JANUARY 1, 2009

NOTHING BUT MYSTERY

All there is is Mystery. Irreducible, Absolute, Sacred, Timeless, indescribably Present, appearing now and evernow as you and me and all the rest of it, every last bit of it, whatever the evolutionary possibilities. Pure Mystery. Nothing but Mystery. The Is of is. To this I bow, until there is only bowing, only Mystery, my words, our words, the words instantly vanishing wingprints in endlessly open sky, leaving not even the slightest hieroglyphic smudge.

Nothing but Mystery. IT is more than Awareness, more than Nonduality, more than Love, more than Wholeness. IT exists simultaneously as subject, object, and verb, weaving a hyperdimensional story that can neither be told nor translated, all the while remaining infinitely Fecund and boundlessly Alive and radiantly Empty, placing this life, like every life, in a context too real to have meaning, leaving us stripped of all familiarity, all our housing projects but confetti in a cosmic storm.

Nothing but Mystery. IT outlives us, is us, transcends us, consumes and births and undoes us. To truly consider IT is to remember with our entire being what and where we really are, beyond all answers and all experiences. Wherever we look, whatever we do, whoever we are, there is only Mystery, both prior to and beyond all knowledge. Only Mystery. Truly realizing this is so radically final, so speechlessly significant, so wildly raw and open-ended, that we understandably tend to occupy ourselves with other matters that help solidify and reinforce our self-sense, extracting as much meaning as we can from such things.

Only Mystery. We may busy ourselves pretending otherwise, including pretending that we aren’t pretending, clinging to our identity and ambitions and spiritual credentials, treating IT as a something to periodically think about, or perhaps to spiritually acknowledge here and there. But to pull back the veils and really wake up to IT and unguardedly feel the full implications of IT is far, far from a lightweight undertaking, rendering our self-sense so transparent that we can no longer take it to be us.

To call It Mystery is not to say what IT actually is. No one and no thing is ever in a position to do so, being but part of IT, as is every possible position and perspective. That is, there is no standing apart from IT, no escape from IT, no alternative to IT. To the usual us, this may signal a kind of ultimate entrapment, perhaps even a hell beyond imagining, but to what we really are, this is absolute freedom, including freedom from all possible identities. Through it we are emptied of ourselves, leaving only what we truly are. Pure Mystery.

Nothing but Mystery. IT cannot be known, for every knower and every knowing is but another face or facet of IT, just as unfathomable as all the rest of it. To approach IT is to let revelation replace explanation. Instead of  trying to understanding IT, we recognize IT, letting such recognition return us to what we never left but only dreamt we did. Eventually we reach a place where we know nothing and recognize everything.

Only Mystery. When we feel ourselves being breathed and lived by IT, our dreaming unravels and we see through undreaming eyes that we have never been elsewhere or elsewhen. The sheer hyperbole-obliterating reality of IT makes this utterly obvious. This only makes sense when we completely stop trying to make it make sense.

Nothing but Mystery. The more we sense IT, the more we realize that we are IT, which leaves us in a more than interesting position, all undressed at the corner of Nowhere and Nowhere with every road an infinite ribboning carrying both an infinity of passengers and no one at all. This leaves our mind speechless, as everything morphs into an everwild, all-containing Möbius strip that has no edge, no mappable infrastructure, no obligation to make sense.

Only Mystery. Perhaps the most fitting other name for IT is God, so long as we don’t limit that word to something that we know or something that we assume is knowable. Only Mystery. Into IT we are born and into IT we die, even though we were never born and cannot die. Such Divine Paradox is but Truth when we no longer stand apart from Mystery, remembering IT in this achingly personal sliver of time, deepening our intimacy with IT until there is only Mystery, nothing but Mystery.

JANUARY 7, 2009

WHAT IS GRACE?

Grace — such a lovely word, so effortlessly evocative, being suggestive not only of a dimension of being ordinarily far from accessible to us, but also of a guidance and support preternaturally attuned to our deepest needs.

In Grace there is an implication or felt sense of sacred intervention, a not-by-us engineered doing that deeply serves our well-being, often in ways that are far from expected.

A serendipitous infusion of more-than-human guidance — this is Grace, however ragged or rough its delivery may be.

Grace — such a wonderfully rich word, conveying a heartfelt sense of something divinely extraordinary arriving on our doorstep, palpably suffused with undeniable significance. It is a gift, regardless of its wrapping or reception.

In us there persists a longing for Grace, a longing to receive it and let it carry us where it may. And at the same time there may be a longing for Grace to arrive in a particular form, which of course does not necessarily happen. Sometimes what we most need is what we assume we least need, and Grace serves what we most need, which often means that it doesn’t seem to be Grace at all to us, but rather just a nasty turn of the wheel.

Grace is neither good luck nor the inevitable result of our good deeds; it is much more mysterious than that, responding as it does to more than just the obviously visible. It takes much more into account than we can see, being intimate with what is out of sight. Grace can be trusted. It won’t let us down, even if in the short term it deposits us in places or situations that we don’t like.

May Grace guide our days. May Grace flow through us. May Grace come to us. Such prayers are but confessions of intuiting or wanting to host the presence of something gloriously Other, something that is, sooner or later, recognized to be none other than what we truly are. May we not limit Grace to how we think it should manifest. May we not decide beforehand how Grace should look or behave. May our prayers for Grace reach without grabbing, ask without begging, and ready us without leaving us on hold. May we recognize Grace for what it is, and remain grateful for it.

Grace is the arrival and expression of sacred direction and support, emerging without any strategy or manipulation on our part. When Grace shows up, we are guided in directions that we very likely would have otherwise overlooked or not seen. The gift of Grace is an astonishing thing, no matter how often we have witnessed it. It always feels fresh.

In the same sense that prayer is a divine personal, Grace is a divine intrusion. To the extent that prayer reaches up, Grace reaches down. The gravity of the situation demands it.

Some think of Grace as the tangible entry of our deepest dimensions into our everyday life, appearing in whatever form fits our prevailing belief system. But however we choose to conceptualize Grace, it exists. It doesn’t matter if we’re religious, agnostic, or atheistic. It doesn’t matter what our status is. It doesn’t matter how high we’ve been, or how low. When Grace shows up, we usually know it, whether we acknowledge it or not. We cannot engineer Grace, but we can deepen our receptivity to it, making room for it, knowing that we don’t know when it will show up, nor in what form it will arrive.

In the same sense that Life is the Poetry of Being, and Intimacy is the Poetry of Connection, and Beauty is the Poetry of Appearance, Grace is the Poetry of Evolution.

May Grace touch you, and touch you deeply.

JANUARY 12, 2009

CELLULAR IMMORTALITY AMBITIONS:
CANCER & DEATH

If we can speak of cancer having an intention, it is not to kill, but to avoid being killed. Period. A death-free horizon, a death-free future. As such, cells smitten with cancer are smitten with immortality aspirations, however rudimentary. In glaringly obvious parallel with this is contemporary culture’s denial of death and dreams of unlimited growth.

Normal cells are programmed, literally and precisely programmed, to die when they become dysfunctional or unnecessary. The term for this is apoptosis. Once it is activated in a cell, the internal networks of the cell are shut down and a series of enzymatic reactions are catalyzed, leading to a full internal breakdown that occurs without fuss — no disturbance of other cells, no leakage of  intracellular components into the extracellular environment. No mess, no inflammation, no dumping of toxins. A clean death.

Some call apoptosis cell suicide, but regardless of the anthropomorphic leaning of such a label, apoptosis is an elegantly efficient, ecologically extremely sound process. Recycling plus.

Cells undergoing apoptosis — over 100,000 every second in each of us — signal their demise in timely fashion to the surrounding tissue, shrinking away from other cells without sucking them in. The outer membrane of cells engaged in apoptosis undergoes a change that can be recognized by immune system cells, leading to a speedy removal by phagocytosis, meaning engulfing consumption by cells born for the task.

Apoptosis has a kind of grace to it. By contrast, cells that die because of mechanical damage or exposure to toxins usually have a messy departure, featuring inflammation of surrounding tissue, loss of membrane integrity, and a leakage of intracellular garbage, all of which of course negatively affects neighboring cells. Apoptosis, however, doesn’t dump on its neighbors or otherwise violate their boundaries; it arises in individual cells, and does not spread to other cells in the vicinity. It is clean, efficient, naturally protective of organismic integrity.

Cancer is constellated around the unrelenting attempt to avoid apoptosis, doing whatever it can to fend off, deflect, bypass, or otherwise keep itself immune to our immune system.

The word “cancer” is closely associated with death for obvious reasons, yet cancer itself is death-avoidance incarnate, a fuel-guzzling, resource-draining clumping of decentered cells marching together not just to a different drummer, but to a different band, setting the stage for a seemingly endless tomorrow.

Death not only serves Life, but makes Life possible. Level upon level, we literally die into Life. We could say that Life outlives us, but at essence we are Life, whatever form it may take. This is no consolation whatsoever to egoic us, but is living truth to who and what we really are. Cancer is blind to all this, being biochemically mesmerized by its own endarkened agenda, just like those who believe in physical immortality, as if aging were just some kind of disease or error in the System.

Some have said that cancer is just the body’s attempt to deal with some very difficult conditions, like a lack of oxygen. Yes, if available oxygen were at a very low level for a signficant period, it would make sense to find a way to adapt to this, such as generating cells that could live on little or no oxygen, which of course is characteristic of cancer cells. But cancer is maladaptive for us; its capacity to live without the oxygen that normal cells require does not lead it to generate functional tissue so as to prolong organismic life, but rather just depletes it, sucking the juice out of it.

Cancer could be described as cellular selfishness and shortsightedness, making unlimited growth into an unquestioned good, plundering other cells and their pathways for its own ends with colonial ruthlessness and a complete lack of ecological savvy. Anything to avoid death. For cancer, apoptosis is something to eradicate or at least rob of any power. Keeping alive at all costs is cancer’s operational strategy, in much the same spirit as doctors who keep patients alive as long as possible, no matter what their circumstances, even when such prolongation of vital functions is far from Life-affirming for them and their family.

But death is not the enemy. Death is not in the way. Avoiding death deadens us. Being intimate with death enlivens us. Being intimate with cancer means, in part, being intimate with that in us which would rather avoid death than face it, through all sorts of means, including being obsessively hyperfocused on material gain and expansion. But no matter how much real estate we own, we are not safe from death. Accumulating more and more is cancer’s way. Opening ourselves, with compassionate clarity, to the inevitability and necessity of death is the way of basic sanity. Sounds akin to apoptosis, doesn’t it?

Apoptosis as a term is of Greek origin, meaning “falling off or dropping off” — as in leaves falling from trees or petals dropping from flowers. An utterly natural letting go this is, untainted by me-centeredness or overly individualized concern. Whether it is conscious or not, apoptosis is sacrifice for the greater good, a dying clearly in the service of Life. Cancer, whether cellular or cultural, personal or collective, has lost touch with this, fleeing the dying that gives Life, estranged from the very Wholeness out of which it first arose.

Dying into Life, we are never so alive. Dying into Life, we are never so here. Are we not all dying to live, to really live? We die, and we do not die — this we know, right to our core, beyond all of our knowledge. Like our cells, we inevitably come undone and dissolve (like a cell in the body of humanity), yet also remain present as the very essence of what persists, eventually letting go of all the dreams and ambitions and hopes of being an Enlightened somebody, so that we might be pure being, emptied enough of ourselves to have room for all.

JANUARY 15, 2009

LOSING MY SENSE OF TASTE

About a month and a half agoI lost my sense of taste — not completely, but enough to make just about everything taste bland and flat. I could still register extremes of taste, and could still feel the zingy buzz of ginger, raw garlic, horseradish, and other bitingly alive substances, but my ability to distinguish everyday tastes was close to gone. Apples tasted like soggy styrofoam, avocados were repulsive slime, lemon juice was subtly astringent tap water, unsweetened pure cranberry juice went down without a pucker, salmon was compressed sawdust, and so on.

I figured this was brought on by various metals coming into balance in my system; for over a month I’d been taking a load of supplements, in part to rebalance my system after finding out I had prostate cancer. Blood tests had shown that my zinc levels were far too low and my copper levels far too high — and since low zinc and high copper are often implicated in the formation of cancer, it was clear that this needed to be remedied as soon as possible. So I upped my zinc intake, knowing not only that doing so would lower my copper levels, but also that zinc had a lot of cancer-opposing capacities. Of course, too much zinc would create a whole bunch of new problems, so I’d have to proceed with care.

When I first lost my ability to taste, my health care adviser assumed that it was because of the zinc I had been ingesting, and so advised me to stop taking it for a while. I did, but nothing changed. I researched taste loss, and found out that what was most commonly recommended to help restore taste was zinc! So what the hell was going on? Maybe it was my excess copper being released, maybe, maybe...

Then I began taking a substance called tetrathiomolybdate (TM). One bottle of 200 capsules, each containing 20 milligrams of TM, cost over $500. And did it stink! My sense of smell had remained very clear. Within 10 minutes of taking even a single capsule of TM, I’d have a lone burp, fizzily imbued with the unmistakable odor of hydrogen sulfide, better known as rotten-egg breath. Needless to say, there was an abundance of sulfur in TM. And why was I taking TM? Because it was an extremely powerful chelator of copper, meaning that it easily bound excess copper to itself, which could then be excreted.

I started taking zinc again, at a low dosage. Still no taste. My appetite had, understandably, really dropped. Then I got the result of my blood test for ceruloplasmin, the major copper-containing protein in blood. A month or so ago, its number had been 44; now it was 18, a healthy low. So there was much less copper in my system. Good news! But the blood for this test had been drawn before I started taking TM, so there was no point in continuing to take it. My intuition was that my having taken a high dosage of zinc had dropped my copper level.

My sense of taste continued to remain flat and dull, its functionality being akin to trying to register subtleties of sensation through touching another while wearing thick rubber gloves. Yet the inside of my mouth often felt exquisitely sensitive, with a great variety of tastes electronically flitting around my soft palate and under my tongue, like butterflies that never quite land. Here a quiver of shapely sweetness, there a rush of bracing bitterness, here a thick wash of saltiness, there a lingering wave of sourness, all coexisting with the faintest wingprints of various aromas. Yet I could taste none of these, save in their extremes. I registered their presence, but without my tastebuds.

A week ago I got the results of more blood tests. My copper level had dropped to normal, but my zinc was still very low. Without delay, I started taking a high dosage of zinc again, with the blessing of my health care adviser. My sense of taste improved a tiny bit. At this point, I’ll be grateful to get my taste back, regardless of how long it takes.

I have developed a great appreciation for the texture of food. A spoonful of chilled unsweetened organic coconut milk, thick and creamy, is a delight to me. The soups that Diane makes are similarly delightful, loaded with many different textures, and with spices that, when deeply inhaled, bring a touch more taste. My appetite has returned. And it is very easy to keep to my sugar-free diet, as I have no sweet-tooth. So there are some blessings in the near-vanishing of my sense of taste.

Still, I would love to be able to fully taste again. There is such pleasure in being able to distinguish and settle into tastes, letting them linger on tongue and palate. Imagine wine tasting like totally flat tap water, and then imagine it tasting like it normally does — ah, but I am alive, and appear to be healing, and do sense that my sense of taste is making a return, however slowly. In the fridge is a container of thick creamy coconut milk, ready to take its place in my morning smoothie along with a horde of supplement powders; I imagine a spoonful of it landing atop my tongue and am grateful, tasting not only it, but also the unsweetened sweetness of Life.