Trust allows you to call forth your negativities in order to heal them. ...Do not despair because your humanness awakens.
Gary Zukav, page 232
My humanness awoke today...not that it was ever in deep sleep lol...but it really woke up cranky to remind me, "Hey girl...you are still very much human no matter how you try to see yourself as beyond your body's limits. The body doesn't go away, no matter how evolved you tell yourself you are becoming."
I have been dismissing my body's symptoms again, convincing myself in more ways than one, that my mind and my new energy level was so strong now that I did not have to succumb to my body's demands. I have been doing more exercise, more chasing around, swinging around, carrying around and playing with my grand-kids. I have been moving heavy furniture and helping my daughter to move here and there over the last few months...lifting heavy boxes, jumping up onto the backs of trucks or trailers with them...I have even been doing hard physical labor that would make an athlete sweat, like helping with the roofing months ago. I have been shoveling when there was snow. I have been doing so much more than I have been used to doing. I mean I would get the symptoms during the exertion but ws able to take my mind away from them...I did not allow them to "scare me into stopping". It was so cool how I stopped being afraid of them. The fear always made it worse.
Today, after I spent the evening yesterday helping my daughter move, I ended up with a bad dose of angina...worse than I had in a while. I had a lot of Shortness of Breath and chest pain when I was lifting and carrying yesterday but I convinced myself that it was okay...all good....not going to stop me. But as is the way with me...I usually feel worse the next day...So as I was sitting with my tea this morning, there it came, making its breath taking appearance... chest pain...that went from a 5 to an 8 in a matter of minutes. I reached for my nitro, remembering that it was way expired. I had not gotten a new prescription becasue I had convinced myself I was all over this nonsense, I was done with Nitro and Emergency Room visits etc. Man I had myself convinced. As I held that bottle with the 2019 expiry date on its bottom that I had used a few months ago during the last attack...I thought it worked then but would it still work now? I also thought, if this doesn't work, I will have to go in to the ER and the thought of having to do that made the pain go to 9. I literally wanted to throw up at the thought of having to face all that crap again. . I was sweating all over. I even hesitated to take the Nitro becasue I didn't want to discover that it didn't work.
Then out of nowhere I had this "feeling" ...that kind of said, "Trust! Your body needs this. It will work!" I took a hit and within five minutes I was feeling as right as rain. So much relief and gratitude filled me I cried. After my past experiences, I have had great difficulty trusting my body symptoms, listening to them. I felt empowered when I was able to convince myself that I could talk myself out of them or ignore them. That was false empowerment, I suppose.
True empowerment comes when we embrace all of our humanness, all of our negativity. It is true that my evolving has lead me past my fear of death which is absolutely wonderful!!! I accept that if my time is going to come soon, it is going to come. And that is one of the Five Remembrances from the Buddhist, "Subject of Contemplation" Sutra: I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death. So without this fear my experience of illness has a totally different context than it had before. But that does not mean I am exempt from illness, that my body will not get sick or complain as it is beginning to do again as I write this. Though I do not want to dwell on labels or specific disorders, knowing that is not who I am, I have diagnosed my body's condition long before I was actually diagnosed by a cardiologist. (I was diagnosed and am being treated for) My body is challenged by something called, "Coronary Vasospasm" ...the arteries that feed my heart spasm if I exert myself too much, or get too emotional or stressed, resulting in a decreased blood flow to the heart muscle which is technically Angina. For me...it comes in clusters...I may not have any pain for months but once it starts I will have several attacks over a few days. I believe this is a familial condition and responsible for heart attacks in other siblings of mine, and possibly for the Sudden Cardiac Death of my older sister. I have been struggling with this for almost 30 years now and have yet to have a heart attack. So I guess that means my body is doing whatever it can to get me to pay attention so that doesn't happen. I can trust the pain when it tells me "Stop! Rest! Take Nitro!"
Anyway, I share that because we all need to remember the second of the Five Remembrances , not just the Third. No...we should not live in fear of illness or death but we must face the reality of it. We are not our bodies but our bodies are part of the package of our experience as human beings. We should not despair when our humanness awakens.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health
At the same time we need to remember we are so much than these bodies, the only parts of us that succumb to illness and death.
I need another shot.
All is well!
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