There is a 2.3 year old here now named 'Milo'. He is my dear friend Susan/Hrimati's son and he is adorable. Hrimati is the person who first suggested that I come here. I remain forever indebted to her for her suggestion and to myself for following it and to my community for supporting my decision. I can truly say that coming here was the best thing that I could have done for myself and my community. Just like you can't force a 2.3 year old to accept a new flavor that he's not ready to taste, I can't force feed myself acceptance.
These past two weeks, I have been sitting with the multifarious iterations of acceptance, fear and frustration that arise. I realize this will be an ongoing dance for life. I have finished a seven-day treatment of oil massage followed by either water with herbs or very, very thick oil with herbs. They have been sitting for 40 days with herbs brewing that are designed to cleanse (water) or strengthen (oil) the central channel. Dr Ashwin also rubs oil onto the top of my head to refresh the scalp from the heat outside. I feel calmer than ever and my body feels good. My left arm has a constant tightness that I'm used to and gets tighter when I do or think of something that I should not do. Otherwise, I am calm and slowly building back up my yoga practice. The meditation practice is good and I love the peace that comes with it. A 60-year old TM teacher was my neighbor for 10 days and his very presence, let alone twice daily shared meditation practice, was calming. Yet, I'm not done cleansing. Acceptance is not complete - there is still much to be met...
I have been having consistent bad dreams about home. In last night's dream, Matthew and I were sitting in a cafeteria. I had a salad in front of me. He proposed that we go to a party that started at 5:30 a.m. I said "I don't see why I would want to go to any party that starts at 5:30 a.m., and for that matter, I don't think that I will be going to many parties at all. I'll wake up early to do yoga and meditation every day and go to sleep early at night. I don't really see how we'll see much of eachother." And Matt said something like "Oh come on, this will be fun," to which I huffed out of the cafeteria and caught a bus. "He'll never understand who I am," I fumed. I was suddenly transported back to 7th grade and the bus didn't stop at my stop. It eventually turned around and during tht time, I tried calling Matt on my cellphone repeatedly. But it either turned into a 1980s joystick or the call wouldn't go through. I woke up frustrated. It followed a dream the night before where I caught my neighbor snuggling with Matt on a couch in an apartment with a bunch of people lounging around and I picked her up by two limbs and threw her out the door in a fit of rage. Matt looked surprised and said 'what's the problem?' I woke up frustrated again...
So, I asked Dr. Ashwin what to make of these consistently frustrated dreams and he said they may be only 10% relevant and not to put too much stock in them. My friend Hrimati suggested that my pitta was clearing out of my channels and this was good. Another person said that in dreams, other people represent YOU....that hit a cord. Although I've been actively trying to accept where I am and what I have, I have been fearful of returning home to the pace and action and lifestyle that I had before. It's easy enough to say that I'll slow down and listen to my body, but quite a different thing to accept that. My dreams are a reminder that this has not yet been accepted.
Today, after breakfast, the gaggle of American ladies who is currently here gathered in a circle and discussed acceptance. I shared my dreams and started to cry that perhaps I won't fit into my life anymore - 'what if I let my husband down?' I asked. 'He married an active, dynamic lady and now I have no choice but to slow down.' Matt later assured me on the telephone that he loves me exactly as I am and that he will do whatever he can to maintain balance in BOTH of our lives. God, I love this man..but back to breakfast...
Clare, the Parisian with MS had some truly salient points: "You are 40 and are now mature. We slow down a bit anyway when we enter the 40s. I had MS when I was 20 and am now 45. I am not in a wheelchair, but I have slowed down. I have slowed down a lot. Before, I was a manager and I was very busy - so busy - I didn't take time to feel my body. Now, I do not have a choice. I must walk slower than other people. I have less energy. I have to take rests. But, I refuse to accept that there is no cure. There are positive things to having MS.'
'Like what,' I skeptically asked.
'You slow down. Slowing down is a very good thing. Sometimes, I am walking along slowly and I see people rushing past to the right, rushing past to the left, whah, whah, there they go - always rushing and wooshing bye. The go so fast! As I walk, I take time to see things. I notice flowers. I connect more deeply with people. I take the time because I must. If I try to walk fast or do too much, I am laid flat. That is not fun. I had to stop African dance because it was too much action and I loved my African dance. But I gave up African dance and I found yoga. African dance is from without and yoga is from within! I found a slower form of dance that I love just as much and allows me to connect with my partner. I feel that my MS is a gift to slow down. I feel so much more connected. I can look at the negatives, sure. There is a lot of terror. There is a lot of fear. Will it come again? Will I get worse? What if....? But, there we are so much more than our diagnosis. We are so much more than our limitations. With each door that closes, another opens. Do you want to rush through life or slow into your maturity with awareness?'
I was inspired. She went on.
'I know that the western medical world wants you to believe that you will have this disease forever. But, I refuse to accept that we can not find a cure. You are lucky that you have come to panchakarma at the beginning! For 24 years, I did not know that I had it. You know and you have taken steps to clear your channels of toxins right away! You are so lucky. You will go home and yes, the stresses will be there, it won't be so relaxing as here, but you have awareness that lifestyle is just as important as a disease that the western doctors tell you that you have. There is no cure? How about a better lifestyle. One in which you make a choice every day to listen to your body. Not ignore it because you are busy, but listen to it, honor it and take the space to stay healthy rather than limited by your disease. There are positives in MS. And there may be a cure. People with HIV get together and stand for a cure - they build a spiderweb of support. What do we have for MS? We don't have the energy to build our own spiderweb? Phuough (the french sound that we all love so well), this is not the only choice. We will find a cure and until then, the choice is ours to find the positive.'
Jen, from America, shared that Clare had previously mentioned that her own children had become more compassionate and sensitive to other people's energies because of her own shifted energy. 'Yes,' said Clare, 'this is also a good thing.' Hrimati suggested that rather than accept a disease as way of life, one meets it, joins it and respects it. 'Maybe the word should be respect rather than accept,' she offered.
And so I have been thinking about this. It echoes Ram Dass' book 'Still Here' in which he talks about aging. He says that we are an ego within a Self within Atman. If we choose to see it that way rather than the reverse (where the Ego is the most important thing), we realize that there is so much more than our body and our current circumstances. There is a greater connectiveness and wisdom of the Soul/Self, and then there is consciousness/Atman in which the Soul is always striving to reconnect. When people die in other cultures, there is less fear because they trust that they will reconnect with the greater awareness that is pure consciousness. They find the space and peace in aging to find wisdom - a trait oft revered by other cultures. In our culture, age is a pariah to be shushed in a corner. People live in fear of aging, disease and dying. Their egos are larger than their awareness of Soul and Consciousness. If we simply pause in the midst of aging, including disease, and shift the prism through which we view things, we can realize that we are not just our bodies.
As Clare said, we are not just our diagnosis. There is something positive to what happens to us. She has taken the lens of looking at least through her Soul and that is what I understand layer two of 'acceptance' to be. Layer three is of course that there is a consciousness through which I, in this life, must experience through MS and whatever else to go even closer to that which pervades the entire universe: love, acceptance and compassion. Bhakti.
I thought about the last three days of my Grandma's life. My sister Stacy and I kept a vigil by her bedside. Our cousin was frequently there, too. My mother was far off in Africa and virtually unreachable. Grandma Kay was 100 and 9 months years old. She hated the nurses ward where she was living, and yet she kept fighting to live. Stacy and Grandma and I had fought the facility successfully in prior years to keep Grandma out of the nurse's ward and in her own apartment, but she kept falling since the 24 hour nurse couldn't watch her every single minute of the day. Grandma Kay hated that ward, but she kept hanging in. When we held the vigil, she was mostlly sleeping. I was reading to her from 'The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying' and singing songs to her in English and Sanskrit. I didn't have a plan, but was just holding the intention that we clear her channels of any fear so that she could peacefully, even joyfully, surrender to death in this body. At one point she sat up and squeezed my hand, or perhaps it was Stacy's hand, I can't remember - we were so unified in our love and hope. As I was looking at the clouds crossing over the moon last night, I wondered what that grasp meant. Did Grandma finally see that she was a part of the entire universe and that this little body need not be her chamber of fear anymore? That is was okay, actually, a blessing to leave it? I like to think that is what happened....
I asked that question to Matthew today when we spoke on Skype. How can we know? We were there in love for her and I hope, hope, hope that we provided a vessel for her to pass with ease and fearlessness. Similarly, I have a choice of how I choose to see aging or disease. When I was first diagnosed, I felt like I was trapped in a chamber of sheer terror. I was terrified of what was going to happen, if I wouldn't get better, if it would pass to my right side, if the pain would never go away, if it got worse, if I became blind, if I ended up in wheelchair. I saw all of the things that I could never do again and felt like I was living in 'The Scream' by Edward Munch. The screams of fear did not cease to assail me...and although here what comes is not screaming, they are dreams of frustration. They are doubts, they are fear and they are also the awareness of a possibility of something peaceful, something mature, something wise.
I can choose how I will see this diagnosis. I can either grasp on to the fear and let it take me down the rabbit hole of doom, or I can step back and observe what is happening from a different perspective than that of total disempowerment. I can respect it for what it opens to me as change. I need not fear it, I can accept the shifts in pace and awareness that are necessarily in my life. Do not the waves and currents of the ocean ebb and flow. This is natural. Reminders are all around us if we simply pause long enough to notice...and relate to them. I am blessed with knowledge and a supportive husband, family and community. I am not beholden to a stressful job or expensive mortgage payment due to a high income. There is a way to value health over doing everything all the time. Why fear this? This, even when it is bad, will slow me down. And there is something positive in that.
Tonight, as you look at the moon through the clouds or the rain, I wonder if you can take the space to breathe deep into your soul and feel your connction with Soul and then beyond that with Consciousness. What happens when you slow down? Fragility is a gift in which to pause...and expand....and connect. It is not for us to understand everything that happens, but we surely have an option of how we choose to participate and observe it all.
My MS may very well be a blessing.
Below is a picture of Clare. The ladies suggested that she should write to help people and she was moved to tears. She has a great gift. Perhaps no matter where we are on our journey, it is always helpful to share and be listened to. She is an inspiration and had no idea. May we all share our wisdom and be honored for it. Merci, Clare.
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