Every once in a while we’re offered an opportunity to demonstrate that we’re not faking it, or full of it.
Try as we might to cultivate a relationship with a Higher Power Who is not just omnipotent but benevolent, loving, and kind, out of the blue there comes a moment when we are gobsmacked by the slapstick of what appears to be at best His love of irony. Wham, bam, kapow. Let’s see how you handle this one, hotshot.
I am at this writing in the fourth week of what began as a sudden attack of excruciating sciatica, and became an ordeal the likes of which I’d never experienced. It so knocked me out the box (not flat on my back, because for over two weeks I could neither lie flat nor stand up straight) that I couldn’t work or play or think straight. It humbled me so low (here’s the highly educated preventative health care professional whose own negligence in self-care has brought him down into the inferno of ER’s, CT’s, EKG’s and MRI’s) that my carefully crafted, ever-so-clever assumptions of silver linings in every cloud were challenged to the core.
Most mockingly, this came at a time when my wife and I were in the midst of launching our new book, Awesome Aging, with its proudly displayed and supremely confident subtitle, Happier, Healthier, Smarter & Younger than Yesterday. It was like, okay Mister Awesome, now what have you got to say for yourself?
The book speaks of meditations and affirmations, wholesome principles of health and wellness, profound and practical guidance toward tranquility, great relationships, effective communication, emotional intelligence… And suddenly here I was unable to meditate on much more than “how long before I can take the next painkiller?” and behaving at times like a physical, emotional, and cognitive basket case.
It’s better now. Weaned from the pharmaceutical drugs, back in my office and at my desk for more and more hours each day, I’m not quite entirely back in the saddle, but getting there. We have weathered the storm, my loving wife and I, after a lot of grueling inner work and generous, expert, caring help; and by the grace of that same ironically minded Higher Power, Who really does love us, I’m pretty sure. Best of all, this major wakeup call affords me the opportunity to become stronger and more genuinely healthy in body and mind than I would probably have been had it not hit me upside the head like a sledge hammer. I fully intend to take advantage of this second (or third or fourth) chance.
I want to share something I learned just yesterday.
One of the big themes in our book is the idea that by being fully attentive to and present in the infinitesimal now we can free ourselves from bondage to the negativity of shameful past scripts and fearful future trips. I remember teaching a class years ago in which I was expounding upon a similar concept, and one of the students said, “do you really believe that?” I assured her that I did, while acknowledging that it can be a struggle to get there or remain there, that it’s neither automatic nor easy. Well, sometimes we discover that talk is cheap. Like when uncertain prognoses and paroxysmal pain take you out of the equanimitous now and into the realm of what-the-hell?! And at such times one wonders whether one has the actual right to talk such talk, whether in a class or in a book.
So yesterday I was praying, as is my daily practice. When I got to the part about healing, in a moment of relative lucidity I was struck by the insecurity and pessimism with which I had been mouthing those words in recent weeks. My first impulse was to chastise myself for my insincerity, if not hypocrisy. However in the next moment something different happened. In the place of the slowly receding pain in my leg, I experienced a shift of attitude, and a correspondingly new sensation. Rather than merely pronouncing formulaic invocations of divine healing power, I was inviting that power in, physically, viscerally, wordlessly. And to a palpable extent, my invitation was accepted. It enabled a fleeting but very real experience of the restorative power of now. Most remarkably, that release obliterated all traces of self-recrimination or disappointment over the failures of the past. And it imbued me with confidence that I can do it again.
There is no time like the present.
