The transcript of a talk I gave about my experience of “holding the space for cancer to visit me temporarily” was just published by The Radical Remission Project, as their featured Healing Story of the Month.
Posts Tagged ‘cancer’
My Response to Cancer
This is the text I read at the storytelling show produced by Spark Off Rose, in Los Angeles, on April 13, 2015. The audio recording of this can be heard here.
I don’t know what you were doing in November 2011, but I was in Bali, teaching a weeklong retreat based on my eighth book, The 5 Principles of Authentic Living. For six months prior to Bali, I had suffered from muscle spasms in my back that would buckle my knees, drop me to the floor, and blind me with pain. I could scarcely walk, but I had committed to teaching in Bali, so I loaded up on painkillers and flew from L. A. to the retreat site. When it was over, I was finished: exhausted, weak, sick, and in pain.
I knew I couldn’t make it back to L. A. Instead, I went to the much closer Australia, where I had recently lived for six years. I went downhill fast. Lying down, I couldn’t lift my legs; I could barely wiggle my toes. On December 24th, yes, Christmas eve, I was admitted to the ER of a local hospital. I didn’t know that I was entering a school that would soon transform everything I had ever known or been. (more…)
Reframing Cancer & Chemotherapy
(written in March 2012)
The notion flooded into me just moments ago, with great clarity, urgency, and force. With my chemotherapy 
sessions beginning tomorrow, I “heard” that I was to rename and reframe both the chemo and my cancer.
From this moment on, I will no longer use the word “cancer,” nor will I use the word “chemotherapy.” I have renamed them Shiva and Shakti, respectively.
Thus, “non-small cell lung cancer with EFGR mutation” becomes SHIVA, and Alimta Chemotherapy becomes SHAKTI.
Shiva, meaning “auspicious one” is the aspect of the Supreme Being that continuously dissolves to recreate in the cyclic process of creation, preservation, dissolution and recreation of the universe. Shiva is the destroyer of evil or transformer among the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the primary aspects of the divine. Shiva is a yogi who has notice of everything that happens in the world and is the main aspect of life. Though he is one with great power, he lives a life of a sage at Mount Kailash. Shiva is seen as the Supreme God and has five important works: creator, preserver, destroyer, concealer, and revealer (to bless).
Shakti, meaning sacred force or empowerment, is the primordial cosmic energy and represents the dynamic forces that are thought to move through the entire universe in Hinduism. Shakti is the personification of divine feminine creative power, sometimes referred to as “The Great Divine Mother” in Hinduism. Not only is the Shakti responsible for creation, it is also the agent of all change. Shakti is cosmic existence as well as liberation, its most significant form being the Kundalini Shakti, a mysterious psychospiritual force. Shakti exists in a state of svatantrya, being interdependent with the entire universe. (more…)
Holding Hands with Death
Myriam Negre writes of her experience with leukemia when she was 12 years old. It was our shared experience of holding hands with cancer that brought Myriam and I together in friendship and mutual admiration. She is a rare and beautiful being, who births each new artwork from her soul and whose every word comes from her heart. She lives in the hills outside of Barcelona, Spain with her husband and two daughters.
Myriam Negre’s backyard
Connection is the Whole Deal
categories: Health, Speaking Truthfully
Of the many sudden, almost fierce, insights I’ve had post-terminal cancer diagnosis was the realization of how rarely I had connected with people throughout my life. I mean deeply and truly connected; connected as if the only thing that ever existed was that moment, with that person or those people. I saw that my connections with people were often utilitarian and business-like, with one eye on the person or people I was speaking with, and one eye on the clock and my calendar, projects, and ambitions. I was too busy to connect, too busy to be present, and too busy to pay attention — to the degree I know now is essential.
“Kiss at the Beach” / original artwork by Myriam Negre
As I emerge from my almost three-year healing cocoon, I’m noticing that the kind of connection I rarely made with people is now of utmost importance. No, that’s not it. It’s more than that: the realism, the reality, of being a human being, and of meeting other human beings, is predicated on this quality of connection. Without being fully present and without paying full attention to our own self and to others in the precise instants in which we are together, we cannot truly have connection. (more…)