Enjoy life! There?s lots of time to be dead.?refrigerator magnet

TO THINK I?d live to see the day when the food that is supposed to nourish me and the medicines that are supposed to cure me pose a vast danger to my existence. Even water, once the element of life, teems with dangerous microbes unless bottled and paid for.

Recently my husband and I had a bout of illnesses, some involving hospitalization. Faithfully he downs the handful of pills his six or seven doctors prescribed and eats all the red(!) meat he can which they say will boost up his hemoglobin. I am enslaved by a lesser number of pills and try to be more holistic. But I have to search high and low for pesticide-free greens to make my daily veggie juice and I have to exercise faithfully (limbs, brains and imagination). So why are the pair of us feeling like this?

But you guys look good?for your age! I am cheered on by my friend Nona Esquivel. Better to look good even when you?re not so good than look bad when you?re feeling diseased. (He he he).

They say old people love to dwell on their illnesses. So, for several months, every part of my body took its turn at being in trouble?heart, lungs, stomach, liver, bladder, nerves; eye, ear, nose, throat?also bones, muscles, skin, hair, teeth. Each disease had to seek its own doctor and its own medical bombardment. After that I was no longer coughing or dizzying but I could not digest anything.

Wilted!

I ran to Dr. Ed Concepcion, my year-round physician-acupuncturist, who accepts the job of keeping me together. He knows I?ve been taking medicinal drugs. He crochettily examines my tongue over and under and we discuss the consistency of my stool. (Such romantic conversations go on at Dr. Ed?s clinic). (I also once got manicured by a patient).

It is obvious, he humphs finally. The flora in your stomach has wilted. Your garden is dead! It could not survive the two weeks of potent antibiotics that had been prescribed by other doctors. Chinese medicine is good at relieving pain but is stumped with infections. It can only teach how to prevent illness. Viruses have become indestructible. Strong antibiotics terrorize them into temporary submission but they demolish one?s antibodies. It would take a lot of holistic work?needles, flushing, vegetable juicing, herbs, meditation, healing dance?to get my system blooming again. The Great Wall of China wasn?t built in a day.

How right he was! What if I have no more money to pour into hospitals and medicines? Well, I remember my friend Romy saying, ?I am having a pain in one quadrant of my brain. But I don?t run to the hospital. I can?t afford the tests and even if they found something I can?t afford the treatments anyway. So I just wait it out. Something else will happen.?

And I realized that it?s the same with old people who can, yes, still afford treatment. Unless one?s resources are infinite, they will eventually bottom out and one still faces the same quandary.
No treatments

Then I remembered Sammy, an elderly friend who had a bad heart but a lot more money. He had the same mind as Romy. No treatments either. By choice. He was told he needed an angioplasty but he decided to endure the pain instead. Until the household found Sammy one dawn on the bathroom floor, dead. His friends wept but those who knew admired him for his resolve and for the courage to keep to it. I wondered if I am gasping for oxygen I will not cry, ?Take me to Emergency!?

All my younger friends are into some kind of spiritual discipline?Chit and Rita and Edna and Lyvia and Ning. Zen has so many comforting phrases floating about which I used to take for granted that I understood, until I decided to take them apart. We need an alternative to hospital bills.

What does to ?let go? mean?

The Zen-ists dug in. It is letting go of one?s everyday feelings of control. To ?let go? means to rest. To stop thinking. Because this will open one to whatever is going to happen. Most of the time it is to something beyond the expected. Letting go also means to ?go with the flow.? What flow?

Deepak Chopra calls it ?the flow of life??the harmonious interaction of all the elements and forces that structure existence. Going with the flow is also called the law of giving and receiving, the essence of relationships. If you only know how to take, if you only know how to give, that interrupts the flow.

Someone questioned, Does going with the flow mean that if you are diagnosed with an illness you just go along with it, not do anything? Isn?t that contrary to the age-old advice that you must fight a disease to conquer it?

The flow

Not at all. In Romy?s case, he has let go of the idea that only doctors and hospitalization are the solutions to his suspected illness. He accepts that he won?t be able to afford that path. But he opens himself to access another combination of energies that may emerge. Nor should he be attached to its result. A miracle cure may happen. A good healer he knows little about may emerge. Unexpected money may come to enable a physician?s diagnosis and treatment. Or he may not be sick at all.

It does not mean, however, that Romy must stop trying to do something about his condition. He still has to try to keep as healthy as he can with natural foods, exercise, meditation, etc.

You interrupt the flow when you impose your beliefs. Such as, that without money to see a doctor one will die. One should allow the bigger choreography to take over. Not offer resistance. Can?t pay the bills? Don?t let it get you. Access the flow so magic can come into your life. But please, no expectations. That is why a crisis or an illness or a threat to security is the biggest potential for accessing the flow. Because then you can take a risk and make the impossible choice.

Silence is space

What is ?being in the moment?? Zen practitioners will tell you it is ?mindfulness,? ?awareness,? ?being the now.? It is total attention to the task at hand, whether it is washing a plate, conversing with someone, writing a paper, singing, dancing, painting, walking. But not to the exclusion of awareness of what is happening around?a fire next door, an emergency call, the pie burning.

Focus is enhanced by meditation. By going into the stillness. Silence is the space where answers come in. A little human effort is necessary for this discipline. One can begin by sitting five minutes a day, in the same place, at the same time. Just to establish a routine.

At first it is difficult. But expectations and boredom eventually vanish. Meditation becomes longer and more pleasurable and automatically stretches to 30 minutes, one hour. One must just not expect results. One can meditate for years and remain on the same plateau. But inevitably the big picture will emerge.

Silence is one?s anchor. The home base to which one will want to return again and again. Amen.