1/9/18
Contemplating the awesomeness of surrendering into living. Life is a terminal condition. All living creatures die – 100% of them. I am living with metastatic cancer. In a week or so, I may have surgery to remove a cancerous left common iliac lymph node. There are no statistics to say that such a procedure with all its risks will increase the length of life. I have lived all my life with a terminal diagnosis, yet the naming of cancer is considered terminal whereas living is not. To surrender into the reality of living is to surrender into the reality of it always leading to death. Surrender into dying is therefore not necessarily different than surrendering into life. To utterly surrender. To willingly, lovingly, enthusiastically give myself into the flow of the mystery of living that is this moment and no other, this radical acceptance of observer coexisting with the process giving rise to observer/observed, is to refine in luminosity until everything is luminous. I am gripped with immense smiling just writing this. Surrender, not as a giving up or a resignation but surrender as ultimate life affirmation. May this become increasingly firm.
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12/9/18
Three days in Tauranga hospital to remove cancerous left common iliac lymph node.
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16/9/18
Abdominal surgery is like going into hibernation. The whole organism slows and digestion, elimination comes to almost a halt. Morphine and other analgesics tend toward constipation as does extreme inactivity. This morning, to my immense relief, my bowel began to ‘awaken’. And I remember, yet again, that awakening is a natural process. You can’t do this abruptly. It has its own timing. Gently moving the body, finding pathways of ease and smoothness, eating a supportive diet. Hospital food is often atrociously bad. Taking sufficient medication for pain, to support a relaxing of the system, and not so much that it becomes even more sluggish. It’s like a garden after a long harsh winter. The warm spring rains and longer days invite life to stir, to reach and thrum. The bees are flying. The birds are remembering something to sing about. And slowly, we begin again to dance.
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18/9/18
I open my e-mail and find many messages of love and good wishes and feel blessed by such warm support. Please let these words be a reply to each of you. The question of how it went is understandable – but unanswerable. The only certain response we can give to such a question is, ‘by the grace of the universe’ and so we flourish, one day at a time. In about 3 weeks I will have a meeting with the surgeons to check the healing and to go over the pathology results. In 3 months I’ll have blood tests and at that time we will be able to make a story of how worthwhile, or not, the surgery was in terms of halting the cancer process or delaying it. The next few weeks will be very much devoted to healing from the surgery itself.
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Mary and I are feeling immensely supported.
This journey of living and learning and sharing;
May it become clear for everyone.
May we soften our grasping.
May we embrace the mystery of this immediate universe manifesting all of us.
May we find refuge in heart felt reverence and functional love.
Thank you everyone – nurses and doctors and technicians and supporters and friends and companions and students and teachers – all.
May our lives continue to weave together well for the sake of everyone.
May blessings abound.