DECEMBER 8, 2008  

THE DEATH OF ADI DA

Adi Da died last week. It did not appear to be an extraordinary death, a graceful exit, a death consciously entered into and clearly foreseen — as has been the case with many great spiritual realizers — even though his devotees of course referred to it not as his death, but rather as his mahasamadhi, meaning the passageless passage that a fully Enlightened being makes at death. Many of them apparently did not even see it as including physical death, hoping and praying en masse that he would somehow “reassociate” with his body, thereby once again conferring upon him the superhuman status in which he had been held by them — and by himself — since the early 1970s.

In any case, he has died, felled by a heart attack. Those who adulate him will likely continue to do so, and those who vilify him will just as likely continue to do so, with very little overlap between the two camps. For one, he was the greatest spiritual realizer of all time, and for the other, he was spiritualized narcissism and megalomania rolled into one exploitive package. Both are, however, missing the essence of the man, either excusing his excesses or overrelying on them in evaluating him. There is much that bothered me about Adi Da and his terminally enthused cult, but at the same time I am grateful for what I got from him, however long ago that was.

I came across his autobiography, The Knee of Listening, in 1974, and was struck by it. At that point, he was going by his birth name, Franklin Jones, looking very young and soft, which only made his eyes stand out more. And what eyes! Clear, balanced, full of energy and presence, unusually steady. I was, however, not drawn enough to go seek him out, but he had definitely entered my psyche, and more.

His third book, Garbage and the Goddess, really got my attention. The year was, I believe, 1976. Much of the book chronicled his interactions with his community, featuring obviously spontaneous talks by him that I found not just invigorating, but dynamically alerting. There was a sense of powerfully embodied wisdom, however roughly articulated, mixed with a not-so-subtle arrogance and a wildness with which I resonated. He was clearly a star in his world, surrounded by an audience that hung on his every word.

Everything he did was presented as though it only arose in the context of spiritual awakening; if he, for example, took another man’s wife to have sex with him, that was, of course, for that man’s benefit, giving him the gift of an in-your-face lesson about attachment. Etcetera, etcetera. I didn’t know about such activities at the time, but nonetheless intuited that they were happening. Still, this did not stop me from reading everything that he — now calling himself Bubba Free John — wrote. His presence grew stronger, and his capacity to transmit a very forceful awakening energy continued unabated, as did his remarkably eloquence. But as much as he shone, I still did not feel much of a pull to meet him, which would have required of me that I become his devotee.

A few years later he, with characteristic drama, changed his name to Da Free John — and would continue changing his name and stretching it out up until the last decade or so. Not surprisingly, things got more and more cultic around him, even as he waxed eloquently against cultism. And he grew increasingly isolated, eventually making his home base on a relatively remote Fijian island. Along the way, he gathered some heady praise, especially from Ken Wilber, and seemed to be taking his place among many as a legitimate, even exemplary, spiritual realizer, a great adept. This was in no small way helped by having over a thousand people who were totally focused on — and arguably obsessed by — every move he made, every word he said, every wish he expressed.

Da did not handle this very well. There was a cult of, yes, personality, forming around him, and he didn’t address it nearly strongly enough to blast through it. Over-the-top grandiosity set in. When he began capitalizing the majority of his words, as well as repeating his teachings over and over and over, I lost interest in him. He had lost his freshness. He kept complaining about how his devotees were falling short, without ever, ever holding himself at all responsible — after all, he was the Godman! And not just the Godman, but THE Godman.

I lost touch at this point with his teachings, aided by the change I saw in him, both in his photos and in his videos. Gone was much of the spark, the clarity, the vitality in his face, especially his eyes, replaced by a dullness, a flatness, with more than a trace of sourness. He had, it seemed, stopped evolving. He was still playing the feudal lord, attracting only those for whom gurucentrism was immensely appealing. When he began stating that he was not only fully Enlightened, but that he was more Enlightened than anyone else who had ever lived — at best, they were what he termed “Sixth Stage Realizers” and he was the only “Seventh Stage Realizer” ever — I completely lost interest in what he was doing. Delusion, it seemed, could manifest at any stage of development.

Still, I appreciated, deeply appreciated, his earlier work, however much it was tainted by his arrogance. When I was invited to sit in darshan with him several years ago near Los Angeles, I agreed to go, but when I arrived at the L.A. airport, Diane and I got a message that her daughter was about to give birth, and so we went in that direction with not much fuss. I would have liked to have sat with Adi Da — for I’d never met him in the flesh — but doing so just was not a priority. As it turned out, Diane’s daughter didn’t give birth for a while, but I didn’t find myself regretting that I had not sat with Adi Da. My link with him had weakened that much. And all the mythology with which he surrounded himself did not help.

Earlier today I was looking at some YouTube videos of Adi Da, including some that showed him simply gazing at those sitting in darshan with him. In places his love was obvious, his presence compelling, his gaze far from ordinary, reminding me of how he was at his peak. At that time, I was admittedly much younger — and not just in years — but his impact on me was considerable, spurring me into deeper spiritual practice, both in waking and dreaming states. He also mirrored my own arrogance, legitimizing it as something other than arrogance, something of course spiritual! So I look back and see him shining bright, and I see myself there too, also shining, hiding my weaknesses behind my strengths, assuming that I had attained something that I, in fact, had not, namely a truly integral maturity of being. Just like him.

So thank you, Franklin, Bubba, Da, Adi Da. May you dethrone your unacknowledged egoity. May you complete what you left incomplete. May you openly face whatever harm you did in the name of Crazy Wisdom. May you reclaim and fully heal your humanity. May you awaken beyond what you took to be Full Awakening. May you get on your knees before Ramana.

You once said, “While we’re alive, we make mind. After we die, mind makes us.” I wonder how this is for you, as you attempt to navigate the Kosmic Mandala’s more challenging zones. Easy Death — or so it seems.

DECEMBER 12, 2008  

THE METHOD OF NO METHOD:
INTUITIVE INTEGRAL PSYCHOTHERAPY AS I PRACTICE IT

To truly consider any psychotherapeutic method or practice is to also consider how it is used. To what degree, if any, do we operate from behind it, or overrely on it, or fit our clients to it rather than fitting it to our clients? To what degree, if any, are we trapped in it, or stagnating in it, or rationalizing our use of it? If we sat in front of our client with no method in mind and no investment in any particular method, what might happen? When we don’t know what to do with a client, what do we then do? And so on — questions like these need not be just mosquitoes buzzing around in our psyches, but can be entry points into a deeper consideration of therapeutic methodology and our investment in it.

Let’s now, as an example, briefly examine the practice of giving clients incomplete sentences to finish, with a special emphasis on the inherent directiveness — a no-no in therapeutic circles that say not to direct a client — of such a practice. Yes, having clients complete incomplete sentences that I give them is directive, but in this I am, as much as possible, allowing their response (which is usually spontaneous) to direct me to what comes next, be it to give them another incomplete sentence — catalyzed by my psychoemotional attunement to them (and their history) and my intuitive response to what they’ve just said and how they’ve said it — to finish, or to have them describe in some detail what they are now experiencing, or to bring more awareness to their breath, or to begin some fitting bodywork, or to guide them into some form of meditation, etcetera. In this, whatever form it may take, my task is not to simply operate from behind a preset methodology, but to respond as freshly, creatively, caringly, and as effectively as possible.

In short, in truly directing, I am directed.

This means, in part, listening not just to what is being said, but also to what is not being said. Listening thus — which is far from a passive activity! — allows us to deepen our resonance with our client, so that we become an open space for the optimal unfolding and expression of his or her process. In such listening, such dynamic receptivity, we can hear our intuition loud and clear, without any dilution of the attention we are giving our client. Without clear and consistent access to our intuition, we will not be able to wisely use whatever methods we’re employing, and may tend to overrely on them. In my way of working, intuition takes a more central place than methodology.

Being directive is not the issue, since a good therapist has to, however indirectly, be directive, even when quietly listening to — and mindfully holding the space for — a necessarily extended monologue from a client. The issue is how we are being directive, and how attuned we actually are to our client’s responses to us and what we are — or are not — doing. Are we being guided in our directing of our clients by their needs and energies and state, or are we being directed by our own need to be seen as a competent therapist, or are we being directed by our allegiance to a certain methodology? Are we being overly directive, or not directive enough? And so on.

We are not just there with our client’s present, but also with his or her past (which may in fact be very present), and we need to hold it all in our consciousness as we work, not just with regard to connecting the dots, but also with regard to what takes our work with them in the most healing possible direction.

The more we get out of our own way, and the more compassionately present we are, the more effectively we will be able to serve our clients’ real needs, regardless of how overtly directive we might need to be. If a client has a tendency to overadapt to what we are doing as a psychotherapist, we need to recognize this as soon as possible, skillfully expose it and its origins, and then work with it in a manner that truly serves him or her.

My sense is that clients tend to feel safest when they know they are in the presence of a psychotherapist who is not only compassionately and solidly present, but who also can take charge with a quality of authority that not only anchors and stabilizes the session, but that also helps them, however gradually, to embody their own intrinsic authority.

There should be no doubt as to our leadership, however much we might let, or might need to let, our clients lead. They need to know — and not just intellectually! — that at any point we can take charge competently and compassionately, and that we constitute a safe environment for their self-exploration and healing. So with artful skill, care, and consistent reliability we guide the therapeutic flow, even as we are guided in doing so by our clients’ actions and needs.

We might sometimes feel as though we are simply a means through which the work happens, but even then we still need to be in charge of — and responsible for — our “mediumship.” Our work is to wear our authority lightly but firmly, maintaining a solid yet fluidly alive presence with our clients, providing for them a safe place to let go of playing it safe, neither relying upon nor necessarily imposing structure, but rather letting it naturally arise from our relationship and interaction with our clients.

Being overly directive can do harm, but so too can not being directive enough! It’s all about how we choose to deal with the authority that comes with being in the position of psychotherapist, counselor, facilitator, guide. However gently or passively we might wear that authority, it nonetheless is still there, and it’s our job, our creative challenge, to embody it as caringly and skillfully as possible, knowing that even though we are bringing direction to a session with a client, we are, hopefully, also letting ourselves be directed by that client’s real needs.

DECEMBER 13, 2008

BEYOND “THE FEMININE” AND “THE MASCULINE”

“The feminine” and “the masculine” are concepts/labels that have brought far more confusion than clarity, whether we equate them with “female” and “male” or not. I personally don’t use them, at least as nouns. Categorizing various qualities as being either masculine or feminine regardless of gender, is little more than a fashionable parlor game. A number of times I have heard people say of someone who is being direct that that person is “in their masculine”— but I prefer to simply say that they are being DIRECT, rather than classifying their directness as indicating the presence of “the masculine.”

A woman who is being direct, especially sugarlessly or fierily, and who is told that she is “in her masculine” — with the implication that she should be more “in her feminine” — is basically being shamed, held up against a definition of femininity that is constricted and narrow, however much it might promote supposedly expansive notions of femininity, such as that of being a “goddess.”

To me, a woman who is being direct, however fiercely, is not necessarily any less feminine for such expressiveness, regardless of how much it might shake up others. (“Goddess” movements that overassociate flow and color and adornment with being feminine and underassociate directness and intellectual acuity with being feminine are doing women a disservice.) Men can be warriors of intimacy; so too can women.

Many speak of women’s capacity to sense energy and “read” the psychoemotional weather in relationships and elsewhere, but I have seen men demonstrate the very same quality of attunement and vision, and these are not necessarily men who show a surplus of female energy. Are they manifesting “the feminine” or are they simply being highly attuned, intimately connected with their intuitive capacity?

Just about anyone, female or male, who is emotionally literate, energy-sensitive, and grounded, can — with more than a little accuracy — sense and “read” others. To me, this is neither a masculine nor a feminine trait, but rather a synergistic blending of them. When I am “reading” others in my work, I don’t feel particularly masculine or feminine — though my character is quite masculine — but instead rather androgynous. Intuition transcends gender.

None of this is to say, however, that there are not differences, and not just culturally-implanted differences, between men and women. For example, men are much more inclined to compete violently, and have a much stronger pull toward sex for the sake of sex, including with anonymous partners. More research findings: Women are better at remembering landmarks, whereas men are better at mentally rotating objects. Women are more attentive to the everyday cries of their babies. Men take greater risks for the sake of status. And the list goes on.

Sometimes the differences are not as great as they might appear, however. Consider fierceness: A man who is being fierce can put out a kind of penetratingly muscular intensity that very, very few women can. This doesn’t mean that a woman can’t be just as fierce, but her fierceness is not so muscular, so solidly pointed, being more fluidly penetrating (think of the liquid quality of fire). The much higher levels of testosterone in a man make up much of the difference here. Size doesn’t necessarily matter, though; I have seen women barely over five feet tall let out a blast of ferociously alive, compassionately ass-kicking energy that blew much larger people back.

In the couples work that Diane and I do, we consistently see that in most cases it is the woman who is more closely reading the state of the relationship, often surprising her partner with her keen eye. But is he less capable because he’s male? Not necessarily. It’s more that he has not developed the capacity that she has. The good news is that he can develop such a capacity, even though it is possible that he may never be as quick or emotionally articulate as she is.

One of the greatest gifts that a man can bring to a woman is to deepen his ability to see and feel her, and not just “feel into” her, but also feel FOR her and WITH her (see Note 1), without in any way losing his power along the way. This is all about him reclaiming his heart without losing his balls, finding a source of strength in his vulnerability, letting his pure maleness shine forth, the maleness that his partner, in her pure femaleness, is longing for, beyond all conceptualizations of “the masculine” and “the feminine.”

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Note 1:

FEELING INTO her is all about sensing her, nonconceptually reading her, bringing an emotionally literate, well-embodied focus to her, regardless of what she is doing. A man cannot do this if he remains in his HEADquarters — he has to be solidly and spaciously present and grounded, with a lucid steadiness of focus. But as necessary as this is, it is not enough; to only do this keeps him “safely” removed from entering into truly vulnerable connection with her. He has not yet gone very far into feeling for her and with her, even as he “holds space” for to be where she is.

FEELING FOR her brings in more empathy, more heartfelt connection, more care. She will very likely feel this, and will usually open accordingly, feeling safer than if he is only “feeling into” her. Now he is not only attuning to her, but also is more overtly caring for her, which asks of him a certain vulnerability. As she senses his vulnerability (his undefended, emotionally open transparency), coupled with his steadiness of presence, she will probably relax even more, letting him in without collapsing or otherwise abandoning her boundaries.

FEELING WITH her makes things even more mutual. Now it’s not just him sensing and reading and empathizing with her, but also him being with her in deeply resonant mutuality. Now she is not so much sitting across from him, as sitting beside him. This of course presupposes that she is also feeling into, for, and with him. She and he are now side by side, in mutually empowered communion, enjoying both their individuality and their interrelatedness.

Put together feeling into, feeling for, and feeling with, and what do we have?

Intimacy.

DECEMBER 15, 2008

ARE WE RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR CANCER?

Are we responsible for our cancer? There’s plenty packed into this question — which is often more statement than question — asking for much more than just a simple yes or no.

Let’s start with what could be called the New Age yes. From this perspective, we are responsible for our cancer, simply because we have created it. That is, it is our fault that we have cancer; we are to blame for it. To hold anyone or anything else responsible is simply delusion. If we really want to be well, and totally believe that we will get well, then we will get well; and if we don’t get well, it must be because we didn’t really want to get well. After all, we create our reality, don’t we? If we have cancer, it must be because we have chosen it for ourselves, for reasons karmic and otherwise.

Those who adhere to such a belief system leave themselves little room in which to maneuver when they find out that they have cancer — they believe that they have brought it into being, they have manifested it, they and they alone are responsible for it. This of course generates almost ideal conditions for the arising of guilt: If I now have cancer, then I must have done something wrong; otherwise, I wouldn’t have cancer. And so those with cancer who have swallowed such New Age dogma find themselves ricocheting between the grandiose, inflationary high of having supposedly created it all and the decidedly deflationary low of feeling guilty for having created something as life-negating and unspiritual as cancer.

The naiveté of such a yes is not very hard to see, rife as it is with magical thinking (prerational cognition) and me-centered overestimations of personal power that are natural to young children (who openly — and naturally — assume that the world revolves around them), but not to actual adults. It could be argued that those who buy into the New Age yes — with minds and wallets undiscerningly open — have grossly overcompensated for a deep-rooted sense of disempowerment and dissatisfaction, clinging to whatever concepts, metaphysical and otherwise, can sufficiently console them in the face of their actual situation. And there are many who, though not fully buying into such a belief system, still find it attractive, perhaps even comforting, in its sunny side-up promises. Magical thinking can be very appealing to us, regardless of our developmental level, when we are under unrelentingly heavy stress or are suffering a major shock (as when someone very close to us dies — Joan Didion articulates this with stark clarity in The Year of Magical Thinking).

Beyond the New Age yes, there is another yes regarding our being responsible for our cancer, a yes that does not say that we created it, but that we, in many cases, bear at least some responsibility for the very conditions that made possible the arising of cancer. This does not, however, mean that we actually CAUSED our cancer, but that there appears to be a positive correlation between certain of our actions/choices and the presence of our cancer.

If I am eating a diet loaded with white sugar, unhealthy fats, and hormone-suffused meat, and am highly stressed, sedentary, and sleep-deprived, then I am increasing the odds that I will get cancer. I could eat such a diet and have such a lifestyle and still not get cancer, but if I was eating a healthier diet and had a happier, more active lifestyle, I’d be lowering the odds that I’d get cancer. The fact that some who have very healthy diets and very healthy lifestyles still get cancer does not invalidate this. There are so many factors involved in the arising of cancer — including ones over which we have no control — that we cannot decisively say that THIS or THAT actually causes cancer.

Let’s now look at the notion that we are not responsible for our cancer. Proponents of this view see cancer as an alien invasion, something that can strike anyone, regardless of how healthy or young they are. They point to our increasingly carcinogenic environment as an inescapable reality, which can be combatted only so far by healthy practices. They also point to the emergence of cancer in young children, to show that cancer is not something for which we are responsible — who would blame a young child for his or her cancer? And they tend to equate saying that we may bear some responsibility for our cancer with the New Age yes, not seeing that taking responsibility for OUR part in the arising of our cancer is NOT an occasion for sinking into guilt, but rather for life-giving reflection and fitting change.

New Age advocates view cancer as something we should be able to eliminate — after all, if we created it, we can uncreate it. By contrast, those who claim that we are not responsible for our cancer view it as something that we cannot eliminate, attributing to it a power that cannot be fully overcome. They commonly tend to see conventional treatments of cancer (surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, hormone therapy) as essential, even if they also are open to “alternative” approaches to cancer. In his otherwise excellent book, Anticancer, physician David Servan-Schreiber emphatically states that there is no alternative or natural approach to cancer that can by itself cure it, while mentioning elsewhere in his book the reality of “spontaneous remission” (which may not in fact actually be spontaneous, but rather an approach, deliberate or not, through which the natural healing power of the body decisively takes over in a relatively short period). Not that conventional and nonconventional methods cannot fruitfully coexist in cancer treatment (ideally in the context of truly integrative, psychospiritually-awakened oncology) — but it seems that almost all physicians, however open they may be to nonconventional ways of dealing with cancer, feel an obligation to not grant to any of these the possibility of actually being a successful primary treatment practice.

If we, after learning that we have cancer, look back at our lives to see what we may have done that contributed to our getting cancer, we don’t have to get New Agey about it, blaming ourselves for our less-than-optimal choices. We could instead simply cast a compassionate eye upon such choices, recognizing how they arose and how they affected us, working with all of this to bring ourselves into a deeper sense of wholeness. No guilt. Just a deeper opening, a deeper understanding, coexisting with the realization that we did not CAUSE our cancer, but rather did or allowed certain things that may have made it easier for our cancer to take root. And so what if we did? For some of us, the presence of our cancer may be the best thing that ever happened to us.

Once we come to recognize how some of our choices may have contributed to our getting cancer, then we can work with them (and also with the anatomy and evolution of our choice-making mechanisms). For example, I can look back and see how driven I have been, for better or for worse, since I was in high school; yes, I also learned to meditate deeply, to really relax, but I still kept driving myself on in most areas of my life. Did this create my cancer? No. Did it create conditions conducive to the arising of my cancer? Probably. Does ceasing to drive myself thus — which I am now happily engaged in — mean that my cancer will disappear? Not necessarily. But letting that drivenness soften and ease, level upon level, is making me more receptive to what is needed, leaving me more dynamically alive, more open to both my death and my life, which I strongly intuit is increasing the odds of healing my cancer. Will the odds be increased enough? I don’t know. It’s enough that I am alive, and getting more alive.

If we don’t heal from our cancer, despite doing all we can to deal with it, this is NOT a sign of failure! There are many factors contributing to cancer, some of which we can control to varying degrees, and some which we cannot. All we can do is deal as best we can with those factors over which we have some control. It is simply magical thinking to assume that we can, if we just wish or affirm or visualize it hard enough, overcome our cancer. Yes, bringing a spacious awareness to our cancer, in conjunction with a wholehearted faith in our body’s capacity to heal itself, can certainly help, but it may not be enough — this is not a belief, but a living reality, made all the more vivid by our bare awareness of our mortality.

I didn’t create my cancer (and we don’t create our reality — regardless of our dreams of omnipotence — but rather our experience of our reality), but I am responsible to a significant degree for some of the conditions that made its arising possible. As I listen to my cancer, I hear more than my cancer. My whole history is before me, with all of its twists and turns, bound in a weave of dazzling contingency, bringing me to more than my knees. I am literally dying to live, more than ever before.

It is my sobering joy to be as responsible as possible TO my cancer, to do all I can to de-inflame it, so that it does not obstruct my living. Rather than attacking it, I am cutting off its supply lines as best I can, with some very skilled help. Will this save me? I don’t know — I’m not doing it only to save myself, but to deepen my life. I would love to live much longer for all kinds of reasons, and I feel strongly aligned with whatever might bring that about, but I know that my time may be much shorter than I’d like; being at ease with this is not at all fatalistic, but rather realistic, bringing me into deepening intimacy both with what dies and with what does not die.

DECEMBER 21, 2008

FEELING SECURE ABOUT INSECURITY

Once Life’s inherent insecurity becomes inescapably obvious to us, regardless of all the ways we have of securing ourselves, we find ourselves at a precipice of understanding, with one hand on our fear and the other on our longing to be truly free.

That edge, that psychospiritual dropzone, asks not for negotiation, recoil, or premature leaps, but for a radical reevaluation and embracing of insecurity.

Such an embrace is basically a matter of existential acceptance. This means, among other things, adopting a nonproblematic orientation to not-knowing, so that we are affirming rather than trying to explain the unfathomable Mystery which we and everything else is arising in and as.

Do not turn this into a spiritual should. And do not just stay with the concept of insecurity, but dive deeper and face, illuminate, and explore its constituent elements.

Take, for example, the characteristic sensations/feelings of your insecurity. If there’s some fear — and there almost for sure will be — name it and turn toward it and enter it, however slightly, with consciously focused attentiveness. Don’t worry about embracing your insecurity at this point; it’s enough to simply be present with it.

There’s a certain groundlessness in insecurity. Instead of trying to counter this, ground yourself in Being and then notice what has become of what you were calling “insecurity.”

With regard to its characteristic sensations, your insecurity then will probably not have gone — but as a conceptual entity, it may be close to giving up the ghost, simply because you are no longer buying into its viewpoint, and therefore are no longer showing up as the “I” that is busy being insecure. The context has changed. The feeling of insecurity may still be there to varying degrees, but insecurity itself cannot be said to be there.

Don’t confuse the feelings associated with insecurity with insecurity itself.

Let me further clarify this: We can cease being angry, and yet still feel the very same feelings that a moment ago we identified as anger. For example, I am angry at you, really angry, for breaking something precious of mine, and suddenly I find out from someone whom I totally respect that you are completely innocent of such breakage, and I am now no longer angry at you. My evaluation of the situation has radically and almost instantaneously changed, yet the feelings I was experiencing just a moment ago  are still significantly present. Can I now call these angry feelings? No, because their evaluative framework has changed.

Life is inherently insecure. But this doesn’t have to be a problem if we will face and, at the right pace and time, go into our insecurity, exploring it from the inside, not letting the feeling of it run the show or sidetrack us.

Do this deeply enough, and you will eventually be embracing/holding your insecurity as if nothing could be more natural, without in any way avoiding the securing of what needs to be secured. (If intentionally embracing insecurity makes you feel insecure, however, then you are probably not really embracing it, but rather only trying to embrace it.)

In the meantime, do whatever you can to examine, investigate, and spelunk your insecurity, without expecting that doing so will somehow erase the feelings which you associate with insecurity. Sooner or later you will start experiencing the security of embracing your insecurity, of being okay with not being okay, of letting the omnipresence of impermanence and death enliven, deepen, and further awaken you.

DECEMBER 24, 2008

TGF-β

Long ago, in another lifetime, I found myself submerged in a doctoral program in Biochemistry at the ripe old age of 21, having no reason to be there other than it being the logical, irrationally rational extension of my undergraduate work in the same field. A year and a bit later, I dropped out (immediately following a dream of ecstatic drowning), having lost all interest in my studies. I have not since used what I learned in those years of intense immersion in biochemistry, but now that I have prostate cancer, I am in some very minor degree using it, as I read through various scientific studies about the latest cancer findings. The language of scientific research still does not appeal to me — could it be any drier or more sterilized? — but the findings are often worth the read.

Cancer has many ways to ensure its proliferation, including suppressing or deflecting any immune response to it. One way it does this is by usurping certain biochemical pathways that are already established — after all, why create new pathways when already-established ones are there for the taking? Such cellular opportunism, closely paralleled by its equally blind macroscopic cultural equivalents, cares nothing about its environmental impact. All that matters to it is its continued growth, regardless of the cost.

One of the key pathways that cancer uses for its own ends is that of Transforming Growth Factor-Beta 1(TGF-β), a secreted protein that normally controls cellular growth and differentiation, fittingly restricting it when necessary. Through its capacity to halt cell cycles at appropriate points, TGF-β helps keep cellular proliferation under control, catalyzing apoptosis — the self-destruction of cells through programmed cell death — when needed. So it has a very important regulatory function in the cellular ecosystem.

However, when cells becomes cancerous, certain parts of TGF-β’s signaling pathway are mutated, resulting in these cells being resistant, even immune, to the effects of normally functioning TGF-β. Such cancer-possessed cells can then grow without regulation, much like multinational business entities that are all but immune to conventional laws.

And to make matters worse, these cells actually increase their production of TGF-β, and for “good” reason — cancer-manufactured TGF-β causes immunosuppression and promotes angiogenesis (meaning the formation of new blood vessels, whether in the service of normal or cancerous growth), which helps fuel the cancer into being more successfully invasive.

And there’s more: cancer-serving TGF-β also converts effector T-cells — which normally support the destroying of cancer cells — into regulatory (suppressor) T-cells, which having the function of turning off immune reaction. Such an off-switching capacity is fine in helping to maintain immune balance in normal cells, but not so fine when in the employ of cancer.

Given that TGF-β is a potent immunosuppressant, it is no surprise that it would be particularly attractive to cancerously inclined tissue. For tumor cells, TGF-β is an essential support, given its ability to deflect immune surveillance. With no policing, unlimited growth becomes more of a reality.

If you’ve gotten this far, you may be wondering why I’m focusing on this particular molecule. It’s quite simple: I’ll soon be having a TGF-β blood test, since elevated TGF-β serum levels are positively correlated with prostate cancer and even more so with metastasizing prostate cancer — which I might have. (I think that one can gather too much information about cancer and perhaps also have too many tests, but having this particular test makes sense to me. There are certain indicators of cancer and cancerous spread that it would be foolish not to have.)

So what causes TGF-β to mutate? Perhaps simply being in cancerous territory is enough to destabilize or “corrupt” certain molecules, especially when they are significantly cut off from what ordinarily regulates and sustains them. Within a new, relatively alien environment, they are operationally altered, much like many young men after doing enough time in heavy duty military bootcamp.

Cancer growth is dependent on an adequate blood supply — hence the production by cancer cells of factors that support this. One of these factors is cancer-made TGF-β. TGF-β is overexpressed in cancer; it’s on the frontlines in the service of cancerous colonization. Research shows that cells which are engineered to overexpress TGF-β produce larger, more metastatic tumors than do control cells in mice. (It appears that TGF-β does this in part by inducing the expression of Interleukin-8, a protein which directly and potently promotes tumor angiogenesis.) Like a group of aggressive colonists taking over aboriginal rights without hesitation, cancer cells subvert and incorporate whatever they can for their own ends.

Cutting cancer’s supply lines and disrupting its signaling pathways, rather than only attacking it head-on, feels intuitively right to me. Such an approach both literally and figuratively resonates with my sense of my cancer. So how to get past TGF-β’s defenses? Among other things, we can ingest botanicals that inhibit its secretion and/or block its receptor sites, such as reishi mushroom concentrate, curcumin, and green tea extract.

And even more importantly, we can bring ourselves into more systemic balance, so that we are not overtaxing or undernourishing certain biochemical pathways in us. Then we will have more energy and attention freed up for the task of deep healing, not just physically, but in all ways, so that we become a Transforming Growth Factor in our own evolution, an unexploitable growth force and container, immune to the siren call of other, less life-giving imperatives.