Words and prose are the crowbars I use to pry my heart open to yours…
On May 13, 2016, I wrote this story “I am a man made up of stories in my head.”
What follows this story is today’s updated version of May 3, 2024, eight years later. I am sharing my journey through cancer and life.
Your questions from my last letter about what does “Rehearsing the Future” really mean? – that story will come soon.
Love,
Blair
Fear is selfish.
Courage is selfless.
Enjoy the following two stories.
I am a man made up of stories in my head.
Aren’t we all?
The stories that play in my mind are many.
Some sad, some scary, some inspiring, some hopeless – regardless of the storyline, they play constantly.
When I become frightened from my own stories, I seek out distractions.
Food, music, movement, passion, fellowship, or solitude – it is there I escape.
And yet, I know that there is something more to me and something more to you than the stories in our head.
Sometimes I sense it as ‘comfort.’ A peaceful presence that accepts all the stories and mischief of my mind with gentle indifference.
It shows me how far reaching the consequences of the story could be if I animate it into my life.
Most importantly, there is relief.
I am not the story or any story.
Instantly humor and clever surprise comes tumbling down around me.
What treachery the mind can cause!
e.e. cummings was right when he penned, ‘oh Lord if you will forgive my little jokes on Thee, I will forgive this great big one on me.’
I turn my attention from the stories to this stillness of compassion.
Giving joyful contentment priority over the endless drives of lower intentions, I wonder…
How long do I have before the mind bursts through my bliss and screams for my attention?
None of us can predict what we will think about 5 minutes from now.
Nor can we predict our feelings or events that are yet to come.
Common people have common experience, but for those who challenge the status quo in a manner deemed deadly or divine, they are the social reformers striking at the heart of normalcy. They ride the roller coaster of life that bumps into the sages, muses, and demons of their art. These artists know that ‘done’ is better than ‘perfect,’ and yet they strive for perfection in their devilish or heavenly ways.
I know that soon I will slip back into the storyland of my mind.
Foods, memories, environment, fatigue are a few of the multitude of factors that manufacture the raw ingredients for the next story.
H.A.L.T. is an acronym reminding me that when I am hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, it is a perfect storm for the perfect story to destroy my best intentions.
Whether I am in my home, office, or car – the story is nothing outside of me.
It is just a story. A story told by my mind. Fact or fiction doesn’t matter.
So, captivating it becomes that I cannot run away. I am it’s only captive.
But help always comes in the most unpredictable ways.
It may be the doorbell, a text message, or my own movement towards the kitchen.
Something shatters the spell.
Like a drowning man suddenly catches hold of a rowboat, there is relief.
Escape. Opportunity. Possibility. Grace.
Reciting my goals, intentions, and fervent prayers may have given me the strength to help, turning my impure food and the influences of my mischievous friends into fodder for divine revelation. Or at least, to birth a pleasant moment or longer. Or not.
I look across my room.
I am in my office – small, crowded with books and papers, files, and mementos.
It is just a room. I am in my chair.
What story is my mind about to create now?
Will I feel better? Will I feel worse?
Or can I turn away from the mind’s media blitz and feel the awareness of my own being?
Or will I succumb to the next story?
For I am just a man made up of stories in my head.
Aren’t we all?
May 3, 2024
Here is this morning’s update:
I was a man made up of stories in my head.
I was trying to make meaning.
My meanings turned into beliefs.
Believing things that made me feel safe, secure, special, inspired.
But my thoughts and beliefs were not enough.
Fears and changes and opinions from outside kept challenging me causing both doubt and wonder. There must be more. More of what?
Something inside me threatened my positive outlooks and stories.
Which was stronger, my stories I made or those from sources unknown?
It was a battle.
I sought outside reassurance from elders and books and nature –sunrises and sunsets, trees, and flowers. They seemed unphased by daily events and yet mankind would damage them sometimes.
My breath caught my attention. Fear caused me to breathe irregularly and sometimes I would hold my breath and want to hide.
The first blend
I would breathe with my abdomen and catch hold of my breath and move it into my body… my abdomen. This brought comfort. I felt grounded. I started to have feelings or sensations or realizations that the world was safe. That I was safe. But why?
It was like a deep memory or knowledge that I was connected to something more permanent and real than the stories in my head. That I was part of something bigger than me, that loved me, that knew more and knew that I belonged here.
When I felt separate from that knowledge, that moving abdomen cured my fear and doubt. Connected to my breath and abdomen I felt safe, courageous, at home, compassionate.
I was moving from imaginary stories in my mind to palpable grounding sensations of trust and comfort. It was like going from an imaginary world to a real tangible world that existed inside me and surrounded me, it was what I was made of…and my body was interconnected with all of this.
I rewrote the stories in my mind to be confident, to have intentions to further guide me and lead me deeper in a manner that kept building this connection with me (whoever that is, whoever I am) with this safe place. The stories in my head that I thought was my identity was now being replaced with experiences of an all-pervasive world where I no longer had to make up stories and meanings and beliefs. Instead, I was merging into a field of solidarity as my mind and breath led me deeper into my body and later into some kind of a connecting field between the consciousness of me and the physical structures of my body and eventually its merging with the world outside me… my clothing, the ground I was standing on, the cushion I was sitting on.
But first it was all about me, my mind and my breath flowing together and starting to gently touch or brush by tiny delicate structures in my body. Air flowing through my nostrils like a baby’s breath…soft, gentle, slow, rhythmic, soothing.
My abdomen rising and falling. Laying on my back covered with a shawl, my head slighted supported with a little pillow, noticing the coolness of air when I inhaled at the tip of my nostrils and the soft warmed air leaving my lungs flowing out of my nostrils. My mind and my stories became hushed and dissolved into a rhythmic awareness of just being there. Yes, being there. That old adage, “you have to be present to win” – I felt present.
I got curious about things I had read of energy centers or special places inside my body that contained balancing forces or vitalities that can help me heal, make me stronger, happier.
I started to explore my abdomen, my solar plexus.
Then I got too relaxed, so I sat up to continue the abdominal work and found myself drawn to inhale up my spine and exhale down my spine always using the nostrils as the entry and exit point for the breath.
I found some landing points or resting areas along the way…the top of my head, my forehead, the junction of my eyebrows, the inner corners of my eyes, the opening of my nostrils, the region of my throat, my heart, my sternum, my abdomen, my pelvis, my sacrum. Just places that I could sense from inside me as my breath and mind traveled up and down.
In this process, it become more real. I was not imagining these areas, nor was I visualizing them, I was just bumping into them from the inside as I traveled. Having no idea of what I was really doing or what was going on. All I knew was that I was safe, my mind was quiet, and I had something to do. 15 minutes of something to do. Good for me!
I thought about my soft palate.
I remembered the 61-point relaxation exercise.
I remembered hearing something about catching hold of the thread of breath (prana).
The 75-breath exercise.
Primordial memories revealing that the real source of our existence was something external and internal and tangible.
Something about how our body is made of these vital strands of energy that activate the manifestation of matter – stem cells, etc., creating us – turning us into a bodily structure.
My mind was quiet, but now it was 9:03 am on May 3, 2024, and my manifest body was hungry.
I got up. Time to go to the kitchen for breakfast. My early morning chai had evaporated.