A Weight of Nerves Without a Mind

So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, so much to be.
Alfred Lord Tennyson; In Memoriam LXXXIII

A lot is said in this sad and pensive poem by Tennyson, a memoriam to his almost brother-in-law and dear friend Arthur who died too young. Throughout this very, very long poem the poet is talking to Christ asking him to keep him rooted in faith in fear that grief will take him away.  What has that got to do with ego talk, and finding the True Self?  Everything!

Many Worlds

What I hear from this section (LXXXIII) is the division of self throughout the worlds (death -life, dimensions, countries, daily experiences) ...the getting caught up in doing and eventually leaving things undone  when there is so much to "be". He resents the fact that his friend didn't get to be, all that he can be.

Like a Dove

For some reason...not that it will ever make sense to anyone, including myself lol...I find myself caught like he as he watches the dove in an earlier section of the poem. I long to be "without a mind".  I too, (though not quite resembling  the drama the poem speaks too lol) am jumping off a cliff and hasting away from this world that I knew.

Like her, I go;I cannot stay.

I leave this mortal ark behind,

A weight of nerves without a mind,

And leave the cliffs, and haste away.

- Section XII

 

Like Tennyson, I am not seeking death, in the physical sense, I am seeking death in the mental.  Tennyson imagines becoming like the dove and escaping all he thought the world was. He imagines flying up and above, circling, looking out at the world in a whole new way, being careless, without worry or concern...thinking possibly it is the end,  before eventually slipping back into the body and time. "...an hour away."  He goes from life, to death ( immortality) to life.

 

(So technically ...this is not a "dove" in this image.  It was the closet I could find.  Either that or a pigeon on a roof  which is technically a dove...but you know it wouldn't have the same effect  :) )


On the Cliff Caught Between Two Worlds

 

In this poem he obviously feels caught between two worlds...the physical and the spiritual.  The physical world is full of pain and grief, the spiritual ...freeing.  This freedom, this joyful vision of the world doesn't require death of the physical body, it requires a death of our "resistance" to it. ...an escape from the mind to just be " a weight of nerves".  How eloquently that describes this beingness...feather light, nothing but the full experience of living, guided by each nerve impulse and the wind beneath the wings...without thought, without resistance, without mind. Is that not living? Hmmm!

 

What drives him to this heart to heart with the Divine? Grief, pain, suffering...what the second noble truth of Buddhism refers to as Dukkha.  Dukkha brings a recognition that yes there is suffering in this world as human beings but there is a way from it. By "leaving the cliffs" ...that edge of physicality... our "attachment" to it...our connection to idea, identity, ownership, separation, ego...we can become free, like the dove...and we connect, as he felt he would, with all other beings in a timeless state. Is that what we are not here to do?

 

I have been feeling like such a misfit in this world lately.  I don't know how to do the "normal" things people do anymore.  They do not have meaning for me.  Yet ego keeps pulling me back into it because as awkward and sometimes painful  as it is...it is still familiar. It tells me I am supposed to be normal lol. Shame and redemption seem to be the normal pattern of existence for me. For so long, I have been standing on this cliff  knowing that I cannot stay.

 

Don't get me wrong...I am not planning to off my Self (or leave this physical body)...I am just wanting to off my 'self", my ego. I want to leave my connection to it behind.  I leap.

 

Ironically...what lesson do I happen upon in ACIM as I pray for faith and guidance, just as Tennyson did?  No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth &; I loose the world from all I thought it was. Lesson 146

 

Now what? lol

 

It is all good.

 

References:

 

ACIM

 

Tennyson, Lord Alfred. (1893) In Memoriam.  Full text: In Memoriam by lord Alfred Tennyson; edited with notes. Retrieved from:  https://archive.org/stream/inmemoriambyalfr00tennuoft/inmemoriambyalfr00tennuoft_djvu.txt

 



Time Out for Ego Twins

Just in case you are wondering about the previous blog...no...I am not like the character in Split.  Well, not really lol.  I was once again speaking very figuratively.  If you were popping in for the first time and concerned about all this "ego" stuff, you don't have to be.  It is all good.  No worries.  Though I am as 'insane ' as the majority of the population, I do not have any virgins in my basement waiting to have their hearts fed to "the beast."  I am just waking up and having a good look at what is real and what isn't. I see the ego twins in many of us and I comment on them.

Now, you could shake your head and think I am crazier than a bag of hammers if you need to.  I am okay with that.  Before you do, however, please take a look at the people around you and take a look at yourself.  Do you not see any signs of a Shamer or Redeemer ego there?  I bet you do.

Anyway. I am grateful for the experience yesterday and what it has taught me.  It showed me that my ego twins both need a long time out.  :)

It is all good.

Wrong again!

Sigh...I hate being wrong when it comes to my physical health for all kinds of reasons...but I know it is all ego based.  It is therefore very good for me when I am :)

The Personalities of Ego

I believe, that not only do I have an ego in  me...a little self that tries so hard to convince me that I am separate from the world, and at the mercy of those around me...I have two of them. Two egos?

Well I believe the ego in most of us is insane and mine is suffering from a dissociative disorder.  It has a split personality. :)  Sometimes it comes out as  Shamer ego...knocking me down and keeping me down with reminders of all the nasty things I am and all the wonderful things I will never be.  It reminds me constantly of the things I did wrong!

Other times Redeemer ego comes out of the recesses.  He does the opposite of Shamer. He  tries to build this idea of me up in the eyes of others with ways I  can compensate for losses, "be better" than someone else...or at least be proven right when Shamer was proven wrong. He gets me into so much trouble with his ceaseless need to "do", to "win", to  "own", to "gain" and to prove myself to this world that Shamer feels so inferior in.

I absolutely despise the both of them lol.  Shamer leaves me feeling the way I feel now but Redeemer never stops. He is too persistent for my liking.

Do you see where this is going yet?

Do you remember my little arm problem that I have been complaining about?

No fracture! 

I decided to ignore Shamer and listen to Redeemer. I spent way too much time thinking about this...and avoiding all the risks associated with the only way I would know for sure.  I had to pull up my Redeemer ego pants, push the voice of Shamer aside, take a deep breath and I had to go back in there!!!  lol.  And I did, if for no other reason than to get out of my head.  I was not going to stop thinking about this until an x-ray was done and a fracture was ruled out.  (But man...I am still not convinced...just too much pain 12 days after a fall to be just soft tissue....did I say that Redeemer was pretty persistent. lol)) 

Anyway...the poor doctor assured me it was not broke because I could pronate and supinate ( hurts to supinate) but I looked at her and out it came, "I don't care!  I want an X-ray!"  (In my mind I was thinking...could be a hairline fracture or a longitudinal one...I would be able to make those movements then and I didn't wait eight hours for a "just a bruise" diagnosis).  So ...I was hell bent on not being dismissed.   I am not sure from where it came...the place of Being or the place of  being frustrated and p###$# off lol.   ...but I was assertive and I got my x-ray!

The results were negative. She came back in to tell me basically that it was "just a bruise". Ugh!!! One thing Redeemer ego cannot stand is to be called "wimp" and I feel I have just been called one...big time! Ego is really getting quite the tuning , isn't it?

And I, now just a red faced Shamer ego,  had to walk out of there with my tail between my legs....again!  All those doctors which were branded and herded together to become the "they" in my health care dilemma won again.  "They" 2,899,000,000...me ( my ego)  0...well maybe 3 lol....oh the shame.

My True Self...however, takes no score. It is not one bit interested in who is right and who is wrong, who calls themselves the doctor and who calls themself the patient, if the arm was  fractured or just bruised, and if my ego got slapped around or not.  It sees no battling personalities  in my mind.  It is beyond all that stuff. It just is.  I want to be "just is" lol

 Man!  There has to be some big learning in this.    I will get to that later.

A Lesson learned when I hurt my arm

Thanks for everything.  I have no complaints what so ever.
-from a story told by Eckhart Tolle in Transcending the Ego Video

I am still  such an ego maniac, a thought junkie, a chronic narrator, a roving reporter, a little prisoner stuck in the confines of the personal self, the heroic victim in the  tragic story I alone am writing  and  I am still for the most part very much asleep. Sigh!

I realize that I am not yet where I want to be.  I am having trouble waking up and staying awake...no matter how annoying that buzzing alarm gets. I am almost there, it seems, I begin to wake up and just as I am crawling out of bed, I fall back to sleep again. I seem to be caught on a "enlightenment wheel" lol. Another big pathetic sigh!

Body Focus

I think I have come so far...and I have...but every now and again I get reminded of how far I have to go.  This arm is reminding me of the obstacles I have before me. It bloody hurts and it is so annoying.  I get pulled back into body focus  and will sometimes get lost in the discomfort.

Mind and Story Focus

But the pain  is benign in comparison to what happens in my mind to spin a story around it.  I get the pain and I think, "Oh it hurts again.  There has to be a fracture.  I wish they would have x-rayed it when I went in nine days ago.   It took me so long to get the courage up to go in when I did. I hate going in there. And like always, my health seeking attempt turned against me."

The thinking will continue to expand to, "I can't go in again.  I think I would rather have a fracture. What will happen long term with a mal union if there is a fracture there? Can I live with that? But the pain...can I live with that?  Man...I live with the chest pain on a regular basis.  This is minimal in comparison."

It goes on..."It would be worse if I got it x-rayed and there was no fracture, wouldn't it? I would then have another "unnecessary ER record"  stuck to my massively large chart, giving them ("them" being all physicians who I have rounded up, branded and herded into one big coral...stereotyping at its best, lol)  even more reason to  adhere to their assumptions about me, 'Fat Folder Syndrome; hysterical hypochondriac, attention seeker or someone with a factitious or conversion disorder.' My future or my family members' future cardiac complaints will then be possibly dismissed when help is needed most. Is my arm worth that?"

The thinking continues to grow into a whirlwind. "I can't expect them to take my complaints seriously just because of a few bruises that are almost faded when they never took the chest pain seriously, the pelvic pain seriously, the loss of eyesight seriously, the severe vertigo I had that time seriously, the fainting seriously or me seriously. I mean...if they did take me seriously wouldn't something have been done about it? My chest pain, even after my sisters' heart attacks, is still such a reality for me but no one hears me.  How am I to  think that they will believe me that my arms hurts when someone else basically tells me the usual story, "These tests or assessments show that it shouldn't therefore it doesn't"? "

I know then that I am out of the present moment. Time becomes my opponent.  I leave the future and am dragged into the past by my desperate little mind, "It has been such a hard journey.  Over twenty years I tried to get help for what most of me knows is very real.  And I still don't have it...even after my sister died of a sudden SCD and two others infarcted in their early fifties, years after I first presented with what appeared to be cardiac symptoms...I am still here living with this, unable to work or do few of the  things I used to love to do. Everything has fallen apart around me.  I have lost so much and I continue to lose so much but still no one hears me.  There is no hope for ever getting any medical help for my health.  And it takes too much out of me to try. It is all so unfair.  I am such a victim to my tragic life.  I don't want this suffering anymore.  I give up trying."

Accepting What is

It is with this 'giving up' that I finally ironically find what I have been looking for... a certain peace in acceptance...I feel myself settling in to what is.  " This is my reality now. It is what it is. As Eckhart Tolle says,   Reality is relatively very benign compared to what your mind is saying about it. (2018).  I can get out of my mind. I will let go.  I will let others believe what they need to believe about me to appease their own egos.  I accept the lack of diagnosis, the lack of help, the lack of support and find my way to the healing that really matters. It is all good."

Then I find myself in the right place, getting to what is really important.  I lose my attachment to ego and physical world things. I feel the veil moving between me and this "transcendent dimension'' (Tolle, 2018) I wake up and I I feel a certain peace.  It is all so lovely...

Ego not done with me yet

That is until...I move my arm a certain way or wake up in the middle of the night to the throbbing and the darn thing starts all over again, "This shouldn't hurt this much.  It must be broken...."     and on and on and on...it goes.  :)  Ego is not done with me yet.

I know there is a very good lesson in hurting my arm.  If I didn't I would just be waking up on a pseudo level.  I wouldn't be dealing with the pain and frustration I stuffed about my health seeking adventure over the years. It is like a big fur ball caught inside me that I need to cough up.

 I don't need to build story around it but I do need to experience the feelings, sit with them, express them.  I haven't done that.  When in ego I numb with story telling, I complain which is equal to resistance and I feel sorry for myself. When in that other beautiful place I ignore the knocking at the door. I shut out the feelings.

I think it is okay to step out and just sit with these feeling for a while. Let them be too.  Maybe this arm is taking me there.  :)

I still don't know about going in to get it x-rayed.  The practical part of me knows I should. still not sure what part that is though...the ego or the true Self. Hmmm!  We will see.  For now, it is just good to see what I am doing in my mind.  :)

It is all good.  It really is.

References

Creative Manifestor (2016, May) Eckhart Tolle: Transcending the Ego. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7QQqJcx4uI                                                           

Inside

Outside,

the world

is noisy and chaotic,

full of voices

calling out my name,

hands

grabbing at my flesh

as they cling to me

in desperate need

of something

I don’t know

how to give.

 

Outside,

the world

is fast and pressured,

with clocks

reprimanding me with

their sharp ticking speeches,

“Get moving!

Keep doing!

Get it done!”

 

Outside,

the world

is a blurry collage

of faces

that rush past me

with their grievances

and their pleas for help.

My hand is so weary

it trembles

when I lift it up

to wipe away a tear

from one of those lovely cheeks.

 

Outside,

the world

is not accepting

of the fatigue and pain

that is claiming

my body

and my mind,

telling me

to just push past it

so that I do not complicate

the constant momentum

of things.

 

Inside,

the world

is different.

 

Inside,

the world

is quiet and peaceful.

 

Inside,

the world

is slow and still.

 

Inside,

the world

is full of  abundant Love.

 

Inside,

the world

is accepting of “what is”.

 

Inside,

is where

everything is real.

 

Inside,

is where

I want to be.

 
 
Dale-Lyn 2010

It is funny how I am running into all these poems now that I wrote so long ago.  They speak to the same issues I am dealing with now...the same learning.  :)

The Gift of Challenge

"This is the gift I give you," Life says. "A tailored made set of challenges, just for you."
-Eckhart Tolle (from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWx1JJTaGa4)


Turning Our Noses Up at Free Tuition

Hmmm!  I love this idea that each of us are given a set of challenges in which to process through, learn and grow.  If we were given free tuition to the university of our choice, would we not be grateful?  We would more than likely accept that it will be challenging and down right difficult at times but we would look at this opportunity to learn and emerge victorious on the other side as a blessing, wouldn't we?  Why then do so many of us complain and blame life for being difficult when it offers us challenges?

So often we look at life as this unfair punisher that is randomly throwing unfavorable circumstances at us, sabotaging us, "picking on us" while favoring others in the class. We look at the circumstances it offers us, sometimes, as unfair punishment.  "Why are you doing this to me?" we may shout out to the universe.

Curriculum Design

We don't get it.  We don't see that every life challenge we encounter is a gift, a precious gift that was picked out thoughtfully by a loving parent of many, many children, just for us. Each of us, each unique expression of the One source that is Life, are given a tailored made set of challenges to process through.  What I am given to experience may be different than what you are given.  Some individuals on this planet seem to suffer excruciatingly painful and difficult challenges, while others seem to pass through life with so few.  Why?  Because what I need to express Life fully and to bloom like the crocus does in spring...is different than what you need, what the person on the other side of the globe needs. Each of us have a different curriculum design to help us achieve the same outcome.

The Real Challenge is in Our Resistance 

The greatest difficulty we have with life is not the circumstances but  our resistance to the challenges or life lessons they offer us. We tell ourselves that life should be a particular way; we compare with others who seem to have it easier; and  we dismiss the thought of others who may have it worse.  We say, "No! It shouldn't be this way.  That person shouldn't be that way.  Life should be easy!!!!"

Life, like a challenging degree, is not meant to be easy.  In fact, it can be down right difficult! But it is difficult for a reason.  Each challenge we encounter is a growth lesson.  If we resist the lesson ...it won't stop the Teacher from rattling on...it won't make the lesson go away.  We will still need to learn what is being offered...and the lesson will not go away until we do. Sigh...we need to stop resisting.  We need to settle in our seats and accept the gift of challenge being taught.

That doesn't mean we have to like it or say it is easy when it is not.  Accepting "what is" is the first and most necessary step into learning, growing and changing life circumstance.  Accept first.  Appreciate next...and then you will be shown when, how or if change is required.

All is well!

Ego Hisses

Man, I found this from a few years back and it kind of speaks to what I have been writing about recently.  I think I wrote it way back when I went off work the second time after getting sick again. I was so frightened then ...knowing the insurance company  wouldn't support me for their own ego reasons and terrified over how I would manage. At the same time, I knew I had to go. I was being pulled away into something greater, regardless of my fear.  Illness was simply the catalyst as it is now.

I went through the door then but I didn't stay there.  I found myself pulled back into ego's world with its senseless demands that take me away from health, rather than toward it. Now I go through the door again, knowing that I won't come back once I do.  No more fighting and struggling on this side of it. I am going home. I am going to be with the peace I long for, the peace we all deserve :)

Ego Hisses

whispers from that place of secrets
become screams in my ears
twisting, turning messages that
express the truth I fear
I suddenly decide to listen
to stop, head stilled to the side
while I decipher all the wisdom
and put away my pride

ego hisses at me with its
desperate pleading cries
to ignore the truths I’m offered
calling them foolish, new age lies
it warns me of the darkness
the desolation I will face
if I go forward with these directions
and leave this warm, familiar place

yet I find myself moving onward
pushing ego’s carcass to the floor
and taking slow, hesitant steps
I move through the open door

I don’t know what I will be facing
what is on the other side
but I know the door has been opened
and it is open very wide.

Dale- Lyn, Nov 2013

 

All is well.

 

It is all good.

For what is life except to be yourself, and what but you can be alive instead?
-ACIM W-139

A bit sad today.  This morning  would  have been the last morning  I taught if I didn't give the students independent study...so I may not see them again.  I will still have time in the office for the next few weeks. Others will be in clinical.

I will make my leaving quiet and unnoticed. When all others are away at clinical, I will walk around and say a proper good bye to the place that I spent so many hours in over the last 14 years.  I will miss it and I will so miss the teaching.

It is a loss, but a necessary one.  The pain I had over the last few days was validation for the necessity of this loss. I don't need anyone else to validate that for me.  I know. 

And it is okay.  It really is.  What is so cool about all this, is that I am learning to be okay with loss and the "big,"bad" things in life.  :) That right there says a lot.

A chapter in my life ends today.  It certainly was an interesting one, let me tell ya.   :)  A lot goes on in fourteen years: divorce, leaving, new homes, children growing up so quickly you can't keep up, illness, health seeking that only turns against you, a sudden loss of a beloved sister, the opportunity to care for a father in the last years of his life and to be there when he made the final transition, cancer in a younger sister, heart attacks in two others, seeing the beings you love the most and were so committed to protecting loose themselves in drugs, recovery, slips, recovery, relationships that begin and end leaving so many life lessons behind, pets that come and go, money in bank accounts and then money no where to be found, hope than a severing of a trust in ego- systems that one believed were there to support, and so many winters and so many springs as the faces of the students who sat in front of me kept changing.....And it was all so good because it just was.  It just was.

Now I move on and not so much literally.  I remove another veil of ego illusion and see a little clearer at least what lay beneath it. I find what is really important. No one can take that away from me.

It is all good.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on!
- Robert Frost


The Veil

I am fully aware that there is still a veil between me and Self...as flimsy and tattered as it may be getting. :)  It is still there.  I am still allowing mind and body to rule at times.  I forgive both though I work hard to get past that veil ego holds up.  I am not "succeeding" at the moment.

Right now body is shouting and screaming...and mind is creating story around it. Sigh!!!

I am working very hard to finish this course I am teaching knowing that it is my last course.  I have not much to offer these days to nursing students...being that I am no longer a "Registered" Nurse but I do have some hard earned writing wisdom I can share (as well as some hard earned life wisdom...sometimes they go together.:)) So it is fitting that the last course I teach in this context is Critical Reading and Persuasive Writing.

Anyway...I made a commitment to put in extra hours to assist my last bunch of nursing students to write a very good paper.  They wrote an emotional one together to keep them inspired and motivated on the rest of their professional journey. This task  required editing on my part and lots of extra hours but I felt it was important.  Now they are writing a technical paper and I made a commitment to review each draft before final submission...that is 24 papers and each review takes over an hour.  24 hours I am not getting paid for or rewarded for in any external way. Sigh!!! lol.  I want to uphold that commitment. I want to help.  I want to leave knowing that I did all I could to help.  That is my nature.  Pathological? Maybe.

It is not going smoothly. Body and mind are obstacles for me.  My arm throbs after a few minutes typing.  (There is something definitely going on in there.)  And the chest pain started yesterday.  I knew I was doing too much...but I ignored the "4" the "5", the "6" warnings and skipped right up into a 9 last night before bed so I could continue reviewing these student papers until late in the evening. It was bad but the whole mental thing goes on when I have it, you know?  "What's wrong with you?  They don't think there is anything wrong with you so stop it...suck it up...keep going...stop being such a wimp"  I have to get past all that before I will allow myself to take the nitro.  Well I did manage to weave my way through the mental chatter...the body was determined to be heard.  The pain  got really loud so I took the nitro and it worked on the first shot...thank goodness. As usually happens when I have these "clusters", I woke up with it again in the morning and took the nitro again...relief.

There is a little battle going on in me ...What do I listen to when spirit can't be heard? Body or mind?  Body won those two battles but if mind can't beat it, it joins it. It steps in to build story around the body.  "Crazy fool!  Look what you are doing. Chest pain again!  And you are all alone in this...you can't even tell anyone about it. No one is helping you with it...and here you are helping others.  What is wrong with you? You are allowing others to take advantage.  You must see yourself as valueless. etc etc" On and on and on it goes. Oh man.

On top of that I have family obligations.  Trying to get my daughter into university.  The residence fee was due yesterday and we put it off til the very last minute because I had no way to pay for it...had to use credit again.  Yuck! And issues with my son showed up.  I need to drive D.'s son today between the bouts of chest pain and I am worried about that.  All this while I review all these papers...It feels like  too much for my body and my mind.

Truth is...I am just tired of all the battling and struggling going on in me and around me. I am tired of the loss ( I am actually very sad about leaving the classroom).   And all I want is peace.  I would take the pain if I could do so peacefully.  :)  I would take the loss if I could do so peacefully. I would work myself to the bone if I could do so peacefully. This veil seems to be waving between me and the peace I want. Man I just want peace.

Anyway...I vented...and I will post today ...just to vent.  I will remove it tomorrow.
All is well.
.

Locked Up?

All this freedom, but I still feel like I'm locked up.
Piper Kerman from Orange is the New black; My year in a Woman's Prison.

I see the sun coming through the clouds and it gives me hope. I am always looking for slices of hope and chunks of relief throughout my day.  I will take whatever I can get and am grateful for it. :)

Two Worlds

I sometimes feel overwhelmed by life on the outside....I am not only seeing  two selves in me but I am now seeing two worlds...the world out there and the world in here.  I like the world in here but I have to function in the world out there...well so my mind tells me.

Out there it feels like I am expected to carry a to do list around with me that is as long as the street I live on. I am told that I am a failure because I have so few things checked off on it.  The guilt, shame and fear sometimes settles over me like a dark cloud.

In here there are no lists and no need to do anything. I just have to Be and I feel this unconditional love and acceptance for that Being.

Prison on the Outside

Unlike the insides of Litchfield prison where Piper and the gang hang out, the outside world is the one that imprisons me, full of high walls, locked doors, bars on windows so I can't see clearly, a need to defend and attack, and many things to be afraid of.  The world in here is the one that frees me...full of expansive space and light.

Sigh...one world I know is just a figment of my mind and one is so very, very real.  I  still find myself stuck in the unreal one and that saddens me.  :)

I sometimes feel guilty for the crimes I committed that put me here and keep me here: My addiction to thought has led me to do things that I regret like get sick, get lost, become a member of the "mob" and do what I could to fit in, even if it was not what my heart wanted. I somehow dragged others down with me(my children)...and that saddens me even more.

Freedom

Yet in those moments when I find a way through the walls of this prison and can go in to the space of freedom...I suddenly  realize that I  have been innocent all along...there is nothing to serve time for. It was all just a scene from a Netflix binge.  I can take off the orange and be my Self.

Hmmm!

I am seeing the sun again and there is something so freeing in that light...like it offers the key to unlock the doors of the busy world so that we can enter the quiet space of the inner one.  Man...I am raving, aren't I? 

It is all good.

The Truth Behind Twisted Limbs

Sickness is a defense against the truth.
ACIM

My arm is bothering me to some degree.  I think it is meant to be for the learning. :)

I had told myself after my ER visit that I would not allow the discomfort to get me down...I would agree that it is just soft tissue injury and thus move and use my arm despite the pain certain movements cause. I have done that.  Now that the swelling is going down and the muscle is relaxing enough for me to actually palpate the bone effectively...I am feeling what may be  some "abnormalities". The pain, instead of easing is the same or possibly worse, especially when I touch those spots where the abnormalities are. Something is going on in there.

To add insult to injury, as I was getting out of the lawn chair yesterday...I and it fell backwards onto the ground. The  chair folded up around me accordion style and the arm of which slapped me right in the sore spot. It was probably a very funny scene to witness but Don knew better than to take out his phone to videotape me.  My swear words were probably warning him of the consequences. :)

I awoke this morning definitely feeling "it" more intensely.  What is this "it" I am feeling?  According to ACIM, it could be nothing more than a defense I am creating against the truth.

WTF (front door)  are you talking about?

I know...all this talk about Truth and Self...defense and attack... may sound like mumbo jumbo to many of you.  It may be flying over your heads or feel like banana peelings under your feet. You may be inspired by it...or you may be entertained by "the ridiculousness of it" or even insulted by it.  You may get it or you may be thinking , "There is something really wrong with this woman!" That will all depend on where you are in your own understanding of waking up. If you are not there...it will indeed just be crazy talk to you...feel free to laugh, or sign off.  :)  I am okay with that.  If, however, it reminds you of a bit of truth you may have inside...please read on.

Learning from Twisted Limbs

Illness and injury according to a Course in Miracles, like time  are defenses ego creates and uses to prevent us from understanding the Truth of who we are. As long as I feel physical pain and I focus on that pain...I am identifying my self with the body.  I believe I am this body and what happens to it is actually happening to me. Thus  is your true identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be. (ACIM W-136:8:4-5) I forget who I really am when my limbs get twisted.:)

Ego (the unhealed mind)  wants us reminded of the body, feeling it, and identified with it.  It wants us thinking we are the body.  So it creates sickness, injury and death.  Physical pain puts us back in body focus.  As we get closer to knowing who we are, ego gets frightened. It wants to pull us back and away from that Truth into 'physical world' things. Illness and injury become wonderful excuses. If we stay there in them, we do not have to experience the loss of the world we create in our minds and have become so pathologically attached to.  We may use pain, illness, injury as excuses for not going farther into our Self discovery. Sickness is a decision....It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall.  Now you are sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishment no more. (ACIM-W-136: 7:1,3-4) 

Isn't it ironic?

Isn't ironic, that as I was getting closer to discovering this Truth and feeling frightened of it...I have this fall where I actually felt I was being pushed down?  Isn't it ironic that I had to deal with very real visually validated  pain just as I was reaching these lessons in A Course? ?  There was a 24 hour period since the fall where all I thought of was my arm and whether or not it was broken. I was, for the first time in a long time, very, very body focused.  I actually questioned, during that time, if all this waking up stuff was nothing more than a bunch of crap. :)

I see the irony now as I read this lesson.

Healing

What will my healing entail? An x-ray to be sure there is no fracture?  A splint or cast to immobilize? I don't know.  That may or may not be necessary to help the arm to heal but it is definitely not what is needed in true healing.  Understanding what sickness and injury are is the first step into healing. No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve.  for then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all.  When this is seen healing is automatic. (ACIM-W-136:1:1-3)

I got it! I am not my body or what happens to it.  It is here to serve me, I am not here to serve it. I will be where I want to be when I don't feel the body at all...when I do not feel ill or well...when I don't feel pain or relief from it...when I don't feel the body at all Hmm! Man...I always tend to do my learning the hard way.  :)

All is well.

References.

ACIM(2007) Workbook for Students. A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume. Third Edition. Mill Valley: Foundations for Inner Peace.

 

Happy Mothers Day to All Mothers Everywhere!

 

 

Have a Wonderful Day!



What are you defending and from whom?

Innocence is its own defense.
-Ben Franklin

I wrote a big long spiel yesterday about a fall I had recently.  I deleted it because of the "poor me" nature to it but what I wanted to say, that might actually have some value, is that I learned a little something about my defenses from that fall. 

Defences?  The fall showed me that I was defending the valueless against  attackers that I created in my mind. This resulted in some less than positive consequences.

Most of us know that the more we tense up and resist a fall, the more likely we are to get physically injured.  That is why babies and intoxicated individuals seldom get seriously injured in minor accidents or falls.  Defense is synonymous  with resistance. While I was falling I was clinging to protect my camera...to defend it against the impact of the ground. I made the ground the enemy. I may have saved the camera but I, not the ground, did a number on one finger as a result.  I was fighting to defend my body too against the impact and "I"  seriously hurt my arm as a result.  Again I made nature the enemy when it was my resistance that was.

What we may not know, is that defending our identity or sense of personal story is another form of resistance that leads to a different type of injury. Yesterday's story was an attempt to defend my pride and my identity against personal and social opinion and I slipped away from knowing who I truly was when I did that.  I made the Self the enemy. I was clinging to what I thought I knew, creating a monster out of the universe when the monster was simply my expectations. I did not see the truth: that if I defend myself, I am attacked. (ACIM, w-135) Attacked by what? Myself.

Say what, crazy lady?

When we defend anything...we are operating from fear based illusion. Ego creates a vicious cycle of fear that we will be attacked, creating defense, more fear, more defenses etc.  Defense is frightening.  It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. (ACIM. W-135:3:1-2).  We believe that we are very vulnerable to attack and attack is all around us.  We must, we tell ourselves,  be prepared to protect and defend against such attack.  So we are always on guard, ready, waiting for the fall so we can resist and fight back. We seldom pause to ask ourselves this very important question:

What are we defending and from whom or what?

We lock our car doors as we leave the parking lot for the safety of the store.  We double lock our house doors at night. Some of us even have weapons tucked away in our bedside drawers, just in case.  We protect our family with the right amount of life insurance.  We pay taxes to ensure there is enough border protection between us and the country beside us and that our resources are kept away from all the "thems" of the world. We spend more time, more money, more energy on protection and defense than we do on creating healthier happier and more peaceful communities, and lives. Does that make sense to you?

It doesn't to me...especially when I see that each defence ends up hurting us in the  long run.

What are we defending?

We are defending things that are valueless and that will perish anyway: things of form, bodies, identities. We defend our material belongings, sometimes with weapons that will destroy life.  Hmmm.  We defend our bodies believing them to  be vulnerable and weak, at the mercy of life forces, when the only thing they are at the mercy of is our unhealed minds. And we defend our identities...who we think we are...even at gunpoint.  We cling to this idea that we are a certain religion, political affiliation, nationality, gender, social status, belief system that needs to be defended against all the other separate entities out there. We may "lay down our lives for the cause." When the cause is nothing more than ego smoke.

From whom or what?

We can tell ourselves we are defending against "our enemy"...but who is the enemy?  If we are all One...who can the enemy be?  The Self? God? Every time we attack someone else in the guise of defense...we are attacking ourselves. Why can we not get that?

Defenses are of the ego and the ego's enemy is the Self.  It will do what it can to deceive us and pull us away from the truth of knowing who we are.  So it creates and perpetuates fear so that we spend our energy defending and attacking.  That keeps us from the Truth.

What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present, and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? (ACIM W-135: 18:1)

The good news is, that if we catch ourselves defending...we can know that the defenses  have something ...not   valuable to defend...but valuable to hide.  What was hidden during my resistance to the fall was this simple truth: I am not a camera owner or photographer.  I am not this body.  I am not this identity.  I am so much more. It took a few nasty bruises to get that into my head.

Beyond each defense is the truth.  Let's put down our arms and see it. We need no defense against the truth of our reality.

All is well in my world.

(ACIM workbook ...Lesson 135)

The Fall

I had a fall on Thursday evening.  I was going into the house after a little running. I had seen a bald eagle over my neighborhood and ran into get my camera, only to find him gone when I got back. Disappointed, breathless and a little dizzy, I was on my way back into the house when the dizziness became undeniable.

With my camera tucked tightly under one arm and my hand around the lens(the way I carry it), IPad, phone and a plate balanced in the other, I found myself suddenly  losing my balance. Instinctively I tensed up to protect my camera.   That little maneuver prevented me from rebalancing myself . Everything else flew out of my hands as I headed for the deck. Beyond my conscious control, curse words poured from my mouth, as if they too were losing the battle  with gravity and falling to the ground.

It all happened so fast and in that brief second or two of clock time, I slipped away.  I was gone. Then I reappeared somewhat stunned, to  feel the camera, that  I fought so hard to protect, gently bouncing off my outstretched hand to safety somewhere on the deck, one little finger of mine breaking its fall so beautifully.  I reached out to caress  the lens  like a mother would a child's hair after waking up beside her. Then it registered in me that I had fallen.  

I am not sure how I fell exactly, what hit first or where.  I just found myself on my back shocked, and for some reason terribly embarrassed. I looked past my unscathed camera to see the plate shattered into  many pieces, and my IPad cracked more than it was.  My pride wasn't the only causality of this trick of nature

It was time to come back into myself. I slowly pulled myself from the powerless position I was in to a sitting one.   I knew I was experiencing pain but at first I didn't know where.  The hand that was only seconds ago clinging to my lens to protect it was throbbing fiercely.  That hurt.  My elbow on that side was burning too.  I looked at it to see that it was bleeding ...not profusely...but enough to add some gory to this little drama.   The back of my head was throbbing a bit. Had I knocked the wind out of my self?  I could breathe but my back was heavy. I looked down to see both knees were  scraped and bloody from the fall.  And then I lifted  my right forearm.  An odd circle of swelling was forming already in the center of it and the pins and needles feeling of a good bump in the funny bone was pulsating through that arm.  I was in pain.   Still I could not tell exactly what part of my body hurt worse or if anything hurt enough for me to even give it more than a second notice.  It all blended into something beyond what I could understand.

Had I done something to deserve this?

What was I thinking before I went down, I wondered, to deserve such a maternal slap on the back of the  head to send me reeling forward? I was thinking about my camera, and how to get students to understand the importance of the thesis statement.  I was thinking about missing a great photo op and how freaking dizzy I can get from a little exertion. I was not mindful obviously. Was I feeling sorry for myself? Was I lost in ego prior to the fall?  Maybe this was the teacher's  way of waking me up when I was caught slipping back into unconsciousness.  Is the universe that mean?  Will it pretty much  knock a person out just to wake them up?

Man, what was I to learn from this?

The learning would have to wait. I  was throbbing  in pain but I couldn't understand it.  What I could understand was that I was definitely awake ! 

Ego still calls...keeping me in my head with the thought, "It is probably fractured! You got dizzy, fell and broke your arm and nothing will be done...you wait and see."  That sickening feeling again stuck with me for 24 hours...I wasted 24 hours on that!

Physically,  I am fine now. I still get that funny bone feeling when I type or move my arm a certain way and the camera  protecting finger is swollen and black. The ribs were sore for a couple of days, but better now. I swallowed my pride and pushed aside my commitment to stay away unless I was unconscious and  went into ER this morning to get my arm checked.  I wanted to rule out an ulnar fracture....not because of ego's whining but because I thought I needed too...I got several other opinions before I did that said, "It's definitely broken! go in!'.  But all I managed to do was make ego  happy with it's I told you so attitude... The attending felt it was just muscle and nerve damage from the impact of the fall and didn't even feel it warranted an Xray.  I don't want to give into ego...so I will agree with the physician. A good bang on the ulnar nerve could cause such pain.

Regardless, the teacher is waiting to evaluate my learning.  I don't know what to tell her. I need some time to think.  :)  I think that is why I focused on the arm for 24 hours...as a distraction from the lesson :)

I am also putting all this into a narrated story in hope that it will take me away from the learning I need to do. It worked. Once again I fed and soothed the ego before the teacher. I obviously have much more learning to do.

It's all good.