Category: Scoliosis

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For the Love

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything here. I left off with being vigilant only for God and His Kingdom, which meant handing my mind over to Jesus. I let go of a lot of things, but I retained a few practices that have been serving me well for some time. I have Scoliosis and have been doing http://www.somaticmovementcenter.com exercises for about three years, and I kept that up, as well as self-massage with Ayurvedic oils, which has solved my dry skin problem. And, in the last month, since moving to http://www.panorama.org, I’ve been lap-swimming every other day. So, I’m now doing the massage and scoliosis exercises on the days I don’t swim. I was encouraged to swim by 1) my own guidance, and 2) the book Deep Fitness by Philip Shepherd and Andrei Yakovenko. The research has proven that physical strength is the greatest determinant of overall well being for elders.

In May, my wife saw that interest rates were about to rise and decided to put our 1903 Portland house on the market a month earlier than we’d planned. Because we’ readied it for sale the previous fall and had lived in the basement BnB since then, there was little work to do before putting it on the market, and it sold in two days. So, we were able to move into our new home June 1st, opening day. We’ve worked hard all our lives, so living at Panorama is an incredible experience. Everything but housekeeping is done for us and the amenities are amazing. It’s a very laid back community of elders! We have a 250-seat auditorium/theatre that is just a 1/2 block from our home, and an aquatic/fitness center just another 1/4 block farther. We’re near the center of pretty much all the community events.

With help from my son and a friend, we packed a 16 x 8 x 8 ft Pod and shipped that off in mid-May, and then rented a 15 ft U-Haul for the rest, filling the middle with Karen’s potted plants. We drove up June 1st and unloaded the truck that afternoon so we could turn it in the next morning. The Pod arrived a week later and we had a week to unload that. So, we did everything ourselves, which is pretty unusual for folks here, but it felt great, just like it had to do so much of the rehab on our Portland house as we got it ready for sale. And, now we can just relax, and we’re letting that sink in.

I’m taking forgiveness to the next level: I’m eliminating contention from my life. Before I moved, I’d cut my ties to partisan groups and was only engaged with neutral/bipartisan not-for-profit organizations. But, since moving here, I’ve cut my ties to everything political and most organizations that are involved in conflict of any kind. The only ones I’m still involved with are doing remarkable, radical projects that are cooperative and non-conflictual, and I’m mostly supporting individuals whose work I admire and am learning from. I guess you could say, I’ve eliminated a lot of the shoulds that still had a bit of guilt at their foundations. And, I’ve become quite vigilant for critical thoughts directed at anyone, including myself. This is giving me a deeper feeling of relaxation in social situations than I’ve ever known before. I’m at peace with the way things are, and I know that matters more than anything else in this world.

I never understood this before. I thought non-partisan people were afraid to take a stand. You know, like they were tacitly supporting the status quo, despite its obvious faults, because they didn’t want to make waves or engage in unnecessary conflict. This is an especially big issue right now, as the world is deeply divided. But, I finally know and feel deeply how important it is to hold to the truth within and not take sides; to support each and every individual, in their spirit, without feeling compelled to support their chosen courses. I am here for the love, which is at the heart of everyone and everything.

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Me and My Body

Sung to the tune of Me And My Shadow, it is interesting that the “me” in the song is obviously the body. But, as A Course in Miracles says,

God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of what you think you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist…(The Holy Spirit) always tells you that only the mind is real because only the mind can be shared. The body is separate, and therefore cannot be a part of you. To be of one mind is meaningful, but to be one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body is meaningless

ACIM T-6.V.A.2.1-3 & 3.2-5

So, the “me” in this post is what Ken Wapnick calls the Decision-Maker, aka the soul. Like everyone else on Earth, I soon learned the dual nature of physical manifestation, that pain follows pleasure. The first dramatic lesson came when I was ten years old and caught polio in the public swimming pool, a year before the vaccine came out. While I had a mild case, it restricted my athletic ability, which gave me emotional pain, and as the body aged, the resulting Scoliosis has given me physical pain.

Addressing the Law of Karma, my spiritual Teacher taught that personal responsibility begins at age ten. Prior to that, whatever befell us was our parents’ responsibility. So, I figured the polio had been an effect of a prior miscreation of mine and by accepting that limitation I had cleared the way for the spiritual progress I was realizing in this life.

In the section of Chapter 2 in the Course entitled Cause and Effect, Jesus says that fear comes from thoughts, and “The fearful must miscreate, because they misperceive creation (and) When you miscreate you are in pain (ACIM, T-2.VII.3:8-9).” So, our thoughts create and thoughts based on false premises miscreate, which causes pain.

In the Introduction to the Text of ACIM, Jesus says, “The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite,” and sums up the Course with “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.” Thus, fear is a miscreation, is unreal and does not exist. And it follows that pain is also unreal and does not exist. In fact, one could extend a bit further and realize that this body and hence, the world, are also unreal and do not exist.

Be that as it may, my situation is such that I do feel pain, which means I experience myself as a body subject to misperception, fear and miscreation. And, as my life progressed beyond my Teacher’s lifetime, I became embroiled in the confusion of this world like everyone else. I made the world real in my mind, sought my own personal advantage, believed in the dream of separation, and enlisted in magic to solve my “problems.”

All who believe in separation have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. They believe in attack and rejection, so that is what they perceive and teach and learn. These insane ideas are clearly the result of dissociation and projection. What you teach you are, but it is quite apparent that you can teach wrongly, and can therefore teach yourself wrong.

ACIM, T-6.V-B.1:1-4

Perceiving myself as having been abandoned, I adopted Mantak Chia’s Taoist Secrets of Love, without abandoning my belief in separation. The resulting sex addiction simply increased the pain from the Scoliosis. Every addiction follows the same pattern of cause and effect. The ego’s mantra of sin, guilt and fear, based on the separation idea, reinforces the addictive behavior, whether the addiction is to substances or processes (like codependence or sex).

Fear is always a sign of strain, arising whenever what you want conflicts with what you do. ²This situation arises in two ways: First, you can choose to do conflicting things, either simultaneously or successively. ³This produces conflicted behavior, which is intolerable to you because the part of the mind that wants to do something else is outraged. ⁴Second, you can behave as you think you should, but without entirely wanting to do so. ⁵This produces consistent behavior, but entails great strain. ⁶In both cases, the mind and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a situation in which you are doing what you do not wholly want to do. ⁷This arouses a sense of coercion that usually produces rage, and projection is likely to follow. ⁸Whenever there is fear, it is because you have not made up your mind. ⁹Your mind is therefore split, and your behavior inevitably becomes erratic. ¹⁰Correcting at the behavioral level can shift the error from the first to the second type, but will not obliterate the fear.

ACIM, T-2.VI.5:1-10

In seeking to diminish the pain from the Scoliosis, I found the Somatic Movement Center and a series of exercises that increased my subtle awareness, giving me conscious control over the autonomic nervous system and reprogramming the muscles that have distorted the skeletal structure of my body. But, I found that my addictive behavior reinforced the old muscle tensions, interfering with the healing process. Therefore, I have to give up the fear-based addiction. “³No one who learns from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs additional convincing (ACIM, T-4.VI.3:3).” I must “Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom (ACIM, T-6.V-C.2:8)”.

The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget. ²You have chosen to be in a state of opposition in which opposites are possible. ³As a result, there are choices you must make. ⁴In the holy state the will is free, so that its creative power is unlimited and choice is meaningless. ⁵Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to create, but its application is different. ⁶Choosing depends on a split mind. ⁷The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. ⁸God did not leave His children comfortless, even though they chose to leave Him. ⁹The voice they put in their minds was not the Voice for His Will, for which the Holy Spirit speaks.

ACIM, T-5.II.6:1-9