Let Go of Everything Completely

What should wash up on my shores of Stumbleupon this evening but a ten year old recording of the Venerable Sarah Thresher speaking in San Francisco on the topic of healing.

It sounded as though the organizers of the talk has set the topic out for her as "Healing the Pain" but she addressed the broadest ranges of individual and physical healing, all the way to healing suffering between nations. And she did so with an engaging series of stories and examples from her own life. I found her teaching style delightful and I commend the audio to you when you have time.

What I have always found compelling about Pema Chodron, Roshi Halifax and also Joko Beck is what I call their Great Grandmother Compassion. No, not that they are literally a great-gran anything, but that they pull no punches, don't sugar coat anything, and their stories are meant to help correct you. To help correct your mind. And however unpleasant it is to be corrected, it's because they love you. After hearing this talk, I now include Ven Thresher in that set of teachers as well.

So as much to get these concepts and practices more firmly in mind myself as to share them with you, here are a few of the approaches Ven Thresher raised during her talk:

Whatever is happening, I need to have happen. Whatever comes, let it come. Try to recognize exactly when we find ourselves saying "This shouldn't be happening to me!" And then say to yourself just: "Well, this is what's happening." When we find outselves thinking "This is outrageous!" then note that is resistence arising, and allow it to be. Because it is what is happening. The toughest part is that part where you say "...and I need this to happen." No I don't need this disease or car accident difficult job situation exactly, but I need to recognize where I am resisting this set of circumstances so I can let go of the resistence which is only increasing my suffering. So I need to work with it, with things as they are.

The only thing you can control is your response to what is happening. Keep asking the question: "Why don't I want to accept what is happening?" If we can recognize in moments of resistence or suffering that we don't actually have to need anything extra, we are complete. Wisdom mind says we don't have to create additional needs. Ask yourself, resisting: "What is it I think I need (that I'm not getting)?" If you can identify (correctly!) what it is you are holding on to that is causing suffering...you can begin to let go. "But that thing I'm holding onto gives me my identity!" What is it you think you are losing if you do let go? Pride. Self-importance? Sense of self? "If I let go of this, what's left?"

When I let go, things change. When I let go, what actully changes is me. Circumstances haven't changed. I have accepted them and therefore can more effectively adapt and respond to them.

View whatever arises as the teacher. Freedom is the mind that doesn't hold onto anything. Because really there is nothing to hold on to (groundlessness is reality). Once you are not trapped by the mind you can help yourself and others. "Let go of everything completely; there are no difficulties."

There is really not a lot I can add to that except to say these are things I really needed to hear right now, and hope you find them similarly compelling.

Dreams of Falling

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, I started having dreams where I would fall from a tall building or crumbling cliff. The sensation was itself terrifying, flailing helplessly into blackness. Subjectively the fall would seem endless, always with the added fear of what would happen when I hit bottom. Objectively the sensation may not have lasted more than a few moments. I would apparently shout quite loudly and then wake up.

One of my parents suggested that, it being my dream, the next time it happened I should just dream up a soft landing. I scoffed. Sounded so simplistic, so like a parents advice when really they could not understand that if I had any control over my dreams I would not be falling in the first place!

And yet somehow in the subsequent weeks and months, when this dream would occur I recall thinking "wait, I can try and change this." Suddenly there was a small space, inside the dream, where I could look at it without being completely overwhelmed by that seemingly endless sensation of falling. It took some practice, but I vividly recall the first time I was able to conjure just a grey piece of solid ground underneath me. Such sweet unbelievable relief to be landed, resting, no longer in stark peril. After a few months the dreams stopped completely, and for years afterwards I gave it little thought.

By college, I had run into the concept of lucid dreaming and could occasionally 'wake up' inside my dreams, and perhaps affect their course or content. I mark this as the first way in which I ever understood that my mind was somehow multilayered...that myself and my mind were anything but unified and monolithic. That a technique applied with one part of the mind can affect how another part of the mind operates, functions or reacts.

I think this is why, when I encountered Buddhism, it made so much sense to me that hundreds of years of self observation, comparing notes, codifying over centuries could lead to a theory of mind not too far from our own neuroscience. And that everyday practices such as lovingkindness, tonglen, and Zen sitting, working with precepts, could help me or anyone else create the space to better respond to everyday struggles.

In extremis, the past week I have been losing stamina, feeling more and more dizzy. Over the weekend I crashed so hard while out with my children I had to lie down on the sidewalk. The cascade of panic about possible outcomes to the situation was very much a free fall. Even now, days later, I still get stuck in loops of what might have happened, how badly things might have turned out. And what might happen next.

So it was just last night lying in the dark in bed, I remembered about the dreams of falling. From a practical day to day standpoint, especially given my current challenges in recovery, I realized that the practice now must be to try to recognize when I am falling while awake, and instead of focusing on the terrifying heights or the fear of the crash, to try to work with crafting a soft landing place. May it serve all beings.

Fear not.

On feeling terrible

When I started this blog, it was with the fullest intention to focus on creativity, Buddhism, healing, recovery and that there would be no whining.

But being open to the process, I find the most important thing I have to share is the possibility that it does get worse before it gets better. And that things may indeed be worse for a while.

So this is one of the times I feel worse. I've been warned. But I had held out hope I might be one of those lucky ones who once they get started with this approach to adrenal healing just feel better and better.

Thought I had a stomach virus last week. Whatever it was set me back, energy wise. I had already become used to not being dizzy, which was a huge relief after embarking on the supplementation regime. But the disequibrium came back, along with this completely new sensation of being stunned. And I mean that quite literally. Like when you stand up under a bunk bed and crack yourself on the top of the skull, and the shock and weakness goes right for you crown through your spine into your toes.

And I'm feeling that each time I stand up. What is disconcerting is that I thought I had pretty well catalogued the different ways this condition could make me feel terrible. And that familiarity at least had its own comfort. Each had its corresponding coping strategy, if not a remedy. This is completely new. And without energy, the hallmark deficit of the condition, I don't have the emotional barriers to cope with it rationally.

So last night the only thing I could do was keep saying to myself, you just have to get through this one moment. Just one moment at any given time.

Really a challenge not to just lie here and worry.

That was last week. Spent the time since then resting as much as I could. Still rose to take one brief walk each day, eat with family, do dishes, small stuff. Took a break from the supplements. While that break has alleviated the stunned feeling, it meant a return of other (gut) discomforts.

When I started out with an interest in Buddhism, I was sure I was like the first horse from the teaching story, the one that takes off the minute it hears about the Dharma (old age, sickenss and death). But now I feel like the fourth horse, which is interested Dharma because of the immediate effects of old age, sickness and death to its own life...plus every other dodge, coping strategy, masking attempt in life has not panned out, things are breaking down, and this is the last option. I wonder if we don't all wind up as the fourth horse, in some fashion, as we get old.

Theresa Vernon interview

Maria at RestCo has done a fantastic three part interview series with Theresa Vernon, a specialist on Adrenal issues and on the Nutritional Balancing approach. I encourage anyone curious to learn more to check out the interview and Theresa's own site.

 

Rest with Great Diligence

This past two weeks I have been starting with re-mineralization. Which means, hey your body is so completely out of balance, you have to take targeted supplements for several months to several years to restore it. If you want to learn more about this, please take a look at what Maria has made clear on her Restco blog.

My own test results were below the lowest of the normal range for all but one vital mineral -- and the ratios between vital minerals confirmed adrenal burnout (not really a big surprise).

One of the things the ARL lab is clear about in their materials is that you will feel better, and have more energy, as you embark on the program. And this has been my experience. Just like Maria, I have found I am at least 40% better already. Which, when you have been absolutely flattened, is a huge improvement.  But what ARL says immediately after "you will have more energy" is "don't spend it."

You body heals mostly at night, and it needs energy to heal. Your cells have only so much energy, and if you're starting from behind the eight-ball you need to guard and preserve what you can scrape together.

This whole process is making me reconsider the wisdom of Daoism, which I had studied in graduate school but mostly disregarded in favor of Buddhism. Well, now that I see an acupuncturist/Chinese herbalist twice a week, I'm coming to understand all the Daoist emphasis on spiritual vitality as an operating metaphor for everyday energy management.

Heaven does nothing: its non-doing is its serenity.
Earth does nothing: its non-doing is its rest.
From the union of these two non-doings
All actions proceed.
All things are made.
How vast, how invisible
This coming-to-be!
All things come from nowhere!
How vast, how invisible
No way to explain it!
All beings in their perfection
Are born of non-doing.
Hence it is said:
“Heaven and earth do nothing
Yet there is nothing they do not do.”
Where is the man who can attain
To this non-doing?

-- Chuang Tzu

What does this look like for adrenal recovery in the modern era? For the first time since grade-school I have been going to sleep at 9 or 9:30pm and I have to say the difference in sleep and the feeling upon waking is remarkable. Also, a self imposed curfew of no electronic screens after 8pm.  I find that helps my bodymind come down from the frenetic energy level we carry throughout the day.  Eating more meals more frequently. Keeping a food journal and being clear about the effects of when and what I eat. Eating only whole, unprocessed foods.  Reviving my sitting practice. Beginning to do artwork again. Letting go of the feeling that I must achieve this or that in any given 24 hour period.

I feel sheepish that a science writer at ARL had to be the one to raise this particular aspect of burnout to my attention.  So much focus on the medical side, anxiety about will I recover from this and not enough on:

What could possibly be positive about burnout? Burnout is often a wake up call. For those who can hear, it can be a signal that one's life is out of balance. It can provide a stimulus to re-examine where and how one lives. Maybe one's attitudes need adjustment, or one has set unrealistic goals. Often one has not loved the body enough and has in fact ignored or mistreated it.
    Burnout can be a opportunity for a person to reevaluate priorities in order to bring one's life into greater harmony and happiness.

The sound you hear is the sound of one Zen hand clapping myself on the forehead.

Peace in Action

I recently signed up for Tricycle magazine's daily email.  It has only been a few weeks, but already several times I've found their wisdom snippets striking close to home.

This one was from a 1992 interview with Thailand's Sulak Sivaraksa. Just an excerpt:

In America and Europe, everyone is very active. But if you become too active, you lose the essence of Buddhism. You only have the Buddhist labels. One must cultivate peace to be compassionate. Without this, what you do, even as an 'engaged Buddhist' is just a lot of activity with no good purpose.

Ouch.

 For those of us who take right livelihood all the way over to the do-gooder extreme, it's hard not to take -- if not pride, at least solace -- in the feeling that no matter how badly one may be screwing up in any other realms of life, at least I got this part right.

And then this very difficult pill to swallow, that anything done to extremes is still life out of balance, and thus not really right livelihood. If it harms you, your family by extension, and those you seek to serve.

I read How Can I Help? by Ram Dass probably three times in my early career, trying to push the very separate circles in the Venn Diagram Of My Life into closer congruence.  A life of service called and who was I not to answer?

When I ran into Bernie Glassman's Instructions to the Cook, I had to sit down in the middle of the bookstore aisle, the sense of recognition and resonance was so strong. The Supreme Meal. Hungry Ghosts feeding each other. Social action, social enterprise, Bearing Witness, engaged Buddhism. Sign me up!

But that sneaky Protestant work ethic, "just do your best, honey" messages, and thorough training in perfectionism ... well what exactly is "our best" and what is the point past which it is actually unhealthy to throw energy even in an unassailably good direction?

What Sivaraksa points out is that if we don't embody peace then we may actually be doing damage as we seek to do good.

Upon reflection I see that after a few relatively solid years I reached the point where I approached my work as work. Fulfilling certainly, but I had dropped my practice more than a decade ago, and my efforts to lead a life of service eventually had no foundation.

Something to sit with.

And the cosmic ha ha here, having scanned the top bookshelf and opened the Ram Dass book again tonight, flipping through the sections I had dog-eared... the second to last chapter is titled: Burnout.  Guess I'll just be re-reading that one later tonight.

Regret and Self-Blame in Healing

Feeling terrible at the moment, having eaten something with a higher glycemic index than I apparently should have.

A string of a few good days after so many tough weeks, and amnesia already was setting in about the tightrope those of us in adrenal recovery must walk. Managing energy output, being careful to eat more often, and eating high protein, low carb, no sugar, etc. I've been refining my weekday regime and Thursday / Friday were two of my best in a few months.

Weekend broke the routine.

I ate too late in the morning, and not enough. Then I waited too long to eat lunch. Grabbed the most portable thing I could think of ... Avocado sushi roll. Harmless, right? Ate it in the car. Home by 1pm and ate a giant salad with egg, chick peas, peas, celery, beets... But that only lasted me until 4. By 4:30 I knew I needed to eat again, so I made a bowl of leftover lentils and rice. Too many carbs in a row. Adrenals not happy, and though I tried to follow up with some grilled chicken, the horse was already out of the barn. I'm left with that jangly, hyperglycemia feeling that I know will shortly be followed by the hypo version.

All of this is just context. On to the regrets.

As I've mentioned it has taken twelve years, possibly even the choices of the last thirty years to get here. The difference to me between this situation and something viral or genetic is that I can draw a clear line from many choices right to the front door of adrenal burnout. So I've found it unavoidable not to catalog, enumerate in detail those choices, reexamine them, second guess them, and generally stew.

I've been present with regret during sitting practice. I've breathed into it, and breathed out metta (loving kindness, self forgiveness). Late at night I have labelled thoughts of regret and watched them arise, dissipate, only to arise once more. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them. But nobody said it would be easy. Doing my level best not to allow regret to mature into self-blame, and finding that difficult as well. 

The fact is I've only become aware of this as a condition, with potential remedies, in the last two months. Since then I've made some pretty drastic behavioral and diet changes, seen some great progress, and have a long term plan for recovery. I recognize that every erg of energy wasted on regret is something I can't put towards recovery.

But as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, we live in a culture where anything but the manic exuberance of youth, or the caffeinated accomplishment-driven adult equivalent has the odor of failure about it. So you feel even more badly about feeling terrible.

All of that is also just context. On to the healing.

Taking another page from Maria at Restco's playbook, I just want to encourage anyone who is struggling in the same unmapped territory to take a deep breath, or several, and know you are not going through it alone. This issue is endemic and largely masked by coping strategies from the obviously bad (caffeine, alcohol) to those as seemingly healthful as overwork, working out too much at the gym, and shoring up flagging energy with fruit and juices. All of which just dig our adrenals further into a hole.

There is a prescription, and it is long term, amounting to changing our way of being in the world, while also rebuilding the nutritional foundation of our bodies. And it starts with rest.  Pema Chodron says "The only thing that exists is the continual opportunity to either open up to what's happening, or shut down." Time to open up and be present.

Paraphrasing here, and aware of the gentle irony:

Recovery is difficult. Rest with great diligence.

On Not Sleeping

So I'm doing it again, where resistance to being present with suffering includes storytelling about how someone always has it worse, really. One of our friends goes several days in a row without being able to sleep. I'm not dealing with anything like that.

When the adrenals are slagged, while they may not work at full power, they also don't really believe it is ok to take a rest. Having been in emergency response mode for the better part of a decade, it is hard to convince them that the crisis (most of which was manufactured) is really not immanent.

What is happening is the experience of being tired and dizzy all day, working with random symptoms and trying not to panic about those. Having cut out any screen time after 8pm, filling that time before sleep with drawing, quieting the mind. Then finding that sleep just won't come. Breathing through that, counting breaths, finally asleep and something in the flow of our house (a literal catfight under the bed, for instance) will wake me again and then it's 45 min or more of working through annoyance at waking, then spinning on all of the above, about not sleeping, finally returning to counting the breath, calming the mind, and again sleep. But it's not a deep restful sleep.

The predominant description I am finding for this state on the adrenal recovery sites is "wired & tired."

So it was with great thanks that I ran across the below this evening,  from ZenDotStudio:  

I was reminded of a Gil Fronsdal talk on insomnia where he suggested rather than fretting about lack of sleep a person could lie there and appreciate that they were safe and comfortable, resting in the present, rather than building a story around sleeplessness.

So simple a prescription, will just be giving that a try in a few hours.

Burnout

For some time I have felt rather on top of the issue of personal health. Not obsessively so, just at level one might call quietly smug. (on edit: This is the smugness of youth that hasn't realized we're well into middle age.)

Kept good track of the myriad possible things on the radar that could kill me, including a specific family history of prostate cancer, heart disease, IBS, etc. and whatever flavor of the  month fatal distraction the popular press might throw up.

Always take the stairs, years past of martial arts training, more recently the gym four to five days a week for an hour and a half. Once I understood the link to heart issues, I had even moved through the entire spectrum from dental floss refusenik to twice a day.

Burnout always seemed describe an emotional state. As in, "that job really burned me out for community organizing, I just couldn't do it anymore, so I had to move on to something different." My man was not aware that you could physically burn out your adrenals. Sub-clinically,  it appears, but still. Just was not on the radar.

Leave aside the litany of activities I've engaged in, and things I have done on purpose over the last three decades that piled insult upon injury to the poor little bastards, it turns out my entire personality (this current ego structure) may be toxic to those unsung, kidney-riding, grape-sized producers of over 50 essential hormones.

My Myers-Briggs description starts with something along the lines of "lives in preparation for emergencies."

This is all about mission-readiness. Grew up in a military family. As a small child, once I understood the scenario of possible house fire, I packed a small bag with the items I was sure I would need to grab on the way out, and put shoes by the side of my bed. 

When we flew, which back then was mainly when we were moving somewhere new, I packed what I called my Desert Island kit--things that might be essential were we cut off from civilization (band-aids, a bar of motel soap and sewing kit, candy, comic books...not really survivalist items and nothing you would get thrown off an airplane for today).

Not to draw to thick a line from then until now, but I find myself in a career that while on the upside is focused on helping others, also keeps me focused on natural disasters, their aftermath, and working with specific efforts for immediate aid, longer term recovery and rebuilding.

At night, I'm the one who wakes up to any odd noise, whether it's to corral and dispose of whatever vermin our cat may have brought in to the killing floor under our dining room table, or to discover a leak under the kitchen sink, or just in time to miss catching one of our kids vomiting with a towel.

So the challenge right now is how to notice and try to amend lifelong patterns of seeking -- from a Buddhist standpoint let's call it addiction to -- a feeling of immanent crisis, and preparations for remedies for same. As if you can ever be fully prepared for life.

At a retreat for individuals interested in end-of-life care more than a decade ago, Roshi Halifax once asked us to practice with the following: "Anything that can happen to a human being, can happen to me, and I accept that."

Surely thought I had accepted that by now. Clearly had not.

Working with a shifting landscape of symptoms and anxiety about possible remedies and whether this is recoverable, it has occurred to me to wonder if, at times, all this focus on attention is just one more strategy of preparation for disaster. Life, perceived as immanent or ongoing disaster. Trying to get to that place of acceptance, like the part in the movie Parenthood when Steve Martin finally relaxes and laughs into the moment.

This is all wrapped up in layers of recovering perfectionism

No answers on this one today, I'm in the thick of it.

Ego and Rest

So sure of myself, I took the robe and bowl, hustled off and got lost. Would I be so wise today if I hadn't screwed up so badly?

"There are many hours in a day, and I am not indispensable." -- Greg @ Upaya retreat circa 2000

A dear friend of mine lived in New Zealand for a year on a Rotary scholarship. She roomed with a woman from South Asia who remarked to her one morning while sipping her tea: "You Americans, you only know how to do. Why can't you just be?"

After an almost ten year hiatus, I am picking back up a formal meditation practice (and starting this blog) just when I need to be removing as much effort as possible in order to focus on healing. My hope is that both will serve that purpose more than they work against it.  For instance working on drawing, posting, sitting helps me to not obsess about getting better -- to not work recovery relentlessly like a business problem.

Our tech-permeated culture, much influenced by Protestant and other hard-working immigrant traditions, doesn't much cotton to rest as a value. Whether focused on the fruits of labor, accomplishment, the sweat of your brow, or kicking back to party hard, chill with Angry Birds there is just not a lot rest-full about our days, weeks, months.

Vacations are for going somewhere and doing things you don't normally do when you're working.

Most often, how we enumerate our own value is completely wrapped up in what we do, our job role, family role, what we contribute, what we earn. Living up to our own and other people's conditioned expectations of who we should be and what we should do. All so much story and ego. This nurse who worked with the dying tells us that nobody on their deathbed ever said "I wish I had worked more."  In fact, #2. on the list was "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

It is radically counter-cultural to practice being. Even when in every visible way we who choose to stop, sit, breathe in and breathe out, may not be cultivating being. In my own practice I have caught myself over and over doing what Suzuki Roshi called "trying to be the best horse." Trying to get to some goal through practice.

Lately that goal has been better health, and that means most of my meditation time is spent lying down, counting breaths in the middle of the night. Or just being with symptoms, trying to allow them to be ok without fighting because that creates an ever greater energy deficit.  Trying not to practice with the goal that it should serve healing -- trying not to make it work. Just letting it be.

Recovery and Renunciation

Renounce means renounce.

Some of us dealing with healing and recovery have talked about how difficult it is to stop eating or drinking their familiars and often favorites. 

This week, giving up the eating habits of many years in order to heal means -- in addition to my having given up alcohol, coffee, tea, chocolate (!) -- I now must add to that list all wheat, fruit juices, whole fruits...and begin paying attention to the glycemic index of any vegetables I may consider for the daily menu.

For someone who grew up in a household where meals were centered on pastas and breads, followed by a double espresso, this has been no small adjustment.

This also means adding in new things like green smoothies (which without the fruit/fruit juices are really lacking). The best recipe I've found so far: throwing celery in with the kale and baby bok choy makes something reminiscent of a V8.

The fact that I feel so incredibly terrible or immensely better when I do eat certain things provides a certain operant conditioning to help me along in this process.  Really wanting not to wind up in the ER again. That also provides great motivation.

Another: No smartphone/ ipad/ computer screens after 8pm, to quiet the mind and prepare the body for a more restful sleep. On night two of that one, we'll see how it goes.

Working with renunciation means noticing our cravings as they arise, acknowledging them, and making a different choice.  I'm making sliced apple for the kids, it smells so good, just one won't hurt...remember last time...right. Time for celery and hummus.