May you learn to breath ...
This is a poem about profound self-healing, breath, love and death. It was sent to me by Sharon Leahy, a practicing hypnotherapist, available for consultation on spiritual growth matters 541.347.5666
BELLS PALSY AND THE BUDDHA
(an autobiography)
In the morning, I was fine.
In the evening, the right side
of my face
was paralyzed;
my mouth
drooped
and would not seal;
my eye
would not close.
In a matter of moments,
I had become a monster.
They called it Bells Palsy,
and offered little hope.
Many massages
from the Gold Beach Dakini.
Maybe you should look
at your emotions, she said.
I didn’t understand.
I thought she meant the torment
I felt
watching people
watch my face.
In extremis,
I casually said to the clairvoyant:
Just wondering what’s going on in my life.
Looking down the trail
of my discarded husks,
the long-eyed one
spoke of my lives
as a Masai warrior and Tibetan monk.
You’re in a Mystery School, she said.
Be alert
for the oriental man
who hands you a packet of papers.
Attending a workshop a month later:
It’s about fully experiencing
your emotions,
the bodhisattva said,
his Oriental face gently smiling
into my gargoyle countenance
as he handed me a packet of papers.
When we have fear,
we stop breathing.
When we stop breathing,
we stop feeling our emotions.
When we stop feeling our emotions,
they don’t get integrated into our lives,
and
the repressed emotions
can manifest in the body
as dis-ease.
Breathe, he said.
Always be mindful of your breathing.
When you’re with your breathing,
you’re in the present.
When you’re in the present,
you are fully feeling and integrating
your emotions.
Mornings sitting on the floor,
breathing.
Restless and crazed.
An agony to sit still and just breathe.
Do not place your values
in the material world, he said.
Everything there
will die,
end,
and disappoint you.
There is no security in anything
you can see, touch, or feel.
Keep breathing, he said.
Stay in the moment,
and
feel your emotions fully.
You can appreciate and enjoy
the material world,
but don’t invest in it as security,
don’t attach to it,
don’t find your values in it.
Breathe.
Keep your attention on your breathing.
When you are with your breathing,
you are with the present moment,
where you need to be
to be fully alive.
Visions of chanting monks and a rising cobra.
Gautama’s precious gifts of grief.
It’s money, honey,
that’s where you’re attached,
the Buddha said,
sitting full lotus in my flower bed.
I breathe in,
feeling my suddenly shakey finances.
My Taurus is writhing on the floor
of my gut,
twisting and drooling in a frenzy of fear.
Hey,
here’s another place
you’re hooked into the world,
the Buddha said,
a small smile of pleasure
laying gently on his lips.
Half-faced,
scared and confused,
I sit with my feelings
about being homeless.
It could happen any time,
the Buddha said, smiling.
And,
oh, hey,
the Buddha said
from his seat in the daisies,
what about the people you love …
and a trap door opened at my feet.
Breathing in free fall.
The path out of suffering
is about not being attached to things,
not trying to control anybody,
not trying to stop things from changing,
to be gratefully at peace with what is,
whatever it is,
the Buddha said.
Everything that happens is the perfect unfoldment of that person’s life,
and life lessons,
at that particular moment in time.
Breathe, the bodhisattva said.
He teaches me to dance
with the Guardian Diety Mahakala.
Swirling swords
cutting cords
of attachment.
Be sure to thank him
and release him when you’re done,
the bodhisattva says.
You don’t want him hanging around.
It’s spiritual madness, Carolyn said.
The dark night of the soul.
Don’t expect to be sane
until you give up
your self-image of victimhood.
Breathe, he said.
Your feet are exchanging atoms
right now
with the floor
they are resting on.
Nothing is solid or separate.
You and I
and the earth
and the sea
and the stars
and the silverware
are all one mass of flowing energy.
We are all parts of,
and united in,
what the physicists
call
a unified energy field.
We are not separate and alone.
We are each one small part
of the whole.
We are each
one small part of the
unified energy field.
The unified energy field is
science’s name for God.
The whole is God.
We are each a piece of God.
We are all learning our lessons
as best we can,
over many lives,
working to reconnect
with our Godliness.
Allow everything to happen as it will, allow everyone to be as they are.
Make no judgments,
the bodhisattva says.
Just keep your mind
in full Godliness:
in pure unconditional love.
And remember to breathe, he says.
You can chant
Om Namo Amida Buddha
to connect with unconditional love.
And keep breathing he says.
I lay on his table,
trying to find repressed emotions. There’s Ganesh on the riverbank,
looking at me,
encouraging me to stay on
this strange and groundless path.
Keep breathing, the bodhisattva says.
And still my face doesn’t heal.
After drawing the energy meridians
on my body
with her well-oiled hands,
the golden-hearted Dakini says:
I feel it’s something to do with
your father.
Another energy worker’s table:
Iliel’s eyes are soft and round,
seeing the unseen.
She focuses her gentle gaze on me.
I see a line
from your injured face
to your heart,
she says.
Integrate your emotions,
the bodhisattva said.
Breathe.
Your hara line,
the yogi said.
You must strengthen your power center.
See that golden cord
from the base of your spine,
the long-eyed clairvoyant said.
It stretches to
the center of the earth,
grounding you.
Naked and red,
dancing in the sky,
Vajra Varahi,
the remover
of veils of ignorance,
looks me in the face,
and shows me her big curved knife.
Go for it, I say.
The veils start to drop.
god-awful thoughts
start flashing in my mind.
How easy it would be
if the son of a bitch would just die.
I hold my breath.
Dear god,
that’s not me thinking this shit, is it?
I slam the thoughts down
and bury them
in the compost heap
at the pit of my stomach.
A nice person like me
doesn’t think things like that.
The thoughts keep popping up
out of my gut.
I’m standing in the kitchen,
wham!
I wish he’d die slams into my mind. Smash!
I push it down and hide it.
Wham!
I’m brushing my teeth,
I wish he’d die
dashes across my mind.
Slam,
I push it down
under the darkness in my gut.
Whenever I’m not focusing
on something,
whenever my mind is soft,
these fierce, angry thoughts
smash into my mind.
I go from peace, to hate, to fear,
to suppressing the thought,
all in a microsecond,
many times a day.
Am I possessed by a mad woman?
I’m having these horrible thoughts,
I say to the full-hearted one…
Wishing people
who are causing grief in my life
would just die.
Her eyes fill with tears.
We all have thoughts like that,
she says.
We have to let them come up
and just be recognized.
Just breathe through them,
she says.
Let them float away like clouds.
My eyes fill with tears
seeing her tears
hearing that she
and others, too,
are afflicted
with these violent, insane thoughts.
Hearing that I’m not alone
in this agony of wierdness
heals something in me
instantly.
Gives me courage to
explore
this strange part of me.
Wham!
Die, sucker, die!
The thought rises so fast
and so hard
it takes my breath away.
I just look at the thought
in amazement.
Where is this shit coming from?
The next time,
the thought has less force.
If he’d only die,
my life would be so much better.
I let it come up,
I admit that the thought
came out of me.
I remind myself that I did not
consciously
frame the thought.
The thought floats out on its way.
I breathe.
It’s ok.
May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
Keep breathing, he says.
Mendocino.
Should I see the woman psychic?
Vajra Varahi says yes,
you got some serious veils, babe.
You’ve got your father’s energy
blocking your third eye,
the psychic says.
You can’t see your spiritual path
with his energy there.
Take it out, I say.
May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
I’m ten years old
in a fifty year old body,
laying on the energy worker’s table.
I’m watching
my father’s raging face
burst into metaphorical flame,
and I’m screaming,
don’t do it, don’t do it,
knowing there’s a beating coming.
Your soul may belong to Jesus,
he says,
taking off his belt,
but your ass belongs to me.
I’m thrashing, kicking,
screaming on her table,
breathing like crazy.
I feel an enormous ball of energy
burst out of my belly.
The terror is gone,
like turning off a light.
You held that inside all these years,
she says.
Now you can use that energy
for healing.
There are no victims,
the bodhisattva says.
Before each life,
and during our lives,
we each agree
on a spiritual level
to receive the lessons
we know we need
to make progress on our spiritual paths.
Breathe, he says.
On her table,
I’m a child again,
the family at the kitchen table,
my father’s face grows horns
and turns black.
His body turns into spikey sticks.
She puts me in a safety bubble
and I scream at him,
you’re killing us,
you’re killing us
and you’ve already killed mom,
look at her,
she’s already gone.
There’s just a grey shadow of her
sitting at the kitchen table.
I want you to die,
I want you to die I scream at him,
and the black demon face
grows big scared eyes.
Ripping out the cords I can feel
around my heart,
stop sucking my energy, I yell,
get your own energy,
stop draining mine.
I drive home, feeling great.
I look at the prayer flags in my garden.
A week later,
it took me three hours to write these words…
and during that three hours,
on the other side of the continent,
my father died.
Out of the fifty years I’ve been alive,
he dies in the three hours
I’m writing about him.
There are no coincidences.
We are all connected in the energy field,
we are all totally aware,
we are all completely comprehensively
all-knowing.
We just don’t let ourselves
bring the awareness
into our daily minds.
We are all one unified energy field.
We are each a piece of God
the all-knowing.
Breathe, he says.
I look at the candle flame,
saying goodbye to a father
I haven’t seen in 20 years,
feeling the oddness around my heart.
I expect he’s in life review about now. Gonna be short on popcorn at that show.
Me and the candle.
I breathe.
Please know I have no anger.
We played out
our spiritual agreement
to live together for a time,
teaching each other as best we could.
You gave me the opportunity
to achieve precious growth
on my eternal path
by agreeing to live this life
which was so unsatisfying to you,
so barren of joy.
You gave me the opportunity
to break free of the cultural blindness,
to break free of the pattern;
to break free of the entire concept
of victimhood.
A million blessings on you for that gift.
Thank you for playing
the bad guy
so well,
thank you
for motivating me
to leave,
to get the hell out,
to find my own truths,
my own wholeness,
my own path.
You and me,
and all of us,
we’re all the same.
Not good,
not bad.
Just ignorant babes
working out our karmic stuff.
We figure out a little in this life,
figure out a little more in the next.
May your karma
rest lightly upon you.
May your next life be holy.
May you have peace.
May you learn to breathe.
October 16, 1997
Sharon Leahy
This is a poem about profound self-healing, breath, love and death. It was sent to me by Sharon Leahy, a practicing hypnotherapist, available for consultation on spiritual growth matters 541.347.5666
BELLS PALSY AND THE BUDDHA
(an autobiography)
In the morning, I was fine.
In the evening, the right side
of my face
was paralyzed;
my mouth
drooped
and would not seal;
my eye
would not close.
In a matter of moments,
I had become a monster.
They called it Bells Palsy,
and offered little hope.
Many massages
from the Gold Beach Dakini.
Maybe you should look
at your emotions, she said.
I didn’t understand.
I thought she meant the torment
I felt
watching people
watch my face.
In extremis,
I casually said to the clairvoyant:
Just wondering what’s going on in my life.
Looking down the trail
of my discarded husks,
the long-eyed one
spoke of my lives
as a Masai warrior and Tibetan monk.
You’re in a Mystery School, she said.
Be alert
for the oriental man
who hands you a packet of papers.
Attending a workshop a month later:
It’s about fully experiencing
your emotions,
the bodhisattva said,
his Oriental face gently smiling
into my gargoyle countenance
as he handed me a packet of papers.
When we have fear,
we stop breathing.
When we stop breathing,
we stop feeling our emotions.
When we stop feeling our emotions,
they don’t get integrated into our lives,
and
the repressed emotions
can manifest in the body
as dis-ease.
Breathe, he said.
Always be mindful of your breathing.
When you’re with your breathing,
you’re in the present.
When you’re in the present,
you are fully feeling and integrating
your emotions.
Mornings sitting on the floor,
breathing.
Restless and crazed.
An agony to sit still and just breathe.
Do not place your values
in the material world, he said.
Everything there
will die,
end,
and disappoint you.
There is no security in anything
you can see, touch, or feel.
Keep breathing, he said.
Stay in the moment,
and
feel your emotions fully.
You can appreciate and enjoy
the material world,
but don’t invest in it as security,
don’t attach to it,
don’t find your values in it.
Breathe.
Keep your attention on your breathing.
When you are with your breathing,
you are with the present moment,
where you need to be
to be fully alive.
Visions of chanting monks and a rising cobra.
Gautama’s precious gifts of grief.
It’s money, honey,
that’s where you’re attached,
the Buddha said,
sitting full lotus in my flower bed.
I breathe in,
feeling my suddenly shakey finances.
My Taurus is writhing on the floor
of my gut,
twisting and drooling in a frenzy of fear.
Hey,
here’s another place
you’re hooked into the world,
the Buddha said,
a small smile of pleasure
laying gently on his lips.
Half-faced,
scared and confused,
I sit with my feelings
about being homeless.
It could happen any time,
the Buddha said, smiling.
And,
oh, hey,
the Buddha said
from his seat in the daisies,
what about the people you love …
and a trap door opened at my feet.
Breathing in free fall.
The path out of suffering
is about not being attached to things,
not trying to control anybody,
not trying to stop things from changing,
to be gratefully at peace with what is,
whatever it is,
the Buddha said.
Everything that happens is the perfect unfoldment of that person’s life,
and life lessons,
at that particular moment in time.
Breathe, the bodhisattva said.
He teaches me to dance
with the Guardian Diety Mahakala.
Swirling swords
cutting cords
of attachment.
Be sure to thank him
and release him when you’re done,
the bodhisattva says.
You don’t want him hanging around.
It’s spiritual madness, Carolyn said.
The dark night of the soul.
Don’t expect to be sane
until you give up
your self-image of victimhood.
Breathe, he said.
Your feet are exchanging atoms
right now
with the floor
they are resting on.
Nothing is solid or separate.
You and I
and the earth
and the sea
and the stars
and the silverware
are all one mass of flowing energy.
We are all parts of,
and united in,
what the physicists
call
a unified energy field.
We are not separate and alone.
We are each one small part
of the whole.
We are each
one small part of the
unified energy field.
The unified energy field is
science’s name for God.
The whole is God.
We are each a piece of God.
We are all learning our lessons
as best we can,
over many lives,
working to reconnect
with our Godliness.
Allow everything to happen as it will, allow everyone to be as they are.
Make no judgments,
the bodhisattva says.
Just keep your mind
in full Godliness:
in pure unconditional love.
And remember to breathe, he says.
You can chant
Om Namo Amida Buddha
to connect with unconditional love.
And keep breathing he says.
I lay on his table,
trying to find repressed emotions. There’s Ganesh on the riverbank,
looking at me,
encouraging me to stay on
this strange and groundless path.
Keep breathing, the bodhisattva says.
And still my face doesn’t heal.
After drawing the energy meridians
on my body
with her well-oiled hands,
the golden-hearted Dakini says:
I feel it’s something to do with
your father.
Another energy worker’s table:
Iliel’s eyes are soft and round,
seeing the unseen.
She focuses her gentle gaze on me.
I see a line
from your injured face
to your heart,
she says.
Integrate your emotions,
the bodhisattva said.
Breathe.
Your hara line,
the yogi said.
You must strengthen your power center.
See that golden cord
from the base of your spine,
the long-eyed clairvoyant said.
It stretches to
the center of the earth,
grounding you.
Naked and red,
dancing in the sky,
Vajra Varahi,
the remover
of veils of ignorance,
looks me in the face,
and shows me her big curved knife.
Go for it, I say.
The veils start to drop.
god-awful thoughts
start flashing in my mind.
How easy it would be
if the son of a bitch would just die.
I hold my breath.
Dear god,
that’s not me thinking this shit, is it?
I slam the thoughts down
and bury them
in the compost heap
at the pit of my stomach.
A nice person like me
doesn’t think things like that.
The thoughts keep popping up
out of my gut.
I’m standing in the kitchen,
wham!
I wish he’d die slams into my mind. Smash!
I push it down and hide it.
Wham!
I’m brushing my teeth,
I wish he’d die
dashes across my mind.
Slam,
I push it down
under the darkness in my gut.
Whenever I’m not focusing
on something,
whenever my mind is soft,
these fierce, angry thoughts
smash into my mind.
I go from peace, to hate, to fear,
to suppressing the thought,
all in a microsecond,
many times a day.
Am I possessed by a mad woman?
I’m having these horrible thoughts,
I say to the full-hearted one…
Wishing people
who are causing grief in my life
would just die.
Her eyes fill with tears.
We all have thoughts like that,
she says.
We have to let them come up
and just be recognized.
Just breathe through them,
she says.
Let them float away like clouds.
My eyes fill with tears
seeing her tears
hearing that she
and others, too,
are afflicted
with these violent, insane thoughts.
Hearing that I’m not alone
in this agony of wierdness
heals something in me
instantly.
Gives me courage to
explore
this strange part of me.
Wham!
Die, sucker, die!
The thought rises so fast
and so hard
it takes my breath away.
I just look at the thought
in amazement.
Where is this shit coming from?
The next time,
the thought has less force.
If he’d only die,
my life would be so much better.
I let it come up,
I admit that the thought
came out of me.
I remind myself that I did not
consciously
frame the thought.
The thought floats out on its way.
I breathe.
It’s ok.
May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
Keep breathing, he says.
Mendocino.
Should I see the woman psychic?
Vajra Varahi says yes,
you got some serious veils, babe.
You’ve got your father’s energy
blocking your third eye,
the psychic says.
You can’t see your spiritual path
with his energy there.
Take it out, I say.
May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
I’m ten years old
in a fifty year old body,
laying on the energy worker’s table.
I’m watching
my father’s raging face
burst into metaphorical flame,
and I’m screaming,
don’t do it, don’t do it,
knowing there’s a beating coming.
Your soul may belong to Jesus,
he says,
taking off his belt,
but your ass belongs to me.
I’m thrashing, kicking,
screaming on her table,
breathing like crazy.
I feel an enormous ball of energy
burst out of my belly.
The terror is gone,
like turning off a light.
You held that inside all these years,
she says.
Now you can use that energy
for healing.
There are no victims,
the bodhisattva says.
Before each life,
and during our lives,
we each agree
on a spiritual level
to receive the lessons
we know we need
to make progress on our spiritual paths.
Breathe, he says.
On her table,
I’m a child again,
the family at the kitchen table,
my father’s face grows horns
and turns black.
His body turns into spikey sticks.
She puts me in a safety bubble
and I scream at him,
you’re killing us,
you’re killing us
and you’ve already killed mom,
look at her,
she’s already gone.
There’s just a grey shadow of her
sitting at the kitchen table.
I want you to die,
I want you to die I scream at him,
and the black demon face
grows big scared eyes.
Ripping out the cords I can feel
around my heart,
stop sucking my energy, I yell,
get your own energy,
stop draining mine.
I drive home, feeling great.
I look at the prayer flags in my garden.
A week later,
it took me three hours to write these words…
and during that three hours,
on the other side of the continent,
my father died.
Out of the fifty years I’ve been alive,
he dies in the three hours
I’m writing about him.
There are no coincidences.
We are all connected in the energy field,
we are all totally aware,
we are all completely comprehensively
all-knowing.
We just don’t let ourselves
bring the awareness
into our daily minds.
We are all one unified energy field.
We are each a piece of God
the all-knowing.
Breathe, he says.
I look at the candle flame,
saying goodbye to a father
I haven’t seen in 20 years,
feeling the oddness around my heart.
I expect he’s in life review about now. Gonna be short on popcorn at that show.
Me and the candle.
I breathe.
Please know I have no anger.
We played out
our spiritual agreement
to live together for a time,
teaching each other as best we could.
You gave me the opportunity
to achieve precious growth
on my eternal path
by agreeing to live this life
which was so unsatisfying to you,
so barren of joy.
You gave me the opportunity
to break free of the cultural blindness,
to break free of the pattern;
to break free of the entire concept
of victimhood.
A million blessings on you for that gift.
Thank you for playing
the bad guy
so well,
thank you
for motivating me
to leave,
to get the hell out,
to find my own truths,
my own wholeness,
my own path.
You and me,
and all of us,
we’re all the same.
Not good,
not bad.
Just ignorant babes
working out our karmic stuff.
We figure out a little in this life,
figure out a little more in the next.
May your karma
rest lightly upon you.
May your next life be holy.
May you have peace.
May you learn to breathe.
October 16, 1997
Sharon Leahy
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