Being Real: A Tough Time

My dearest friends and well wishers,

I've come to a place in my journey where it is calling on the deepest surrender and peace I can muster. My father said once, laughing: "No one gets out of here alive." The impermanence and uncertainty of life is shining its spotlight directly into my soul right now. We will all be here one day, and it doesn't necessarily mean this is my time. But it is real, raw, and has me realizing, perhaps for the first time since the diagnosis, that our lives are utterly, utterly, in the Hands of God. I keep thinking I've gone to the deepest place inside, and then another experience comes to show me even a greater letting go.

Perhaps that is the most courageous act we can ever do in life....lettiing go. Letting go of the False Self. Letting go into the Great Surrender of Life and transition. Trusting that all is OK, yes even death and letting go of form, as we know it here. We certainly know this intellectually. Lord knows I taught it, meditated on it and generally kept it as a comfortable "belief system" ideology that seemed far into the future. When it comes (potentially close), like now, it is a whole different ball game......

I never thought I'd be here, yet here I am. I thought some special blessing would surround and infuse my situation with unbounded Grace and Healing....and it still may.... As things are unfolding, however, my choices seem more limited, except one: surrender (which doesn't mean giving up) into the Love that truly is our Nature.

If there's one thing I have experienced through this (besides pain -- ha!) it is that I am loved, especially by my sweet Pete. There have been such tender moments together, and scary moments, and heartening moments.  My life is so blessed -- beyond all words -- to have him by my side through this.  His resilency is mighty.  His heart and his caring glows magnificently.  I learn from his giving every day.  Last night he said, "You know, this situation is so very hard, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, doing anything else." 

I have never felt so loved in all my life. I have also experienced a Grace that has been transforming on a core level that goes way beyond words. It is an energy that uplifts, awakens, fortifies, inspires. It is the heart of Goodness in the universe. I have been fortunate to experience this on a level much deeper than mere intellectual understanding or belief.

Where to go from here?

Peter and I went to the Kaiser in LA that works with the City of Hope this Friday to explore my options about a bone marrow transplant -- which, as I've written before, is the only potential cure from a Western perspective, and very little at that -- 10-30%. The mortality rate from the transplant itself is 15-20% within the first 6 months, and it is a grueling procedure which greatly affects the quality of life. When we asked if anyone my age with relapsed Leukemia in the spinal fluid had been cured through City of Hope we did not hear a resounding "yes," but rather that a woman younger than me had. And they work with thousands of people.

As Grace would have it, we met with the warmest, most humane "Western" medicine doctor we have ever met in our lives. At the end, she hugged me for a full minute (which is long for a hug!) and said I was a walking miracle. When Leukemia comes back into the spinal fluid, as it did for me in July, it can take a life in a matter of weeks, she said. But here I was, walking into her office, out of hospice, and looking pretty darn healthy for being so close to leaving this world just 3 short months ago. My case is definitely intriquing and "miraculous" and there is hope and promise, she said. I have the cold energy and chemo to thank for that, and many, many seen and unseen blessings -- as well as all your prayers.

So....why not just go back to the cold energy now and eradicate all of the cancer cells? The decisions I face now are so difficult for some reason. The cold energy, at least in July-Sept, could not (did not) eradicate all of the Leukemia cells. Thus the facial paralysis. I needed good 'ol chemotherapy to get me back into remission. Both definitely extended my life. I know that now more than ever. I can't do chemo with the cold energy, they tell me (and I believe them). I have to choose. It appears that Life may be asking me to remove the resevoir from my brain and it's a better delivery system for the chemo. I was going to have the surgery tomorrow, but decided to put it off for two weeks, if it doesn't add to the risk factors. Am waiting to hear back from the surgeon.

All these twists and turns (some quite positive) make a clear path of treatment all the harder. Peter and I will be going to the Mederi Foundation in Ashland, OR and they have been encouraging....but we haven't been there to really see and understand what they can do for me. Do I stop chemo now with the spector of the cancer coming back into my brain and creating more stroke-like symptoms?

This is my soul's gripping journey; not an easy one to be sure. Dr. P said last week (not to minimize other cancers), that another form of cancer would have been easier to tackle.

The small self wants certainty and form. I read a beautiful quote this morning from an amazing book called The Field of Compassion. I highly recommend the book by the way. The quote has to do with living in a non-dualistic state. It's not a quote one can "pin down" but rather one that requires practice and embodiment as a state of awareness that doesn't separate life's experiences into categories of good and bad (i.e. moving toward reconciling seeming opposites). We are all going to face our own endings in this finite world, saying goodbye to loved ones, to so many things and shifting our forms from material to ethereal....... "What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset".   ~ Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator

Anyway, here's the quote I read, and I will end my latest update here.....

"The Unitive sees happiness and unhappiness as part of the necessary, temporary (and endless) fluctuations inherent in the human situation. Instead of seeing life in a dualistic way, where some things are appropriate and desirable while others are inappropriate and undesirable, the Unitive experiences the world as a place where all opposites 'arise together' and 'go together....' The Unitive watches as positive turns to negative and back to positive, endlessly -- and necessarily."

I love you all,

Heidi