Accentuate the Positive

This week for me is about preparing for surgery next week. On Monday 21 March, I will have my operation. What a great day to clear the old and welcome the new…Spring Equinox. Winter is passing and the new life of spring is arriving.

I am embracing the moment with an open heart and it is pretty damn scary also. I am keeping a very innocent and positive attitude on all of this and working hard at it. I know that in the end all will all be great but…they are going to remove my bladder!! Yikes! That is the reality of it. Mamma Mia!!!

I feel a bit like the dog in Gary Larsen’s cartoon, “I’m going to the vet to get tutored!” There is something he didn’t quite hear right. I am sometimes wondering, am I hearing everything right. How can I be so positive about all of this. Well, I could complain…but, would it help? I don’t think so. So, I endeavor to keep my positive perspective in the face of something very new and unknown to me. And, so far, so good. I’ll give you the reality check after my surgery.

“Accentuate the Positive”

I first encountered this song with Shakti Parwha Kaur who was Yogi Bhajan’s first student in the Western World. Shakti has been a big influence in my life and has been a wonderful teacher, mentor, friend and guide to me since the early 1970’s. One of her favorite songs is, and I’ve been hearing her sing it since 1973: Accentuate the Positive written by Johnny Mercer in 1944…we could call this Ancient Wisdom. The chorus is:

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

Thank you, Shakti. Somehow this song is on automatic replay in my mind and is great continuing wisdom for me at this time and keeping me on the positive…I ain’t messing with Mr. In-Between. I just can’t afford to.

For the effects of postive thinking, I’ll refer once again to Mayo Clinic. They have some of the best minds in science, medicine and psychology so I will bow to their wisdom. Here is the link:
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/positive-thinking/art-20043950

Training the Mind and Spirit.

I have to say, I am a big believer in the power of positive thinking… and, I think that’s a bit obvious by now. Most of us know and believe there is a strong connection between Body, Mind and Spirit. You may have heard the old adage, “As above, so below”….so in our personal realm, we can translate this to “as the mind thinks, the body” is or, “how we think, we are.”

For me, this positive thing is not always automatic. I have to work it. It’s very easy for my mind to want to “mess with Mister In-Between”. So, I need continual reminders, and for me I find the easier, the better.
Then I will actually do it!

I talked about this next meditation earlier but I want to share an audio link so if you like, you can practice with us whenever you like. The meditation is simply chanting in monotone, “Healthy Am I, Happy Am I, Holy Am I”. Check out the link. We look forward to your joining us.

I sit in easy pose. You could also sit in a chair keeping your spine straight. Close your eyes and concentrate at your 3rd eye point (a point just above and between your eyebrows). Visualize yourself immersed in a golden, healing light…totally bright. You can put your hands in gyan mudra (touch the tip of your index finger to your thumb tip with the other fingers straight), or you can place your hands on your body where you feel you need energy. In my case, I put both of my hands on my bladder and project golden light right into my bladder. Then in amonotone, I chant, “Healthy Am I, Happy Am I, Holy Am I”. I like to do it for 11 minutes but if I feel I really need some help, I will chant it longer. You can also do it shorter if you like. If your health does not allow you to sit up, then you can do this laying in your bed in any comfortable position. When Tiny (my tumor) is causing me pain I am often lay down…then he relaxes.

Chant this mantra enough and you really start thinking and believing “I am Healthy, I am Happy, I am Whole in Spirit”. I love it. It keeps me on the positive and when I’m feeling pain or just sorry for myself, I get this going and it changes everything for me. Believe me, I practice this one a lot!

Reality: Fear and Cancer

So, I have all this positive stuff going but I also want to be very honest with you, hell yeah, I have fear. If I didn’t admit that, I really would be lying. It is cancer after all. So, I don’t expect the fear to go away but my expectation and my experience is that a positive mind allows me to confront and balance that fear. It is there for sure. I’ve never had an operation before. I heard they actually hurt. Me, I don’t like pain. Hope the morphine is good. Will I have my own room? Hope so? Last time I was there for 6 days and had to share with Guido for 3 of them. I like Guido but I also like my own space…hey I’m 65 years old! So, yeah, I can make a long list of fears, but they are there and I don’t really need to dwell on them. I will listen to them and then find a counter…at least we can get to neutral. In the powerful words of Nelson Mandella: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Budwig – Bud-Light

I talked a little about the Budwig Diet last week. Food can be medicine. Other cancer survivors strongly recommended this diet to me. I listen to them. They have been someplace I haven’t been before, looked that beast in the eye, and came away victorious. So yes, I listen.

I have to say that I don’t like diets. I am fairly disciplined in that area being a vegetarian, non alcohol-drinking, non smoking and almost non junk food eater. But I have to say, within that, I would like to eat what I want to eat when I want to. Being on a diet takes much of that away. But at the same time I recognize the benefit of a little discipline and I’ll listen to survivors a lot. I find solace in their words. They survived!

So, back to Budwig. Bascially a super alkaline diet as we described last week. I’m actually feeling very light energetically from it and it’s a good feeling. So, I’m keeping to it. It involves a lot of Flax Seed and Flax Seed Oil and Quark. I found out what Quark is….fancy German cottage cheese found in health food stores. I don’t like so much the combination of quark and flax seeds and flax seed oil (actually pretty yucky in my opinion) but if you mix enough fruit in it, I mean a lot of fruit in it, it’s not so bad. And here I thought a quark was one of those tiny light elements which are the building blocks of all matter. But now, it’s cheese! Who knew!? But, it’s special cheese and if I keep that quantum connection, it’s cheese made of light. So, I have changed the name of my diet from Budwig to Bud-Light. Gotta keep smiling and staying in the light.

Bye Bye Tiny:

So this week I am getting ready for surgery and having lots of tests and practice time in the hospital….blood tests, urine tests, EKG, total body bone scan, home injections for blood thinner etc, etc. I guess they figure if you can get past all this stuff, then the surgery will be like nothing or so I hope. This week, Tiny and I are saying our good-byes and having some really honest communication. Some of which are kind and some I start with, “look you little mother-effer…” but we’re doing good and coming to terms and a good understanding.

So the other day, Tiny says, “…so did you get the lesson?” And I responded, yes I did. And he asks, “what was it?” And I answered, “Harmony”. He asked me, “how did you know?” I said, a friend told me. And that actually happened. I heard from a friend after many years of almost no communication and she writes and asks, what do I think of the word, “Harmony”. And like that, I got it. She then sent me this quote from the Tao Te Ching. I share it with you here.
the best way to live
is to be like water
for water benefits all things
and goes against none of them
it provides for all people
and even cleanses those places
a man is loath to go
in this way it is just like Tao

live in accordance with the nature of things:
build your house on solid ground
keep your mind still
when giving, be kind
when speaking, be truthful
when ruling, be just
when working, be one-pointed
when acting, remember – timing is everything

one who lives in accordance with nature
does not go against the way of things
he moves in harmony with the present moment
always knowing the truth of just what to do

So, old lessons come home and arrive in the most unexpected ways. I am finding Harmony and living to that model. That which is harmonious to me, I embrace, that which is not, I let it go. That feels like a Spring Cleaning. I am already looking forward to the Equinox!

Love to All, Light to All, Peace to All