Now is perhaps “the worst of times” learning a few weeks ago that my cancer is growing and spreading, with no treatment option left.  My body is most certainly heading toward the exit door. 

In my heart and mind “this is the best of times”, “an epoch of belief… a season of light” to borrow a bit more from Dickens.  It seems the heighten senses and opportunity that come with crisis has benefited me.  I have spent the past weeks focusing on the Spiritual aspect of my situation. What is death? What happens? Where do we go? My reading and mediation has reached broadly into many areas: Buddhism, Christianity, Physics, Near Death Experiences, Health Perspectives… and all disciplines pointed to the same place.  Light, energy, love, bliss.  Let me say that louder, LIGHT, ENERGY, LOVE, and BLISS.  Talking about this concept is difficult because it transcends day to day reality.  This “place” or “experience” is named in many ways: God, Christ, Universe, Luminosity, Eternity, Implicate Order, Higher Consciousness, and Unconditional Love. What I am certain does NOT belong in this state is the human ego, i.e. fear, judgment, good v. bad. I feel certain that beyond the exit door is a state of incredible unity and oneness.  I imagine it as those reporting a near death experience describe, heaven like, bright light, and omniscient with radical acceptance. Does it last, as a heaven? Are we reborn?  Is it simply a phenomenon of the brain shutting down?  I don’t know and I don’t feel the need to “know”, because of course this part of life is unprovable.  Logic stops here friends, I stand at the point of surrender and I’m ok with that, in fact it feels wonderful.  

As this state of understanding dawned into my awareness, something huge shifted inside of me. I had accepted my diagnosis and prognosis honestly, I wasn't terrified, but my small sense of self still squabbled and suffered over hurt feelings.  This actually hurt more than the news that I was dying, showing me how deeply I was looking for an answer in the wrong place.  Once the shift occurred, things no longer bothered me, I could accept everything exactly like it was.  Joy opened up in me with the realization that many parts of my life had already been dedicated toward shedding the me, me, me, ego and finally seeing the God in others.  Money, material goods, status had lost meaning and no longer defined me. My job as a therapist proved to be an almost holy experience, welcoming those who felt broken, holding their wholeness as sacred and definite, until they could see and hold it themselves. The work was complex and demanding but it felt exactly right and energizing. I was evolving; I was on my way here!  

I now feel a lovely certainty that I finally know my place in the world.  I continue to dream about working in this unconditional balance of love with women and children who suffer poverty and generational patterns of abuse.  As long as I live I will dream, I feel my consciousness joins with the whole and my dreaming can help move things forward.  Besides, this is what I love, I am so lucky to have the retired freedom to dream and fill my days with love.

Below is an OnBeing (Krista Tippit) interview with Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who is doing something very close to my dream. He works with young felons caught up in gang activity, helping them find a way out, a way back to themselves.  He runs Homeboy Industries. His balanced unconditionally loving approach is a model that makes sense to me.

OnBeing (Krista Tippet) Interview of Father Greg Boyle

Imagine sitting at the sea shore watching waves roll in.  The waves are individual and unique, not only to the time of day and season, but even one to the next.  Would you ever argue that a wave is not the ocean? If the waves were absent, if there was a quiet sea, would you be disturbed?  What if the entire ocean were gone? Surely, if we woke to find no ocean we would be disturbed; the ocean is the basis for waves and all life that arises from the ocean.

This example illustrates Bohm’s Theory of Implicate Order, that there exists in our universe an unseen, multi-dimensional pattern of life energy that is the ground, or basis, for all things. The Explicate Order, like the waves, is the seen reality that arises from the Implicate Order, and then returns to it. Our lives and our world are part of the Explicate Order, they feel very primary, but in truth the Explicate, whatever form it takes, is a temporary manifestation of a total undivided whole.

Going Home.  Returning to the whole is a normal, natural, inevitable aspect of all things including human life.  We are not separate people with separate diseases, we are open energy systems constantly interacting and evolving with each other. The pattern manifested by a disease does not stop with one person but is part of the greater whole, the undivided wholeness of the universe.  Call it the universe, higher consciousness, God, the Implicate…this highest level is love. A person does not possess consciousness (God or Love) the person IS consciousness. Love is the substrate for all emotion. It manifests itself in different forms depending on the person’s ability to let go and let love be. What we consider negative emotions – hate, anger, jealousy – are distortions of love: love in a bind.  Vulnerability, suffering, disease do not diminish us. What does diminish us is trying to protect ourselves by binding ourselves off from these experiences. When you begin to tell yourself that your emotional stance in life is a distortion of your potential to love, then you have invited a flame into your life that will gradually destroy and transform you. In the course of many years of loving (extending limits) is a gradual but progressive enlargement of the heart, incorporation within of the world without, and a growth, a stretching and thinning of our ego boundaries. In this way the more and longer we extend ourselves, the more we love, the more blurred becomes the distinction between the self and the world. The art of living is the conscious loss of control, the letting go of the obsession with self, the surrender into Being, the opening of the heart.

If the highest level of consciousness is unconditional love (God, Universe, or Implicate Order), this explains why those who experience near death situations typically report dazzling light energy and the feeling of being embraced and filled with love. All that arises passes away, like the wave, this is an undeniable truth. If we do not turn away from the experience, death can become a transformative door, taking us and all who share the experience, home to the core heart and mind of love.

My thoughts and some shared words from “Health as Expanding Consciousness” by Margaret Newman

Imagine “God” as the body of all creation, the God within each of us comprising the perfect whole.  Over time some parts over identify with smaller subsystems of the body, mistaking this for the whole. These subgroups over consume, to enrich a smaller self-based system. Brilliant and ambitious they ingeniously move around resistance and corrective obstacles to continuously gain more. It feels successful, rapid growth and enrichment seem a sure sign of ascendancy.  This is a successful anomaly, but not in the plan, unwittingly they deplete resources needed by the whole, choking and killing distant overlooked systems.  Climate change, toxic waste, species extinction, war, genocide…the success of one group ultimately beacons a death risk for all.  How to cease the risk and protect the whole?  War? Regulation? Toxic chemo?  Perhaps some success can be found with “attack” solutions, but internal war and killing increases chaos and risk, and does not deliver a solution.  Again, aggression toward any part of the body weakens the whole.  Only by returning to one sacred whole can God’s body of divine grace remain strong and eternal.  This means activating God’s immune system: the realization of interconnectedness, and the activation of love and compassion.  A solution is not found by force, but instead by leading the deluded parts back into contented rhythm with the “whole”.  

Inspired by the book “Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives”