Friday, October 2, 2015

Return to Stillness

I feel peaceful again. I don't feel anxious or scared about the possibility of recurrence as I did on September 23rd.

Just days prior to my meeting with Dr. Kemeny, I had finished a silent retreat with Zen Buddhist teacher Adyashanti. And fortunately it was not completely silent and I was able to have a short conversation with him about my fears of recurrence or more specifically, my fears of a recurrence of the combined debilitating circumstances I found myself struggling through from 2010-2012. In essence what I came away from the conversation with was an awareness of what's available out of "letting the feelings in." And how not letting them in, is in fact to resist them. And so it was two days following my conversation with the doctor that I remembered to let the feelings in. Initially I found myself repeatedly letting them in. Over and over, each time my mind recreated the fear. Yet by the end of the day I felt peaceful. Wednesday evening, worrying about money the fear returned, though not nearly as powerfully as it had upon hearing Dr. Kemeny's concerns about my scan. And eventually the fear dissipated.

Right now I'm clear I have nothing to fear because there is no sign of cancer in my body. And should another wave of fear roll in, I know what to do with it. It really is all self-generated. I find that quite comforting.

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