Today, I woke up knowing that I would later in the day do a soul retrieval. I intended to do ceremony and journey with the specific purpose of gaining back the fragmented pieces of self that were lost along the way. I knew in my heart where these pieces were. Some were lost as long ago as when I was three years old. Some were lost a month ago when I underwent painful surgery and recovery.

For the past several months, and specifically for the last month, my story has been one of suffering and woe. Almost for 15 years, this physical pain has defined me in many ways. I have been in someway, in part or in whole, to varying degrees, in victim mode. The pain has drained me emotionally, spiritually and physically.

In the few weeks since the surgery, I have felt violated,cast aside and traumatized. Continue reading “Every Act is Done When it is Conceived”

Shannah Tovah!

As I think about the last year, I recall feeling a mix of emotions ranging from love to loneliness, gratefulness to thanklessness, humility to arrogance. I suppose that I am no different from any of us. one particularly challenging time for me occurred just last month when I was hospitalized for pain management following surgery. In those solitary moments when I was left alone, wondering my fate, I asked if I could find purpose in the agony of recovery. Now, as I am in the final stages of physical healing from that ordeal, I reflect upon the meaning of my dark night of the soul. And I find that what carried me through were the moments in which I felt connected: to my wife, to my mom, to my clergy, to my therapist, to my patient advocate, and to my dog. I also noticed a profound shift from the moment that I asked to be put on the Mi Sheberach list.

Sometimes I get so caught up in my own stuff that I forget that I am part of a community. Continue reading “Rosh Hashannah 2009”

So,

It takes a surgery to get me back to my blog. Actually, it takes Twitter to do it! As I face a day of preparation, and then a day of surgery, and then some days of recovery, I am filled with awe. Mainly, I am awed at the power I have to decide how I feel about the upcoming days. If I allow it, then I experience fear. My hands shake and my body trembles with the prospects of what “could” go wrong.

And equally as easy, I can remain calm and secure, knowing that I am on my path and can handle anything ahead of me.

In acting classes, I was taught “getting ready to get ready.” We had exercises to get us ready to act. These rituals and routines prepared us by honing us to the task; they focused us and created purpose for our next moves. But we also had exercises that helped us get ready to get ready. These practices emptied us of expectation, cleared our desire for a particular outcome, and brought us to a moment where anything could happen.

I know now that what we were doing was entering Sacred Space: the realm of miracles. I find that in the last few months, I have been entering into this partnership with myself, letting go of expectations. And why do I need to let go of expectations? Because I have been programmed from birth to fear and expect the worse. I am not alone. I believe that the product of our modern society creates just that. We have news that tells of tragedy in every corner of the globe, tragedies that hit close to home and predictions of worse to come. We live with scarcity, we live with fear.

How can we expect to create miracles that have anything to do with happiness, if we have not cleared ourselves of this fear first? We must get ready to get ready! And so I have created opportunities of accepting that the horror stories about my surgery are not what will happen to me. Things could go any way possible, but I will not write history before it happens!

And so, in getting to get ready, I have emptied the expectations that came naturally to me. And then, once I felt the vacuum space of having no expectations, I allowed the space of positive outcome to grow. I started seeing stories of speedy recovery on the internet, now, where I had only seen pain and agony. The world reshaped around my differing expectations. As I left getting ready to get ready, and moved into getting ready, I found myself able to vision a path of ease for myself.

In fact, I stopped fighting destiny. I stopped holding on to the idea that I could not avoid an unpleasant outcome. And by letting go, creating void, entering Sacred Space, and visioning Peace, I find that I actually think less about the surgery at all! Oh sure, it creeps in. But the monster is easier to put back on its leash.

What will be, will be. Worrying about it now only puts me in distress now! If I encounter pain along the way, then I hope to only experience it when it is there; I don’t need to feel it’s grip now!

So I create the void. I experience this moment. I live in Sacred Space. And I will sleep well tonight.

blessings,

Daniel

This morning, early, long before my bedside alarm was set to go off, I was awakened by my dog’s low gruff and growl. She didn’t move or bark as she does when there is a predator animal, or maybe a cat, outside. Instead, she just seemed to want to wake me up and her job was done. As I gained awareness of the physical world around me, waking from a deep sleep, I noticed that there was a cacophony of crow caws.

They were talking up quite a storm, but I paid only a little attention. I was tired, and knew that I was set to get up in about an hour. I needed my sleep! So I went back to dreams.

When my alarm woke me, the crows were still singing their morning tune. I was now awake enough to understand that there was a message for me waiting. Continue reading “Standing Tall”

The science news of the day is that nearly half of the practicing doctors today prescribe placebos to their patients at some time. A placebo is a medicine that medical science believes has no curative powers for the symptoms or disease involved. Common placebos are sugar pills, or saline solution injections. Also common are prescriptions for common pain killers in complex symptom sets such as fibromyalgia. The doctors prescribe these medications, knowing that according to their science of medicine there is no reason for the treatment to work. Yet, according to the New York Times (October 22, 2008), “Some 30 percent to 40 percent of depressed patients who are given placebos get better, a treatment effect that antidepressants barely top. Placebos have also proved effective against hypertension.”

There is significant controversy in the medical community as to the ethics involved in prescribing placebos to patients. Continue reading “Placebos”

In the Jewish calendar, tonight is Simchat Torah. The idea behind the holiday is that we read the Torah completely through, once each year. Simchat Torah is the night when we finish reading the last page, and begin reading the first page again. At the end of the story, Moses is leading the people to the border of the promised land. His reward for decades of service of the light is to gaze upon the goal and know that his people will cross into this land of milk and honey, their dream and fulfilled. But we learn that Moses will not cross into this Haven, but rather into Heaven. He dies on the mountain before crossing into Israel.

At this point, we know that the community will survive, but Moses will only survive in memory. His life ends as the story ends, with the last word of the story being “Israel.” In Hebrew as in English, the last letter of the word “Israel” is the letter “L.” That is how the story ends.

On Simchat Torah, after reading this ending, we immediately read the start: “In the beginning…” Continue reading “Endings and Beginnings”

In my dreams last night, I recognized that part of my role was to sing.  The particular story that I sang was the history of a beautiful princess.  Her health was fading and so was her mood.  She didn’t want to be sick, or be on her way to death.  But somehow the song that I sang calmed and soothed her.  It was a long song, more of a poem set to music.  It started out with the feel of the “Circle of Life,” and then merged into the feel of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” both from The Lion King. 
As I sang this song, both the Princess and her lover moved from a feeling of despair to a feeling of pride and hope.  They were good people who were not disappearing from the world; rather, they were becoming immortal.  Their story was changed to one of hope.  It was oriented toward the future, not the past. Continue reading “Singing the World’s Song”

The lead story on CNN’s website when I read it this morning was about how “Hard times hit heartland.”  This is the kind of story that troubles me the most in the news today.  The slant of these articles is that we are in tough times; we are going to experience tougher times, and woe be us who try to live in these tough times.  The news is pessimistic and discouraging, and seems to be calculated to inspire depression in all who read it.   

And it’s not bad enough that this story is the headline today.  So we must watch them wring their hands in public and tell us that they are the candidates to help us through these particularly tough times.  Am I heartless enough to discard the  troubles and worries of the day?  To discount the pain that has hit Marengo, Iowa and so many other cities and towns across our nation?  

 

Hello!

This is A Peaceful Blog.  I hope that you find it useful and interesting.

many blessings,

daniel