The Challenge
Living with a life-threatening health problem, such as cancer, is one of the most severe challenges we can face. The mind is beseiged by fears, worries about what will happen, concerns for our children or family, about fighting the disease, about looking for causes and often blaming ourselves for the problem, and by anger (such as towards the medical system) and jealousy (such as towards healthy young people). All of this creates despair and makes the struggle for health seem sometimes impossible.
And then, if someone (or a book) comes along and tells us that a disease can be an opportunity, a turning point in our lives, and it is not all bad, it can sound absurd, unreal and irritating.
Yet there is a profound truth in it, which often cannot get through to us because it is presented as words, and not experiences, or because we are so drowned in our suffering, that there is no room to listen.
We need to be wise, heartful and persistent to open new channels in us to messages that will transform the situation.
A Retreat To Help People With Life Threatening Diseases
As an example, I would like to discuss a recent weekend retreat which I taught with two other teachers in the north of Israel for those with sickness and pain. There were 50 participants, most of whom suffered from cancer, fibromyalgia, and other diseases, some severe.
At the beginning, the despair and confusion was palpable. The room was heavy with the personal stories that each person carried, and shared, the tears flowed and it seemed impossible to lighten the load.
At the end of the short weekend there was laughter, and lightness, there was hope and hugs, there was deep gratitude, and most of all, the participants felt truly alive, in some cases for the first time in a long time. I would like to describe here the methods we used and how they worked.
The Method
There were some underlying values that helped to clear the emotional ground. Firstly there was no professional agendas. There were no promises that 'professional others' would fix, cure, treat or lessen the disease.
Secondly as teachers we did not come over with a system, a belief, or even a special status. In some way we tried to show that we are all the same, the situation of human suffering is universal, that there were not sick and healthy people there, but just people, all with different issues.
Thirdly we made sure it was not expensive, and there was an atmosphere of giving, helping, volunteering rather than getting.
Mindful Meditation
A basic tool was mindfulness meditation, using breath and body as the main focus. We taught this in several sessions throughout the 2 days with plenty of real time guidance and imagery.
One of the main images that went along with the meditation was that of coming home, of finding a genuine refuge within us rather than expecting it to come from the changing and often distressing conditions of our lives. Bringing back the awareness into the lived immediate experience, creates a sense of wholeness and intimacy with our life, which is quite beyond the disease.
Being aware that all our projections, fears of the future, scenarios, memories, and worries are in the end just thoughts, however loaded they seem, takes some of the weight off.
Resting in the experience of the natural flow of breath and sensations in the body is not only a safe place but a place in which we discover that there are messages within us of healthy lived experience.
The disease is shouting so loud we cannot usually hear other quieter voices within us. For example we usually don't know we have a head unless we have a headache.
Present Moment Experience
Taking the disease down off centre stage and replacing it with our lived experience creates a profound shift in attitude. Our situation lightens, we can become a participator in our fate and not its victim.
The power of this intimacy with present moment experience to take us to a place beyond disease is illustrated by this quote from Treya Wilbur, in her book: Grace and Grit. She was dying from cancer at the time:
"If I do become well for long periods of time, will I lose this deliciously keen knife-edge of awareness I now have?…new creativity pours forth under pressure of this illness, I would hate to lose that…there are moments when I feel practically ecstatic just sitting on the veranda and looking at the view at the back of the house, and watching the puppies play. I feel so blessed in this moment. Each breath is so incredible, so joyful, so dear. What am I missing? What could be wrong?'"
Besides, learning to reconnect with the present moment of breath and body is a great help in coping with stressful and painful situations such as hospitals and treatments. One or two conscious aware breaths and the anxiety fades and we are in a different place. In addition, as is well known, meditation is a tool that can be used to help support our healing and the life force in us.
Being With Others For Support
Another important element was groups. Here there was a chance to ventilate fears and experiences, including issues of death and dying. It was a chance to listen to others and feel the support.
The first morning's groups were indeed full of tears and the most difficult stories, but as the retreat progressed, the dialogue shifted - towards inquiry into the meaning of being ill, towards illness as a personal journey.
Several times, participants, for example, raised the issue of control. Do we have control? Is it better to fight even though that may bring expectations and anxiety, or is it more helpful to surrender? The groups helped, by talking, to cut the 'demons' down to size, reducing the denial and avoidance which generally increases the suffering.
On the second day the groups were actually like alchemical vessels in which change happened because of the intensity. New insights emerged into how life could be lived, new directions were realised, joys were shared.
Self Appreciation
Another method that we used was to open the heart to ourselves and to others, by means of several guided visualisations and other exercises. We cannot easily 'befriend our cancer,' but we can be friends to ourselves. We can bathe in soft appreciation. We can feel gratitude for those ordinary moments which are in fact quite miraculous.
We can experience a softness in our belly, softness that can hold all the pain. We can feel compassion to ourselves and to all others who suffer. We can feel the preciousness of ourselves and of each other.
And a final part was more contemplative, taught by talks and mutual inquiry. It is about the truth that the experience of the disease is not the disease. The consciousness is freer than we think. We can be bigger than the problem. Whereas at first we may be circulating like a moth around the candle of our problem, slowly we can realise we are like a moth circulating around the candle of our mystery.