Irises: Rainbow Bridges between Earth, Heaven
As soon as the goddess entered and brushed away the dreams that hovered around her, her brightness lit up all the cave.
“The Halcyon Birds,” Bulfinch’s Mythology
In the Greek myth “The Halcyon Birds,” the king of Thessaly dies at sea while his beloved wife Halcyone prays ceaselessly for his return. Halcyone’s prayers are heard by the goddess Hera. Hera can’t bear Halcyone’s pleading for the impossible return of the dead king, so she sends her attendant, the goddess Iris, on a mission. Iris dons her robe of many colors, then paints the sky with a rainbow on her way to deliver Hera’s message to the god of sleep. Hera wants the god of sleep to give Halcyon a dream about the king of Thessaly’s shipwreck so Halcyone will stop her incessant prayers. Iris’ radiance fills the sleeping god’s cave. She delivers her message to the god, then returns by her rainbow to the heavens.
The iridescent rainbow goddess Iris represents a connection between earth and heaven through the bows she creates with her robe—the female version of an Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat—when she traverses the air.
The iris flower bears her name. Symbolically, this bloom bridges earth with heaven because of its great beauty. It represents the ability to communicate messages with those who reside with (the) God(s). If you have lost a loved one to cancer, the iris might take on some extra significance for you.
Irises have been growing for decades at Grailville in Loveland, Ohio, which has served as a spiritual bridge between the human and the Divine. It is sacred ground upon which my 19-year-old son Brennan inspired one final time.
Buckets of extra irises from the property recently found their way into my little car, thanks to Mary Lu. They now are planted in Brennan’s garden behind my home. From sacred ground to hallowed ground, the irises connect the spiritual with the profane, the light with the dark, the living with the deceased. They help bring the Spirit to my son who sought the Spirit in the false highs of heroin. The flowers now provide a symbolic way to communicate with him.
The iris has another symbolic connection for me. Early usage of the French royal symbol, the fleur-de-lis/fleur-de-lys, probably referred to the iris, which grew abundantly along the river Lys, rather than to the lily. The fleur-de-lis is a symbol for the Boy Scouts, in which Brennan earned the Arrow of Light honor.
I look forward to the flowers beaming their iridescent radiance in the spring. There is no more meaningful addition to his garden.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
To invoke the energy of the rainbow, or of communication with your loved ones on the Other Side, perhaps meditate with a drop of iris essence or essential oil on your forehead between your eyebrows, or with an iris blossom next to you.
Sources:
Richard Martin, ed., “The Halcyon Birds,” Bulfinch’s Mythology (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1991), p. 65
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleur-de-lis, November 1, 2017
How to Manage Your Emotions
Enlightenment, peace, and joy will not be granted by someone else. The well is within us, and if we dig deeply in the present moment, the water will spring forth.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step
Digging deeply into the present moment can be enraging, terrifying, or sorrow-filled. That’s why many of us are experts at avoiding our feelings, at living in our heads, at focusing on thinking and doing rather than being.
When we are stimulated into raw emotions such as rage, terror, or grief, we experience uncomfortable physical sensations in our bodies—a red face, butterflies in the stomach, an ache in the heart. This happens because our brains are programmed to respond to threatening stimuli by dumping chemicals into our bloodstreams, according to Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, author of My Stroke of Insight.
“It takes less than 90 seconds for one of these programs to be triggered, surge through our body, and then be completely flushed out of our blood stream,” she said.
Hearing this on her CD, I got my own jolt. She was giving a physiological explanation for what my psychotherapist had taught me, a practice called the map the emotions. Practicing the map provided me with enormous assistance for successfully navigating the traumas I’ve endured since 2009—end-stage sarcoma, then divorce, then the loss of my 19-year-old.
And suddenly the experience of grief rising, cresting, and crashing like ocean waves made sense.
During those 90-second surges, I had practiced staying with the physical sensations in my body without thinking about them, analyzing them, judging them, or making stories about them. I did not have a choice about what happened those first 90 seconds inside my body. I did have a choice how I would respond. I could observe and accept the sensations, staying in my body and in the physiological experience; or I could ignore the sensations and get stuck in emotional pain.
After the 90 seconds were over, I had another choice. Was I going to turn my attention to the source of that stimulation, allow my negative story-teller to re-weave a web of drama, get emotionally triggered again, and continue the pain?
Or was I going to live in the present moment, turn my attention away from the trigger, and choose to let the experience go?
Sometimes I allowed myself to be triggered repeatedly for more than an hour. Yet I stayed with the practice of experiencing the physical sensations with each surge of emotion. Finally I would want some peace and I chose to stop setting off my brain’s limbic system with my thoughts.
It takes practice, like any other skill. Allow time to develop these new thinking and behavior patterns. If you choose this practice, be gentle with yourself as you learn this new way of engaging your thoughts and emotions.
By practicing the map of emotions, I made a conscious choice. I became response-able. Taylor said, “If you re-channel those energies into being aware of what is going on in the present moment, you will be able to make a breakthrough and discover joy and peace right in the present moment, inside of yourself and all around you.”
You will be digging deeply in the present moment, and the water of life will spring forth.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
If you feel a sudden surge of emotion, focus on the physical sensations it creates. Notice how it moves around or possibly gets intense. Notice it lift after 90 seconds. Do all of this without engaging your mind. See if it brings you a sense of peace or relief, and watch your thoughts to see if they want to re-engage with the initial trigger.
Sources:
Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life (New York: Bantam, March 1, 1992), pp. 41, 42.
Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey (Viking, New York: 2008), pp. 146, 148, 152.
Photo: http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=5127&picture=breaking-wave
Heidi Bright awarded Champion in Cancer Care
Heidi Bright, MDiv, Milford, Ohio, has been named 2017 Champion in Cancer Care by Cancer Support Community in Cincinnati.
The CSC gala on Saturday, Oct. 14, honored inspirational individuals working in cancer care.
Bright, in radical remission from highly aggressive end-stage sarcoma for six years, embodies the words Champion in Cancer Care—she champions genuine hope and hundreds of healing solutions for cancer patients, according to her nominator, Amy Ostigny, Executive Managing Director of eWomenNetwork Cincinnati.
As a national speaker and traditionally published author of Thriver Soup: A Feast for Living Consciously During the Cancer Journey, Bright emphasizes healing one’s life to open space for the body’s natural healing abilities to arise, said Ostigny.
“Her compassion shines through when speaking and writing because she knows the devastation of being told there are no more medical options and to get one’s affairs in order,” said Ostigny.
All proceeds from CSC’s signature fundraising event are channeled into free programs and services for anyone impacted by cancer. http://www.cancersupportcincinnati.org/Default.aspx
How to Quiet the Peanut Gallery
Be not thoughtless, watch your thoughts! Draw yourself out of the evil way, like an elephant sunk in mud.
The Dhammapada, v.327
Watch your thoughts! warns the Buddha. Negative self-talk and storytelling arise from an area in the left hemisphere of our brains that takes up about as much space as a peanut. Jill Bolte Taylor, author of My Stroke of Insight, calls it the “peanut gallery.”
Do you have a peanut gallery in your mind that runs negative thinking loops over and over again, like a broken record? Do you obsess over an event in the past or an upcoming situation, like a cancer treatment you have to endure? Do you whine and complain about the same things, like cancer treatment side-effects?
Perhaps you can steer your brain cells in a more pleasant direction.
Taylor says, “I have learned that I can own my power and stop thinking about events that have occurred in the past by consciously realigning myself with the present.”
Nothing is more empowering than realizing you don’t have to think thoughts that bring pain, she adds. “It is freeing to know that I have the conscious power to stop thinking those thoughts when I am satiated.”
How do you stop the negative thinking? Use that peanut in your brain to entice the elephant of negative thinking up out of the mud so you can wash the dirt of negativity away.
First notice that it’s going on. Try to simply observe, not judge, any looping thoughts. Watch your mind as an external witness so you can notice your habitual patterns.
Next, when you notice the negativity, try switching your attention to your body. Feel the four corners of your feet. Focus on your in-and-out breathing. This will slow down the self-talk and help you reconnect your mind with your body, returning yourself to wholeness and the present moment.
Then initiate some conscious self-talk. Some of my friends encourage me to say, “Cancel, cancel, cancel” when I express negative thinking. I also find it helpful to recite a ritual prayer or affirmation. Another method is to talk directly to the negative thinker inside our brains, saying, “Stop. I don’t need that anymore.” Or maybe imagine that clean elephant wagging its trunk in front of the peanut gallery, threatening it to shut up—or else.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
Watching your thoughts takes vigilance, because the peanut gallery is persistent. It can chatter incessantly, especially when you are tired. You have to be more persistent with redirecting your attention. Have your own plan in place to first notice, then deal with the negativity so you can return to the present moment where there is more peace.
Sources:
Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 10: The Dhammapada and Sutta Nipata, by Max Müller and Max Fausböll, [1881], at http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe10/sbe1025.htm 10/8/2017
Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey (Viking, New York: 2008), 147, 148, 152.
“Life is but a Dream”
“Row, row, row your boat / gently down the stream; / merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, / life is but a dream.”
On one level, this nursery rhyme is just a fun song to sing, especially in multi-part harmony. Yet it contains what might be a profound truth: life as we know it could be but a dream.
In the 2010 movie Inception, the main character and his wife spent fifty years within a dream constructing a world of their own choosing. What if this human life we are living also is a dream that has been constructed? What if, when we pass away, we wake up from this human dream and realize this drama does not encompass our true nature, who we really are?
This idea has been around for millennia. The Hindu scripture, The Bhagavad Gita, explains that our ability to dream demonstrates that all of creation itself is a dream, an illusion.
How can this be? British philosopher Alan Watts explained it beautifully in a lecture. He posed the idea that if we could stuff 75 years of life into one night of dreaming, and we could control what happened, and we could do this every night, we would spend the first few months fulfilling all our wishes while in the dream state.
After a few months we’d get bored and start adding adventures to our dreams. Then we’d get tired of that and we’d add a new dimension—forgetting that we actually are dreaming while in the dream. We would enter into the dream state and believe the experiences were real, which would give rise to fear. Yet it would be safe to try this, because when we woke up we would know it was all “only a dream.”
And with all the possibilities the universe could offer, we would eventually end up dreaming the kind of life we humans live now, playing with infinite possibilities and forgetting, while in the dream, that we are only dreaming. Watts says, “the whole nature of the Godhead, according to this idea, is to play that He’s not…. What you are, basically, deep deep down, far far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself. And when you find that out, you laugh yourself silly. You yourself are the eternal energy which appears as this universe.”
Indian yogi and guru Paramahansa Yogananda said much the same thing in “Awake from this Dream into Your Oneness with God.” “If in a dream you feel your leg crushed under a car, your suffering seems just as real as if your limb were actually injured. But when you wake up, you laugh and say, ‘Oh, how silly. It was only a nightmare.’ This is exactly what will happen when you wake up in God.
“God’s dream creation was not meant to frighten you, but to prod you to realize finally that it has no reality. So why be afraid of anything?”
The implication is that this life is only a dream, and it is only real while we are living it out as humans in three dimensions.
Great spiritual masters tell us that eventually we will wake up and truly know this life is but a dream. They teach that one way to wake up from this nightmare is to meditate. Yogananda, however, warned, “To state that the world is a dream, without trying to attain in meditation actual realization of this truth, may lead one to fanaticism. The wise man understands that even though mortal life is a dream, it contains dream pains. He adopts scientific methods to awaken from the dream….”
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
While we are in pain, meditation is pretty much impossible, even for those who practice regularly. Pain consumes the mind.
If you are struggling, perhaps you can find a small amount of comfort from maybe playing a little bit with the idea that while we are living a nightmare now, at some point we might wake up from this agony and feel far better.
Sources:
Alan Watts lecture at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G79EHVjLgwU
Excerpts from a talk by Paramahansa Yogananda titled “A New Look at the Origin and Nature of Cosmic Creation” printed in “Awake from this Dream into Your Oneness with God”
Bhagavad Gita V:18, “The Universe—God’s Magic Drama,” Volume I, No.22
How to Reduce the Pleading of Your Bone Marrow
“whisper of blood, and the pleading of bone marrow”
Knut Hamsun (1859–1952)
Knut Hamsun, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920, urged writers to describe the “whisper of blood, and the pleading of bone marrow.”
I’m a writer, and I understand the pleading of bone marrow at the physical level. And I worked to reduce that pleading during 42 days of chemotherapy spread over two years.
Some cancer patients live on maintenance chemotherapy, which involves receiving bone marrow stimulants like Neupogen or Neulasta after each infusion to keep white blood cell counts up.
One patient who had Neulasta for dozens of cycles was told she had widespread bone metastases. Upon further investigation, those studying her situation agreed that what appeared to be metastasis in the bones was actually not cancer, but the long-term effects of the marrow stimulant.
The shots cause bone pain and are extremely expensive. When long-term use of these shots causes serious damage, why not try adding some safe integrative therapies that strengthen the body to avoid the shots?
I was offered the shots after each cycle, yet I turned them down because I wanted to try natural means for keeping my white cell counts up. It’s necessary to have white blood cells to prevent infection. If levels drop too low then chemotherapy is postponed, which can create its own set of problems.
I did not want the bone pain and the enormous additional stress it would add to my body on top of the chemo. Rather, I wanted to strengthen and support my body.
I used diet (lots of carrots, cooked mushrooms, and bone broth), acupressure, visualization, and Emotional Freedom Technique.
I ended up needing only one shot one time to raise my white cell counts.
No one has studied whether what I did could work or not, and no one will because there’s no money to be had. Alternatively, no one will ever try to prove they don’t work, again because there is no money to be gained. I don’t think any of the things I did worked on its own. I think it was a healthy dose of each process done faithfully that made it possible for my body to produce enough white blood cells to get me through two years of aggressive chemotherapy with only one shot.
Did my processes work to keep my white cell counts up? It appears, based on the fact patients are routinely given the shots because they are not expected to keep their white cell counts up, that it probably did. I don’t know anyone else who has been able to avoid those shots (I’d love to hear from anyone who has!).
As always, discuss with your oncologist before passing up the shots. My blood counts were closely monitored. It took a big commitment on my part to work at these processes every day. For me, it was worth it.
What is your life worth? What is your health worth? Are you willing to try safe integrative therapies to give your body every single fighting chance you can? There are so many things that can be done that have not been scientifically proven, but if they are safe and you discuss them with your doctor, they just might give your body the edge it needs. Sometimes it takes it all to turn the corner. It did for me. And that doesn’t mean it will happen for everyone, because we are all different.
But I was not going to sit back and let the doctors and only scientific studies determine what I would and would not do. If I had done that, I know I would have died at least six years ago.
I chose to do everything medical and everything safe that I could.
And it worked for me. Maybe it will work for others. That is my hope, because often with this disease, we are without real hope. I want the suffering to stop. I want the pleading of bone marrow to stop. And so I share what I did.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
Vince Lasorso at Whatever Works Wellness Center in Cincinnati created the “Bone Marrow Healing” CD I used during treatment, and occasionally now when I feel a cold coming on. The visualization involves feeling—not seeing—one’s bones lighting up. I highly recommend it.
More information on what I did to support my body during chemotherapy can be found in Thriver Soup.
Sources:
Knut Hamsun, “Fra det ubevidste Sjæleliv,” Samtiden, September 1890
New Videos: ABCs of Creating Conditions for Healing
Create conditions for radical Healing in your life. Find simple solutions by updating your attitudes, behaviors, and making major life choices to influence cancer and other dis-ease outcomes. If you have cancer, ALS, Parkinson’s, or other “incurable” dis-eases, find relief and personal healing by using these concepts.
I was told to get my affairs in order after two years of conventional treatment for highly aggressive end-stage sarcoma. Yet against all odds, I have enjoyed radical remission since 2011, free of evidence of cancer and free of cancer treatment. Find out what I discovered about changing attitudes, behaviors, and making major life choices that can assist you with turning the corner and thriving.
This short series comes in 4 brief parts and is posted on youtube.
Part 1: How I healed from highly aggressive end-stage cancer.
Please enjoy and share, and let me know about speaking engagements where I can share this important message.
Many thanks to Jim Gray, with Gray Solutions, for creating this new video for Thriver Soup!
6 Years Clear :-)
It’s official!
My 6-year chest X-ray is clear. I had an abdominal scan in March after December’s intestinal blockage/hernia operation; also clear.
With deep gratitude I stepped into St. Mary’s Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington, Ky. I lit a cobalt-blue candle in front of Mother Mary, got on my knees, and gave heartfelt thanks for this incredible miracle.
And for the wonderful support of family and friends, for the conventional treatments that bought me time, and for all the healing options available.
Also of note:
You can catch the #ThriverSoup interview this past week on #MomentswithMarianne now on youtube starting at 36:25: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiAxuUTXqGo
Moments with Marianne Today at 8pm EST/5pm PST
Thriver Soup is featured today on “Moments with Marianne,” a transformative hour that covers an endless array of topics with the ‘best of the best.’ She selects guests who are leaders in their fields, gifted, and true visionaries.
Thriver Soup is the 2nd segment on the show. Click here to listen LIVE today, Thursday, September 7, at 8pm EST/5pm PST: http://tinyurl.com/iHeartRadioMwM
OR download the Moments with Marianne app on iTunes & Google Play
