Adversity as a gift

It's a reframe that carries no small amount of grace

For the last two days, I’ve been fighting off a cold as if I were Superman battling Lex Luthor.

I’m supposed to be on a flight to the mainland next week—Santa Fe to be exact—to start a two-year certification course in Soul Alchemy and trauma coaching. It’s an important step in my life and personal growth, and the last thing I want to do is miss the first week of training. Nor do I want to flush all the money already spent on airfare and other expenses etc. down the toilet, unused.

Most of all, I don’t want to succumb to the interference this looming bug represents.

Yes, interference.

It’s no accident, me trying to get sick at this juncture. Have you noticed the same pattern in your own life? Just when you need to be at your best to show up for something really important personal growth-wise, you stumble and fall into a hole? Maybe illness shows up, or maybe some sort of family emergency or a financial crisis or the reawakening of an addiction?

It’s not coincidence. There are definitely negative forces that do not want us growing and stepping into our power. And the closer we get to doing so, the more intense the pressure against us.

Anyway, I’m half-asleep in the wee hours this morning, feeling the growing pressure in my chest to cough, sensing the edge of a sore throat. Apparently all the Chinese herbs, homeopathic remedies, and vitamin C I’ve been throwing at this invisible “bug” invading my body are failing at their jobs.

Feeling frustrated, it suddenly it occurs to me I’ve been approaching the situation all wrong.

Resistance is futile

Any decent martial artist will tell you resistance is a waste of time and energy. Fighting something, energetically, is like double taxation. There’s the press of the “enemy” upon you and the expenditure of increased opposing energy fighting back the press.

What brought this to mind was undoubtedly the series of fight sequences between Bruce Lee and Mohammad Ali that “coincidentally” showed up while I was scrolling through my social media feed—odd videos vastly distant from my normal algorithmic content—fight sequences which weren’t truly fights at all. They were more like teaching dances, with Ali fiercely attacking and Lee flowing like water around the jabs, delivering lighting strikes and flowing away, all the while coaching Ali to “breathe” and “relax.”

I recalled my own training in Aikido, a martial art that views any attack as a “gift” of energy that can be received, turned around, and given back with very little expenditure of one’s own energy in the process.

Hmmmm.

I contemplated how I’d been throwing “outside” ballistics at this bug—herbs, vitamins etc. Sure, they’re wonderfully useful as supports for the body. But I’d been using them like bullets.

There, take that, bug! Take that! WHAM! POW!

Was I gifting the bug instead of myself using that approach?

Drawing on the light

And then there was the tactic of drawing LIGHT and LOVE into the fray … like calling down lighting from the heavens to strike one’s opponent.

Why was I seeing light and love as outside myself? Like some resource in which I was deficient? Why was I wasting my energy trying to locate and then magnetize the light into me so I could use it against the bug when the light is already me?

Why was I trying to weaponize the light against something I viewed as potentially harming me? Holy Moly!

All this ambled through my mind as I lay there in the dark, both cats snuggled up against me outside the covers, one on one side, one on the other. And I thought:

What if I just lie here and feel my light?

What if I gently lean into what I already am and feel light and love pulsing, not just through me, but as me?

And as I did just that, strength flowed through my body. I felt an emanation—not against anything—but simply a quiet glowing sensation that felt like strength itself.

How could anything possibly attack and harm this? I wondered.

How, indeed?

What if I just lie here and accept the gift of the bug? (Or whatever the hell it is.) What if I simply dance with it as light instead of fighting as a limited human?

What would Bruce Lee do?

As I’m in the beginning of the question, I don’t yet know how this will all turn out. I do know, however, that I feel better—at least psychically—already.

Time will tell.

Reframe

But back to gifting for a moment.

What if we accepted everything that came into our lives—parking tickets, sudden windfalls, eviction notices and unexpected promotions—as gifts from life? Gifts that, pleasant or otherwise, are only here to advance us? Take us to the next level? Refine and unburden us?

One of my dearest friends was floored by a cancer diagnosis a couple years ago. But the difficult healing journey it took her on (which she handled with utter grace) changed her life for the better in so many many ways, she hasn’t even discovered all the blessings yet.

And hers is not an unusual tale.

Out of the ashes rises the phoenix.

Surely, taking the Aikido viewpoint of embracing blows as gifts whose energy we can use to our advantage beats the alternative of wallowing in victimhood and despair?

Talk about a potent reframe!

Two days later

Well … I haven’t gotten “sick.”

I have a deep cough and am bone tired. But sick? No.

I’m still taking homeopathics and whole-food vitamin C. And I confess I’m doing urine therapy. Yeah. I know. Thirty-five years ago that was my reaction as well. But at that time in my life I was blessed to have a naturopathic doctor who learned about it while studying natural medicine in China long before US citizens were even allowed in the country. (I never did discover how he pulled that off!)

He would often talk about the benefits of drinking one’s urine—at which point I would make gagging noises, make a face and change the subject. But then, being a health journalist, I couldn’t help but study up on it.

Much to my surprise, I learned that urine is a byproduct of blood plasma filtration! Who knew? More to the point, blood and blood plasma are constantly being created by the body and constantly picking up and transporting all the biochemicals and antibodies the body creates moment-to-moment to use in response to pathogens the body is exposed to—including bacterias and viruses.

In other words, the body is constantly manufacturing the precise antibodies we need to stay healthy … and … we piss it all away.

Hmmmm.

I still wouldn’t do it. My social training was totally against it no matter how beneficial the practice might be. But then one morning I woke up and immediately registered two things: I felt terrible—I had a blinding headache and there were muscular aches and pains throughout my body—and I literally heard the words “urine therapy.”

I staggered to the bathroom and discovered, much to my horror, that I had a tick bite on my hip—and the tick was circled in the classic black lump with the outside red ring that could only spell L-Y-M-E D-I-S-E-A-S-E.

I got rid of the tick and peed in a jar. Then I found an eye dropper and proceeded to put 10 drops of urine under my tongue.

And I have to tell you it took feeling like I was going to die any second to do it.

And …

There was practically no taste whatsoever.

Granted. I maintain a decent diet. I eat whole organic foods, and pretty much zero processed foods. I eat very little sugar. I’m on no medications. I don’t do drugs. And I drink at least two quarts of filtered water every day.

Basically the body is like programming a computer. And like a computer, the GIGO Effect is firmly in play:

GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT

So, if this subject interests you, take that into consideration.

Anyway, I proceeded to ingest 10 drops of my urine every two hours—from a fresh jar every time because the body changes biochemically second-by-second in response to what it needs. By 5 pm I felt like a normal human being. The rash had hugely diminished.

I woke up the next morning to about half the symptoms of the previous day and proceeded to follow the same protocol.

By morning #4 it was as if the tick never bit me.

I’ve since learned that the critical window for effectively curing a LYME infection is 14 days. If the body doesn’t get the right “medicine” in that window, whether natural or otherwise, the ramifications can be severe.

Thirty years later I still show no signs of LYME.

Which is why, to this day, any time anything negatively impacts my body, I turn to urine therapy automatically. It costs nothing. Is readily available. And is precision-made by my body to deal with what ails it.

Just sayin’.

On another note

Totally changing subjects, I’d like to mention something else I ran across on social media this week. (I confess I love my algorithm. It consistently delivers delight!)

Watching the 21-minute video below of Jacob Collier doing musical improv with the San Francisco Philharmonic Orchestra has given me chills and brought tears to my eyes each of the six times I’ve watched it so far!

The beauty of humanity—our beauty as creators—shines through this young man. And the joy he evokes bringing people into the majesty and miracle of making music together is incredible.

Truly, orchestras, with their different instruments adding their own unique color and splash of character to the sound of the whole, are an exquisite reflection of humanity and how, when we come together in unison—even while each of us is doing our own thing—magic happens.

Contrast this with the depraved crud twerked out by Bad Bunny and forced upon 125 million people during the recent NFL Stupor Bowl half-time extravaganza.

(Lyric sample: “Let's take a selfie, say "cheese" Let the ones I already fucked smile … Buzzing high over in Washington Heights. The coke is white, yeah, yeah, the 2CB's pink, eh-eh.” )

Seriously? That’s entertainment for our nation’s kids and adults?

It’s gets ever easier telling the difference between who is onboard the rising tide of consciousness and who is not …

Much love and aloha ~