Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Planets Aligned

As I settled into the final countdown towards the surgery, I took a great interest in the fact that three eclipses occur this month, the first being a solar eclipse during my last full day at home. Energy seems to be powerful when the sun, moon and earth are lined up together, often portending an auspicious time for new beginnings.

Few times seem more in need of a good energy than the preparation for such an invasive procedure, so I created a day of meditation around the eclipse, including adding my name to the list for a concentrated healing at a particular hour in the early morning. I sat on the sofa where I expected to spend the next month convalescing, my feet squarely on the floor, my legs spread to open my wounded groin to the air and the energy, my heart pulsating with intention to heal.

Connection, whether real or imagined, clearly settled into my soul. Eyes alternately open and closed, I could feel the pulse of energy toes to head to fingertips, the silence roaring with the idea that thousands of people around the world were sitting in that single moment in contemplation of the eclipse, the alignment, and some in particular were thinking of me as well, not even knowing me, but still sending healing thoughts to this stranger across the seas. Throughout the day, I stopped occasionally and considered again the oneness of the universe and my tiny but significant (as much as anyone else's) place in it.

The long-anticipated surgery went magnificently well. The friend who took me gave me a beautiful stone agate which the anesthesiologist taped to the palm of my hand, adding (I saw later) a smiley face and her own name in support. Not in an elapsed time, but definitely in a state of my own conscious unconscious, I could feel the energy of the stone, empowered with all the blessings of friends and readers who held me in your thoughts that day.

When I awoke to the words, “It’s over, all done, you’re fixed!”, my tears flowed freely. Great moans of relief with every exhalation poured out. A palpable shedding of energy released shadows from my soul and bathed me in sunlight even in the artificial light of that basement recovery room.

For three hours, I lay focused on my breath, still so shallow and anesthetized, the alarm kept sounding when it got too thin. I wanted to be back in this world, but rested at last, so grateful to be finally and fully beyond the procedure.

Twelve hours after the first intake of drugs, I sat straight up clear and sharp, alert and excited. Even as I made friends with the nurse, I wanted to be on my way up to my room, on to my healing, on to my life. In the morning, I was cleared to walk across the room. By the afternoon, I touched the windows at both ends of the hallway.

On the third day, two days earlier than expected, I was released from the hospital and we began our journey home. The sun on my face for real, fresh air in my lungs, my spirit soared to not be so sore as I had been after the original accident.

I am convinced that the energy of that stone in the palm of my hand and the love from so many friends is why I am so well today, scribbling frenetically with inspired creativity and joy. Prayers, meditation, a heartfelt desire to be healed and living life more normally; all contributed to a replenished outlook on a life that, living more consciously, only gets better and better.

In the halls of pre-op procedures, in beds side by side, I became familiar with faces recognized the following days still suffering in their rooms as I walked more strongly each step towards going home. Each story is different, of course, but my lesson was so clear that attitude overrules predictions. I was determined to be done with this no matter what the doctors and nurses had said.

My first morning awakening in the clean sheets I had laid last week in preparation, I felt too excited to move directly to the couch as I had planned, but walked instead up to the street to breathe fresh air. One step before the other, I was feeling so fine, I thought it might not be too far to get some coffee, a goal of four hundred yards I had imagined previously might have been a month away.

It was too much, actually. I knew it about three quarters of the way up the road, but I kept walking anyway, thinking I could get a bus ride home or prevail upon an unknown neighbor, the police at worst by dialing 911 on the cell phone now in the palm of my hand; solutions are always available. Still, I trudged forward and back home again, step by slow and slower step, enjoying the sunshine and the smiles of people racing past. It was a relief to my woozy self to get home at last, a good lesson learned to really take it easy in this time, but still so thrilled to be alive and walking at all.

As for the stone that had become such a valuable symbol of my healing, I wanted to set it on the shelf with my mother’s odd trinkets and new warrior talismen, a trophy to remind me of the powerful achievement just accomplished. Lost in the linen or carried out on a food tray, however, it has passed on, having served its purpose for me, destined to appear magically to some one else in desperate need. I have my heart and sacral chakra, powerful once again, to prove what has been transformed.

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