What a unexpected pleasure my birthday turned out to be....because i've been on my back in my bed since around New Years Eve. I don't know exactly at what point in time IT happened, and really it's not that important, but I have a couple of what my parents used to refer to as "slipped discs". This is the diagnosis of bo
th my chiropractor and myself and I've had many of these impinged nerve/herniated vertebrae things in my life to know that at least one disc has definitely slipped out of place. I'm not writing today to tell you about
the pain or the discomfort that has had me basically staring at the ceiling for 7 days now like this reclining Buddha over here to my right...
...or about how difficult it is to do anything when there is a template of severe pain over everything you do. I don't want sympathy, either, because this situation (which has been the worst such situation i've EVER experienced) has given me an enormous amount of compassion for anyone suffering any chronic pain be it from an injury, chemo, cancer, fibromyalgia, aids, surgery, or basically anything up there on the pain-o-meter and it makes me realize that my very own mother was in this kind of pain her whole life. This is what you might call an "epiphanatic moment"...or in my case dear reader, an "epi-fanatic moment".
LET ME REPEAT HERE. This experience has made me realize that my very own mother suffered this kind of pain her whole life. She spent much of my childhood in very much the same position I have been in for 7 long, uncomfortable days. To you people out there who were raised in Christian families, you know that January 6 is a holiday called "THE EPIPHANY". This is the day that the three wise men came to visit the infant Jesus and brought him his gifts. In Spain and in some Latin American cultures, the Epiphany day is called El Día de los Reyes (The Day of the Kings), and this is the day that the Christmas gifts are exchanged.
According to Wikipedia, Epiphany (feeling), is the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something. It could also mean a "KNOWING", like the Buddhist term "Satori" for "enlightenment." The word literally means "understanding." "Satori" translates as a flash of sudden awareness, or individual enlightenment, and while satori is from the Zen Buddhist tradition, enlightenment can be simultaneously considered "the first step" or embarkation toward nirvana.
Satori is typically juxtaposed with a related term known as kensho, which translates as "seeing one's nature." Kensho experiences tend to be briefer glimpses, while satori is considered to be a deeper spiritual experience. Satori is as well an intuitive experience and has been described as being similar to awakening one day with an additional pair of arms, and only later learning how to use them.
My last blog was centered around my father and this installment, if you may have noticed, has already referred to my mother a number of times. I've spent many blogs discussing bag
and kundabini construction, but I think I need to get into a whole other level of construction here.
This business of compassion through one's own experience is a HUGE one because I had very little compassion for my mother. I perceived her predominantly horizontal position as LAZINESS. It never occurred to me that she might have been severely uncomfortable in any other position. Her pleas for understanding fell on deaf ears, which she must have been used to, because bad hearing ran in her family.
Anyway, the Dalai Lama said. "As a Buddhist monk, the cultivation of compassion is an important part of my daily practice. One aspect involves merely sitting quietly in my room, meditating. That can be very good and very comfortable, but the true aim of cultivation of compassion is to develop the courage to think of others and to do something for them." If you'd like to read more about the Dalai Lama's thoughts about compassion,
I have always had copious amounts of compassion for others, but where was the compassion for my own mother? And that leads me to the even bigger question...... where is the compassion for myself? What IS compassion for the self?
"Compassion is really just the opening our hearts to suffering without allowing our judgments to get in the way. If someone is suffering and we judge them, this closes our hearts and fills our mind with harsh opinions. Compassion does not mean we do not see the mistakes others make; it means we have sympathy and understanding for their difficulties, knowing we are not really different from them. We are all born and live in this human realm in which ignorance and delusion strongly influences our lives."-Rev. Kinrei Bassis
So when thinking about Compassion for the Self, I was thinking about the"ethic of reciprocity" which is best known as the biblical, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", a.k.a. The Golden Rule. All religions have a version of
THE GOLDEN RULE. A person, like myself, who is learning to how to HAVE COMPASSION FOR THE SELF would have to learn to live by the adverse of this concept. Instead of asking myself the question, "How do you like to be treated?" in order to know how to treat others.....I need to ask myself, "How do I treat others?" as a tool to gage how to treat myself.
SO....what does
Spontaneous Remission have to do with all of this? I was scheduled to teach my first OFFICIAL class of my own at
Yoga West. I've been subbing there regularly for 1 1/2 years and my birthday, January 6, The Ephiphany, El Dia de los Reyes,
the day I started to put five and five together, the day I came down the birth canal (55 years ago) of the woman for whom most of my life I had little or no compassion, the day I held in such reverence because to
teach Kundalini Yoga is the greatest honor and joy and responsibility imaginable...and I was feeling a lot of pain the days leading up to this point,
was, simply, a very important moment in my life.
I had my daughter, Zoe drive me to Yoga West because I couldn't drive there myself. I walked in, set up and addressed the class. I'm thinking to myself, how am I going to do this? I'm hurting like I've never hurt before. I can barely move without agony, if it is difficult to climb onto the teaching podium....how am I going to demonstrate an exercise or sit upright for so long? I ask for Yogi Bhajan's help like I do at the start of every class I teach. We tune in. I'm in another dimension completely yet I'm more HERE than ever before. The Dimension of Painlessness.
I'm sitting on The Stage of Spontaneous Remission. Yogi Bhajan sat here. The energy field is so high and so bright, my pain cannot exist here. I've just tuned into the Golden Chain. ONG NAMO GURU DEV NAMO. I've experienced this before in my teacher,
Harijiwan's class where being inside of certain Kriyas and
his playing of the Gong elevated the vibration of my energic field to a place where pain did not exist. Here I was again. It took about 10 minutes before I realized what had happened.
After class I sat in the foyer and had some
Yogi Tea and gradually the pain returned. I decided that I had to do some serious work on this phenomenon of the relief of chronic pain through the elevation of the energy field if it was the last thing I did! Kundalini Yoga and the Phenomenon of Spontaneous Remission. This was something I received as a gift on my birthday. My Ephinany.
"Certainly, it is easier to mediate than to actually do something for others. Sometimes I feel that to merely mediate on compassion is to take the passive option. Our mediation should from the basis for action, for seizing the opportunity to do something. The meditator's motivation, his sense of universal responsibility, should be expressed in deeds."-The Dalai Lama
th my chiropractor and myself and I've had many of these impinged nerve/herniated vertebrae things in my life to know that at least one disc has definitely slipped out of place. I'm not writing today to tell you about
