Difficulties Can Heal You

What do I mean when I say awakening into life? I mean actually experiencing life – hearing it, tasting it, feeling it, seeing it exactly as it is in the only moment that matters – now. So, I invite you to pause for a moment and really open to this moment. It is no ordinary moment. It is the only moment that matters in your whole life!

When life started waking me up, I saw, really saw, that most of the time I was somewhere else – in the past or the future, daydreaming or just spacing out. I was truly startled when I realized that, while I was thinking about life, I was missing it! I also saw how strong the urge is to not be present for life. The last time we were fully here, in the first years of our lives, we got scared out of ourselves and out of life and became imprisoned in our minds, which are afraid of being present again.

As these truths penetrated my dense, busy mind, I began meditating every day, the kind of meditation that doesn’t aim for any particular state. This kind of meditation is all about grounding right here and, when your attention drifts back into the world of thought, it gives you an opportunity to get to know the stories in your head. This helped immensely because I could see there was a huge difference between experiencing life through my thoughts and truly experiencing it.

I am, like most people, a work in progress and yes, over the years, my ability to stay open to life has increased. But if I am deeply challenged, my mind will still contract in resistance and in fear – although not for as long as I used to. About five years ago, I was diagnosed with Myeloproliferative Neoplasm, a rare type of blood cancer that will be with me for the rest of my life, managed with chemotherapy.

The easiest way to see how this diagnosis unsettled my mind was in my meditations. My mind was much more turbulent than it had been. Before, I used to fairly easily drop into the stillness that is always here, underneath the busyness of the mind. So, for many years, it was wonderful to rest in that stillness when I meditated and also periodically throughout the day. But now my mind is much busier because it is afraid. The diagnosis brought into stark relief the truth that one day I will no longer be here and in the meantime, I may not feel so great.

In order to open into the field of stillness, I have to open into what I am physically experiencing from the cancer – deep fatigue, increasing nerve pain, and an overall feeling like I’m getting the flu. My mind really doesn’t like these sensations. But over and over again, this gives me the opportunity to say hello to my mind. When it is very upset, I say, “I see that you are scared but remember, being with what we are experiencing is where things open up.” And because I have created a loving relationship with my mind, most of the time it calms down, and the field of stillness is there.

I feel a bit like a yo-yo in my meditations lately. I open into the stillness, and then the mind takes over again because it wants to be anywhere but here, but this is such a good training ground. For more and more quickly, even when my mind is deeply turbulent, I remember this is just the mind, and with that realization, my heart opens, which has room for everything. And when my mind lets go, under the compassionate gaze of my aware heart, I am then again present in my body, and wonderful heart energy floods my beleaguered body with love.

As I move through my daily life, it is so much easier to remember the preciousness of every single moment. We are so quick to take life for granted but this unwanted diagnosis is a blessing in disguise, for I fairly quickly wake up when I see I am sleepwalking through life. And then the only thing that makes sense is to meet life with the love and wisdom of my heart.

So, this moment where you are reading these words is precious. It is the only moment where your life is completely brand-new, and it is the only moment where you can open into the truth of love!

What can you bring into your life that invites you for a moment here and a moment there, to open to life just as it is? Maybe giving yourself at least three minutes every day where you choose a focus in life like your breath or the sounds and every time you notice your attention is back up in your head, without judgment, you return to your focus? Or maybe it’s about living as if this were your last day alive. If these don’t call to you, ask life to show you how to move beyond the fear in your mind so that you can be present for this amazing, wondrous, alive, and constantly new journey called life.

Whatever you give to yourself, know it will become much easier to cut through the old games of your mind – the resistances, the entanglements, the struggles, the posturing, the trying, the doing, the endlessly struggling with life. Then only love would be an appropriate response to whatever you are experiencing.

If this resonated with you, and you’d like to explore this more, then I invite you to listen to my podcast on Dreamvisions 7 Radio: The Great Healer. It will air on Thursday, January 29th at 5am and 5pm HERE. After the 29th, it will be available on demand, along with every other podcast I’ve ever done HERE. Please feel free to explore my catalog and listen to topics that call to you.

Offerings:

DATE CHANGED Free Live Call with Mary: My Good Friend Cancer, Really???

Thank you again for a wonderful free night! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. We will be meeting on March 3rd, now March 17th at 5:30pm PT as usual. Here’s the topic:

Mary has been working for 6 years with a rare form of blood cancer. While it has had its challenges, it has also healed her in ways she couldn’t imagine before her diagnosis. Join her in exploring all of the gifts this cancer has brought into her life and how you can access all the gifts that come with the challenges of life.

As always, even if you can’t make it at that time, if you are registered, you will receive a recording of the event for you to listen to at your leisure. Registration is now open! Click HERE to learn more and register.