What I'm Not Trying To Do, What I Must Remember

I had a helpful conversation with friend and author David Hilfiker yesterday. It impels me to continue the theme of my last post - Desiring Peace Means Practicing Peace, in which I try to clarify my January 1 post about relinquishing inner peace to nothing and no one.

David reminded me that I have a diverse readership and that what seems obvious to me -- making the choice for inner peace -- can seem an insurmountable obstacle to another. Of course, that's the premise of my last post (Desiring Peace Means Practicing Peace, link above). But what David said prompted me to add another layer of clarification and reflection.

Yes, I've made the journey from chronic anxiety to increasingly present inner peace. Yes, there was a time when the tools I now use seemed so far out of my realm of possibility that though I knew about and wanted them, I could not practice them. And so, to a certain extent, I write as a means to shine some hopeful light into someone else's dark journey: I have been there, I understand, and here's what I have done to help myself out of that place.

David was not saying this is not a legitimate purpose for this blog. He was asking me to remember I have certain advantages that some don't have. As a person who lived sunk in clinical depression for many years, he knows that -- even though I attempt not to sound patronizing or as though it's all a simple matter of developing some good habits -- I risk leaving out those for whom just making a decision to try a new meditation or call a doctor can seem an insurmountable task.

As I reflect on what he told me, I want to acknowledge two things: one is that while I've had the kind of depression that naturally goes along with anxiety, I've not ever been as depressed as he was, nor do I have any of the other mental illnesses that can cause one to lose hope. The other is that I also have advantages of the material kind that others do not.

Photo  by William Marsh

The first is self-evident. I won't explicate. But the other is one that bears some discussion. I have a comfortable, safe place to live and a loving and supportive primary relationship. I don't work and it's a good thing my husband does because my disability payments, as grateful as I am for them, don't begin to cover the expenses of living in D.C. I have the immeasurable but unseen benefits of a life-time of good health care, good nutrition, economic security, a fine education, and an assured place in society due to my race and class.

My ability to choose inner peace today is in part predicated on these benefits. With my background in working for and with those less privileged than I and the compulsion I have to find a way to extend that background through my writing, it's only right that I remember and acknowledge this.


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

Desiring Peace Means Practicing Peace

In case my most recent post sounded glib -- or at least short and without much explanation -- I want to write today about what needs to come after the decision to maintain inner peace.

I've used certain tools for long enough now that keeping or getting back to inner peace is a matter of taking a few deep breaths or removing myself from a situation for a while.

But there was a time when I very much desired inner peace, yet my inherent anxiety and acquired habits of worry and fear plunged me into turmoil despite that desire. I was driven and I knew I was driven. I hated it and could do nothing about it. There's a long story or essay here, but for now I want to acknowledge that acquiring inner peace is a journey. Depending on where you are on that journey, some blog post telling you to "relinquish your inner peace to nothing and no one" might seem patronizing and unhelpful. It would have to me.

The fact is that the second step on my journey to inner peace (the first step being desiring it) was to get myself on anxiety medication. That was a hard decision -- I'd always prided myself on not taking a lot of pills and over-the-counter medicines -- but my misery was so deep that ultimately I had no alternative. After the medication helped me become calmer, I found within me the resources to take the next steps on the journey: to discover and practice the methods and tools that allowed peace to grow.

Photo by William Marsh

I have posted a lot about those tools: meditation, reflective prayer, deep breathing, counted breathing, deep muscle relaxation, guided meditation, music, and small comfort measures. (You'll find links to these topics in the Labels list to the right.) They have sustained me through the loss of my work and active life to chronic migraine pain, as well as sorrows and difficulties for family and friends.

It has been a journey of many years. And there were times I despaired of myself and my inability to find the peace I longed for. So I would never say it's easy. Too much in our world and within ourselves mitigates against calm, quiet, ease and serenity. Yet it has been worth it. And I would not go back for anything.




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

Reading Mariechild Together: Potential to Awaken

For today's post I am going back to the reflection for May 27 (in Diane Mariechild's Open Mind -- Women's Daily Inspirations for Becoming Mindful), which I missed while busy with a school assignment.

She begins the reflection with a quote from Pema Chodron, one of my favorite spiritual writers:

"Taking refuge in the Buddha means that you are willing to spend your life acknowledging or reconnecting with your awakeness [sic], learning that every time you meet the dragon you take off more armor, particularly the armor that covers your heart."

That takes a lot of courage, to take off the armor with which we have protected ourselves, our hearts. It's difficult enough to do in relatively safe relationships and circumstances, let alone when we are meeting "the dragon."

And what is this dragon? Perhaps the dragon is whatever makes us fearful or angry or withdrawn: whatever we allow to move us away from our birthright of peacefulness and compassion.

In this sense, our pain -- physical and emotional -- can be viewed as a dragon. This week I had four consecutive days of migraine and, although I have been through such periods and longer many times, by the fourth morning I awakened frustrated and angry (quite naturally -- I do not blame myself for being upset at four days of pain) that the pain was still there. It took me a while in meditation to make friends with the pain, as I like to say; in Pema's words, to take off some armor.

So I gradually took off the armor of frustration and anger, those shields that I have created over a lifetime of sensitivity to hurt. And what is below or beyond the shields? Softness, vulnerability, quiet acceptance, reluctance to fight. That's why it takes courage to disarm before the dragon: we are left defenseless, or so it seems.

Yet if we can understand this defenselessness as courage to be awake, if we can accept the pain without any hard armor in that acceptance, then we have not only become more awake and thus softer, more compassionate, we have opened a lovely space in which to practice pain management skills. (See the list of Labels to the right for links to previous posts about pain management, methods and acceptance.)

We also have a lovely space in which to have compassion for our hurting selves.

Contact me at carold.marsh@gmail.com. Comments can be made through Google Plus.

Reading Mariechild Together: Abundance

I had lunch with my dear friend David Hilfiker yesterday. We talked about his recent diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease and the blog he has created: Watching The Lights Go Out: A Memoir From Inside Alzheimer's Disease. David is embracing what is happening in a way that is inspiring and, strangely, comforting; he is not depressed or upset about it; he views it as freeing him from expectations and obligations with which he burdened himself for all of his life.

And then I read Mariechild's reflection for today, February 9 -- "Women's Abundance." She says

"...we can each find a ritual that reminds us of the power of the bleeding time...Try placing a single red flower on your altar or desk during your bleeding time."

But I am past my bleeding time, and I imagine that many women reading this are also. How do we relate to this reflection?

I do have two thoughts.

One is that David's attitude toward Alzheimer's is instructive. I sense abundance in many things about him now: in his new-found ability for vulnerability with me and with others; in his joy at the ways the disease has freed him; in his learning to set aside the life-long assurance of possessing an amazing intellect in order to simply be with what is happening.

He teaches us that losing one expression of abundance does not mean we have lost all expression of abundance.  

My second thought relates to my chronic pain. I am on disability. I can no longer do the work I love. I am not productive in the way we generally think of production: some days I barely get off the bed (I do insist on getting dressed; spending the day in pajamas is really too depressing and besides, I have a little dog). I have grown to accept these facts of my life. Acceptance has led to peace that is increasingly overlaid with a simple joy and which stays with me until I allow the doubts to assail me. What am I doing with my life? When will I get well and DO something? I contribute nothing to the world.

I had one of those moments this week, and I shared about it with David. He reminded me that when I worked with very vulnerable women (homeless women living with AIDS), I never considered them to be doing nothing or not contributing. He said that I would never think that way about them so why think that way about myself?

And so today the peaceful feeling I love, with its joy in what is, has returned to me. And I know that the abundance is in myself and in my loved ones, and in us all, regardless of our condition.

May we all find our own abundance, and may we set it free.


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

Reading Mariechild Together: Born of Woman

"We are reminding ourselves of the source of life. Everything we know is born of woman." Joan Halifax

"For me, home is shelter, a place of refuge where I can be all that I am. One of the Zen koans, or riddles, asks, 'What was the face you wore before you were born?'" Diane Mariechild.

These two quotes are from January 25 and January 26 in Diane Mariechild's "Open Mind -- Women's Daily Inspirations for Becoming Mindful." 

Diane, I am pretty sure, must have linked these two days purposefully: the one (January 25) reminding us that all humans are born of woman; the other (January 26) asking both what we consider home to be and whether we ascribe over-importance to our possessions or achievements.

The face before I was born? Nothing to do, I am sure, with the condo in which I live, or the degree for which I now study, or the nonprofit I used to lead. Much more to do with generations of women springing from and going to the Source. The same Source that is now my home, and when I allow myself to peacefully sit with and love that awareness, it is my refuge.

Another point of connection between the two days:

"We respect this great power by...living peacefully, even in simple ways, such as choosing to let go of irritation when things aren't going our way...We must always stop to think: Is what I'm doing creating peace or creating conflict?" Mariechild, January 25

"Meditation and reflection on such a question [the koan, above] is a way of shattering our usual perceptions, our own ideas, opinions and all the ways we have become attached." Mariechild, January 26

Simply put, attachment to our things or to our ideas of who we are and who we hang around with does not make for peaceful living: no attachment cannot connect us to the Source. (Not even attachment to connecting to the Source, however noble or right it may feel, can help us live peacefully.)

Attachment can be at the root of much of our impatience, anger, fear, and lashing out.

How do you pull yourself back from an attachment or the way you are allowing it to keep you from living peacefully in this world?

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

Accept and Bear Reality

Fourteenth in a series

We who live with chronic pain feel powerless a good bit of the time.  Not only can we not control the pain -- it is chronic: by definition, out of our control -- but we are disabled in aspects of our lives that pain-free persons take for granted: travel, work, exercise, daily and basic choice.  It's worth a good whine every now and again, and I do indulge, as my husband can attest.  But one cannot whine very long without seriously damaging one's self-esteem.  So, what is left to us chronic-painers?

The same thing that is left to every other human being on this planet, that's what is left to us.

Long before I began living with migraine disease, I'd read various authors -- Anthony de Mello, Melody Beatty, Eckhart Tolle, Pema Chodron -- who all said essentially the same thing: when it comes right down to it, the only control any of us have in our lives is the control we exert over how we accept and bear reality.

This being the case, we with chronic pain are no different than any one else.  One of the realities of our lives is that we live with chronic pain.  It is a difficult reality, no doubt.  But we can choose to take it out of the victim-mode of this chronic pain is ruining my life and into the empowered-mode of this chronic pain is a reality I can choose to accept and bear just like every human being.

Suddenly, we don't feel so alone: Our task, our lot in life, is the same as any spiritually-evolving and -maturing person.  We don't feel absolutely powerless: We do have a choice.

We can choose how we deal with our life circumstance.  We have power over our own reactions.  We are in control of our Selves. 

Eckhart Tolle, in The Power of Now, makes a case for the human ego being the root of our inability to accept our reality, our Now.  My previous several posts have been discussing this.  He says that coming out of a mind- or ego-identity (he uses these terms interchangeably) brings us along on the journey to spiritual enlightenment.

Our life circumstance, chronic pain, can become a doorway to our spiritual enlightenment.  We can choose to let our pain teach us to live in the Now, to open our hearts to reality, to show us the freedom of accepting what is.  And all of the spiritual teachers I know say that this is the path to inner peace, to a loving heart, and to becoming a compassionate presence in this hurting world.

What more could we ask?


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

Meditation for (Distracted) Dummies (Like Me)

I am not a meditation purist.  I employ several different methods to help me slip into that peaceful, prayerful and meditative space that so nurtures and sustains me.  Perhaps it is due to the almost constant pain in my head. Perhaps it is simply what I was born with. Whatever the cause, my mind can often be so easily distracted, so quickly caught up in the flow of thought, that I have had to find other methods than the classic one (sit cross-legged on a small cushion and stay there for an hour or so with completely empty mind) to enter a meditative state.

As a follow-up to my previous post, I'll share these methods.

GUIDED MEDITATION

Thank God, bless Allah, praise Jehovah: there are people wiser and more centered than I who have recorded meditations that I can purchase and play on my portable CD player or my stereo.  Here are a few of my favorites, and you can go to Amazon.com to find any number of CDs to buy:

** Kelley Howell and Brain Sync profess to change one's brain.  I don't know about that, I just know that her guided meditations as well as her music CDs are very helpful for me.
** Stephen Cope has a 2-CD set called "Yoga for Emotional Flow" that I just love.

** Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's CD, "A Gift of Silence" consists of three guided meditations.
** Jon Kabot Zinn recorded a 5-CD set - "Guided Mindfulness Meditation" - that present a variety of ways to meditate.

PRAYER BEADS, ROSARY
I am not Catholic, but I did spend 30 days once in a retreat (the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius) at a Jesuit spiritual center in Pennsylvania.  That experience opened me to to rituals and practices of Catholicism, which, although I do not subscribe to Catholic beliefs or doctrine, have informed and deepened my prayerful and centering practices.  One of the things I learned to do was to use a rosary (a beaded necklace would do just as well) for centering.  There is something about the tactile, regular fingering of the beads that, combined with whispered, repeated phrases allows for peace of spirit and calming of mind.

SIMPLE RITUALS

Small things like the lighting of a candle, sounding of a singing bowl, or yoga assanas help center me and are a wonderful way to begin a prayer or meditation time.  I always use the breath for centering, something about which I have posted before (click on breathing in the LABELS section, to the right).

CHANTS and MANTRAS

I recently discovered chanting, and do not have many resources yet, but learned from a CD, "Five Classic Meditations" by Shinzen Young.  I cannot find this CD, even on his website, but I saw a CD called, "Chant: Om Mani Padme Hum," and that is the chant I learned from the "Five Classic Meditations CD."

QUIET REFLECTION

There are days when, despite my years of practicing centering prayer and meditation, there is something so pressing on my spirit that emptying the mind seems not only impossible, but not what I need.  Having learned from some visits to the Insight Meditation group in Washington, DC that there is a form of meditation that allows and even follows the thoughts arising from one's spirit, I now allow myself these times that clearly require reflection instead of meditation.  However, it's not simply a matter of plunking down in a chair and engaging in repetitive, compulsive thinking patterns that are anything but quiet and reflective.  I use music, simple ritual, and maybe a bit of chanting to help me center and relax before I begin reflecting.

There is more to share, but this migraine is worsening, so I will continue in another post.  May you allow yourself some moments of peace today and may these moments bless you and keep you close to God.

 

 

I would love to hear from you.  Please use the Comment link below (and note that I have been unable lately to comment on my own or any other blog, so will not be able to reply) or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com.

 

 

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.

Equanimity About Pain is Not Giving Up

Yesterday was Good Friday, it was Earth Day.  I knew it was coming and yet I missed it completely: I spent the day on my bed - with, thank God, my little dog curled up against my knees - the blindfold on, listening to a Golden Girls DVD for diversion.  I had my quiet time and a nap on that bed and behind that blindfold, was there when my husband left for work and when he came home.

Those sentences are statements of fact.  However much they may sound like complaining, they are really just a description of my day.  I don't remember thinking much about the significance of the day, I remember staying in each moment and accepting it for what it was: a day spent managing the pain of a migraine.  As I recall it today, I am a bit bemused - where was the impatience? the anger? the feeling sorry for myself with the ice pick stabs above my left eye?

 When we are facing another day full of pain, natural regrets and even anger arise - how could they not?  It's no one's idea of a good day to lie on the bed in the dark trying not to move lest the throbbing worsen.  We have all complained bitterly about such a fate; I have tired myself out with my own whining.  Yet if the pain is happening anyway, and we know that our mental state can affect the pain, why not accept it? 

Perhaps I am learning acceptance - if yesterday is any indication, it seems to be sneaking up on me.  You'd think that wouldn't be a surprise, given the months I've been writing this blog and the number of books I've read and CDs I've listened to, all of which tend to be about relaxation, acceptance of reality, and the gift of the Now.  If I know myself, I'll be swinging back and forth between this new-found equanimity and the more habitual complaining for a while.  But hopefully, the equanimity will win out.

It is hard to give up the struggle against the pain: it seems to indicate an overall resignation to having an illness that causes chronic pain.  But yesterday's quiet and blessedly peaceful moment-to-moment calm has not made me any less determined to ask my neurologist - I have an appointment on Tuesday - whether I can try again the class of medications that often prevent migraines.  I am optimistic that the side effects may be easier to handle now that I am not working.  And I have an article about surgery, plus notes on the pain-filled 4-month regimen that was supposed to reduce the migraines and didn't.  Accepting yesterday's pain has not diluted one bit my energy for and interest in finding relief.

Think of it as the grace of God, or what Jesus said about anxiety and the sparrows; what the Buddhists call equanimity; what Byron Katie calls loving what is; what Eckhart Tolle calls the power of Now.  In how many ways have I been receiving this message for most of my life?  It finally seems to be sinking in, and there is no giving up about it. 

No, it doesn't feel like giving up.  It feels more like courage.

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

Reading "How to Be Sick" - There is Pain Here, But I am Not in Pain

This is sixth in a series of posts about Toni Bernhard's How To Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and their Caregivers.

In my previous post, I discussed a practice Toni developed connected to the Buddhist concept of what she calls "the wheel of suffering."  In this post, I want to explore this concept some more through a story that Toni tells in the beginning of Chapter Five.  It's a story about a teacher, Munindra-ji, who, when quite old, went on a trip throughout India to view and experience the sacred sites.

One day they were waiting in a train station.  The train was five hours late.  It was blazing hot.  They had no food.  There were no restrooms.  The track where they were to catch the train kept changing, so they had to keep getting up and moving.  Munindra-ji would sit down in each new location and rest his head on his arm.  He looks so frail that [his traveling companion] began to worry about how he was holding up, especially since she and her friends were barely coping with the conditions.  She finally asked him if he was all right. 

He replied, "There is heat here, but I am not hot.  There is hunger here, but I am not hungry.  There is irritation here, but I am not irritated." 

What the teacher was referring to is what Buddhists call "anatta," which means "no fixed or unchanging self."  The Buddhists also speak of the Witness, or that eternal and immediate Presence that is ineffable, always calm.  As a person raised in the Christian tradition, I think that Christians might think of this as the "soul," or, as Quakers say, the piece of God that is in everyone.  American Indians have a beautiful way of talking about the oneness of the universe, at the Center of which is the Great Spirit - which is also the Center in all of us.  Hindus speak of Atman - the non-material self that never changes and is distinct from body and mind.  Muslims talk about three souls: the commanding soul and the blaming soul (which seem to me to be comparable to Western psychology's ego); and the soul at peace, which becomes a place of silence in which Allah's signs can be manifested.

I love it that so many of the world religions (and the above is just a smattering of the major religions) have a way to express the Infinite and the Divine that resides in all of us.  Of course, the details are not precisely the same, and Toni does a wonderful job of explaining (pages 38-42) how the Buddhists broke from Hinduism with the revolutionary concept of "anatta."  Yet still, when I read the above quote from Toni's book, I don't have to be Buddhist to understand it.  This is one of the reasons that I deeply regret the divisiveness that so easily arises between sects and religions.  To me, we are all saying things that probably are not so different, or wouldn't be if we could release our need to be right and to have The Answer.  It breaks my heart that we allow ego, pride and fear to cause such schism, violence and hatred.

For me, Buddhism does the best job of both explaining and helping one connect to the Witness, but my Christian background helps me to deepen that understanding.  As I have explained in previous posts, practices like Buddhist meditation and Christian centering prayer have been of major importance on my spiritual journey: they both lead to that place within me of deepest peace, acceptance and stillness in which my best Being resides.  

So, however we understand what Munindra-ji is saying, it remains wonderfully resonant for many of us, especially at a level below understanding where we simply Be with it.  And it allows for a practice that Toni talks about in her book:

I recalled [this] story one day as I lay in bed after becoming sick, so I silently said, "There is sickness here, but I am not sick."  The statement made no sense to me ... After a few minutes, I realized, "Of course!  There is sickness in the body, but I am not sick!"

As Munindra-ji said, "There is hunger here, but I am not hungry."  As a practice for the moodily swinging emotions that accompany living with chronic pain, it encourages me toward equanimity - a sense of calm stillness no matter what is going on around me or in my body.

This is reminding me of what St. Therese of Lisiuex once wrote:

"Nothing, not even my joy, can disturb my peace."

So I have been practicing with Toni, and finding that there are many, many situations and emotions that can be helped by this practice.  It points to the peaceful calm that is our heritage yet is so difficult to approach, let alone remain in.

"There is irritation here, but I am not irritated."

"There is anger here, but I am not angry."

"There is shyness here, but I am at peace."

"There is pain here, but I am not in pain."

"There is joy here, but I am at peace."

I want to spend some time linking these six posts to pain management, about which I have written before and which I want to review in light of the learnings from Toni's book.  And that will be the subject of my next post.

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



Reading "The Pain Chronicles" - One

NOTE:  I am not writing this series of posts about Melanie Thernstrom's The Pain Chronicles as a book review.  I do highly recommend this book for anyone who is suffering pain or close to a pain sufferer, but I am not trying to make the case for that.  It's really a matter of inspiration: a book written by a chronic pain sufferer would naturally hold interest for me, and the section on religions and pain gave me much to ponder in relation to this blog.

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"I felt diminished - degraded, even, by pain - not only physically but spiritually as well." (The Pain Chronicles, page 75)

I know what she means: even after six years of living with and learning from migraine pain on both the physical and spiritual levels, I found myself feeling like a failure recently when - after two months on a very restrictive diet - the migraines were still coming regularly and, often, fiercely.  "Other people say they felt better after two weeks on this diet!  What's wrong with me?"   It helped when my friend Juliana read to me some reviews of the book in which I found the regimen, and it was clear that many migraineurs are disillusioned to the point of verbal vitriol about the good doctor and his diet.

The diet hadn't (yet?) worked for me.  That did not make me a failure, and part of me understood this even as I felt myself sinking into depression and onto the pity pot.  But that is one of the tricky things about chronic pain: we lose perspective in its clutches, we find ourselves degraded by it.  Our lives are restricted by it, we become defined by it, we live through many losses because of it.  How, then, to work with the diminishment on the spiritual and physical planes?  How to find redemption in this purgatory that seems to consign us to the outer edges of life?

However far we may have come in accepting, allowing, and learning from pain, the daily reminders sting none the less.  The radio station is giving away tickets to Washington Opera's "Madama Butterfly" and I listen intently for details until I remember that I haven't attended concerts in years: I don't know in advance whether I will feel well enough to attend a performance on any given night.  Melanie Thernstrom describes wanting to participate in a canoe trip, adamantly insisting that she can do it, despite the facts that she has never paddled a canoe and the pain in her neck, which radiates down her arm, would sideline her before she even began.

Our minds don't want to remember we have pain.  When circumstances and our own desires force us to remember, it hurts.

I am not now and will never be like the saints, those of the beatific countenance as the martyring flames devour them.  The concept of choosing martyrdom, which Thernstrom also discusses, repulses me because I simply cannot believe that God can desire for us or lead us into such annihilating pain. I do not accept the migraines as a punishment that will teach me a lesson, or as a sanctifying alchemy for my soul's ultimate benefit.

However.  All that being said, I do know and I have experienced the spiritual and physical benefits of choosing to allow the pain: to resist fighting it, to accept it as a reality over which I have only limited control, to view it as a life circumstance that, albeit difficult, can serve to break me open to the Light.  Perhaps it seems a negligible distinction, but to me it is a very important one.  It's a matter of spiritual perspective: I have no need to find a reason for the pain.  Instead, I find a teacher in the pain.

Pain as instructor, not as theological discourse.

In the case of the opera tickets, the stinging disappointment as I realized the impracticability of obtaining a ticket made for a difficult moment or two.  At such moments, my next thought is never something like, "God must not want me to go," or "There's a good reason for this."   That kind of thinking is counterproductive at least in part because thinking - with its circular, repetitive character - simply doesn't help.  What helps is breathing (three long, slow, deep breaths) along with a quietly inward focus learned through deep meditation and centering prayer.

In a few moments, I am calmer, more accepting of my reality in the moment.  The disappointment is still real, I do not deny that.  The wish to be able to attend the opera stays with me, I do not force it away.  But the centering practice connects me with a spiritual spaciousness that is its own reward, so wonderfully different is it than the narrowly claustrophobic confines of my thinking mind.

The practice of three slow breaths with an inner focus has come from years of meditation, Christian centering prayer, Buddhist meditation, and learning from Eastern religions.  My pain has become easier to bear - I do not say lessened - due to the age-old wisdom of the world's spiritual masters and mistresses.  When a migraine or a disappointment due to chronic pain enter my reality, I am grateful for access to a broader and deeper, calmer and lovelier place.  In this, I am blessed.

That is not to say that I wouldn't, given half a chance, give up the darned migraines in a heart's beat.

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

Week of 19July: So Where AM I in All This?

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Today's post:
* Get Thee Behind Me, Ego
* Painful Poetry - A Sonnet to Pain (in the tradition of Shakespeare, more or less)

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Get Thee Behind Me, Ego

I hope that the posts thus far have established a few points about my spiritual life:

1. I do not care for or need the more intellectual exercises of theology and doctrine at this point in my spiritual journey.

2. Deep relaxation and prayerful meditation are essential to my spiritual life, the more so when I am in pain.

3. Connection to God is the guiding desire of all my spiritual practice, although I do not attempt to define or name God in any of the traditional ways. Simply, God is. To me, this means that God is always present - it is the human condition and my own fallacies that keep me from knowing and feeling God.

4. I feel a constant tension between my own language for God and the need to write in this blog in a way that is accessible. I have not resloved this tension. At this point, my default position is to use more traditional language most of the time.

So, my basic premise: God is always, wondrously and lovingly present to me. If, as I said in the final sentence of my 16July post, the more important question is not where is God in this, but where am I in this, then I need to explore what keeps me from being present to God?

Number one on the list: my ego. (Please note that I take a good bit of what follows from my understanding of how Ekhart Tolle speaks of ego, particularly in his book, "A New Earth", Chapters Three and Four.)

In this context, I define ego as a thought, habit or state of mind that takes me away from presence to God (this is mine, not Tolle's). What I understand Tolle saying about ego is that it serves the essential function of forming our identity and giving us space for establishing the self, but that its darker side shows in the way we create separations and identities that feed our egos and thus our need to be different, or better. This keeps us from understanding our one-ness with all of creation. Nota bene: This is a paraphrase, you should read the book.

For example: I am driving down the street and I pass a car that is parked more than a foot away from the curb, and crooked to boot. Maybe I have to slow down and maneuver past it, and as I do so, I scoff, "Who taught you to park? You don't need that SUV if that's the best you can do."

Example: I am in a group discussion, listening to someone ask questions for which I'd figured out the answers ten minutes earlier. Restraining my impatience, I console myself about the waste of time with the condescending thought that not everyone picks things up as quickly as I do.

Example: I am in a group discussion, asking questions and realizing that the person across the circle is looking annoyed and squirming impatiently. I console myself about my hurt feelings by telling myself that I have a finer attention to detail and clearly have a lot more patience.

Example: A friend tells me that she is training to run a marathon. Maybe my pride is stung by this, as I have long wanted to run but have never disciplined myself. Or, maybe I am self-involved at the moment and unable to be present to her. So I say, "Oh, really? I used to run in high school."

I could go on. The point is that we - in the service of our egos - find many ways, all the time, to separate ourselves from others by making ourselves better, or separate:
* gossip
* fault-finding
* complaining
* resistance to the reality of the moment
* excessive airing of grievances, including clinging to victim status
* violence and warfare

I love what Tolle says about the ego: it would rather be right than at peace.

Tolle's point is that all of this is a natural function of the ego, that entity that helps us learn confidence, self-identity and self-understanding, but the problem is that it then goes to extreme because what the ego wants to do is justify and magnify its existence, which it does by creating the other - the wrong, not-as-good-as other. (Again, read the book, Tolle says it much better and more clearly. Chapters 3 and 4 are particularly helpful.)

When I am heeding my ego, which is about difference and insularity, I cannot be present to God, ultimate Love for and presence to everything and everyone. When I cannot be present to God, the pain in my head is that much more problematic in several ways:
* I expend energy in emotions or behaviours that sap my stamina instead of harboring my strength for surviving the headache.

* Muscles tense as emotions tense, making pain worse.

* I find myself in a sort of rut, or groove, running on an energy that is self-perpetuating, so that I cannot see a way out of it even though I understand its destructiveness.

Next Post: "It's Not Only Ego"

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Painful Poetry
Original if Awkward Attempts to Find Humor in Pain

A Sonnet to Pain (in the tradition of Shakespeare, more or less)

O! thou who fillst me daily overmuch
And of my life prov'st naught but hellish bane
Could I with craven visage find a crutch
wouldst not I forsake thee? Thy pure disdain
notwithstanding, I'd hie away and flee
thy fullsome clutch that harks of mythic lore.
Lo! of mortals, most joyous would I be
when 'pon thy fearsome form I look no more!
Yet thou in constant presence to me are,
ne'er moment am I of thy sense bereft
So should'st I let thee alway this day mar,
Have I not learnt I, too, in ways am deft?
Yes! Triumph shall I o'er this mortal coil
and Fie! no longer let thee my life spoil.

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