Freedom and Ego

In the past week I've posted about having ambivalent feelings about getting well, and, within five days, unambivalent desire for the migraine pain to stop forever.

It seems a wide swing. I feel a bit embarrassed just thinking about it, especially that it's posted for all the world to see. Yet a couple comments on that first post tell me I'm not the only one honest enough to admit to such feelings. So I am certainly not the only one feeling them.

I can't write a long post today because my head's fuzzy with pain and medication, but I want to share a couple of thoughts about this seeming conundrum: that I can be both afraid and desirous of the same thing.

The first thought is about the ego. I have written before about Eckhart Tolle's writings on the ego that have helped me more than anything else to begin to find true freedom of spirit. (Click here and here to read posts; there are more in the Labels column to the right -- click on "ego" and "eckhart tolle.")

Our egos will grab any reason to form an identity. That grabbing targets the obvious and socially-acceptable identities like physical beauty, career and job, relationships (parent, sibling, friend) and talents. So we say, "I'm a painter." or "I'm beautiful." or "My daughter is a doctor." as ways to identify who we are. There are also less acceptable identities that are not so obvious and easy to name, like victim, sick person, or loser.

But, though some identities seem logical and others counter-intuitive, they're all the same mechanism: the ego clutching identity in order to survive. Where does freedom (in the title of this post) come in? Any clutching our ego does limits our freedom. If you cannot let go of your identity as lawyer or successful business woman, you are not free. I cannot let go of my identity as migraineur: I am not free.

There's more, but my head hurts. I am going to free myself of my identity as a writer who is thorough and finishes what she starts -- I'm ending
this post now. More later.


Thank you for reading this post. You can comment below or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com

Attachment To Desire

At the end of my previous post, I said I'd write about opening the doorway to joy. The idea that we can find joy in lives that are restricted by illness, pain, grief, unemployment, a broken heart, poor mental health, or addiction can seem ridiculous. Essentially, though, finding joy in life is at the heart of religion and most of the self-help books you can find these days. We're all on that search and have been since we became conscious beings. I find different titles and ways to say it, but finding joy is really the underlying topic of all the posts on this blog.

For now I'm focusing in Buddhism's Eightfold Path, and how walking that path can help set our spirits free to experience joy even as we live life's pain.

The second step on the Eightfold Path is called Right Intention, and is composed of three intentions:
1. The intention of renunciation, which means that we intend to resist the pull of desire;
2. The intention of good will, which means that we intend to resist our feelings of anger and aversion;
3. The intention of harmlessness, which means that we intend not to think or act cruelly, violently or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

I like the way the first intention -- renunciation -- follows logically from the first step on the Eightfold Path, The Four Noble Truths. The Truths are all about understanding how our attachment to desire causes us suffering. Notice the Buddhists are careful to say, the attachment to desire. It's not desire itself that is the problem. Desire for food and water makes us survive. Desire for sex ensures the human species goes on generation after generation. Desires to become a better person or more learned or more comfortable have ensured all of the change and growth since we lived in caves. I write this blog because I desire to find joyful freedom within a life greatly restricted by chronic migraine pain. These desires are essential to who we are.

This second step not only reinforces what we've learned from the Truths, it drives home the lesson by using the verb intend. For renunciation, it's not I will resist the pull of desire, but I intend to resist the pull of desire. Built right into the phrase is an acknowledgement of how even our noble desires are subject to attachment. We can become attached to desiring to resist the pull of desire, causing our own suffering by castigating ourselves or getting depressed when we don't resist. 

Saying we intend to resist desire's attraction signals to and reminds us of  the danger of attaching to the desire to detach from desire. We humans make life pretty complicated.
 
ACCEPT THE DESIRE
When you're in chronic pain, you want it to stop. When you're unemployed, you want a job. If a loved one has died, you want them back or want to have not said, or said, or not done, or done something. If you're growing older, you wish you had the strength and energy and looks of the younger you. If you're disabled, you wish for your full capabilities.

You're human. It's natural. Accept that you have desires. Let them be what they are, sit with them. (Meditation and prayer are, I think, essential to this kind of acceptance. You can click on an item in the Labels column to the right of this post if you'd like to read more on the subject.) 

INTEND TO RESIST ITS PULL
I intend to stop complaining so much about having to stay on the bed in a dark room so often. When I realize I've been complaining, I simply remind myself of my intention, which is a lot more positive and much better for my self-esteem than wondering why I'm such a narcissistic whiner.

Basically, I wrote this post to remind myself of my intention.


You can contact me by leaving a comment below via GooglePlus, or at carold.marsh@gmail.com.

Reading Mariechild Together: Wanting Something To Be Different

I wanted something to be different this morning. It's the third day of a rather bad migraine -- which also means this will be a short post -- and I wanted not to have the pain. I called my patient husband to whine a bit, told him I was done, and let him get back to work. Then I read Diane Mariechild's writing for today.

I needed the reminder that I am not my pain-filled head and exhausted body.

That reminder helped me see beyond the pain and remember my practices for pain management:

deep breathing;

deep relaxation;

letting go of victim status;

accepting that I am powerless over the pain but not over my reaction to it.

Peace.


I would love to hear from you. Please click on the word Comment below, or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com/. Thank you.

This IS My Life

Perhaps for many of us who are living with chronic pain and/or illness, there comes a time when we realize we have to stop doing what we have unconsciously been doing: waiting for the pain phase of our lives to be over and the rest of our lives to begin.

This moment happened for me during Lent - the 40-day period leading up to Easter that Christians see as a time of repentance and turning inward for reflection and prayer.  Taken from the example of Jesus' life, this time of abstinence and quiet also prepares one for the death and resurrection of Christ.

Now, I have written before that I don't indulge in theological or christological arguments, nor do I need to believe without doubt most of the Christian doctrine on which I was raised.  Yet still I love the season of Lent for its time of purposeful soul-searching, for the examination of the spiritual life, and for its sense of being in the physical world while living more intentionally from the world of the spirit.  And so, although I did not use the season for the purpose of preparing for a resurrection, I did live into it for the purpose of delving deeper into my spiritual life.

Interestingly, what has come out of my Lent is the phrase that I used for the title of this post: this IS my life.  During Lent, it slowly dawned on me that what I have been doing - since leaving my job as Founding Executive Director of Miriam's House in late December 2009 - has been mainly waiting for the migraines to ease up and go away so that I could get on with the rest of my life.  Yes, there was the benefit of much-needed rest after seventeen years of work that I loved yet had taken so much of my physical, emotional and spiritual energy.  I was able to live a more quiet life - wonderful for an introvert like me - and pursue beloved hobbies such as knitting and gardening.  And all the while, living each day with its pain and fatigue as though by dint of rest and rest alone would I turn the corner toward health and some day, an actual job.

But this IS my life: the quiet days, enforced both by pain and by my own choice because I love the quiet; the frustration of postponing outings, activities or visits due to a migraine; pain management and learning how to eliminate the suffering that I often layer on top of the physical pain (more about that in my next post); and the narrowing of my circle of friends. 

This IS my job: to learn more about living peacefully with chronic pain; to allow the pain and my responses to it to deepen my spiritual life and broaden my approach to all of life; to practice patience when the pain is so bad that I want to scream in your face; to rejoice in the small things that are actually great blessings; to spend more time in the silence and stillness that nurtures me; to pick up again the journaling that I abandoned years ago; to explore as I love to do the religions of the world and allow them to teach me new practices, ideas and spiritual truths.

This is my life.

I would love to hear from you.  Please use the Comment link below, or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com.

Is This the Fast That I Choose? Reconnecting to Isaiah 58

In my previous post, I shared some whining about how difficult it is for me to imagine following the practice of fasting and sacrifice embodied in the Christian season of Lent, the Muslim Ramdaan, and in many other religions and spiritualities.  Normally, I embrace what I learn from our wise ancestors when they are teaching me about spiritual growth.

Not this year, not this Lent.  The idea of fasting - set as it is in the context of my fourth month on a really restrictive diet and curtailing of all pain medications - is ludicrous.  Particularly because it seems the regimen is not even working: the migraines keep coming.

So I cast the inward glance, acknowledge my fatigue, and find a small bit of compassion for myself.  Honestly, who wouldn't, in my same situation, be reluctant to think of yet more abstinence or sacrifice?  Of course Lent seems impossible this year.  It makes me more tired just to admit that, to sit for a moment in the reality of the fatigued pain that is daily with me.  Just for a moment, however, and no wallowing in self pity: wallowing is not the same thing as acknowledging, and is a trap that captures me in victim mode.

When I do so, the momentary stillness allows a bit of scripture from the Old Testament to float up into my mind.  These are words that were instrumental in bringing me to Washington, DC twenty years ago to take up a volunteer position in a residence for homeless, pregnant women.

Is this the fast that I choose?

It is from Isaiah 58: 6-12.  Click here if you want to read the entire scripture.

Those years ago, I knew in the depths of my spirit that God had chosen a particular fast for me, and so I moved to DC for what I thought was a year but ended up to be twenty (and counting); started a nonprofit residence for homeless women living with AIDS, living and working there until the migraines forced me to resign. 

Is this not the fast which I choose,

To loosen the bonds of wickedness,

To undo the bands of the yoke,

And to let the oppressed go free

And break every yoke?

7“Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry

And bring the homeless poor into the house;

When you see the naked, to cover him;

And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

For those twenty years, my fast was my life, and although I lived it imperfectly and with plenty of difficult lessons to be slowly and painfully learned, it contained for me a wonderful and peaceful satisfaction.

So the question is not "how can I be expected to give up yet another food or activity this Lent?" but, "how do I live into this fast that seems to have been chosen for me?"

[Note: I am not of the belief that God "gives" us the circumstances of our lives, or that there is any entity at all who points the finger of fate and says, "You there ..."  My spirituality encompasses the thoughts and practices of several different religions, and I have no desire for doctrine, dogma or rigid systems of belief.  You can read more in this past post.]

The fast that is mine now is in many ways opposite to that which I was given for the past twenty years, when I was living my passion for social justice in active, immediate presence to those who are disenfranchised and neglected.  That is not possible any more.  I must let it go.  In its place is a fast that has to do with solitude and meditation, prayer and reflection, quietness and depths. 

Can I fast now with the commitment and passion that were mine before the migraines changed so much in my life?  That will be the subject of my next post.

I would love to hear from you.  Leave a comment below, or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com.

16July Presence to God

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Next Week's Topic: So Where AM I in All This?

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Presence to God

I could stop at the physical and emotional letting go process explained in the previous two posts, and simply use meditation, some yoga and deep relaxation as a foundation for dealing with chronic pain. It is certainly possible to manage pain without reference to the spiritual life - there are many, many websites, books, and articles for that. But what redeems the pain for me is placing it and my practices to manage it in the context of the Divine, or God.

As I said before, I am not interested either in my own spiritual life or in this blog to discuss who God is and what God does or does not do. That presents some difficulty - I have set myself the task of talking about a Divinity to which I am quite reluctant to assign attributes, characteristics and motives. There is only one thing that I feel I can be sure about God: God is Love. I could also say, Allah is Love, Jehovah is Love, etc.

The scriptures and literature that seem most germane to me:

1. Exodus 3:14. Moses' first encounter with God, and God's way of describing Himself is this - "I am that I am."

2. Revelation 1:8 - "... the Alpha and the Omega..." It boggles the mind to try to cognitively understand how God can be the beginning and the end. That's the point: the mind boggles, the spirit comprehends.

3. The Tao te Ching, Verse I - the Name that we can name is not the eternal Name.

4. The Lankavatara Sutra (Zen) - the finger that you use to point to the moon is not the moon. Or, the words and ideas we use to discuss God are not God.

So, there is long precedent for acknowledging that words cannot be assigned to God, even as a name. That we do this by using words is a tremendous - and sort of funny - irony, the inherent tension of which serves both as frustration and to keep me from becoming complacent. I have just written a lot of words and used a lot of concepts to say that I don't want to force words or concepts into a box and call it God. It's amusingly humbling.

So where IS God in all this? The paradox that is the problem of needing to name and know and describe a God that is unnameable, unknowable, and indescribable illuminates the powerful, intuitive nature of meditation. In the ineffable world of the Spirit, words fall away, concepts are pointless and it just doesn't matter that there is really no way to describe it. God is. I do not come to that understanding by intellectualizing about it. It comes to me in the stillness of deep meditation, a practice that I have been led to through a long and intense search for Love.

The more important question, at least to me, is next week's topic: So Where Am I in all This?

I'd love to hear from you: click the Comment link below or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com