PHYSICAL PAIN: ITS DIRECTIONS

I awaken to excruciating pain—mostly in my back, but also sometimes my neck and the occipital nerves towards the top of my head. My back feels as if it has been bashed with 2x4s. So I rise from bed early out of necessity and then go downstairs, one stair at a time due to the painful stiffness through my body. All this pain diminishes as I move around, but not entirely; it still lurks in my body, surprising me with its sharpness now and then. Approaching bedtime, I take a pain pill and a sleeping pill. These enable me to sleep and rest for a while until my sharp pain awakens me as if I had fallen asleep on a medieval torture machine, the rack. My doctor says this is the result of spinal bone spurs, which is a spreading crystalization of calcium over the backbone, with protrusions of “bone” into spinal nerves. The pain radiates out following any old slight bone fractures of which I have a few in my lower ribs on the right side, due, not just in my estimation, to a belt that struck me there when my bones were still forming. The pain has come home to roost or so it would seem. However, since it does diminish as I get on with my day, I consider myself lucky indeed, even blessed. My wife, in the nerve pain of her severe and chronic fibromyalgia is always in pain, and can barely move around at all. I told her yesterday, “We get up, have our coffee, do our errands and doctor visits during the day, have dinner, watch a movie, go to bed, and then we’re dead—if all goes well.” She laughed. Pain makes life literally tortuous. Every day one is tortured simple because one has a body that is subject to such. Such is the nature of bodily existence. This by no means makes the body “bad.” I surely enjoyed its pleasures well enough when I was young and younger and still do what I can to counterbalance the pain.

But the pain of existence—the inherent life of the pain of the world, the suffering of the world, called weltschmerz by Schopenhauer—has always been there for me and is inherent within every human being, be they conscious of it or sensitive to it or not. For all its pleasures and wonders and great joy and beauty, life is painful and life is suffering. This does not make it bad at all; it is just that to the extent that we identify ourselves with our physical bodies and the physical world without getting beyond this level of identity is the source of our loss—for the body and all that it holds dies and all is lost in that regard. Buddhism offers no remedy to physical pain, saying that it is inherent to life and the body and must therefore be borne by us. We do have the ability, though, to not suffer over our suffering, i.e., to not make our pain cause us more psychological pain—which is what we tend to do. Rather than accepting and being with the pain and ourselves in pain, we pray to God to take it away—which is all in vain as well as a vanity, an unreality, a falsity. My own pain I tend to take with a grain of salt; it hurts but it is as it is and I adapt and accept. My wife’s pain is something that is more difficult to accept, for it includes an acceptance of losing her, of having her with me no longer. This kind of acceptance is most painful and most difficult, though the fact that one who is in chronic and severe pain may be relieved of such pain does make its acceptance more possible. One of life’s most difficult dilemmas is to allow oneself to love another, for this is to love another as oneself. Even when that love is deepened beyond one’s very being, since it is still personal, i.e., of the person, of the body, when they leave their body, a part of the one who loves them is taken away. The hole in one’s heart, in one’s being, is not only metaphorical. How many mates whose spouses die, follow them very quickly. This is called “heart-breaking,” and that goes to the very core of one’s being, of one’s life. On the other hand, such a death of one who suffers and is then released from at least its physical aspect, is a blessing and an opening to whatever is to happen next. I assume that something does, but that’s another story. That story pertains to our need to let go of the suffering and pain in our mind and heart to every possible extent, before we finally leave the body.

I loved my mother very much and was close to her though I lived three thousand miles away and also had a disabled child which made it pretty much impossible to visit her and my father. They were in ill health but did their best to come to see us. She died young. But I found that when she left her body, she was closer to me—as if she literally entered into my being and became a part of it. I missed her even less because she was always present. Perhaps this is how it is for those whom we love deeply; they somehow enter into us when they depart their bodies. Perhaps it’s purely psychological, though I actually don’t think it’s only that. I think somehow it’s literally physical. I know an Indian medicine man, leader of a local ancient tribal people. He’s very big, probably 350 pounds and well over six feet tall. He told me that he has “seven grandfathers” that live in his body, that they are always hungry and he obediently feeds them. At the time I thought, “What a feeble excuse,” but now I have more of a sense of the truth of his statement. If we take other people into ourselves, into our very cells, when they are alive, which I believe to be absolutely true, why cannot this happen just as much or even more so once they leave their bodies?

“Pain” has the capacity to lead us many places within ourselves. Esoterically or spiritually, pain is the great purifier as well as the “punishment for sins.” Perhaps any of this is true. Perhaps pain is “karmic.” And/or perhaps it is simply part and parcel of existing in a body and as a body, not just as an individual but as a part of a great whole of humanity with whom we share the same heart, the same feelings in many respects; even the same mind and soul, if you will, on a certain level. Is it “my” pain? Is it “our” pain? Am I suffering for others or just for myself? One must be able to hold these questions properly and in a balanced way so as to avoid megalomania and narcissism, but just where between each of us are the boundaries? I don’t know if our own “taking on” of the pain of others actually reduces their pain, but if it’s not diminished, our own willingness to take it upon ourselves, to put another’s being before our own, reframes us, reforms us, purifies us of our own “sins,” our own actions committed in ignorance. As I’ve said before, I never know where these “conversations with myself” will lead—but they generally go where they want to go.

There's a line from No Country for Old Men in which the Sheriff visits an older sheriff who is now in a wheelchair. The Sheriff asks "How are ya?" and the man says "Yer lookin' at it."

ON BEING DEFINED

Recently I was talking with my sister and she noted that I have always sought to be with a woman, though she framed it as “companionship.” This caused me to reflect upon my nature and upon human nature in general. I always tended to think that I am “self-defined,” i.e. not needing others to be able to see myself and how I am. I even prided myself on my independence and sometimes isolated existence. I could go into the woods and stay there by myself for days or be at my little house off Zayante Rd. in the Santa Cruz Mountains and write my dissertation and my book for weeks at a time in solitude. In retrospect I now see just how painfully lonely I was and that my sister is quite right. Such a realization causes me to redefine myself as one who has been defined not by myself. It would seem that most people are not defined at all—to themselves or anyone else. Most people, it seems, define themselves by their roles in life, their careers, their family, their nationality, ethnicity, or nation. Or they may define themselves by their religious beliefs or otherwise spiritual beliefs, or their philosophical bent and state of mind. I see that these are all valid and credible self-definitions, if you will. I cared for my daughter for twenty years and my life revolved around her and her care, yet I would not say that I was defined by her, though I would say that I was defined by my love for her. That’s a rather strange thing to say, at least for me to say. I have now been with the woman who is my wife for seventeen years and have no doubt that she has defined me. To actually find someone whom one deeply loves and who deeply loves back is probably the most profound occurrence possible to humans. One does come to share heart, soul, mind, and body with another. Such matches are, in my estimation, beyond “natural.” One finds oneself defined by the other.

To be defined in this way is neither submission nor surrender. I suppose it could be called “love” or “connection” or “oneself as another” (to use Ricoeur’s book title). It may be that in order to “be defined by another,” one is already necessarily oneself first. But I think it’s an ongoing, deepening process. I have noted that we live on many “levels” of being simultaneously. We may focus on the more superficial levels initially but the focus and experience deepens to more subtle levels as time progresses. Hot and frequent sex becomes something different—and more sublime and lasting—as we get older, or, for instance, if one’s physical condition catalyzes such changes in the process. It may be that in the process of caring for my daughter, I learned to make her needs primary to many of my own needs. Doing this on a daily basis for twenty years perhaps had the effect of literally reforming my own psyche, my own thinking and feeling process, bringing what is called soul more to the fore. In other words, there was a kind of self-redefinition that occurred. And then the woman who is now my wife came into my life and I, with her help, was able to recognize that she was to be trusted at a very deep level. Such currents run deep in spite of the storms upon the surface. We have to be able to “go deep” and become a bit amphibious. Such is the redefining of ourselves.

Now the discussion arrives at a few questions: Where do I end and she begins? What is the nature of the boundaries between us on the deeper levels? Do people become “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone”? Do we feel each other’s pain, even physical? One is reminded of Schopenhauer’s notion of weltschmerz or “world sorrow or pain” which, according to him, could be felt in the very cells of one’s own body. Do we naturally “take on” the suffering and pain of others, even into our bodies? Obviously so, in my estimation. Obviously too, I always tend to answer my own questions. I talk about weltschmerz somewhat at length in my book, Depression’s Seven Steps to Self-Understanding: A Guide to Comprehending and Navigating Your Inner Journey, published in 2010.

I find that once I start to write these thoughts down as essays, they lead to someplace quite different that I may have initially anticipated. To me, this is the purpose behind any creative thought: to see where it goes. Life is fascinating in this respect, no matter what.

ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

One may, of course, attempt or even succeed in evading the responsibilities and reality of the present moment by reverting to “past lives” or “the other side” or what have you. I am aware that I readily speak of such things rather frequently here, perhaps because they are more interesting and more dramatic in their own way than the “here and now.” But I am quite aware of the fact that I live here and now here and now. One may “go places” in their minds, in their thoughts, and be quite aware of being in different layers of existence. I am aware that there is a “greater context” in which I live and move and have my being, as the Biblical phrasing goes, though when “taken away by the moment,” it seems that I forget about it. However, even though I may judge myself as losing my sense of the greater context since I may "lose my temper," as it were, and demonstrate signs of impatience, ignorance, and stupidity, this too is what occurs within the greater context, which is inclusive of it all, of the sacred and the profane, the holy and the unholy. There is no particular way of being that must be demonstrated. We cover the spectrum of being from lower animal to higher spirit, from the most dense to the most sublime—all at the same time and moment.

So, how is life supposed to be? What are we supposed to be doing? It seems there is so much that is wrong and so little that is right. People have false or wrong priorities and such has been their indoctrination to social and cultural life. I have certainly been of that mind and action most of my life, how can I expect others to be beyond it? If life as it is lived is false, how can it be lived truly? Can there even be such a simplisitc dichotomy? That which is false leads away from that which is true, but it is not necessarily evil in its intention. Being born in the flesh in itself leads us away from the real as we come to identify with the body and seek to survive above all else.

But humans are different over time and place, i.e. culture and society, even thinking and feeling differently, while always “tending” to be human. Such is my understated sense of humor. Though we are at “home” as we will ever be in these bodies, we do not “feel at home.” One cannot call the body home for long; no matter how much we try to convince ourselves, our days in the flesh are limited.

I have been fortunate in my life. The gods have been forgiving of my many wrongs done to others, not maliciously but certainly ignorantly and obliviously. I am sure I remain quite narcissistic but have learned some restraint. In some respects, my life has been quite heavenly and, in others, hellish. It just may be that heaven entertains, if not contains, hell. Such an eternal heaven can seem like an eternal hell, depending on how we look at it, how great our understanding, context, and identity can be.

REMEMBERING

There are memories that come to mind when I am about my daily activities, especially when I am driving and my mind wanders. There is an awareness that I am present in this body in this life even as I was present in other bodies in other lives. They are a bit like remembering movies that I’ve seen in the past, though when I was younger my memories of such were much more dramatic, emotional and “personal” to me. I don’t recall or try to recall them or their specific details any more but I have a definite sense that I was “there” just like I was there at my high school graduation or when I received an award in first grade at Roosevelt Public School for my drawing of a sailing ship (which I believe I still possess somewhere hidden in my tomes of things perhaps in the garage). I remember myself getting up proudly, my parents beaming on either side of me, and walking up the aisle and up the stairs to the stage to receive my award certificate. What I refer to as my “past life memories” are much like that, except that they include rather dramatically unpleasant moments as well as some pleasant ones. I am more emotionally detached from these past memories than I used to be. Some of them used to be very painful and sometimes still are. The more recent ones still have some emotional effects on me. 

The most recent is that of a rabbi who, with his eight children, are sent to the Treblinka concentration camp in Poland. His French wife was previous murdered by German soldiers whom she attacked as they tried to rape her, as he thought more of protecting their children than going to her defense, which, of course, would’ve gotten him killed. He felt himself to be a profound coward for not dying to protect her. The Kommandant of the camp did not kill his children in order to retain his willingness to help keep his congregation “under control” rather than rebel. Ultimately every child died of sickness and he was left to face the firing squads of German boys in uniform as the Russians entered Poland. There is much more to this story.

In the other "recent" life, a fourteen-year-old Lakota Sioux boy whose father, Little Fox, and mother have been killed by the US Cavalry, is, with his sixteen-year-old sister, left to defend those remaining alive of his tribe who are fleeing the soldiers. They are attacked, his sister has her jaw broken and is raped by the soldiers. He is captured by the soldiers who laugh at him because he is so small. He escapes his bonds and stabs a soldier in vengeance. As he runs away, he is shot in the back, the bullet passing through his lung. Then his head is put in a noose and his spinal cord is supposed to snap or he is supposed to strangle when dropped. But he is so scrawny and light that he just hangs from the rope and kicks until one of the soldiers grabs his feet and yanks him down.

I know these things happened. There are many more descriptive details. It seems like my imagination running wild but these are not old TV shows I saw as a child. They actually happened to me when I was another person in another time. I remember all sorts of things, and especially liked being in the world before the advent of technology—cars, telephone, engine—when all moved by horse-power, when the horse was personal and had a name, was a friend. I prefer those times when the world was slower and quieter and the main diversions were human—conversation, music, games. I was able to find “success” in this world by being able to sell financial advice and services, which required, in my estimation, one who could demonstrate a care for the client, the customer, as well as satisfactory financial results. I did this before computers came onto the scene and took over as the informational source. But I have always had a kind of awareness that I don’t really belong in this world, even though I was able to just about convince myself that I could be comfortable in it. But not quite.

There's another story from the early 18th century. My sister and I are hiding under a table in a pub full of drunken sailors and not-quite-as-drunk prostitutes, one of whom is our mother. The floor is covered in a matting of damp straw that smells of beer, urine, and vomit. Like the proverbial Dicken's theme, we are ultimately adopted by a well-to-do Anglo-Irish couple and live in a mansion outside of Dublin. At university, I become interested in the "black arts" and drop out to move to the country and be educated by a group of women who are always at risk of being accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake by the priests. This lifetime would appear to end in 1728 when Seamus is put into a door-sized hole in the ground, a wooden door is placed upon him, and the priest directs the villeins to throw rocks upon the door to crush him. But he is saved from death, though not quite intact, by one red-haired witch, who literally remembered him 250 years later. There is more to be told of this story as well.

I wish there was a moral to this story and the others, but I find that it’s a story in which myriad other stories converge. I just have to let this be as it is. As one who has paddled and floated down the river of his particular life and who discovers that there are numerous other rivers now converging into a great river flowing into the greater sea, I see that I am now carried by the current. We may call it “forward” but it is simply the direction of the current. Remembering the memories of the long past of one’s lives reveals oneself to oneself as flowing within a current of different times, different places, different people. It instills a perspective that extends beyond time, place, and personal identity. What I feel now, I have felt before. But the beauty is that it is all fresh and new in every single moment that occurs here and now in which there is no past and no future.

TO A FRIEND

This is a copy of an email to a friend whose medical condition is fragile:

I was thinking about what you said a while back re Buddhist meditation and it just "sunk in." You had the idea that the meditation was meant to "bring you out of your body," and I noted that that's not its purpose and continued to pontificate as usual. But now it dawns on me that you were seeking a meditation that does allow one to "transcend the physical." I did practice such a meditation for ten years or so pretty much on a daily basis. It's a theosophical rendition of what is probably a Hindu meditation. It takes you out of your body by moving up the chakras until you are beyond it and then you come back down into it with what might be called spiritual insights. I'd be happy to describe exactly how it's done, if you might be interested.

For most of my life I was hardly in my body and believed this was how it was for everyone. There are causes for this that I could share with you if you might want to hear them. Suffice it to say that I could sit zazen for hours and hours and hours once upon a time, though now I can't at all--which is probably a good thing. So I spent much effort trying to "get in" rather than "get out."

But I, for many years now, have been very interested in knowing how to "make the transition" out of the body when I die, for one must be able to be in the proper mind that can adapt to a different (non-physical) state of being. I have finally internalized what I see as true regarding this: the non-physical state of being is our natural state, whereas being in the body is actually an unnatural state for us. I think that's why I enjoy sleeping as much as I do--being out of the body. Rudolf Steiner said that death is much like going to sleep--but then waking up without the physical part, which can be disconcerting if one isn't aware of what's up.

Just wanted to share these thoughts with you. I think life and death can be seamless. Time is somewhat relative and our self-identification needs to be expanded if not replaced.

A WALK OVER THE FROZEN SWAMP

He had been walking all day, since early morning. Now it was late afternoon. He wasn’t tired; he just wanted to keep walking. He had started on a fire trail, then to a hiking trail, and for the last few hours, a deer trail, very thin but worn, skirting thick brush, but sometimes quite steep. Once, when he was much younger, back in New York State, he followed a deer trail for hours and actually came upon the deer grazing in a small meadow. In those days he liked to walk in hopes of actually getting lost so that he might then have to find his way once again. And he had gotten lost a number of times and always found his way out, once after thirteen hours and spending a winter night in front of a roaring fire in the ruins of an old mansion with a six-foot high fireplace.

            He no longer sought to get lost; he knew he already was lost, so there was no need. He just wanted to walk and really didn’t care whether he was lost out there in the forest or not. He might die, he thought, but it was not on his mind. He thought about when he ventured into the forest not so far from Millbrook back in New York State in the middle of winter when he could explore the vast marshes and swamps that were frozen over, places he had never been able to get to before. This is where he came upon the foundation of an old mansion that probably belonged to a patroon who had cleared the land and farmed it as early as two hundred years ago. Now, all these farms and their mansions had been reclaimed by the forests of Dutchess County. Why the farms failed, he didn’t know. The rock and cement foundation was quite large and at one end stood a six-foot high rock fireplace with a thirty-foot high rock chimney. The hearth in front of the fireplace was six-feet across and stood three feet above the foundation. It was all surrounded by thick fir trees, some of which grew within the walls of the foundation.

            The sun was setting and it was getting to be in the low 20s. He wasn’t particularly cold yet but he had no sleeping bag, only the clothes on his back. He gathered a big pile of firewood, packed it into the fireplace and lit it up. A big white owl flew out the top of the chimney. Soon there was a roaring, hot fire which he fed with a couple of logs he had dragged up to the hearth. He laid down on the rock hearth and fell asleep, using his small knapsack as a pillow. Soon it became too hot, so he took of all his clothes and lay on the smooth rock of the hearth which had become warm from the fire. He slept for a while and was awakened by a chill that pierced right to the bone. The fire was now embers but still quite warm. He put on his clothes that had been warmed by the hearth.

         Suddenly he looked around him and saw literally scores of glowing eyes watching him from the edge of the forest, reflecting the light of the fire. Some were large, some small, some higher, some lower. He wasn’t frightened though he thought that there could easily be a mountain lion in the mix of what were probably deer and raccoons. He rose at dawn and followed his tracks back, eventually finding his way out of the swamps and marshes, and back to the road home.

WHY THE STORIES OF OUR LIVES?

I can tell stories of my various life experiences, yes, but to speak of or otherwise discuss these in a philosophical or spiritual or psychological manner requires that I use the pertinent languaging or terms. But I find this approach to be very limiting and restrained and false in that respect. How does one speak specifically in vague terms? One does not. One cannot. Instead, one tells a story and thus conveys the attainment of any “meaning” to the reader. One lets the reader draw the conclusions. Perhaps even leading the reader to what one does not particularly wish to conclude. 

     And what, after all, is "true"? Are our experiences of ourselves, as we tell them, accurate? True? I would say not. Not because we're liars, but because we have our particular and literal points of view. We see in the way that we see. Which is to say that there are things that we do not want to see about ourselves; things that we avoid. Such blind spots are not so conscious to us; we just don't see them because we don't want to see them. Our stories are primarily for ourselves, even to ourselves. That someone else might listen or even hear what we say is validation to us that we are telling the truth and even that we simply exist. 

    Some of us feel compelled to tell our stories. It's not just for "attention"; it's because there are "vital human lessons" to be gained from reading these stories. There is some kind of wisdom, or at least some kind of "wider experience of being" that people should be aware of for their own knowledge of being. That's precisely why, in my mind, I maintain this blog and why I write in it. Somewhere, weaving in and out of the words, is a kind of spirit. Call it even a demon if you want to. It has power and knows things; things beyond the notions of "good and evil." It just is and is present behind the words. I have faith in this much, though it is unseen and unknown and unmeasureable.