This blog is a reiteration of an understanding that has become central in importance to me over the last 15 years; the last nine in particular. This is my seminal message about accepting and not resisting the situations we're faced with, no matter what they are. I realise how contrary this is to our way of thinking. Our 'warrior culture' wants to be in control and use whatever ever force is necessary to bulldoze obstructions from our path.
We have all developed a lifelong habit of looking at ourselves in a mirror and always seeing our image the wrong way around. Our news media give us a continuous stream of negativity creating the impression that 'No news is ever good news' Though our ego-selves would prefer 'business as usual' maybe it's time we stopped being ego-slaves. Stop for a while long enough to notice nature. As an old Chinese sage said, “Serenity and peace is the norm of the earth.” Wars end, most people recover from illness, most live to an old age, and most people are doing good things to most other people most of the time. Maybe carrying an image of ourselves that's the wrong way round is not so clever after all.
We have each made up a sense of ourselves from images created by other peoples' images of us. It's unavoidable. However, most such self-images are “good enough for jazz”, as my musician friends say. But a diagnoses of any serious illness, especially a terminal one, can confront some, maybe most of us, with a level of truth about ourselves we may not be ready for. At first this will almost certainly appear terrifying. Yet when we let our barriers down and begin to realise (make real) this new found freedom of acceptance from our old self can bring us, many find themselves living our lives in quite different ways.
It's all about allowing and letting go, which is an amazingly simple thing to do. Just letting go of something we're holding means relaxing and allowing gravity take the object into the waste bin. Simple yes, but easy, no! It should be easy on the face of it, but our ego-self is born out of contrariness. Our beliefs about having and keeping control in order to keep secure (which may merely mean 'familiar'), can bind us to our beliefs both mentally and physically like steel cables. But belief is the weakest level of understanding. For many people belief doesn't need evidence or proof. It just needs a strong feeling. If that feeling is strong enough, and for billions of people it is, then are capable of absolutely absolutely anything, no matter how ridiculous it may seem. We only need to listen to statements made by American politicians to prove that! The trouble is the emotional impacts of our beliefs are not only mental, they affect the body too.
Subtle energies, the job of which are to flow through the body supporting the gross energies of our physical biochemistry, can become trapped in physical organs like whirlpools among currents in a river. It was whirlpools like these that were found in my body through working with my acupuncturist and kinesiologist. The enabled the release of these energies. Of such energy a Chinese sage said 2500 years ago, “It blunts all sharp edges, It unties all tangles, It harmonies all sights, it unites the world into one whole.” I hope this may give you a tiny inkling of the way in which we can work with nature's energies at different levels of our bodies and minds as well as those of the world around us.
In trusting such processes and working with open minded awareness we can find ways to explore such avenues as these. But I must stress those words 'trust', 'open minded' and 'awareness'. At the outset of our exploration being an intense believer is in the processes and therapies is not necessarily helpful. In such situation we can carry a lot of preconceptions. Neither should we be dyed-in-the-wool sceptics. Leave a few cracks in your mental roof to let the light get in. Don't believe or think you know. Don't expect for an outcome or a failure. Watch and listen with a healthy detachment. If we can be still enough and silent enough and open enough, something wonderful will happen.
I meet a lot of cancer patients, many of whom have been under treatment for a along time. All the ones I know are positive and hopeful even though, like me, some are aware they are terminal. I suspect most people find their way through the darkness to a place of peace. I don't know if any have had counselling; somehow I suspect not. Maybe at such times there is an inner 'counsellor' - a sense in which wisdom arises out of such circumstances. Belief is never enough.
May peace, love and joy fill your days and all that you need be enabled within you and for you.
Contact me on the blog if you want a chat.
(Not edited by Liz
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