a "prayer" for people on ACS with cancer

I have had some trepidation about sharing something "from my Soul" here that
I worry may offend some people as some form of pseudo-religious posturing,
new-age babbling, profane mixing of various unique cultural and religious
sources, showing off, inappropriate violation of the implicit pact in ACS to
respect the diversity of our lives, our religions, our backgrounds that
really is the living Heart of a group like this reaching out across time and
space, across pain and trauma, lonelinness and confusion, crisis and chaos,
to find common humanity and give and receive support.

But this truly came "from aHeart, as well as a Soul" (via a Mind, but "which
Mind ?), and my Heart tells me now it is okay to share as long as you
understand this doesn't "belong to me," "I" didn't do this;" it came through
me, for which I am very grateful, as I am grateful so much for the kindness
and information and loving support I have received here.

I have tried to express/color/shape what "came through me" in imagery drawn
more from the "western," Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Judaic cultural
roots of modern Judaeo-Christian culture rather than through my long
experience and immersion in eastern forms and religions with the hope of
making it more accessible here.

If you receive support from this, I am blessed. If you do not, I am blessed.
Let it pass through you, keep any smiles it gives you, forget any frowns,
ignore anything discomforting or not nourishing to you now. You know what
you need, and we are walking together next to a river named Jericho whose
waters we need only bend over to reach to receive exactly what we need and
give back exactly what the water and the river, and the river-bed needs. We
are walking together, all of us, along this river, even if we forget for a
while, we are not alone there.

Forget it, Delete it, killfile me, print it and use it to wrap fish-heads,
share it with those you love or those you hate. Do with it what You need to
do. As the Sufi Poet Kabir said "rahi gulzar to phool khilenge" : "where
there is a Garden, the Flowers will come." This is a flower that came into
my Garden who told me clearly : I am in everyone's garden already in the
way they need to see me, and I need to leave you to visit other Gardens.

love, humbly, my hand in yours by the River, Uncle Sally

A "prayer" for people on ACS with cancer

copyright 2007, all rights reserved, assigned to Alt.Support.Cancer by its
"vessel" Uncle Sally

"Something is going on in your life ... on physical, mental, psychic,
emotional, spiritual levels that you intuitively recognize is something that
is going to change your life for the rest of your life. It involves
yourself, not other people, although on a primary level it is all/only about
the "part of you" which is the same as, and connected to, all other people,
animals, rocks, the sky, leaves, and stones, the cry of a newborn baby as
well as the maggots and flies on the corpse of a dead dog near your house.

When these rare times of your life happen you may instinctively shut down
parts of your social life that dilute or move you away from letting whatever
this is happens. And the brutal truth may be that the circumstances of your
life at this time : obligations, debts, being on the verge of hard-worked
for dreams, your career, your roles as parent, employer, employee,
breadwinner, artist, home-maker, athlete, older brother, younger sister,
may not allow you to dis-engage as you may really need to in order to heal
and experience. And the reality is the medical care system in most countries
may "work against" what may be an important transformation in your inner
life that is seeking to happen pushing you into a "Pachinko" machine of
de-personalizing and fragmented, segregated, systems of treatment that
impinge on you while you are most vulnerable, most in need of contact with
the thing inside you that you know is the truly important dimension of your
life as "more than an animal body." Brutally interrupting the most sacred
"goodbyes" and "hellos" and "I love you's" you've ever needed to say.

No, I'm not speaking of "doing" a Nebuchudnezzar and going out in a meadow
to live like a cow and chewing grass with your cud for seven years, but if I
had to use an image to suggest what's happening from mainly Judaic tradition
it would be the story of the return of Joseph, the prodigal son, from Egypt.
But this is as much "about" Joseph's father experiencing the return of the
"lost son" as it is the return from "exile" of Joseph to his birthplace.
Yes, there is a coat of many colors, but in this case it is being returned
with Joseph to Joseph's brothers revealed in its true form as a Seraphim
whose karma/mitzvah is to heal the guilt-ridden anguished lives of the older
brothers who sold Joseph for it. These words are shadows on a white page,
black, white, grey. But this is a full-color movie with surround sound.

This is not madness, or a phase, or something reducible to simple
explanation in reference to bio-chemical and post-treatment physical and
mental state. Trust it, Welcome it.

"Yeah though I walk in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no
Evil, for the Lord, my God, is with me. He prepares an island of comfort
with the true nourishment and serenity I need even in the presence of forces
of darkness who would destroy me from within and without."

Be patient, pray for others, as they pray for you. Our connection, The
connection, is everything : it is our limited egos and our exile or lostness
outside "Eden," our nature to sit down by the waters of Zion and remember
Babylon. Our nature to run from those moments when Life opens a door for us
to something (or do we open the door ?, or is the door the Gate of living
bodies of Seraphim surrounding "ein sof" that instantly destroys anything
impure ?) beyond ourselves, as Arjuna ran from Khrishna's terrifying direct
revelation of the nature of cosmic reality in the Bhagavad Gita revealed by
his charioteer who had revealed himself in his cosmic form as Lord
Khrishna.

This is about Jonah in the belly of the whale, it is about, a little, the
existential "trial" of Job by Yahweh. This is the story of King Gilgamesh
and his reunion with his dark and wild brother of the forest, Enkiddu, and
their joining together to go back into the forest and slay the monster
Humbaba. But was Humbaba really a "monster" ? Or is the story really about
the fact that the journey of Enkiddu out of the wilderness and savage state
was the necessary balancing of the necessity for Gilgamesh to go into the
forest, outside his Kingly state in the World to re-unite with the lost
brother ? Is the story really about coming down from a mountain blinded by
Holy Fire only able to walk balanced by carrying heavy stone tablets on
which are burning letters of fire ? Or is it about the journey up the
mountain, above the orgy below in emptiness, anguish, disgust, in the "dust
and ashes in the mouth bitterness of Ecclesiastes ?

Is this about the 'moment' of Abraham when the sacrifice of the most
precious in your life is being demanded ? When there is apparently no choice
between two paths to self-destruction ?

This is not "madness," although you may feel so, and others around you may
act like they perceive you as so, caught up in their own webs of loss,
grief, dis-connection, fear, ignorance.

This is a walk along the Jericho when its waters are clean, pure, cold, full
of wonderous schools of golden-scaled and silver-scaled fish with flowers on
its banks.

"Who is a "whole person" ? : He who has a Heart (Hebrew "lev schavo" ?).
Humbled, broken, aware of its "sins," contrite, ready to be changed.
Rebbi Nachman of Breslau (Breslov) also sometimies referred to as Reb
Nachman of Uman, 16th. century Christian Era Chasid, Zaddik, sage.

Words may need to dry up for a time : your body may dis-connect from those
senses of taste, smell, sight, hearing, touch, balance that keep you in an
equilibrium in the illusion of a fictional world that has constancy,
permanancy, and security. The rivers of social nourishment and love that
really sustain you may become undrinkable or unavailable through pain,
drugs, isolation, separation from the rhythms of night and day, separation
from the great stabilizing pillars of what Freud called "leben und arbeit,"
Love and Work in the matrix of the Human condition of social and Family
life.

but ... stay with Us, see the River Jericho, smell its moistness, the
fragrance of the uniquely transient flowers framed against impossible
palettes of green from pale emerald to paradoxically radiantly dark green .
We are there already, stay with Us there even if you can only imagine that
you can truly leave or have left and can't get back. We are there
together."

Sally:

Each to his own. I posted about religion maybe 18 months ago. I don't buy
religion at all -- I think it's an overgrown fairy tale.

That being said, I am VERY envious of those with strong religious
convictions. I think it helps one greatly in life when dealing with these
crises. It induces a calmness and helps to lessen many fears.

So, if it works for you, great!!

Good luck to you.

Mel
"Uncle Sally" <uncleSally@auldUncleSally.com> wrote in message
news:ks_ei.341846$3h2.41438@fe08.news.easynews.com ...
>I have had some trepidation about sharing something "from my Soul" here
>that
> I worry may offend some people as some form of pseudo-religious posturing,
> new-age babbling, profane mixing of various unique cultural and religious
> sources, showing off, inappropriate violation of the implicit pact in ACS
> to
> respect the diversity of our lives, our religions, our backgrounds that
> really is the living Heart of a group like this reaching out across time
> and
> space, across pain and trauma, lonelinness and confusion, crisis and
> chaos,
> to find common humanity and give and receive support.
>
> But this truly came "from aHeart, as well as a Soul" (via a Mind, but
> "which
> Mind ?), and my Heart tells me now it is okay to share as long as you
> understand this doesn't "belong to me," "I" didn't do this;" it came
> through
> me, for which I am very grateful, as I am grateful so much for the
> kindness
> and information and loving support I have received here.
>
> I have tried to express/color/shape what "came through me" in imagery
> drawn
> more from the "western," Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Judaic
> cultural
> roots of modern Judaeo-Christian culture rather than through my long
> experience and immersion in eastern forms and religions with the hope of
> making it more accessible here.
>
> If you receive support from this, I am blessed. If you do not, I am
> blessed.
> Let it pass through you, keep any smiles it gives you, forget any frowns,
> ignore anything discomforting or not nourishing to you now. You know what
> you need, and we are walking together next to a river named Jericho whose
> waters we need only bend over to reach to receive exactly what we need and
> give back exactly what the water and the river, and the river-bed needs.
> We
> are walking together, all of us, along this river, even if we forget for a
> while, we are not alone there.
>
> Forget it, Delete it, killfile me, print it and use it to wrap fish-heads,
> share it with those you love or those you hate. Do with it what You need
> to
> do. As the Sufi Poet Kabir said "rahi gulzar to phool khilenge" : "where
> there is a Garden, the Flowers will come." This is a flower that came
> into
> my Garden who told me clearly : I am in everyone's garden already in the
> way they need to see me, and I need to leave you to visit other Gardens.
>
> love, humbly, my hand in yours by the River, Uncle Sally
>
> A "prayer" for people on ACS with cancer
>
> copyright 2007, all rights reserved, assigned to Alt.Support.Cancer by its
> "vessel" Uncle Sally
>
> "Something is going on in your life ... on physical, mental, psychic,
> emotional, spiritual levels that you intuitively recognize is something
> that
> is going to change your life for the rest of your life. It involves
> yourself, not other people, although on a primary level it is all/only
> about
> the "part of you" which is the same as, and connected to, all other
> people,
> animals, rocks, the sky, leaves, and stones, the cry of a newborn baby as
> well as the maggots and flies on the corpse of a dead dog near your house.
>
> When these rare times of your life happen you may instinctively shut down
> parts of your social life that dilute or move you away from letting
> whatever
> this is happens. And the brutal truth may be that the circumstances of
> your
> life at this time : obligations, debts, being on the verge of hard-worked
> for dreams, your career, your roles as parent, employer, employee,
> breadwinner, artist, home-maker, athlete, older brother, younger sister,
> may not allow you to dis-engage as you may really need to in order to heal
> and experience. And the reality is the medical care system in most
> countries
> may "work against" what may be an important transformation in your inner
> life that is seeking to happen pushing you into a "Pachinko" machine of
> de-personalizing and fragmented, segregated, systems of treatment that
> impinge on you while you are most vulnerable, most in need of contact with
> the thing inside you that you know is the truly important dimension of
> your
> life as "more than an animal body." Brutally interrupting the most sacred
> "goodbyes" and "hellos" and "I love you's" you've ever needed to say.
>
> No, I'm not speaking of "doing" a Nebuchudnezzar and going out in a meadow
> to live like a cow and chewing grass with your cud for seven years, but if
> I
> had to use an image to suggest what's happening from mainly Judaic
> tradition
> it would be the story of the return of Joseph, the prodigal son, from
> Egypt.
> But this is as much "about" Joseph's father experiencing the return of the
> "lost son" as it is the return from "exile" of Joseph to his birthplace.
> Yes, there is a coat of many colors, but in this case it is being returned
> with Joseph to Joseph's brothers revealed in its true form as a Seraphim
> whose karma/mitzvah is to heal the guilt-ridden anguished lives of the
> older
> brothers who sold Joseph for it. These words are shadows on a white
> page,
> black, white, grey. But this is a full-color movie with surround sound.
>
> This is not madness, or a phase, or something reducible to simple
> explanation in reference to bio-chemical and post-treatment physical and
> mental state. Trust it, Welcome it.
>
> "Yeah though I walk in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no
> Evil, for the Lord, my God, is with me. He prepares an island of comfort
> with the true nourishment and serenity I need even in the presence of
> forces
> of darkness who would destroy me from within and without."
>
> Be patient, pray for others, as they pray for you. Our connection, The
> connection, is everything : it is our limited egos and our exile or
> lostness
> outside "Eden," our nature to sit down by the waters of Zion and remember
> Babylon. Our nature to run from those moments when Life opens a door for
> us
> to something (or do we open the door ?, or is the door the Gate of living
> bodies of Seraphim surrounding "ein sof" that instantly destroys anything
> impure ?) beyond ourselves, as Arjuna ran from Khrishna's terrifying
> direct
> revelation of the nature of cosmic reality in the Bhagavad Gita revealed
> by
> his charioteer who had revealed himself in his cosmic form as Lord
> Khrishna.
>
> This is about Jonah in the belly of the whale, it is about, a little, the
> existential "trial" of Job by Yahweh. This is the story of King Gilgamesh
> and his reunion with his dark and wild brother of the forest, Enkiddu, and
> their joining together to go back into the forest and slay the monster
> Humbaba. But was Humbaba really a "monster" ? Or is the story really about
> the fact that the journey of Enkiddu out of the wilderness and savage
> state
> was the necessary balancing of the necessity for Gilgamesh to go into the
> forest, outside his Kingly state in the World to re-unite with the lost
> brother ? Is the story really about coming down from a mountain blinded by
> Holy Fire only able to walk balanced by carrying heavy stone tablets on
> which are burning letters of fire ? Or is it about the journey up the
> mountain, above the orgy below in emptiness, anguish, disgust, in the
> "dust
> and ashes in the mouth bitterness of Ecclesiastes ?
>
> Is this about the 'moment' of Abraham when the sacrifice of the most
> precious in your life is being demanded ? When there is apparently no
> choice
> between two paths to self-destruction ?
>
> This is not "madness," although you may feel so, and others around you may
> act like they perceive you as so, caught up in their own webs of loss,
> grief, dis-connection, fear, ignorance.
>
> This is a walk along the Jericho when its waters are clean, pure, cold,
> full
> of wonderous schools of golden-scaled and silver-scaled fish with flowers
> on
> its banks.
>
> "Who is a "whole person" ? : He who has a Heart (Hebrew "lev schavo" ?).
> Humbled, broken, aware of its "sins," contrite, ready to be changed.
> Rebbi Nachman of Breslau (Breslov) also sometimies referred to as Reb
> Nachman of Uman, 16th. century Christian Era Chasid, Zaddik, sage.
>
> Words may need to dry up for a time : your body may dis-connect from those
> senses of taste, smell, sight, hearing, touch, balance that keep you in an
> equilibrium in the illusion of a fictional world that has constancy,
> permanancy, and security. The rivers of social nourishment and love that
> really sustain you may become undrinkable or unavailable through pain,
> drugs, isolation, separation from the rhythms of night and day, separation
> from the great stabilizing pillars of what Freud called "leben und
> arbeit,"
> Love and Work in the matrix of the Human condition of social and Family
> life.
>
> but ... stay with Us, see the River Jericho, smell its moistness, the
> fragrance of the uniquely transient flowers framed against impossible
> palettes of green from pale emerald to paradoxically radiantly dark green
> .
> We are there already, stay with Us there even if you can only imagine that
> you can truly leave or have left and can't get back. We are there
> together."
>
>

"MZB" <moo@noway.prudigy.net> wrote in message
news:c%%ei.32$6Q6.22@newsfe02.lga...
> Sally:
>
> Each to his own. I posted about religion maybe 18 months ago. I don't buy
> religion at all -- I think it's an overgrown fairy tale.
>
> That being said, I am VERY envious of those with strong religious
> convictions. I think it helps one greatly in life when dealing with these
> crises. It induces a calmness and helps to lessen many fears.
>
> So, if it works for you, great!!
>
> Good luck to you.
>
> Mel
> "Uncle Sally" <uncleSally@auldUncleSally.com> wrote in message
> news:ks_ei.341846$3h2.41438@fe08.news.easynews.com ...
>>I have had some trepidation about sharing something "from my Soul" here
>>that
>> I worry may offend some people as some form of pseudo-religious
>> posturing,
>> new-age babbling, profane mixing of various unique cultural and religious
>> sources, showing off, inappropriate violation of the implicit pact in ACS
>> to
>> respect the diversity of our lives, our religions, our backgrounds that
>> really is the living Heart of a group like this reaching out across time
>> and
>> space, across pain and trauma, lonelinness and confusion, crisis and
>> chaos,
>> to find common humanity and give and receive support.
>>
>> But this truly came "from aHeart, as well as a Soul" (via a Mind, but
>> "which
>> Mind ?), and my Heart tells me now it is okay to share as long as you
>> understand this doesn't "belong to me," "I" didn't do this;" it came
>> through
>> me, for which I am very grateful, as I am grateful so much for the
>> kindness
>> and information and loving support I have received here.
>>
>> I have tried to express/color/shape what "came through me" in imagery
>> drawn
>> more from the "western," Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Judaic
>> cultural
>> roots of modern Judaeo-Christian culture rather than through my long
>> experience and immersion in eastern forms and religions with the hope of
>> making it more accessible here.
>>
>> If you receive support from this, I am blessed. If you do not, I am
>> blessed.
>> Let it pass through you, keep any smiles it gives you, forget any frowns,
>> ignore anything discomforting or not nourishing to you now. You know what
>> you need, and we are walking together next to a river named Jericho whose
>> waters we need only bend over to reach to receive exactly what we need
>> and
>> give back exactly what the water and the river, and the river-bed needs.
>> We
>> are walking together, all of us, along this river, even if we forget for
>> a
>> while, we are not alone there.
>>
>> Forget it, Delete it, killfile me, print it and use it to wrap
>> fish-heads,
>> share it with those you love or those you hate. Do with it what You need
>> to
>> do. As the Sufi Poet Kabir said "rahi gulzar to phool khilenge" : "where
>> there is a Garden, the Flowers will come." This is a flower that came
>> into
>> my Garden who told me clearly : I am in everyone's garden already in the
>> way they need to see me, and I need to leave you to visit other Gardens.
>>
>> love, humbly, my hand in yours by the River, Uncle Sally
>>
>> A "prayer" for people on ACS with cancer
>>
>> copyright 2007, all rights reserved, assigned to Alt.Support.Cancer by
>> its
>> "vessel" Uncle Sally
>>
>> "Something is going on in your life ... on physical, mental, psychic,
>> emotional, spiritual levels that you intuitively recognize is something
>> that
>> is going to change your life for the rest of your life. It involves
>> yourself, not other people, although on a primary level it is all/only
>> about
>> the "part of you" which is the same as, and connected to, all other
>> people,
>> animals, rocks, the sky, leaves, and stones, the cry of a newborn baby as
>> well as the maggots and flies on the corpse of a dead dog near your
>> house.
>>
>> When these rare times of your life happen you may instinctively shut down
>> parts of your social life that dilute or move you away from letting
>> whatever
>> this is happens. And the brutal truth may be that the circumstances of
>> your
>> life at this time : obligations, debts, being on the verge of hard-worked
>> for dreams, your career, your roles as parent, employer, employee,
>> breadwinner, artist, home-maker, athlete, older brother, younger sister,
>> may not allow you to dis-engage as you may really need to in order to
>> heal
>> and experience. And the reality is the medical care system in most
>> countries
>> may "work against" what may be an important transformation in your inner
>> life that is seeking to happen pushing you into a "Pachinko" machine of
>> de-personalizing and fragmented, segregated, systems of treatment that
>> impinge on you while you are most vulnerable, most in need of contact
>> with
>> the thing inside you that you know is the truly important dimension of
>> your
>> life as "more than an animal body." Brutally interrupting the most sacred
>> "goodbyes" and "hellos" and "I love you's" you've ever needed to say.
>>
>> No, I'm not speaking of "doing" a Nebuchudnezzar and going out in a
>> meadow
>> to live like a cow and chewing grass with your cud for seven years, but
>> if I
>> had to use an image to suggest what's happening from mainly Judaic
>> tradition
>> it would be the story of the return of Joseph, the prodigal son, from
>> Egypt.
>> But this is as much "about" Joseph's father experiencing the return of
>> the
>> "lost son" as it is the return from "exile" of Joseph to his birthplace.
>> Yes, there is a coat of many colors, but in this case it is being
>> returned
>> with Joseph to Joseph's brothers revealed in its true form as a Seraphim
>> whose karma/mitzvah is to heal the guilt-ridden anguished lives of the
>> older
>> brothers who sold Joseph for it. These words are shadows on a white
>> page,
>> black, white, grey. But this is a full-color movie with surround sound.
>>
>> This is not madness, or a phase, or something reducible to simple
>> explanation in reference to bio-chemical and post-treatment physical and
>> mental state. Trust it, Welcome it.
>>
>> "Yeah though I walk in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no
>> Evil, for the Lord, my God, is with me. He prepares an island of comfort
>> with the true nourishment and serenity I need even in the presence of
>> forces
>> of darkness who would destroy me from within and without."
>>
>> Be patient, pray for others, as they pray for you. Our connection, The
>> connection, is everything : it is our limited egos and our exile or
>> lostness
>> outside "Eden," our nature to sit down by the waters of Zion and remember
>> Babylon. Our nature to run from those moments when Life opens a door for
>> us
>> to something (or do we open the door ?, or is the door the Gate of living
>> bodies of Seraphim surrounding "ein sof" that instantly destroys anything
>> impure ?) beyond ourselves, as Arjuna ran from Khrishna's terrifying
>> direct
>> revelation of the nature of cosmic reality in the Bhagavad Gita revealed
>> by
>> his charioteer who had revealed himself in his cosmic form as Lord
>> Khrishna.
>>
>> This is about Jonah in the belly of the whale, it is about, a little, the
>> existential "trial" of Job by Yahweh. This is the story of King Gilgamesh
>> and his reunion with his dark and wild brother of the forest, Enkiddu,
>> and
>> their joining together to go back into the forest and slay the monster
>> Humbaba. But was Humbaba really a "monster" ? Or is the story really
>> about
>> the fact that the journey of Enkiddu out of the wilderness and savage
>> state
>> was the necessary balancing of the necessity for Gilgamesh to go into the
>> forest, outside his Kingly state in the World to re-unite with the lost
>> brother ? Is the story really about coming down from a mountain blinded
>> by
>> Holy Fire only able to walk balanced by carrying heavy stone tablets on
>> which are burning letters of fire ? Or is it about the journey up the
>> mountain, above the orgy below in emptiness, anguish, disgust, in the
>> "dust
>> and ashes in the mouth bitterness of Ecclesiastes ?
>>
>> Is this about the 'moment' of Abraham when the sacrifice of the most
>> precious in your life is being demanded ? When there is apparently no
>> choice
>> between two paths to self-destruction ?
>>
>> This is not "madness," although you may feel so, and others around you
>> may
>> act like they perceive you as so, caught up in their own webs of loss,
>> grief, dis-connection, fear, ignorance.
>>
>> This is a walk along the Jericho when its waters are clean, pure, cold,
>> full
>> of wonderous schools of golden-scaled and silver-scaled fish with flowers
>> on
>> its banks.
>>
>> "Who is a "whole person" ? : He who has a Heart (Hebrew "lev schavo" ?).
>> Humbled, broken, aware of its "sins," contrite, ready to be changed.
>> Rebbi Nachman of Breslau (Breslov) also sometimies referred to as Reb
>> Nachman of Uman, 16th. century Christian Era Chasid, Zaddik, sage.
>>
>> Words may need to dry up for a time : your body may dis-connect from
>> those
>> senses of taste, smell, sight, hearing, touch, balance that keep you in
>> an
>> equilibrium in the illusion of a fictional world that has constancy,
>> permanancy, and security. The rivers of social nourishment and love that
>> really sustain you may become undrinkable or unavailable through pain,
>> drugs, isolation, separation from the rhythms of night and day,
>> separation
>> from the great stabilizing pillars of what Freud called "leben und
>> arbeit,"
>> Love and Work in the matrix of the Human condition of social and Family
>> life.
>>
>> but ... stay with Us, see the River Jericho, smell its moistness, the
>> fragrance of the uniquely transient flowers framed against impossible
>> palettes of green from pale emerald to paradoxically radiantly dark green
>> .
>> We are there already, stay with Us there even if you can only imagine
>> that
>> you can truly leave or have left and can't get back. We are there
>> together."


Hi Uncle Sally,

I get what you're saying. We're all connected (correct me if I'm off base
here). I didn't get it as being any one type religion but as spiritual.
There's this whole other realm we have but are too afraid to step out of our
norms to enjoy what's out there for us.

It's about love, it's about coming home to a hearty welcome, it's about
letting go and living. I really got the part about saying goodbyes. I didn't
get that chance, but I don't think a goodbye was necessary because deep
inside I know there will be a homecoming, a continuation of what we have
here.

If not, what's the point?

Mel, I respect what you're saying, too. I think we all get through trials in
life different ways. What's so strong and what makes this group seem so
close and warm is that there's a common thread of fear, loss, hope,
confusion and even love.

Some of us have bickered back and forth, but it seems that peace eventually
prevails because even though we don't really know each other, we know what
each other's going through, and if we have any compassion at all, we accept
each other unconditionally, and that's what this group is about.

Even though it's cancer support and even if what you wrote has a spiritual
ring to it, which could be considerd "OT," Uncle Sally, it touched my heart
in many ways.

You shared your feelings even though you were hesistant, but you did that
out of love. To me, the absence of peace and love is hell. I don't want
hell. Last night was a bad one for me. I missed my husband so much that the
word "yearning" became obsolete. No word describes that feeling, but it's
like a physical pain, and I want to click on rewind when he was here before
C, came knocking at our door.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and writing. It was good to wake up to
this morning.

Love you, Uncle Sally
Giuditta

I didn't understand the whole message but was touched that you wanted
to share it with us.

Alex

On Jun 23, 4:12 am, "Uncle Sally" <uncleSa...@auldUncleSally.com>
wrote:
> I have had some trepidation about sharing something "from my Soul" here that
> I worry may offend some people as some form of pseudo-religious posturing,
> new-age babbling, profane mixing of various unique cultural and religious
> sources, showing off, inappropriate violation of the implicit pact in ACS to
> respect the diversity of our lives, our religions, our backgrounds that
> really is the living Heart of a group like this reaching out across time and
> space, across pain and trauma, lonelinness and confusion, crisis and chaos,
> to find common humanity and give and receive support.
>
> But this truly came "from aHeart, as well as a Soul" (via a Mind, but "which
> Mind ?), and my Heart tells me now it is okay to share as long as you
> understand this doesn't "belong to me," "I" didn't do this;" it came through
> me, for which I am very grateful, as I am grateful so much for the kindness
> and information and loving support I have received here.
>
> I have tried to express/color/shape what "came through me" in imagery drawn
> more from the "western," Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Judaic cultural
> roots of modern Judaeo-Christian culture rather than through my long
> experience and immersion in eastern forms and religions with the hope of
> making it more accessible here.
>
> If you receive support from this, I am blessed. If you do not, I am blessed.
> Let it pass through you, keep any smiles it gives you, forget any frowns,
> ignore anything discomforting or not nourishing to you now. You know what
> you need, and we are walking together next to a river named Jericho whose
> waters we need only bend over to reach to receive exactly what we need and
> give back exactly what the water and the river, and the river-bed needs. We
> are walking together, all of us, along this river, even if we forget for a
> while, we are not alone there.
>
> Forget it, Delete it, killfile me, print it and use it to wrap fish-heads,
> share it with those you love or those you hate. Do with it what You need to
> do. As the Sufi Poet Kabir said "rahi gulzar to phool khilenge" : "where
> there is a Garden, the Flowers will come." This is a flower that came into
> my Garden who told me clearly : I am in everyone's garden already in the
> way they need to see me, and I need to leave you to visit other Gardens.
>
> love, humbly, my hand in yours by the River, Uncle Sally
>
> A "prayer" for people on ACS with cancer
>
> copyright 2007, all rights reserved, assigned to Alt.Support.Cancer by its
> "vessel" Uncle Sally
>
> "Something is going on in your life ... on physical, mental, psychic,
> emotional, spiritual levels that you intuitively recognize is something that
> is going to change your life for the rest of your life. It involves
> yourself, not other people, although on a primary level it is all/only about
> the "part of you" which is the same as, and connected to, all other people,
> animals, rocks, the sky, leaves, and stones, the cry of a newborn baby as
> well as the maggots and flies on the corpse of a dead dog near your house.
>
> When these rare times of your life happen you may instinctively shut down
> parts of your social life that dilute or move you away from letting whatever
> this is happens. And the brutal truth may be that the circumstances of your
> life at this time : obligations, debts, being on the verge of hard-worked
> for dreams, your career, your roles as parent, employer, employee,
> breadwinner, artist, home-maker, athlete, older brother, younger sister,
> may not allow you to dis-engage as you may really need to in order to heal
> and experience. And the reality is the medical care system in most countries
> may "work against" what may be an important transformation in your inner
> life that is seeking to happen pushing you into a "Pachinko" machine of
> de-personalizing and fragmented, segregated, systems of treatment that
> impinge on you while you are most vulnerable, most in need of contact with
> the thing inside you that you know is the truly important dimension of your
> life as "more than an animal body." Brutally interrupting the most sacred
> "goodbyes" and "hellos" and "I love you's" you've ever needed to say.
>
> No, I'm not speaking of "doing" a Nebuchudnezzar and going out in a meadow
> to live like a cow and chewing grass with your cud for seven years, but if I
> had to use an image to suggest what's happening from mainly Judaic tradition
> it would be the story of the return of Joseph, the prodigal son, from Egypt.
> But this is as much "about" Joseph's father experiencing the return of the
> "lost son" as it is the return from "exile" of Joseph to his birthplace.
> Yes, there is a coat of many colors, but in this case it is being returned
> with Joseph to Joseph's brothers revealed in its true form as a Seraphim
> whose karma/mitzvah is to heal the guilt-ridden anguished lives of the older
> brothers who sold Joseph for it. These words are shadows on a white page,
> black, white, grey. But this is a full-color movie with surround sound.
>
> This is not madness, or a phase, or something reducible to simple
> explanation in reference to bio-chemical and post-treatment physical and
> mental state. Trust it, Welcome it.
>
> "Yeah though I walk in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no
> Evil, for the Lord, my God, is with me. He prepares an island of comfort
> with the true nourishment and serenity I need even in the presence of forces
> of darkness who would destroy me from within and without."
>
> Be patient, pray for others, as they pray for you. Our connection, The
> connection, is everything : it is our limited egos and our exile or lostness
> outside "Eden," our nature to sit down by the waters of Zion and remember
> Babylon. Our nature to run from those moments when Life opens a door for us
> to something (or do we open the door ?, or is the door the Gate of living
> bodies of Seraphim surrounding "ein sof" that instantly destroys anything
> impure ?) beyond ourselves, as Arjuna ran from Khrishna's terrifying direct
> revelation of the nature of cosmic reality in the Bhagavad Gita revealed by
> his charioteer who had revealed himself in his cosmic form as Lord
> Khrishna.
>
> This is about Jonah in the belly of the whale, it is about, a little, the
> existential "trial" of Job by Yahweh. This is the story of King Gilgamesh
> and his reunion with his dark and wild brother of the forest, Enkiddu, and
> their joining together to go back into the forest and slay the monster
> Humbaba. But was Humbaba really a "monster" ? Or is the story really about
> the fact that the journey of Enkiddu out of the wilderness and savage state
> was the necessary balancing of the necessity for Gilgamesh to go into the
> forest, outside his Kingly state in the World to re-unite with the lost
> brother ? Is the story really about coming down from a mountain blinded by
> Holy Fire only able to walk balanced by carrying heavy stone tablets on
> which are burning letters of fire ? Or is it about the journey up the
> mountain, above the orgy below in emptiness, anguish, disgust, in the "dust
> and ashes in the mouth bitterness of Ecclesiastes ?
>
> Is this about the 'moment' of Abraham when the sacrifice of the most
> precious in your life is being demanded ? When there is apparently no choice
> between two paths to self-destruction ?
>
> This is not "madness," although you may feel so, and others around you may
> act like they perceive you as so, caught up in their own webs of loss,
> grief, dis-connection, fear, ignorance.
>
> This is a walk along the Jericho when its waters are clean, pure, cold, full
> of wonderous schools of golden-scaled and silver-scaled fish with flowers on
> its banks.
>
> "Who is a "whole person" ? : He who has a Heart (Hebrew "lev schavo" ?).
> Humbled, broken, aware of its "sins," contrite, ready to be changed.
> Rebbi Nachman of Breslau (Breslov) also sometimies referred to as Reb
> Nachman of Uman, 16th. century Christian Era Chasid, Zaddik, sage.
>
> Words may need to dry up for a time : your body may dis-connect from those
> senses of taste, smell, sight, hearing, touch, balance that keep you in an
> equilibrium in the illusion of a fictional world that has constancy,
> permanancy, and security. The rivers of social nourishment and love that
> really sustain you may become undrinkable or unavailable through pain,
> drugs, isolation, separation from the rhythms of night and day, separation
> from the great stabilizing pillars of what Freud called "leben und arbeit,"
> Love and Work in the matrix of the Human condition of social and Family
> life.
>
> but ... stay with Us, see the River Jericho, smell its moistness, the
> fragrance of the uniquely transient flowers framed against impossible
> palettes of green from pale emerald to paradoxically radiantly dark green .
> We are there already, stay with Us there even if you can only imagine that
> you can truly leave or have left and can't get back. We are there
> together."

>Hide quoted text-

A wonderful description of the path we are all walking, reading it
helps one feel less alone ~ knowing another is also experiencing the
spiritual aspect of this path.

Thank you Uncle Sally ~ I don't see this as OT it's very much On
Topic.

hugs,
isi