Fear of Illness and Death

Besides being biologically wired for fear and also the experience of being brought up as a child in constant fear, I have the additional fear stimuli surrounding the effect that the cancer has on my body. There are many times when I feel sick or feel like something really bad is happening to my body. The mind and ego tend to freak out. 'We have to DO something about this NOW or we could DIE!' Adrenalin pumps into my system exacerbating this reaction. Within a few breaths I generally become aware that 'I' am doing all that I can to lessen the effects that are occurring in the moment. When I release the idea that there's something that I need to do, then there is just the experience of dizziness or nausea or the heart pounding or exhaustion or whatever is going on. It is the game we play here.

Sometimes, I just sit back and allow the mind and ego to freak out. The fear is still occurring but it isn't having any effect on my experience.

WTF is my problem?

In what ways do my ‘injuries’ from childhood still keep me from showing up? In what ways do they impact my life?

I talked to J about the dream in which she says she’s tired of being influenced by this old stuff. It’s ok for her or me to help others but when people try to love us or help us or even TOUCH us, we flinch a bit just because we were betrayed or injured as freaking children when we truly needed assistance or support. I still have that. I’m afraid that whoever it is will pull the rug out from under me at some point, they won’t be there for me when I need them. Eeesh. And who needs who here? What do I ‘need’? What is a ‘need’ that god won’t provide? He may kill me but that’s beside the point, He may allow me to be stabbed to death on a street corner, but that’s beside the point. Come ON! Get this!

Jesus. Sometimes this seems incredibly slow. I’m STILL protecting the fragile little egoic self! Someone might hurt my f*ing feelings! Oh. My. God!

I get that when the experience and the experiencer become one, when the experience is no longer filtered through the ego/mind that the rules of the game are very different. I’ve had moments in which I’ve experienced it. I understand that in order to get to be ‘ok’ with death, that’s where it has to come from. If the ego is the one that’s experiencing death, htf is it going to be ok with that? If there is only the experience of leaving this body behind without the mindfuck of rational (mis)interpretation than it is just the experience. What good does that do you if you can’t get there and stay there? Yes, I assume that when ‘my time comes’ that I will at some point drop into that place, but I sure as heck would like to be able to hold it right now and not wait.

Take Me Out Or Leave Me Alone

I tell her ‘Take me out or leave me alone!’ but she won't. She thinks its good to f**k with me . She’s never been wrong so far, I guess.

"Oh no" she says, "you got MORE work to do here! We're gonna stuff you in the stew pot and turn it on high, then throw you in the icy sea, then turn it back on, then run you through the food processor then back into the sea for awhile and then...”

And after all this time, I still don't got it all figured out, so see? 'Nice guy, needs work'
“How long?” I say. “How much longer?”

“Hah!” is the response. “Telling you would shortcut the process and you’d goof off most likely! Just shut up and simmer or swim…or whatever I have you doing in the moment.”

I'm trying to feel the patterns going forward, just sort of get a whiff, a scent,
the thread thing that's pulling me forward toward this godlight. Be aware of it and the directions it wants to tug me in. Meanwhile meditate, 'be', do the inquiry.

This am at 3, i went out and put my hands on the dirt and sensed again how the planet has loved and supported me and how much i love this little dirt ball and its wild critters and trees and rocks and things and how much it loves me.

And I try to figure out a way to show up for the physical part of my life, the doing part, because that's real and important too, even if it's ultimately meaningless. Maybe Something a bit more than writing emails to friends. don't know what yet.

Hmmm, title. How about more random musings?

I wake up in the morning and immediately want to grasp for something that gives me meaning or makes me feel accepted and appreciated. Check my email, see who’s written me, check the news. It feels like ‘grab onto something quick! Grab onto something outside of myself to make me ok, feel loved, worthwhile’.

How hard is it to just drop into awareness and stay there? Experience this without the mind’s interpretation? The mind wants to ponder things that are fantasies, how I would build a house with straw bales, for instance, something that’s clearly NOT going to happen, but it gives the mind something to chew on, some kind of meaning. Or drop into a novel, someone else’s version of reality to avoid my own.

First I have to catch myself avoiding MY experience and then stay in it. There are the experiences we call ‘good’. I feel pretty good, the sun is out, I’m eating something I like and then there are the experiences we call ‘bad’. Rain, cold, pain, dizziness, loneliness. But we don’t show up for either. While I’m eating, I’ll be surfing the news instead of savoring the experience. The sun is out and I’ll notice it, go out in it, but stay busy within my mind rather than enjoy the feeling on my body.

God been poking at my heart today. I was given enough energy to go to the water, that was nice. Lovely places, beautiful. Could see Rainier and the Olympics and White Horse and Mt.Baker and to the East, the mainland and Whidbey and other islands.

I've been having a bit of sadness. Some tears. Not big, just noticing. I am missing the old danny who made plans and did them, the one who showed up for this dirtworld experience. Ok I have some plans, going to the mainland and the heli trip and Richard coming and stuff, but its not what I’m talking about. It’s the place where I say, ‘I’m going to fix Scott’s truck tomorrow’ or ‘maybe I’ll go to Blank in the fall or next summer. Or the one who learned all the birds and plants cuz he wanted to know and investing the energy into that was worth it; someone who had a future beyond next month or maybe the one after or maybe just the one after that. I'm just noticing. I'm not a part of what other people are doing to a large degree. Not morbid, not angst, just noticing and accepting, but it's a process. I don’t know how to be with it sometimes.

Even if i'm on earth for awhile yet, i'm still not part of most of this experience. i can be friendly with cashiers and listen while people talk about 'next year'.
and i love to play with Huggins and all of that.
That makes some sense to me. It's just new and different ground i guess.

It was an awesome day today. I just went out and there were a million little puffball clouds lit underneath by the rising moon through the trees, almost full which means I might get some rain on the mainland. Sometimes just after a full moon the weather here will do that.

Its a weird hand to be holding. If it had gone on for a year or two, it would have been one thing, but wow. and how much longer?
My muscles are a little sore from walking today. What an odd feeling. I used to get a little out of shape and then look forward to getting back in shape and I could. And I could push myself up a trail or on a bike and it might hurt a bit for a few days, but it would feel so awesome. As it is my ability to be physical is so limited that 'getting back in shape' or the experience of sore muscles is just an aberration, a discomfort, probably not leading anywhere.

My neck has actually been hurting for a good week or more, maybe just pinching some nerves or something.

It seems like the priority is this stuff I'm working about my 'way' of being in this world. I’m detached from two perspectives. One is the knowing that there is no egoic meaning to any of this, the other is my short timer status. I’m finding the balance between expressing myself and still just 'being' without the ‘me’go-mind.
What do i 'do'? How do I express the hours and days that are left to me?
How do I function in this physical realm for this period of time?
How do I respond?

There IS a plan. There is an invisible thread going out from me and my experience forward. I can't see very far where it leads but I am being pulled forward along it. It's important that I show up for it fully. More important than ever. Once I have a handle on that, the relationship with certain others will become more clear, but there are some things I have to uncover first and be able to hold in the palms of my outstretched hands, gingerly, softly like a tender baby animal, with presence, making sure it is not frightened or alarmed. And that nascent animal is my experience, my life.
It is the only work i have to do, show up for it I will. Everything else comes from that place. It is relentless.

Then you fall off the wagon again

What? Did you expect to hold onto freedom all the time?
You think that when you get there, that's it?
Your work here is done?
You can be above it all for the remainder of your days?
You can be at peace all the time?

I've always had to work pretty hard at whatever I wanted to get good at and this is no exception.
This is one of those places where intelligence is probably not helpful and in fact may be harmful.
This is not one of those things like calculating the sun's angle of incidence at 1 pm for a particular geographical position and time of year.
It's not like figuring out a better way to manage a couple of dozen employees.
In many respects it doesn't have a dirtworld application.

After being so comfortable and confident and feeling like there's some sense in all this (a lovely high, btw) the slightest little toe stub sends you reeling back to the pits of your self created hell. Maybe it's the contrast between states that makes it so hard.

Even though I KNOW that there's treasure in the dark hard places even THAT can seem so pointless on the level of existence.

I was pretty sick for a number of days in a row. I don't know how to describe it. Like the life force is SO low that you're floating in the tween state between embodiment and death for hours. Sometimes that feels painful, sometimes I am merely curious. Sometimes it feels like I'm hanging on for 'dear life'.

That's just my truth. No holds barred. My quality of life was pretty dismal there for a bit. Then being here DOES seem pointless.

When you ask god, beg him/her to go all the way into complete knowing, you're jumped onto the back of an animal that you have absolutely no control over. You've entered a realm that is going to take you to your own personal hell over and over and over again. Maybe you'll come back and maybe you won't. There are no guarantees and you can't back out or change your mind.

Push yourself up off the ground again, can you sit, can you stand? No mercy. Is there a reward at the end of this? Is it worth it?

Sometimes I want to speak without the censor

There are times when I just want to be able to say whatever it is that’s on my mind without having to censor it, ya’ know? It is a big thing to pack around, there’s no denying that. I know that you probably understand the feelings you get. I just never know if today is the first day of the last six months on earth or if that symptom, whatever it is, is the beginning of some unknown something that means ‘it’s happening’. The story with aggressive cancer is supposed to be that if you let it begin, then it quickly takes over. That’s why the docs are so aggressive with treatment. You should hear them talk to me (when I used to go to them). The whole ‘Oh my god, we have to go in like yesterday” and “I can’t believe that you’ve waited this long.” And the feeling that this will probably be an attribute that I carry around for the rest of my life. God has blessed me with that. :-)

Sometimes I want to dwell on the Cancer (there, I said the word), think about it; try to foresee the potential unraveling of my life force. I think it’s a control issue. I want to be in control and ‘ready’ for whatever may come. All of that stuff about ‘how would I deal with it if it looked like this or that?’ Hell, I’ve beaten the odds so far, probably by 6 or 8 months. For how much longer? Maybe till I’m 80?

Other times I want to ignore it and just go about my life. Somewhere in between denial and not lending it any credibility.

I know that I can make it better by taking extreme care of myself. Sometimes I feel like it doesn’t leave a lot of energy left to support anyone else or to have much left over to give to the world. I need to be able to pretty much do exactly what I want exactly when I want to do it. Whether that’s running wheelbarrows full of dirt from here to there in the garden, taking a nap or doing some emotional ‘homework’.

I’m working on feeling like I’m worth the time and energy to take care of myself.

Sometimes I’m just tired of the whole thing, the work and the struggle and the emotions and I think how easy it would be to just let it come and take me away, rather than do all the work. I’m aware that all I have to do is ‘allow’ it in. I work on that one often enough that it’s for real. I can’t beat this through ‘will power’. I can only beat it through self love, which is also that crap about climbing down into the ‘dark night of the soul’ shit and uncovering all that is ‘not love’ and exposing it to the light of day, even if that makes me sad, or cry or whateverthefuck.

I like the fact that I'm living sort of alone and I can just BE who I want to be in the moment without having to consider somebody else’s needs.

“These days I'm learning that it's also a privilege to sit with someone in life. Really sit. Really be. In life, in breath. I know that you know what I'm talking about here.”

I totally grok this. I’m learning also to accept and be totally aware of and in myself. It brings up the ‘not love’.

We all have our dharma, our soul’s work to do and mine is no more important or particularly harder than anyone else’s. I can think of a LOT of life situations I wouldn’t trade including mindlessness, lack of awareness like those who can sit in front of the TV and cover up their pain with cheap beer (or expensive single malt scotch), not to mention being in Ethiopia and suffering on so many levels. I GLADLY ACCEPT THE CANCER DIAGNOSIS AS MY EMOTIONAL WORK! I also know how it has driven me (and is driving me) to do my soul’s work and for that I am grateful.



We’re all exactly where we’re supposed to be doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing.