What The Piano Player Needs

 

The body [and mind] is the instrument of the soul. If the piano player is sick, does it help to repair his or her piano? ...In some cases, a broken instrument can be repaired, but a repair at that level cannot cure what caused the breakdown. Gary Zukav Page 175

Learning from A Coughing Fit

Yesterday, in the grocery store I had a coughing fit.  My body has always had  a very dramatic cough reflex that gets activated when I have a virus. When it starts I know it will last for about ten to fifteen minutes.  There seems to be nothing I can do to stop it once it starts.  I  will have to cough and cough until I am literally blue in the face.  I will gasp for air in between each cough. I mean, I struggle to breathe at those times. I have to bend over.  I will often vomit. I won't be able  to speak or explain to others what is going on etc. It is not pretty and often very scary for people to watch.  It can be scary for me too. I absolutely hate when it happens in front of other people.   What I have done in the past is st run to some quiet secluded spot, usually the bathroom, so I could allow the coughing fit to do what it was going to do without my permission anyway, in private  and let it run its course. 

Well it started over the produce aisle yesterday when my daughter and I were shopping. It surprised me because  I thought I had recovered enough to go to the store at least.   It came on quite quickly and dramatically like it often does.  I panicked. My daughter could not understand what was going on and I did not have the breath to tell her.  I knew I had to leave the store and find a secluded spot.  This need to seclude myself was even more important. With the COVID anxiety all around, this type of coughing is not something one wants to display in a  public place. Yet I couldn't tell her what was going on. She, and my sister in law, who just happened up the aisle,  could see me fighting for breath and  changing colour and knew something was up.  I ran out of the store to the car.  It got bad enough for me to call D. to tell him in some barely spoken way between the coughing and the gasping to come which he did. By the time he arrived it had stopped and my breath was returning to normal. I was absolutely exhausted for the rest of the day. 

This incident  took the wind out of me and it took a great deal of positive energy out of me.  I began to worry about what my body was doing.  For a moment, I even wondered if  my time was coming and mentally checked to see if I had my affairs in order. I wondered if I would be one of those COVID patients that ended up on a ventilator.  All this from a coughing fit, that had little to do with COVID, and more with how my body responds to a cough. 

Just a Random Body Thing? 

"You just got COVID, crazy lady, like the majority of the population in this pandemic.  Let it go!  Get over it!  Stop making it into something, it isn't." I can hear my ego mind, the shamer part of it, chirping away as  write this. I would have agreed with this statement completely a decade ago, so body focused was my perspective.  I would have seen an ailing body as both the cause and effect of this experience. I mean, I would have reluctantly added on the mental variant as well because I have always been a student of the mind and would have  questioned the psychosomaticity of this. I would have pondered if it was primarily my mind or my body that "did this"to "me". In fact, I still very much see body and mind  as a part of my illness experience.

Without Meaning? 

However, I also see now too, so clearly, that physical and mental dysfunctions do not occur without meaning.  I was not one of the many to get this virus for no reason though it seems so random.  I do not have this crazy dramatic cough reflex for no reason either.  There is a meaning for all physical dysfunction. Sure, stress plays a significant part in physical illness and I have been mentally feeling "stressed". We can take it farther though. . I want to see and understand my experience beyond the level of body and mind.  I want to ask what my soul needs to be healthy 

Are the numerous ways that physical dysfunctions occur without meaning? Health for some people is a matter of the heart, for others a matter of what they can digest or eliminate in the course of their lives, for others a matter of the head, and for others a matter of being able to hear, or to see, or to move through their lives flexibly, or to stand on their own, or literally to handle the experiences of their lives. These are the issues that must be addressed directly and openly and honestly in the creation of health. Page 176

My instrument might seem to be sick with COVID because my mind is sick with "stress" but only because the player of both  is in need of something.  It is the soul that is crying out to be heard. Repairing my body and/or mind , without understanding what is ailing my soul, will do little good in the long run. 

I suggest now that we go beyond body and mind to understand what is truly needed for health.  What does the soul need? 

It is the health of the soul that is the true purpose of the human experience. Page 177

All is well. 

Gary Zukav ( 1989/2014) The Seat of the Soul. New York: Simon and Schuster.