October 25, 2010

Municipal Election Day

After two days of painful bed-rest I have a wonderful massage. It was as if the young lady were rerouting several of the energy patterns in my body. I reached a new level of relaxation. I also discovered that I was carrying the guilt of agreeing to having my back operated on almost 40 years ago. It was good to see the guilt and let it go, since in truth it adds nothing either to the past or the present.

Later in the day I went to the second of the last sessions of the pain management work-shop. At dinner before hand I did the reading that was assigned last week. It is eye-opening to realize that there are multiple feed-back loops that keep pain in place and in fact can increase its intensity; loops that include stress, nutrition, self-talk, breathing, and more. Like the “seemings” that we learn to collage in the Wisdom Course, the actual event of pain is long gone and the experience of pain is reinforced and sustained by these cycles.

There is no question that I have experienced stress and injury since choosing to create and leave on the World Peace through Inclusion Tour in October of 2008. And here I am now caught up in the multiple feedback loops. For example, constipation is a natural result of stress and this went unnoticed by me and led to interference with my bladder elimination and my eating habits. My swallowing was weakened by muscle reaction to stress and this led to poor eating habits and less energy. All of this is stressful in and of itself. Does it matter that there may have been an initial injury? Even more so, at this moment, is there not a balance to find between continuing to look for causes and loosening the grip of the feedback loops?

I have much to explore with my circle and a great deal to learn about myself and how I build or reduce these loops of pain.

Perhaps it is a good time to give myself a sabbatical. The purpose would be to rest and relax and also to closely examine myself while learning new things about how bodies work and especially my body. Perhaps the entry into Cycle 3 is to create some elementary studies for myself about myself.

There were several people in the workshop in a kind of “reviewer” status. They affirmed that they have learned to recognize a personal rhythm, a rhythm that if they follow allows them to have significant moments when they can be virtually pain-free and active. Several stated that they sometimes consciously choose to go beyond the point where the rhythms say they should rest and stop “doing”. When they do go beyond this point they know they will shortly experience a huge upswing in pain.

What was exiting about what they had to say is that clearly they had discovered a capacity to choose within a realm of experience that I currently find frightening and overwhelming. Choosing is the door to freedom. So today I have experienced that I can again have a life of my own design.

So now the question is there of how do I design around the bubbles of thought and energy and self-expression that effervesce from my being. The limitation of this art is that the flow and rhythm of the design cannot be driven by results. Rather it must be founded in a pattern of honouring my actual capacities. Of course my capacities are expanded by my commitments and my relationships. What is new is that my own body becomes a central factor in the organization of my art in a different way than it ever has been before.

This seems very odd to say in that I have never lived a life without significant attention to the capacities of my body. Yet this is a very different time. In the past I would see what other people can do with their bodies, especially people who do extraordinary things considered miraculous by ordinary folks (Cirque du Soleil). I found ways to fill in the gap between what I can do and what needed to be done – large gaps in need.

This is a different design structure. Of course I am not certain yet. I am sure that I am still interested in results and commitment. But the point of focus for
the creation of the miraculous is no longer outside of my personal self. This is very much new to me.