Consumed!

 Hello Friends...

Sorry for my long absence, but I have been consumed

By illness for more than 2 weeks, which felt like someone

Sucked the life out of me.

For those still with me - Thank You.

Posting will probably not be as often as I would like,

And don't know what shape it will take,

For those who may be wondering about my MRIs, 

This is what they told me:  There are ventricles in the inner

Brain that are supposed to be symmetrical looking,

Something like a butterfly.  Mine are distorted and

Enlarged, indicating too much spinal fluid,, or

Hydrocephalus which could be causing the trouble

With walking and balance.

Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, oh my....

I'm still hoping to post inspiring things, but may also include

My recent experience with loss of health, and how

That has impacted my life.

A poem also emerged, which indicates that my 

Creativity is coming back on line again.

Hopefully I can learn to use this ipad better so that I

Can add a picture :)

In any case, thank you for being here :)

Mystic Meandering

The Challenge of Illness - John O'Donohue

We never value or even see some things in our lives until we
are just about to lose them.  This is particularly true of health.
When we are in good health, we are so busy in the world that
we never notice how well we are.  Illness comes and challenges
everything about us.  It unmasks all pretense.
When you are really ill, you cannot mask it.

Illness also tests the inner fiber and luminosity of the soul. 

Illness focuses us onto our "inner landscape", into resting
deeply in the inner silence of the Soul.  It is a remedial silence
that allows us to endure, to move through, but not necessarily
getting rid of the illness.  We can't have an agenda - only the 
deep acceptance of the companion - and learn to navigate it.

John O'Donohue
From - Eternal Echoes

~

Photo of Soft Sunset taken by my brother :)

 

Find a way back...

 May we find our way back to
peace, civility, integrity and health,
and open our hearts to a new reality of living.

_/\_

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Challenge of Illness - John O'Donohue

We never value or even see some things in our lives until we
are just about to lose them.  This is particularly true of health.
When we are in good health, we are so busy in the world
that we never even notice how well we are.  Illness comes
and challenges everything about us.  It unmasks all pretense.
When you are really ill, you cannot mask it.

Illness also tests the inner fiber and luminosity of the soul.
It is very difficult to take illness well.  Yet it seems that if
we treat illness as something external that has singled us
out, and we battle and resist it, the illness will refuse to leave.
On the other hand, we must not identify ourselves with our
illness. .....very ill people are often more alive to life's
possibilities than the medical verdict would ever allow or
imagine.

When we learn to see our illness as a companion or friend,
it really does change the way the illness is present.  The
illness changes from a horrible intruder to a companion
who has something to teach us.

...Sometimes, when you see a thing as the enemy, you
only reinforce its presence and power over you...

Held openly, as a friend, this bit of unknown aliveness
may take you on an amazing journey to places you may
never have anticipated.  Such attention enriches and
deepens genuineness and presence.

Illness also focuses us onto our "inner landscape", into
resting deeply in the inner silence of the "Soul."  It is a
remedial silence that allows us to endure, to move through,
but not necessarily getting rid of the illness.  We can't have
an agenda - only deep acceptance of the companion - and
learn to navigate it.

John O'Donohue
From Eternal Echoes

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The Dharma of Illness - Tarchin Hearn

In the midst of the 21st century, many people, in spite of all
their worldly wisdom, are still laden with medieval attitudes to
illness.....as if sickness is some kind of failing.  Physical dysfunction,
frailty or weakness is often experienced as if it were something to be
ashamed of, or guilty about - as if we have failed to meet some target
or some kind of socially acceptable ideal of good health.  We often
feel a need to make excuses for our suffering.  As if we needed to make
excuses for being vulnerably co-dependent dancings that we are!  We
try to identify a concrete cause for our condition, not only to help us
find a resolution to it but because the only alternative to identifying
a clear 'outer' cause seems to be that we ourselves, our behavior or our
lifestyles, are the cause.  It's our bad 'karma' or perhaps our bad diet or
lack of exercise or excessive stress, and illness is punishment or
retribution for our dissolute living!

[Could it be that] illness has invited us into a period of intensified
enquiry, contemplation and spiritual ripening...

An immeasurable expanse of experience and experiences surrounds
 and suffuses [us], a weaving together of uncountable situations and
circumstances - a seamless whole in the act of constant transformation
 - this dancing of [our] current knowing/beingness.

All complex, inter-dependent life dancings, in other words, all living
beings, have come about through the collaboration and balancing of
uncountable factors.  As the relationship between these factors
 changes, the system functions differently.  If the relationships change
 sufficiently, the functioning will change into something else
all together and the original functioning will no longer be there. 
These constantly changing relationships are a basic nature of all
interdependent arisings.  There is no shame in this.

Birth without death would not be life.  This continuous streaming of
birthing/dying is life in action.

~

Moving in the flow of compassion and deepening enquiry,
we engage with all beings in ways that support the integrity,
the stability and the beauty of the entire living world.

Engaging with this [flow] of birthing/dying living,
embracing it, surrendering to it, [we find that] the mystery
is tremendously integrated.
It is extraordinarily stable.  It has been in action for
billions of years.  It is breath-stoppingly beautiful in
all its vulnerability...

My medicine is wonderment...

Tarchin Hearn

Excerpts from:
The Dharma of Illness and The Medicine of Wonderment

Tarchin has a unique view of the inter-dependency of all life,
which he calls the "Holoverse", borrowing from the idea of
the Hologram.  The full article is worth the read, especially
for those dealing with a chronic health condition.  It really
helped me change my perspective on my own health issues.

(Dharma = Cosmic order)

Pneumonia...

A week of Pneumonia has brought me to my knees – only to find a grey emptiness and lifelessness, finding myself to be an empty shell of a woman.  Just a body in pain, discomfort and very aware of the absence of spirit.  I can’t even “spiritualize” it, or make it sound “spiritual.”  No words of wisdom rise to the surface.  I have never experienced anything like it before.  I am entirely focused on the body mechanism itself and my inability to function.  Just making it through each day.   I am unable to read or meditate, only pray…

Twice to the doctors this week.  Throwing up the antibiotics he prescribed, being told I may have to go to the hospital.  Loss of appetite – two days of bread and water.  Seemingly robbed of health and a sense of Divine Spirit that supposedly animates this body, that I have so come to rely on, yet can’t seem to locate.  Only grey emptiness…

To make matters worse B has been away for 4 days on a business trip.  He will thankfully be home tonight. 

Today I just sat and cried – thinking of all the people in the world who are truly suffering from illness and disease, especially in poverty stricken countries – with no one to truly love them, or care for them. Feeling a bit "abandoned" myself...  How they suffer for lack of love…

May we all know deep love in our lives – the love that heals, that sustains and gives us breath…  I've come to the conclusion that this is really the only thing that heals - Divine Love