FACTOR 7

If you ever lose your mind, I’ll be kind/ And if you ever lose your shirt, I’ll be hurt/ If you’re ever in a mill and get sawed in half, I won’t laugh/ It’s friendship, friendship, just a perfect blend ship . . .

While an undergraduate student at Harvard, Kelly A. Turner read an account of “Spontaneous Healing” and thought it odd that the medical profession showed no interest in what produced a cure in an illness they had pronounced incurable.  She proceeded to do her doctoral thesis on Radical Remission, interviewing over a thousand healees and alternative healers around the world.  From reams of research she identified Nine Key Factors that figured in their cancer remissions.  Each chapter in her enlightening book (Radical Remission by Kelly A. Turner, PhD) is devoted to one of those key factors.

While Turner’s research was with cancer survivors, it seemed obvious to me that those nine factors related to any illness, terminal or chronic, and to the process of Aging.  Having just survived total knee replacement surgery, I could relate to everything in her book but for this blog will focus on Factor 7, Embracing Social Support or “getting by with a little help from my friends.”

Cousin Judy was there to take me home after discharge.  Because she lives about an hour away and isn’t used to big city driving, she and her husband had driven down the day before so that she’d know exactly where to go.  So nice.  Things did not go well that first night home and it was necessary to call 911.  Neighbors responded to the flashing red lights and one drove Judy to the hospital.  How nice was that!  Thank you Carol.  My sons arrived shortly after and spent the night in the ER with me.  Thank you Carl & Jeff.  Multiple tests (MRI, CT scan, X-ray, blood) revealed nothing, rather they ruled out possibilities.  It’s likely that a small clot traveled through but didn’t stop.  Thank you, God.  Judy spent the next day with me in the hospital until I was cleared by the hospitalist and neurologist for discharge late in the afternoon.  How blessed I was with Judy’s loving care the next three days when my baby brother, Butchie, (the one I used to beat up on until he got big enough to turn the table on me) arrived from Colorado to relieve her.  We spent a delightful week together.  He turned me on to TV’s Good Wife (I’m hooked), replaced all the sprinkler heads, shopped, cooked, washed clothes, and even installed a new toilet.  Beyond nice. Thanks Butchie.

Throughout both weeks, friends and family called and the mantle is host to a display of get-well cards.  Judy did Healing Touch on my knee and showed Butchie what to do and, bless him, he did it!  He didn’t know what he was doing but I felt the intention of love and caring in my knee.  Friends sent distant healings as well.  So, just as the cancer patients responded, I also responded to: #1.Receiving love (“love is a high-frequency, health inducing form of energy shown to be more beneficial than exercise or diet”), #2. Not feeling alone (“loneliness is associated with increased cortisol levels — stress hormone — and a depressed immune profile”).  This was my first serious health challenge without the support of the Rose Man and I was feeling alone as the surgical date approached.  And #3. Physical touch (“hugging for only ten seconds a day can decrease blood pressure, reduce cortisol, and increase oxytocin — the cuddle hormone).  Only two weeks out from surgery, Physical Therapy was dumbfounded as to what to do with me because I was already meeting standard goals for home care.  How truly blessed I am with family and friends, and it’s why cancer support groups have proved so beneficial.

More about Radical Remission to come.  Oh yes, that lady in the basement is back.  (See posting of August 12, 2013.)

If you’re ever in a jam, here I am/ If you’re ever in a mess, S.O.S./ If you ever feel so happy you land in jail, I’m your bail/ It’s friendship, friendship, just a perfect blend ship/ When other friendships have been forgit/ Ours will still be it.  (Friendship songwriter: Cole Porter.) 

It’s in Everyone of Us

It’s in every one of us/ To be wise/ Find your heart/ Open up both your eyes.

I recently submitted an article on Spiritual Eldering to Energy Magazine (May/June 2014 — Issue 73).  According to Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalome, in his book, From Age-ing to Sage-ing. Spiritual Elders function as wisdomkeepers, evolutionary pathfinders, and pioneers in consciousness.  Eldering is a process of transmitting that wisdom.

Years ago I had the privilege of being in “community” with a spiritual elder and a pioneer in health care, an east coast psychiatrist who wrote a book that was number one on the New York Times bestseller list for an extended period of time.  His name was M. Scott Peck, and his book is the classic, The Road Less Traveled.  He invited us to call him Scotty and I remember a delightful day, sitting outside with him, elbow-to-elbow under the Colorado blue sky, eating lunch.  He was a quiet man, an interior man, even a troubled man perhaps; the kind of man that could conceive and write a book that begins, “Life is difficult;” a book well ahead of its time in that it drew on man/woman’s spirituality; unheard of in psychiatric circles at that time.  Scotty took his celebrity on the chin.  Part of his wardrobe was a neck collar and he was in line for, if I remember correctly, a third neck surgery.  He lived long enough to see his work accepted and appreciated by many in his profession and most certainly by seekers of truth.

I think Peck would have liked and respected Larry Dossey, M.D., another pioneer in consciousness, an outrageous thinker (way outside the box), controversial in conventional scientific circles, and a sage.  I’ve just finished reading his latest book, One Mind; How our Individual Mind is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why it Matters.  Both Peck and Dossey are mystics.

I believe we all are mystics only we either don’t recognize or we discount our mystical experiences, or they scare us because they’re outside of our comfort zone and people might think we’ve disconnected from reality.  “Mystics,” according to Peck, “acknowledge the enormity of the unknown, but rather than being frightened by it, they seek to penetrate ever deeper into it that they may understand more — even with the realization that the more they understand, the greater the mystery will become.”  That’s exactly what Dossey does so deliciously in his book.  Meditators frequently disconnect from reality, merging with the One Mind into blissful union.  Actually, that becomes part of their reality then; a reality that more and more people share.

Lyrics: We can all know everything/ Without ever knowing why/ It’s in every one of us/ By an by.

Music and lyrics by David Pomeranz.