I’ve always been intrigued by Silo’s (Mario Rodriguez Cobos ) statement that the pre-human being displays much disinterested interestedness. He says that we can learn what it means to become truly human by exercising the muscle of humanness, the muscle of interested interestedness when being in communication and listening to what is beyond the chatter of words, for the quality, for the essence that lies within the person speaking. During month five of my MS treatments, I have encountered within myself a stirring of new caring for myself. This new caring revealed a previous inherent superficial caring which often meant pleasing the other, validating myself, and being very inauthentic.
With my treatments and my friendship with Dr. John Neighbors, I often heard, but this month I heard, the puzzling words, “I just don’t care.” John is a master in what he does, and does just wonderful work saving people’s lives, or at least changing the course of people’s lives. I started to understand that his words were a strong expression of self-preservation. This is a wake-up call for me. When I cared so deeply, and my mind was racing because of it, had no more boundaries to take care of myself. Since my caring was without a path for implementation, I was left completely deflated, and then sick.
Over the course of the last four months, a woman Renee had joined my journey. With kidney & pancreas failure and going blind, Renee was not left with much life ahead of her. I became very fascinated by Dr. Baek’s clear acupuncture approach to establishing communication between her organs, taking the heat of Renee’s heart and sending it straight down to her kidneys, then teaching Dr. Neighbors to do the same in his weekly treatments with Renee. When Renee’s body finally accepted the communication and her health was flourishing, she took a course of healing which Dr. Neighbors completely disagreed with, a raw food diet. It made Dr. Neighbors very angry because it is a fact that it takes a lot of energy to digest raw food and he did not want Renee to use that vital energy just to digest. He had worked so hard, and really cared about Renee, and felt her jeopardizing her life. That was the first time I hear Dr. Neighbors say to me, “I just don’t care,” letting go of his reins of being the one in charge of Renee’s life, a wonderful moment. I really sensed how much he cared and yet he found his self-preserving resignation with the three words, “I don’t care” Even while writing this message, I cannot completely wrap myself around these three words, but I must. Why? For freedom. For my life. For being truly in relationship to others and their lives. Or is it to be truly in relationship to myself?
This month, I started doing basic Iyengar yoga classes again, together with a medical yoga class. It was great. I love how my mind can travel with Anna’s (Yoga Tree) command of “pressing down the inner heal, big toe and the outer arch,” and how I didn’t know what she meant by that. Returning to Gabriel Halpern (Yoga Circle) for medical yoga was a profound reconciliation. Six years ago, when I was invited to become a teaching assistant, I ran like hell due to Gabriel’s energy, in regards to women. I just didn’t feel safe. It doesn’t matter that much to me anymore. I simply accept his incredible understanding of the human body.
A week ago, Marcie, an MS patient of Dr. John Neighbors, asked me if I could get hotel and car reservations for her from Priceline. I said yes. The same day, Lael, another patient asked me the same. I again said yes. I then ended up with the most incredible panic/anxiety. Why? On one hand, I felt like it was dumped on me, from John, since John made it very clear to me that he doesn’t care how Marcie would come, and thinks that it’s just absurd that Marcie’s husband wouldn’t help her. So when John says, “I don’t care how she gets there, I’m not going to do it”, I somehow want to say the same, to both preserve my own energy, and for Marcie to take responsibility for her own life, for her own healing, in spite of her husband. How can I be in relationship, treating the other as fully responsible for her own healing and her own life, and still be connected to be able to guide? For example, “Marcie, do you have a computer? Can you (maybe with your husband’s help) go to to Priceline.com to reserve a room? How can I support you in that?” Maybe this “I don’t care” is somewhere inside me, but that somewhere is so unknown to me. Maybe it’s that I do care and don’t know the boundaries of that caring.
In any case, I had a lot of resistance to actually do something with all of the feelings I was having inside. I did express myself to John and he just said, “Relax. Maybe Isabel can take her from the airport to the retreat center, and I can take her from the retreat center to the hotel.” I realized that it’s not so complicated, that I don’t need to do everything myself. And that’s exactly how it worked out. Isabel took Marcie from the airport to the retreat center. We all helped Marcie, and John and Chris took her back to the hotel late at night. I had some stirring feelings, thoughts, that I didn’t do enough. They were just so lightly on the surface that they didn’t bother me. And I ask myself, what does John actually mean when he says, “I don’t care,” because it’s so not true.
Ted and I talked about many things regarding how I close myself off from others with my negative thoughts. There’s of course Isabel, who was my first healer, in 1993/4, who truly had done wonders for me. And yes, there were and there are many ways of being that I struggle with, in regards to Isabel, but I told Ted that I’m really impressed how she’s taking it upon herself to bring many people to Sung to get well, her initiative, her work, and then to help Marcie. She actually was the only one that stayed for Marcie’s Friday treatment, and took notes. Isabel also brought her 16 year old daughter, who I sense is very open and curious about healing and health in a non-conventional way. Boy, would I have loved to have done something like that for one of my children.
To this moment, I cannot say that I feel I am the same as Marcie, and what is that? We both have MS. Is it arrogance? Is it denial? But I can also honestly say that many times during the last three days, I was moved by Marcie’s presence, and wanting to heal, because that is something that is deep inside myself that I don’t see so much around me. Saturday night (Sunday morning), I said good night to Marcie and gave her a kiss. Did I plan that? No. Was it my truth? Yes.
And then there’s Dr Baek, Sung Baek. He invited all of the participants from the Homo Recto center to his concert in New York Saturday night. Ted became part of the community by driving one of the 12-passenger vans (2 1/2 hrs to get there!). Everyone appreciated him and it. It was an adventure. And you know I love adventures! The performances were, well, you might call it weird. There was a lot of ethnicity in the performances and playing with the human form. There was a woman who pretty much fooled everyone, showing herself from the back that that was her front, with the movement of her arms. Dr. Baek invited all of us for a Korean dinner. It was the most amazingly elaborate, multi-course feast. I felt truly Roman. The only thing that I could have thrown behind me was not a bone, but a squid. We learned that Dr. Baek is forming a band in New York City. Sadie, the vocalist and Mike, the drummer, appeared at the dinner. They didn’t know what Dr. Baek does for us, breast cancer patients, MS patients, and many, many students. They were in awe.
I had heard so many stories about Dr. Baek, and I had many experiences in my short personal relationship with Dr. Baek, tales of money-hunger, tales of addiction, tales of violence. After this dinner, I asked myself, what is generosity? How I viewed Dr. Baek is and was not what he really is. He’s very generous. All in all, writing this fifth entry, I feel full of a family that I never wanted to meet. Some of you have commented on my blog and said that this is not your writing, or that you could have never done that. And you know what? You’re right on. I speak and write in so many disconnected bizarre circles that it took unwinding for almost a half hour, to edit this fifth entry, like all the others have been. And I’m most grateful to Ted, my partner, who straightens me out. Ha ha.
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