Peace in the Mystery....

Dear Friends and Family,

These past two weeks have been full of lessons, stumbling, tears, laughter, confusion and insight!  Around Thanksgiving (a beautiful, beautiful day) I went into an unexpected freefall -- you know, that place we go when we've been shoved over the proverbial cliff and there are simply no grappling hooks, no limbs to break our fall, only a slippery rock face...and an uncertain outcome.  (More on this later....)

Some recent details:  My bone marrow biopsy came back "clear' of cancer.  Boy, was it a painful test but such great news!  I call myself the human pincushion...the "pokes" must  be well in the hundreds by now!  I had another chemo lumbar puncture today (with methotrexate -- again -- and an important sampling of my cerebro-spinal fluid for the presence of cancer).  The puncture again set off my nerves in the tailbone area.  I came armed with a powerful painkiller this time!  It's been a month off chemo because the last time I had spinal fluid leakage.  Have started to feel pain at the base of my skull in the last few days, which makes me wonder...  The last time I had pain there was right before the facial paralysis due to cancer cells in my brain.  So I have a few butterflies with this latest test.

The Mederi protocol is working its wonders, I'm sure, as my recent blood work is very good....not in the normal range yet, but its holding its own.    My fatigue continues to be daunting.  My activity is only a small percentage of what it was even last year. More news is that Dr. Polikoff called the expert oncologist in San Francisco about the Rituxan anti-body therapy  -- found by the clinical advocate I have worked with in November.  It has had some promise with relapsed Leukemia (ALL) in the spinal fluid. It turns out that it is only administered through an Omaya Resevoir, and we all know what happened with mine!  (now removed...)  So more choices ahead. 

For now I'm taking it a day at a time, a week at a time.   

There truly is no way of knowing outcome of any of my choices, really, since I'm in uncharted territory. How true that is for all of us, though not all situations are life or death outcomes.  Nevertheless, they are real and raw.  A dear friend of mine was just laid off work, has a number of health issues with no medical insurance. A neighbor just found out she has breast cancer.  Again, no insurance.  I've been inspired by some of my friends and family who seem to be more comfortable with the freefalls of life than I.  I am gradually finding my way to a deeper grace and peace in the unknown.  Too often I have harbored a sweet expectation that the wisdom of "masters" or healers or teachers of one kind or another would lift the curtain, shed a light on my next step or somehow wave a magic wand and take it away forever!  But I have witnessed, at least in my current situation, that no writer, speaker or wisdom teacher can do this for me. Their wise words on the pages of a book or in my heart only point the way,  I have to do the walking.  I'm the one who needs to determine when I've had enough chemo, or when I change treatments, or how I work with myself when in pain or anxiety. 

The irony is that the enlightened journey leads in, not out.... and to become "full" we must become as "empty" as we can.  After decades of reflection, I am closer to understanding the idea of how empty becomes full (and vice versa).  My path to live this understanding is another thing entirely.  Yet each backward step has propelled me forward. I "keep on truckin'" as they say.  Eventually we will all get there!

I got up early this morning, very groggy, and nestled into my meditation seat.  Looking out of the window in the early morning, all I could see was a field of grey sky.  A thick fog hung low outside as the dark limbs of trees contrasted a colorless sky.  I reflected....How bare and vulnerable, these trees, without their protective garb, their countless masks falling into this God given moment....

During these past two weeks I have witnessed my own leaves falling wistfully to the earth. I've tried to catch a few on their way down....only to have my fingers grasp thin air. A fog seemed to settle in around me recently as I felt an unsettling north wind blowing though my inner landscape, despite my best efforts.  I think I'm realizing more and more, both the obvious and subtle ways I have tried to keep every leaf of my life fresh and green, clinging to whatever might give me a semblance of "certainty".  When I touch the edges of my resistance to the falling leaves -- e.g. to the pain, the cancer,  fatigue, to not having, for now, the life I once had -- anxiety would flood my being.  Perhaps the two years I've been at this so relentlessly is shaking my tree, just a little more.  Sometimes I imagine myself bolting -- running fast and free until I finally out-run my experience with illness.  But there is nowhere to run, to hide, to isolate.  Can I turn... right here and now and breathe into loving myself and others in this moment?  Can I breathe into a larger sense of myself  that is way, way bigger than a vulnerable, trembling leaf, more deeply rooted than the tree, or that even endures impermanence itself?   

As I sat there this morning, I began to feel my energy shifting.  The grey sky which blocked out the landscape with vague ambiguity, became embracing, silent, friendly and my inner landscape became more illuminated.  Some clarity came -- not necessarily about my treatment or "next steps", but about life itself.  Perhaps I got just a little closer to the truth that "trusting" is not necessarily "knowing".  It is, at least for me right now, being able to walk into the foggy air around me with a sense of hope, and to let the leaves fall where they may. 

Well, here I am again waxing poetic. How appropriate, then, to end with one of my favorite poets:

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell.

As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

 

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent Earth: I flow.

To the rushing water, speak: I am.

 

 -- Rilke

 

 

"In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads...."  The night is immense, infinite.  Darkness stretches out into infinity to remind us that we cannot know the beginning or the end of things; that life itself is uncontainable, uncontrollable.  The emptier we are, the more we can hold of the Great Immensity. 

 

Heart's Love,

 

Heidi