Feldenkrais Method, the practitioner slowly and gently moves the body into those areas where there has been a proprioceptive avoidance of pain, demonstrating that either there is greater range of motion than was thought, or that the proprioceptive reaction is no longer necessary--basically allowing shool to expand in the area.

This goes much deeper into what it means to hurt, to suffer, and to eventually start defining ourselves by our state of pain--changing our social behaviors, altering our physical movements, and justifying the pain by accepting it as a part of who we are in the world. This is all a result of pain fixation, and not realizing that there is shool within the pain that is the gateway to healing.

Again, back to Manifestation 101, Joe Dispenza said it well: "You have to feel whole before your healing; you would have to feel abundance before your wealth; you would have to feel awe before the mystical moment; you would have to feel love before your new relationship; and you would have to feel empowered before your success." So, I would add you would need to feel shool before your healing.

Death Is Obsolete

 

"Death, as a concept, is preposterous in the face of the infinite effulgence of being." -- Unknown

From a quantum perspective, death is actually a re-arrangement, a re-assignment, of particles and waves. But death in the way it is used in casual social parlance, means the "end" of a living organism's lifespan. I had a wonderfully bizarre conversation with a channelled being calling itself "Anttarr" one afternoon back in 1991.

I had asked if my lifespan was predictable--you know, that question that most psychics get: When am I going to die? Anttarr replied, "Dying is a hallowed tradition amongst you humans. It is a way to escape commitments, prove a point, give up, and stop playing the game."

I countered, "So we humans don't have to die? If we wanted to, we could live as long as we wanted?"

And before I had completed that sentence, Anttarr barged in, "Of course, of course. But there is much to unravel here. There are hundreds of generations of DNA programming to prove to you that death is as inevitable as taxes," it chuckled. "But no, you don't have to leave your body, nor do you have to age. That, too, is a social meme, a more, an accepted value; a way of constructing a character around an ego. A way of using time to validate self."

I didn't really have anywhere else to go with the conversation, so I changed the subject. But Anttarr's words stuck in my craw, and every time I start mulling over my mortality, Anttarr is standing there waving his "finger".

This week, Deepak Chopra published an article in SF Gate Magazine, called "Practical Immortality". In it, he stresses the point that consciousness cannot be non-existent. It always has been and always will be conscious. It is the basic, fundamental property of experience, the physical universe, and all dimensions beyond this one.

Within this context, the concept of death is exposed as an extreme example of duality. As Alan Watts said, "Death implies Life", since death would be meaningless without life. In the social human world, we have languaged and defined life as "not death", focussing cultural attention on the end of life being the reason for living. On the face of it, it makes a kind of slavish sense, but universally and from a non-dualistic view, it is absurd.

If we can turn this around so that death exists alongside life, it makes much more sense, and becomes something we can work with. Life no longer is defined by death--no longer defined by "lifespan". Instead, death becomes a useful agent for change--a way to transform self, and transcend the death-obsessed ego.

In most cultures is the idea, or tradition, of the "mid-life crisis", seemingly brought on by "becoming aware of one's mortality." This is how we program our minds, our DNA, and those around us, into carrying on this fine tradition of mortal fear, body death, emotional loss and suffering. We live our lives under the auspices of "being a contribution to society" while we're still alive to create a "legacy", and generally use death to motivate and worship our ego.

In the face of the "effulgence of infinite being", these concepts, traditions and cultural habits become obsolete. And by contextualizing living as an everlasting sequence of experiences and expressions of form, we arrive much closer to the Cosmic Truth about existence--a truth that is informed by infinite possibilities, choices, freedom and joy. We choose to live in this form. We choose to live as boundless expressions of creation, untethered by such mundane and slavish concepts of "lifespan" or "mortality".

By living a life without end, we send a message to our DNA to continually repair and regenerate, and we embrace the nourishing impossibility of non-existence. We have always been here, and will always be here. It's the inescapable essence of life.

Rounding the bend toward healing

I finally have put it together after SIX YEARS of mis-diagnoses, extreme pain, discouragement, and general life upheaval.  I now see a way to transcend my physical mal-adaptation (for want of a better word).

Here's the story:

My life partner, Shay, had taken an apartment in San Diego in order to be close to a doctor in Tijuana who was treating cancer with a new aggressive form of chemo-therapy that was not FDA approved. Shay had been diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer, and rather than continuing to commute from Portland, she opted to move to San Diego, where she could also attend courses and participate in regimens at the Optimum Health Institute in Lemon Grove.

Meanwhile, I was holding down the fort in Portland, running the online health products business, taking care of two houses (one rental), and playing drums nights in various bands, with the occasional tour.

Shay was not doing well, and finally called to say she couldn't do it alone anymore, and would I please come down to assist.  I loaded up the RV with items she wanted from the Portland residence, and packed a bag for myself.

Once situated, I commenced driving her back and forth over the Mexican border a couple of times a week.  At some point, her condition deteriorated to the point where she needed hospitalization, so she was admitted to the Tijuana hospital where her doctor had been administering her chemo treatments.

Initially, she was admitted to treat a bad case of pneumonia, and had surgery to insert a drainage tube into her lung.  On the day of her surgery, she had a couple of visitors who had come in from San Diego and her sister who had come down from Portland,  for moral support, so we were all sitting around her hospital bed, joking and reminiscing.  I suddenly began to feel sick--a slowly building nausea, that ended with me hunched over a toilet, puking my guts out.

It felt like an extreme version of stomach flu--although I'd never had it that bad before.  I decided to go back to San Diego to recuperate, and Shay's sister decided to go with me, as her flight was leaving the next day.  It was a miserable drive back to the apartment, since the traffic line at the border was always a long wait--and with stomach flu--well, let's say I don't ever want to do that again!

The "flu" lasted about 36 hours, and I was having trouble even keeping water down. After a couple of days, I was still shaky, but able to eat.

I went back down to Tijuana, and remained there until Shay passed a few days later.  Although it was expected, her death was still a big emotional blow for me, and contributed to compromising my immune system, setting the stage for what was to come for me physically.

After her death, I opted to remain in San Diego, taking over her rental, and beginning a new life without Shay.  After about 8 months, I began getting extreme pain in my left shoulder at night, which then migrated to my right shoulder, making sleep difficult and intermittent.  These shoulder pains would come and go--some nights be absent altogether, other nights I'd be up all night.  Aspirin didn't cut it, and I was getting anxious about what the hell it was.

Then, it seemed to subside, and I was relieved.  It was just in time to go to Burning Man!  It was my first time, and was a great experience.

Upon my return, the pain came back, but now had spread to my knees, with swelling and aching. I was doing daily yoga at the time, and it got the point where it was just too painful to continue. I started getting regular massages, and that helped.

Over the next 5 years or so, I saw healers, naturopaths, acupuncturists, and shamans.  I have always been a spiritual person, and this "condition" took me down a deep rabbit hole of conscious awakening, self-discovery, and put me face to face with the darkest parts of myself.  And for that, I am grateful.

However, I'd sure prefer to not experience my body AS PAIN.

The condition has left me with 50% less muscle mass, shrunken cartilage in my shoulders and knees, and an inability to stand fully, due to pain.  I can't "walk" (hobble really) or stand for more than 15 minutes, without pain getting to an "8" (my own scale where 8 is involuntary vocalizing).  Symptoms are much worse upon waking, with sharp pains in both wrists and elbows joining sharp pain in shoulders, knees and ankles.

As I have scanned the past 6 years every day, I always come back to that Mexican flu.  I believe now that whatever bacterial infection that was, it got established in my joints and is reflecting back as "bacterial arthritis".  I was susceptible to this due to continuing battles with dental dysbiosis--gingivitis and at its worst, periodontal disease--which had become systemic in my 40s, but with diet and focused dental care, I was able to control it.  However, the channels had been set up, making the body a prime candidate for bacterial overgrowth, which I now know is what is going on.

I never did anti-biotics, instead opting to do probiotics, but now I see that the level necessary to get to a deeply ensconced bacterial "fortress" has been woefully inadequate.

I began a course of Source Energy Medicine--the system developed by Stephen Pollitt, applying theories of "programmed water" developed by the late Masura Emoto.

Now, after nearly 4 months on the program, my body awareness and communication has increased to the point where certain vital information is finally coming into my consciousness about what my body has been trying to tell me all this time.   One of the "programs" in Source Energy Medicine is bacterial infestation, which is something I occasionally wondered about, but now realize THAT is what my body has been me to laboring to get me to understand.

As of today, I've begun "phage" therapy with  bacteriophage cocktail from Body Ecology, and have doubled  my probiotic intake, and for the first time in over 6 years, I'm feeling some relief from the body finally giving me a "thumbs up" for this line of treatment that I haven't had since the genesis six years ago/

Stay tuned!

Greener Pastures and Silver Linings

Here's a thought experiment: Imagine a playing field, such as a soccer or football field. Now, at one end the playing field is a beautiful countryside with rainbows, beautiful flowers, amazing villages, children laughing, super-high-vibes--your happiest place. At the other end of the field are your worst nightmares--darkness, sadness, terror, injury, drama and dysfuntion. Now, go down onto the field. Which end are you closer to?

We all live somewhere on this dualistic spectrum--some days closer to the light end than the dark, and other days closer to the dark than the light. Within this dualistic mindset, is an aversion to the dark, and a longing for the light, and therein lies a trap of sorts.

By resisting the dark end of the spectrum, we expand it, and by longing for the light, we demonstrate how the light end of the spectrum is not what we are having, doing, or being. It is a sort of double jeopardy, where one end seems unattainable while the other seems to be continually biting at our heels. As Princess Leia of Star Wars said to the Imperial General, "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

We have been acculturated to deny and run from the darkness within ourselves, and like so many societal "solutions" to undesirable states and conditions, the more intensely we resist and deny the darkness, the more solid it becomes.

"Greener Pastures" are always "over there" somewhere away from where and what we are being right now. That "Silver Lining" is always behind those dark clouds, seemingly out of reach, representing a day of divine blessing that never seems to come.

What is easily forgotten, or overlooked, is that the "dark end" of the field could not exist without the light end. And if we find ourselves at the dark end of the field, it means there must be an opposing light end. The other unacknowledged truth is that within each moment at the dark end there exists a gateway to the light. We have only to make that choice to go there.

By getting hung up about "how dark it all seems", we expand it, make it greater than we are. We lose hope of ever getting to the light, and tumble further and further into that Dark End Zone. We stop looking at the light end, throwing away personal power in favor of "fate" or a rescuing "savior" that will make it all go away.

News flash: We are all our own saviors, and we save ourselves by choosing and committing to that light end of the field.

When there is pain, we must acknowledge that relief co-exists with that pain. We choose relief and thus begin the hero's journey out of pain. When there is the loss of a loved one, we must acknowledge that connection, oneness and love is co-existing with that sense of loss. When there are financial setbacks and poverty, there can only be such things because prosperity and abundance exist within those conditions. Just as with any problem, the solution exists within it.

I was sent a very special video by a friend that got me going on this--a talk by Miranda MacPherson. She speaks about the practice of non-duality being a frontal assault on everything we've decided we cannot be. Everything convinces us that we are not good enough, strong enough, smart enough or conscious enough to experience joy, grace and unconditional love in our lives. By fully embracing the entire spectrum of dark to light, and truly accepting and allowing both ends as eligible for unconditional love, we rise to the awareness that all is good, all is joy, and all is love. There are no excuses for our perceived weaknesses, as those are a denial of our strength. There are no excuses for our stupidity, as that points directly at our innate intelligence--how we learn and grow to appreciate our choices.

As we become inclusive of ALL of who and what we are--the entire spectrum of densities from that carbonized black goo to the glorius effulgent light of infinite being, we gain a mastery over our choices. We gain a truly deep appreciation for everything we've gone through across the entire spectrum of experience, for it has brought us to this place of true understanding.

We become free to run and jump and roll around anywhere we please on that Field, in the full knowing that no matter where we go, we are loved, we are cherished, and we are infinitely free.