CANCER – CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY, PART 2

 For me, cancer has become a transformational journey!

I came to this realization before I read Caroline Myss’s definition on the Wounded Healer Archetype in her book, Sacred Contracts.  Here is the phrase that is most pertinent to my above statement:

The Wounded Healer archetype emerges in your psyche with the demand that you push yourself to a level of inner effort that becomes more a process of transformation than an attempt to heal an illness. If you have successfully completed the initiation, you inevitably experience an exceptional healing, and a path of service seems to be divinely provided shortly after the initiation is complete.

That’s what I was going to write about in Cancer – Crisis and Opportunity, Part 2. Amazingly and unbeknownst to him,  my dear friend, Samo, actually encapsulated this about me in his blog, entitled GRRRR! I would like to share his words with you.

First and foremost, Sam is one of my dearest friends,whom I met when I lived in Hawaii. We’ve been friends for over a decade. He was also one of my major lifelines back home while I was in Bali and Singapore last year.

In conjunction with being an invaluable support to me, he is a spiritual healer/reader who, I might add, has been very accurate in his readings for me, even when others have erred. I trust him implicitly.

I do plan, at some point, to fill in background information on some of the statements I made to Samo. As always, I am  simultaneously honored and humbled to know that my personal realizations can be thought-provoking as well as helpful to others.

Please click below to read about cancer as a spiritual journey and, contact Samo if you have need or desire for a spiritual healing, counseling, and/or reading. His information is on his blog, “Samo Says”.

Thank you, Samo, I love you.

click here

IN MEMORY OF MEME IN BALI

Meme means grandmother in Balinese, and that is how I remember her even though she is gone from us.  She was the mother at the ancestral homestead in which I lived for 6 mos. last year.

The last I heard was that she had fallen, broken her elbow and was going in for surgery. Her son-in-law notified me almost immediately.

Her passing brings up the time I spent in Bali.  It was one of deep reflection, of having the time and space to meditate, do qigong, walk and be with a community that treated each other like family. Life is very basic there, one of the oldest villages  – Kerambitan – in Bali that has not changed with time.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Motorbikes abound with even young children zipping along the country road. And, they do have several public internet places – my only connection with the outside world.

It has, however, retained its community life where people not only help each other out, they depend on each other for their survival as well as for their overall well being, something unheard of in the West.

Remembering Meme brings up memories of my time there and with her. Meme was the epitome of a village mother.

When I first met her, I thought she was older than she was. In fact, I was surprised to learn that she was younger than me. I realized then how nutrition can play such an important role in one’s physical and mental development.

She stood not 4’9″, thin to the bone, her small body bent over, and shuffling along slowly so that she would not fall. She would have to sit on the stairs to come down each step. She had chronic diabetes.

Meme had a perpetual frown on her face, showing the scars of living a hard life where finances are scarce. Yet, I have come to know her in quite a different way.

ACTS OF LOVE , by CHRIS HEDGES

I read an article on love.  So, this precedes my Part 2 of Cancer- Crisis and Opportunity, a blog that is evolving as I continue my journey.

Yet, I am coming to realize that many life threatening diseases are exactly about the LOVE THAT IS MISSING IN OUR LIVES.

CANCER – CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY, PART ONE

“You do know that your tumor is malignant, don’t you?”

This is how the oncologist informs me of my condition on December 23, 2011.  After the initial shock, my qigong breathing kicks in, and I recall that the Chinese character for crisis is the same as the one for opportunity.*

Slowly breathing in and out, I make a real effort to remember this as my children, Jennifer and Matthew, and I absorb the news that I have cancer.

This is my second bout with cancer. 1994 ended with a dx of  a malignant polyp in the colon.

This time, the dx is a malignant gastrointestinal stromal tumor, one that appeared at the end of Nov., 3 days before I am due to fly home from my year’s sojourn in Bali and Singapore, back to the U.S.

I now know that this tumor is a slow-growing one that just decided to suddenly pop up. It reminds me of the Taoist Qigong Masters’ stipulation that the disease is inside the body for a long time before the symptom appears.  And, so, this may have been inside me the whole time I was away in Bali and Singapore all of 2011, and I didn’t know it.

Even as I remember crisis and opportunity, at the same time, I wonder how I am to deal with yet another trauma in my life!

Trauma, Disability, and Social Isolation

Reblogged from Trauma, Violence, and Human Rights:

• 

Robert E. Murphy describes his own experience with social isolation after becoming a paraplegic in this selection, titled, “The Damaged Self.” He uses words like “stranger,” “aliens,” and “exiles,” to describe a new condition of being in the world. There is much trauma attached to disability. Murphy describes an “us vs. them” mentality when he speaks of being “one of ‘them’… somewhat apart from American culture, making in many ways a stranger” (Murphy, pg.

Read more… 197 more words

MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS A BOOSTER by Dr. Adele McDowell

THE ESSENTIAL PIECE TO HEALING TRAUMA

FORGIVENESS.

But, what does it really mean to forgive?

What I’ve learned for myself and working with others as a qigong healer/psychotherapist is that “forgiveness” is one of the most difficult things to do. Yet, it is ABSOLUTELY necessary in the healing of trauma – whether it is to forgive another, forgive your “God”, or forgive yourself.

In fact, forgiveness is essential to our overall health and well-being, whether or not we’ve been traumatized.

Forgiveness, first and foremost, is a process – an often times lengthy one at that. It is NOT a one-shot deal! Sometimes, it takes doing it over and over, each time letting go of a little more anger, pain, and sadness.

It’s also not about just saying the words, “I forgive you”.  Forgiveness does not come from the mind. It comes from the heart. The heart is the entry way into our souls.

However, our hearts can harbor the angst for a long time, a sharp or dull ache that we keep close inside us.

The first thing we need to understand about forgiveness is that it’s NOT about excusing another for whatever pain they caused or you think they’ve caused.  It is about releasing the toxic emotions that will make you or keep you sick because you’ve somehow stuffed all the pain in your heart.

You need to let your heart break .  It is in the breaking that begins the process of healing. When your heart breaks, it opens the floodgates for the emotions to flow out.

It is this very out pouring of feelings that leads to forgiveness.

SACRED ACTIVISM W/ANDREW HARVEY

My good friend, Chairani, sent me this link. Finally, someone is talking about how to combine spiritual mysticism with social/political activism.

Sounds like a match made in heaven.

Click the link below to see what Andrew Harvey has to say about how this is the critical time for us to  take back our country our POWER and how we can do it.

http://www.liloumace.com/Occupy-Wall-street-facing-the-crising-Sacred-Activism-Andrew-Harvey_a1671.html.

I for one am grateful that someone is giving us a plan to combine the spiritual with action, that it’s not enough for us to simply meditate, that we must also do something. And, that we must do it together, for that is where the power comes from – ALL OF US!

DEEP TRUTH by Gregg Braden

I find synergy amazing !

Right after I finished blogging about “survival of the fittest” and the mind-set of competition that it sets up worldwide, I receive a link from Lisa Garr’s The Aware Radio Talk show in which she interviews Gregg Braden who speaks to this very concept in his new book, Deep Truth.

Gregg is a spiritual teacher who is also a trained scientist. He, therefore, bridges for us the gap between science and spirituality.

DALAI LAMA AND MANKIND – What Does It Mean to Live?

Now, that is a very interesting question. I find that particularly so after reading what the Dalai Lama says about humanity.

We are taught to survive, but is that living?

Don’t think we can answer that question until we look at the concept from which our society is built – SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST – Herbert Spencer coined this phrase following Charles Darwin’s work on “natural selection” of the species, stating “let the strongest live and the weakest die”.   Although Darwin was referring to those w ho could adapt best to the local environment, “survival of the fittest” came to mean “survival of the most physically fit”.

Now that we are more advanced, it doesn’t seem to mean the most physically fit, but to mean the ones who excel in competition, who supposedly start out with a “silver spoon” in their mouth – family money and connections which means the best education, health care, transportation, etc.  With this wealth and these connections, they learn from an early age that they are entitled, that money buys status and power, even the power to sidestep laws that bind the masses.

Inadvertently, this concept has produced a culture of competitiveness carried to extremes – a society based on exclusivity (if one is not seen as one of the fittest), a society built on the belief that we must fight for our survival, so when one is not part of the “fittest”, one is seen as “the other” or those who are the dredges of society and, therefore, not fit to receive the benefits of those who are fit.

It sets us up to fight – something that violence and wars have shown throughout history.

We, in short, don’t know what living means, let alone know how to live.