In Sickness and In Health (nothing to do with marriage)

What a week.  I've been sick.  Talking about one's illness is boring so I won't except to say it took me an entire week to come to my senses and do something about it.  And that something wasn't going to the doctor.

I come from a long line of Christian Scientists and although I don't consider myself a Christian and instinctively shy away from anything with Christian overtones (not because Christianity is inherently bad but because of the bad things done in its name), I do believe in the power of the mind, I do believe we are all spirit and that our spirit is essentially the same as the Great Spirit or Infinite Spirit or God from which everything has its being.  And if I am that than I am capable of healing myself.  So after a particularly excruciating morning in which I spent most of the time doubled over in pain I took myself off to bed.  And then to the couch as the house painters were painting outside the bedroom. 

I lay there and visualized the pain as a knot.  I thanked it for its presence (after all I have lost 2 kilos!) and for what it came to teach me but now it was time to let go its grip and relax. 

Cameron and his girls were coming.  I had to be up (and straight up, not bent over groaning) and about before they arrived.  And I was.  By the time they came the pain had gone.  I'm sore.  Whatever it was, in the space of a week, left a bruised feeling but that's nothing.  The cough is still here (an entirely separate affair?) but that too is nothing.  And I'm working on that.

I am rereading In Tune with the Infinite by Ralph Waldo Trine.  Finished it and started reading it again.  It is chock a block with underlined words and sentences that held special meaning for Mom.  In the back is written:  Beauty: Eternal Spirit Truth Infinite Life Love.  In fact, although the book doesn't especially emphasize beauty, Mom does. She reads the book with beauty in mind.  To her it seems important to find the beauty in everything.  She also wrote that sins were like mathematical mistakes made in ignorance.  Once one knew better than one didn't make that mistake again. 

Having done a little research (thank you Wikipedia - just did this years small donation) I have a bit better knowledge and appreciation of my roots through the maternal line.  Apparently many of New Thoughts movers and thinkers in its early years were women.  Grandma Hazel was a Christian Scientist and I believe Aunt Joanne was cured of a serious (incurable?) disease through Christian Science.  So the female emphasis continues.

Unity Magazine used to be a daily part of my teenage life.  I read it and liked it but wasn't really ready for it and even then I was put off by the Christian overtones.  Didn't know that Unity Church also has its roots in New Thought.  

I'm just grateful.  Mom's emphasis was on beauty.  Perhaps.  Her artistic nature, necessarily dampened down by the life she led, found some release in the beauty of the everyday?  I'm only guessing.  I don't know.  My daily emphasis seems to be in gratitude.  Just so damn grateful to be alive to see the beauty in the every day.  And to be pain free.

The Dentist and a Lesson in Spirit

Went back to the dentist because of pain.  What a pain!  Knew being scared before the visit was in fact enduring it twice but the mind has a mind of its own (so back to meditating with a vengeance to try and tame it!).  Then, Oh Joy Oh Happiness, the dentist, after reading the write-up of previous visit, thought it might be better to try non-invasive techniques first.  Swelling has gone, as if in answer to reprieve and I can live with the nerve pinging with hot or cold (have had that in other teeth for a long time but this one is somewhat acute). 

Part of me stood back and was amazed at the transformation experienced physically, emotionally and mentally with that news.  Like someone flicked a switch.   Where before I was small and sad and frightened, I was large and light and bright with joy.

When I am frightened the world becomes very small because it is all centered on me and my fear.  A pinprick of fear, a pinprick of awareness.  What an illustration.  What a testament to trying to live big, like an ever expanding balloon of gaiety.       

Many years ago I fainted in a theatre during the movie, The Other Side of Midnight, some trashy soap opera whose memorable scene, the attempted (successful?  I don't know I was unconscious)  abortion in a bathtub with a wire hanger.  When I came to I had the profound sensation of being squeezed back into my body.  The I that had temporarily vacated the physical was limitless and bore as much relation to my person as a seed is to a sequoia.

Despite returning to this episode repeatedly I forget the significance of it.  We are more than our bodies, more than our minds, more than our sensations, more than our pedestrian awareness.  I don't know how much more.  Not even sure I am equipped to grasp it, nevertheless it should never be forgotten.

Sometimes it takes a trip to the dentist to be reminded.                  

How does one exist in the moment while simultaneously thinking/planning/dreaming of the future?  Mindfulness is all very good.  Getting oneself back to the living breathing infinity of now to counteract the centrifugal pressures of information overload. 

Sometimes I think it would be better not to keep up with current affairs.  After all, it's always and again, 'wars and rumours of war'.  Humanity hasn't changed, we just wage our wars on a bigger scale and with better news coverage (with instantaneous real time video).  With the continuous onslaught of how horrible we are to each other, to the earth and to all living things, I need to bring myself back to here and now.

There's no better way to do that, for me anyway, than to be in nature.  I'm a lousy meditator and have pretty much given up trying to meditate.  Later on I'm sure, I'll drag out my pillow and set the clock and focus on my breath but after round after round after round of practice with little change I have had enough.

(as an aside:  One is instructed to just be aware of the coming and going of thoughts, like puffs of air on the surface of water, while not getting involved with them.  Even that is beyond me.  When I'm thinking a thought, I'm the thought.   I can't stand outside the thought to observe the thought wafting about on the surface on my mind   It may occur to me later that I'm thinking and I'll let that particular thought go, so I can sense the dichotomy of the thought and me as the thought.  Nevertheless, that little bit of meditation wisdom is beyond my ability).

But in Nature.  That is another thing entirely.  I become like a sponge.  I can almost feel the buzz of life; trees growing, grasses growing, insects munching, walking, flying, eating and being eaten, the continuous hum of life.  The very air seems alive.  My ears seem to expand until they are the size of dinner plates.  I look up and there is the sky.  The Sky!  A continuous look through infinity if we'll just raise our gaze.  And the clouds, like white schooners, solid yet amorphous, drifting over me, me looking up and making them real by seeing them.  How little we take in.  It is much easier for me to BE when in nature.  It is easy not to be defined by thought for all my thought is defined by the boundless Self in Nature. 

Sometimes when I've been inside for a long time and I step out under the sky, I can feel my spirit expand to match the limitlessness of it.  Until that moment I didn't realize I was constrained, constricted and made little by four walls and a ceiling.  It is those moments when planning or dreaming of a future is just a game to amuse the human element.  The spirit is always infinite.

The Incredible Blightness of Being

Have you ever felt *heavy*?  I feel heavy when I've not aligned myself with what is best in me.  Typically, because I tend to overeat, it is because I overeat.  But it's not only the physical manifestation of overeating, it's a psychic heaviness.  Psychic Sludge is as heavy if not heavier than the extra slice of chocolate cake.  It is a weighing down of one's spirit. 

It is this realization that made me think of how losing bad habits, like smoking, is not so much a denial of pleasure, but a lightening of the load.  After all one wouldn't keep wearing scarves and mittens in a sauna.  What is not needed is left behind.

I do believe we are a coherent collection of energy.  Not random energy in the universe, but an intellgent collection of cooperative energy which has come together to experience this apparent now-ness of present reality.  Anyway, without getting too lost in the wherefores and wherewhy's, this coherent thinking collection of energy seems to be experiencing reality as well as seeking its source.  And that source is pure, bereft of extraneous *stuff* which weighs it down.

Smoking is one.  Why add something so obviously banal and clunky to this pure and perfect spirit.  Because we're learning, me thinks.   Also because pure spirit is a bit hard to take if not prepared.  And Western civilization is anything but prepared.  We are the masters of distraction.  I am the master of distraction, dissembling, dumbing down.  So much easier than facing, no not facing, being, what is within me to be.

Why am I so scared.  Why is it so hard to be who we really are?  If I knew the answer to that, I could help millions of people.  Including myself. 

But it is easier to focus on the spare tyre I've collected since qutting smoking 7 months ago.  One has to start somewhere after all.  It is weighing me down - and I'm not talking in the physical sense.  It is a blight on my spirit because I continue to live with this *thing* which has Nothing to do with who I am.  It is an accoutrement, an addition, a consciously chosen extra to this life I lead.  Doesn't make sense, does it?  Why wear those gloves in a hot room?  Why wrap a scarp around one's neck when it is already 80 degrees? 

There must be hardwired into us this need to do the wrong thing.  Is it so that when we overcome it and are true to ourselves the elation is like an intellectual orgasm?  For it is a conscious thing.

For instance, I was supposed to go to yoga tonight.  I always walk the dogs before I go.  I start at 3pm so that I am home and ready to pop into the shower by 4:10pm.  If Richard comes with me we need to start 15 minutes earlier.  At 3pm Richard decided he'd come for the walk.  I hadn't started earlier as I didn't expect him to come. I was peeved.  Either the walk would have to be cut short or I wouldn't make it home in time to shower for yoga.  But as I walked along, I decided to just let it go?  How important was it, after all?  So I missed a yoga class.  I *made the decision* to not be annoyed.

And what a revelation that was!  Instead of being filled with resentment and ruining the walk and the moment, that continuous moment of now, I decided just to let it go.  And I had a really nice walk, a really nice evening and a little glow of satisfation at a teeny tiny life lesson successfully implemented.

July 4, 2009, Independence Day in the States, well, tomorrow. It's not quite the 4th of July here yet. My stepson is on leave from Afghanistan, talked about how patriotic the Americans are. It's a funny thing patriotism. I used to think about it in school, not the flag waving American brand but how quickly we band together against The Other. My home room in a contest with other home rooms, my class against other classes, my school against other schools, my state against other states and then of course, my country against and better than other countries. Sometimes, in my bleaker moments, I think we need an alien invasion to stop us squabbling amongst ourselves and get us to pull together. It's a strange kink in the human psyche that we have this Us against Them attitude. We always find an Other, whether it's the Aryan super race against the Jews, Gypsies, political activists and anyone else who didn't fit their idea of the perfect specimen, or as I see it here in Oz, the *native* Australians against, let's see, 50 or more years ago, the Italians and Greeks and Yugoslavs or now, that the mediterranean immigrants have been here for several generations, those new *natives* against the tide of refugees seeking a new start in this lucky country at great personal risk to themselves. Yet we're so afraid of losing something to them (jobs? culture? race purity?) we attack them; the Indians, Pakistanis, Afghans, Africans, Asians, etc. They are now the Other. White is right.
Another thing that occurs to me is how each country, race, even continent, has their time in the sun. Hundreds of years ago, the Portuguese ruled the world - and the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, the English. Now, for awhile longer, altho the sun is setting on their economic empire, the Americans. Who will be next? The Chinese? The Indians? I place my bet on the Chinese. That will be a bitter pill to swallow. Improved communication, the aforementioned patriotism and our increased tendency to violent eruptions may mean disaster.
On the other hand, there is an increased Self-Awareness. I am not normally pessimistic about the fate of the world. More and more people are turning to Spirit, in whatever guise or label they understand. I'm NOT talking about fanatical evangelical Christianity (Jesus would be spinning in his grave if he had one) as that seems as violent as the hard line Islamics, both determined to wipe the other from the planet. I'm talking about what could be conveniently lumped under New Age, despite it not being very new: Zen Buddhism, Wiccan, Paganism, all the self-help gurus and teachers, the New Age ethos which harkens back to the basic tenet of all the major religions; humility, treating others as you would like to be treated, forgiveness and above all else, love. Violence spreads but so too does this. We may not be able to change the world but we can make major changes to our place in it.
It's something I work on alot. I get angry, impatient, snide, callous, selfish -- all those icky traits. I see them, don't like them, don't even overcome them all the time but I try. I have a problem with a girl at work. I know she is a gift so that I may work on myself. When I resent her I very much doubt she knows. I am courteous, cheerful, etc. but inside I'm seething. Who does it hurt? Me. Who does that help? No one. So I continue to plug away at seeing her, really *seeing* her as another soul who is doing the best she can at this time. Like me.
It would be better if we, the entire human race, saluted one another on meeting, with Namaste - my soul greets and salutes your soul - to keep us mindful of who we really are. And who they really are. *They* are not The Other. They are ourselves looking back at us. When I hurt her (and thoughts are things as far as I'm concerned) I'm not hurting her. I hurt myself. It's so obvious when I think about it. We are all interconnected. The butterfly and the typhoon thing. So when we do violence to them, in thought, word or deed, we do violence to ourselves. Isn't that sad? It's like the human race has a severe self-image problem.
All this talk about love and kindness and non-violence and there's a fly that keeps landing on my face. I want to kill it. Ironic, eh?