Taking up the Sword

The state of limbo that suspends me between hospital and health challenges my soul. On spiritual, emotional and physical levels, it seems an effort to find any sign of forward movement.

Since the indefinite postponement of surgery, it made sense to replace the tube in my belly—as must happen monthly—and this has brought several days of increased spasms and forced hours of rest on the couch, disorienting even though I had planned and wanted to be lying there anyway. The new tube also keeps disconnecting and mysteriously leaks, causing loads of laundry. The constant irritants which I have tolerated for eight months have increased to an unacceptable level, grinding my mood like a tooth ache.

That I came to within a day of the surgery and fulfillment of finally putting the worst of this behind me is an outrageous insult to my belief that positive thinking can create results. So shocked by an expectation, so cruelly disappointed, these following days have been passed in a daze of inertia and depression, tears, disbelief and despair.

Spiritually, I am being told my higher self is returning to my body and the perfect process of over-coming resistance is taking place. The final skins of my old habits must be peeled away before I can embrace my true self. This is hard to believe when I feel so miserably defeated.

In no way am I alone in this and, in fact, many people suffer so much more than I. My willingness to lay this out so publicly in a blog is not a function of selfish egotism, but more an example of Chiron, the wounded healer, speaking truth without embarrassment so that others may take heart and join the choir. Constantly we have the message before us that we are not alone, but wrapped in our stubborn fears, it is difficult to feel the powerful support of love that surrounds and embraces us.

Patience wearing so thin, I admit that depression has taken a strong hold on me, creating darkness where I so recently felt immersed in golden light. Love that had been dancing over me feels withdrawn, miss-perceived and I am disheartened and desperate. Nothing has actually changed, everything is simply postponed, but my sense that events have conspired to thwart my recovery buries me like an avalanche in frustration.

I sit outside of life, full of self-pity and disillusion, watching others fall in love, take vacations, graduate and celebrate. Others thrive while I wallow, dependent on the outcome of an appeal determined by a bureaucratic process seemingly incapable of compassion, responsibility and the willingness to take a risk.

This week, I read again “the Way of the Superior Man” by David Deida, re-enforcing my belief that a man must stand his ground against all challenges and adversity. The truth of his purpose must take priority over family, work and societal expectations. Integrity of action determines the outcome…which might explain my life of mediocrity, disappointment and outright failure to thrive in the way that so many had predicted I should.

Only in these last years, having given up the struggle to live the normal family configuration, abandoning the well-defined and respectable, but failed business, and embracing the passion of music and writing these words, does my life begin to make sense. It still does even as I succumb to depression and fear that I am unable to heal, perhaps am even sub-consciously unwilling.

Deida says sexuality is the masculine life force, the passion that invigorates the blood. The connection of two souls in a blissful union arouses a spiritual ecstasy, elevating us far beyond the mundane order of ordinary life.

Intimidated by the possibility of that intimacy, I have effectively neutered myself, side-stepped the fulfillment of a life of passion. Possibly I am a warrior choosing to sit out the battle, fearful of victory.

I approached this surgery knowing it was a choice to be healed, that while unconscious, I would be guiding the surgeon’s hand. It is in my own power to regain my function or live without passion, even to live at all. In this context, delay of the surgery appears to be propitious. Apparently I was not fully recovered enough emotionally to risk a scalpel to my groin.

Only when confronted with the loss of sexuality am I able to penetrate the fear and realize how deeply I want a true and full connection, unable and unwilling to settle for a shadow of love—no matter how wonderful—without the physical consummation. To fully let go and merge into the Oneness of life, I must embrace the desire--not shy away from it--and be able to leap into action.

Unbridled passion—no matter how frightening—is everything.

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