Cancer and Death
My spiritual teachers have often said that they only offer help to those who are actively seeking change. And Eckhart Tolle teaches that the only people who are willing to change are those who have reached a point of saying, “My life sucks so bad that I have no choice but to change.” It seems to me that those who have cancer must have discovered in some way that they are NOT in control of their life and that there must be need to change. And change may not be easy, but it is much easier than continuing suffering by not changing. When you do not change, surely the suffering will increase. To change means doing the necessary inner work. Remember that what is causing you suffering is ONLY a thought, and YOU have the power to change that thought. So, this post is directed only at those who are accepting that change must come into their life if they want the suffering to cease.
Now to the point of Cancer and Death. How can one accept cancer and turn a negative experience into a positive one? Well, if you cannot accept death, you cannot accept or look positively at your cancer experience. Death is merely a marker between birth and the end time, and like all of life, needs to be celebrated. If you cannot celebrate life, you cannot celebrate death. Each day is a moment of awe, love, experience, and change. Living totally in the moment teaches one the meaning of “being” and gratitude. Your undisciplined mind will cause you immense suffering. If you simply allow the mind (ego) to control your life, you will surely suffer. If you learn to stay out of the mind and into “what is” you will find peace. So the purpose of this post is to offer suggestion of teachings that have helped me and millions of others to find Peace in this life.
IF you decide to start this inner journey to Enlightenment, here are some teachings that have been monumental to me. I suggest this first:
This was written 60 years ago and is an affirmation of all that I have been taught by my many spiritual teachers. It is also about healing cancer.
For me the graduate source is Eckhart Tolle. The Power of Now is a synopsis of the teaching that changed my life, after I got to the point of,” My life sucks, I have to change”
If just ONE person decides today to take the first step toward enlightenment, My mission is accomplished.
Love, Swami Rakendra
Comments
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Death is not the end of life, but a pause in a continuing story
Here is another of your excellent posts. I do not know what the books say but I like to read your quotes on the subject. After all you summarize what you have learned from the various sources and experiences. And still more important is that you manage to spell it down as crispy running water. Your words are hypnotizing and stratify the matters issential to us PCa patients.
When at my first visit to John Hopkins (in 2001) I was given a booklet which title related to death. I took it as offensive at beginning as I was a cancer patient looking for a doctor, not a mortician, but later read it and found it interesting because it introduced the subject of death from a different perspective. I think it was a compilation from the book "Learning to Die". It starts with the comment that it is necessary to understand death to understand life.
On the top they had this quote:
Death is not the end of life, but simply a pause in a continuing story.
Here is the link; http://www.swamij.com/swami-rama-learning-death.htm
Wonderful
VG
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Thank you
Thank you for the kind words and for the elightening link which clearly states the case for enlightenment. It is no coincidence that all true religions end in the same place. Here are two of my favorite quotes from your link:
“For him who is wholly free from attachment there is no grief, much less fear. From craving springs grief, from craving springs fear; for him who is wholly free from craving there is no grief, much less fear,” said the Buddha.
Another Buddhist text states: “Through the abandonment of desire the Deathless is realized.” and
St. Paul referred to life as a slight, momentary affliction that prepares a person for eternal glory. “Everything in human life,” he said, “is for spiritual work.” Life ceases to be a struggle and becomes heaven when one realizes this. You see, you do not have to wait for heaven or hell. They are here and now in your life. It is up to you. You create your own hell by your thought or your heaven by your thought. And the problems that seem so real to us are not problems and are not real. They are simply thoughts, and you have the power to change those thoughts. But, it is not that easy, of course. You cannot control the mind. No one can "control" the mind. But you can learn to turn it off by becoming the witness outside of the mind and realizing that the ego is just doing its thing to destroy your serenity. The mind is like what someone says. What someone says has no importance except the importance you give it. If you give it no importance, then it is only just what someone says. And this is true of everything in your life. Nothing has importance except the importance of what you give it. In spiritual terms, there is only "What is." Acceptance "what is" without judgement and with celebration is the true path of the Enlightened One. All is perfect; All is for your benefit.
Love, Swami Rakendra
All ways living love, always living love
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These days we have more time to contemplate and to prepare
Back in 68 My dad passed due to a heart attack (56 yrs).. About 3 months prior he had his first one. Back then they kept you in the hospital for a couple of weeks and sent you home with pain pills.. He died at my hockey game eatting a hot dog.. Now myself I have his genes.. And those genes caught up to me right around his same age. But with the symtoms I was having thery caught it early LAD was 80% blocked ( Widow Maker).. So after a number of stents and no heart attack here I am today with PCa. At a diffrent time it could have gone another way.. Last year went in for dermatologist appointment. Dr looks on my back sees this little mole freckle ( i am cover in freckles) he says have you ever seen this before.. My answer was no because it is really hard to look at my back. Well he caught the early stage of Melenoma, had that removed so here I am today with PCa.. Now for the PCa. My PCP did a blood test for a physical at the same time I was having my lipid panel done for a appointmnet with Cardiologist the next day. He saw on the test my PSA was at 4.3 and I should have that checked out.. Well it went to 2.5 then jumped to 4.9 in a year.. So Biopsy 3+4 50% 2 of 12 cores and 6 10% 2 cores.. So again they caught it early.. My point is.. At a diffrent time say back in the 1960's I most likey would have been in the landscaping business already. Really no time to contemplate, no time to reflect and beleive me I have done a lot of reflection.. At one time I was affaid to die.. Now I know it is just part of the process.. I have grown. I now know what is important and what is not..
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Defying death by prolonging the living experiences
B.
You are right indeed. PCa is evil but it makes us to grow and appreciate life differently. We learn how to choose and "what is important and what is not".
My brother died last week of an heart attack (72 yrs). He knew of the risks but never tried to prolong life as he always avoided doctors or health care. This Embolism is a malady running in our family. 40 years ago my mother died of the same problem at the age of 54, my sister had to be hospitalized and I was caught recently with renal deficiency (CKD) in part due to high blood pressure. I may be more fortunate because of the improvements in health care and shared information but also from what I have learn with PCa experiences. I think I am wiser and more careful (have an aspirin in my pocket), and better prepared to accept any fatal encounter. I believe that while living we should try enjoying our existences and follow treatment as much as possible, defying death by prolonging our living. Death has been at our door steps since birth, we do not need to care about it but about to live with quality.
Our parents would have told us the same at their timing; "These days we have more time to contemplate and to prepare", and now we repeat that to our children.
I wonder about your diagnosis and how you are caring for it. PCa prejudices our Q&L. Use wisdom moving forwards coordinately and timely.
Best,
VG
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Wonderfulbassoneman said:These days we have more time to contemplate and to prepare
Back in 68 My dad passed due to a heart attack (56 yrs).. About 3 months prior he had his first one. Back then they kept you in the hospital for a couple of weeks and sent you home with pain pills.. He died at my hockey game eatting a hot dog.. Now myself I have his genes.. And those genes caught up to me right around his same age. But with the symtoms I was having thery caught it early LAD was 80% blocked ( Widow Maker).. So after a number of stents and no heart attack here I am today with PCa. At a diffrent time it could have gone another way.. Last year went in for dermatologist appointment. Dr looks on my back sees this little mole freckle ( i am cover in freckles) he says have you ever seen this before.. My answer was no because it is really hard to look at my back. Well he caught the early stage of Melenoma, had that removed so here I am today with PCa.. Now for the PCa. My PCP did a blood test for a physical at the same time I was having my lipid panel done for a appointmnet with Cardiologist the next day. He saw on the test my PSA was at 4.3 and I should have that checked out.. Well it went to 2.5 then jumped to 4.9 in a year.. So Biopsy 3+4 50% 2 of 12 cores and 6 10% 2 cores.. So again they caught it early.. My point is.. At a diffrent time say back in the 1960's I most likey would have been in the landscaping business already. Really no time to contemplate, no time to reflect and beleive me I have done a lot of reflection.. At one time I was affaid to die.. Now I know it is just part of the process.. I have grown. I now know what is important and what is not..
Your post is wonderful, bass. I loved it.
My father-in-law had his first heart attack and quad bypass at the age of 38. He had bypasses every ten years until he died at 63, of a heart attack. He never had high cholesterol or triglycerides in his life. It was congenetal, unrelated to diet or anything, for that matter. He was slim and fit the day he died, working on his lawn.
It is all the luck of the draw. I have always lived a healthy lifestyle, but diet, activities, they are mostly irrelevant. I mostly monitor this siite for the great posts that Swami submits occasionally. While I am a Christian myself, I have studied world religions academically my whole life, and have been evaluated by a Buddhist monk as a Buddhist Arahant -- "non-returner." Arahant is variously described in Buddhism, but my view of it is of one not yet perfected. I was killed in a car wreck in December of 1986, revived at the scene, and then arrested in ICU a week later and revived again. Two years of rehab, organic brain damage. But then two degrees with highest honors, so all can be overcome. Cancers have been a relatively minor part of my struggles. Death is natural and not to be feared, but I do what I can to maintain health. I have no fear of death at all, but cherish the present.
Your time in reflection is the best time a human being could ever spend. It is rare, almost unheard of in our "digital age." People seek crowds and "information," whitch actually banishes wisdom. The word "wisdom" is laughed at, ridiculed. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger noted in the 1930s: "All human being is being-toward-death." When you are born, the countdown to death begins. But there is joy in this life.
You have insight,
max
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Atheism?
Wondering if the old saying “there are no atheists in foxholes” can be paraphrased to “there are no atheists among PC survivors”? If there are any here that believe the Darwinist atheist paradigm that “you live like a hog, you die like a dog, and that's the end of it”... I would like to hear what you have to say. I myself believed that, but after enough experiences with altered states that isolated soul from body enough to understand that the mind is the soul's using of the brain and the senses to “interface” with the physical plane of existence, that all changed.
After getting my undergrad degree in Psychology and Philosophy, and spending a year doing research and experimentation for the PhDs at the Psychiatric Research Institute, I dropped out and just hitchhiked around the country for a while. I appreciate what they were doing there, but they only saw the one side, the physical reality.
That's why I am curious if there are any atheists on this forum who don't believe in the potential of another plane of existence. I am not putting down your views, I am just curious. I usually don't make any headway in such conversations, because I realize if you haven't experienced yourself, you probably won't believe it.
In fact, that “experienced it yourself” has made me realize I had not understood what Paul was saying in such passages as 2 Corinthians 5:1. We studied rationalism and empiricism in school... Aristotle, Locke, B.F. Skinner, Nietzsche, etc. etc. I had read everything pertinent... the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, Be Here Now, Three Pillars of Zen, etc... and the Bible. But I realized I don't believe things unless I experience them for myself.
So I get why an atheist is skeptical of another plane of existence. I was too. But reading some of what Paul said, I think it helps to assume that he did indeed have those experiences and if he is telling the truth, I should give them fair hearing. You know the saying... “Men will die for a lie they think is the truth, but no rational man will die for a lie he knows is a lie”.
“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, and house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven
If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked
for we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.” .... 2 Corinthians 5
Just to clarify the King James English... naked is referring to disembodied spirit/soul, we won't be just isolated awareness or soul, but are promised a spiritual body to interface with the spiritual realm, the same way we have a physical body to interface with the physical realm right now. As for the groaning, been there done that. As for “eternal in the heavens” this does not mean up in the clouds with a “sky god” as I heard one atheist put it. It means eternal (outside of time) and the heavens (outside of this physical realm).
Side note: A lot of misinformation about other planes of existence have been straw man arguments in the past, such as “sky god” references to heaven. This is a misnomer created when the Roman and Christian religions amalgamated and Jehovah and Zeus merged, creating the sky god and heaven in the clouds in the sky shown typically in art and literature, like the Sistine Chapel and Dante's Inferno. Though they were meant as allegory, popular theology at the time embraced them as representative of the truth. There are other straw man arguments as well... like the whole “flat earth” misnomer. The ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantine, etc. believed the earth was an orb. I can't find any culture beyond that believing the earth was “Flat”. The Romans, and the Byzantines displayed the earth as an orb on their coinage. The orbis was typically held in a emperor's hand showing he had authority over the entire earth. This continued on when the Catholic Church put a cross on the orbis, suggesting that the Pope had that authority as well, after the “donation of Constantine” that may or may not have been legitimate. Admittedly, the Popes may have believed the earth was round, but Paul V did not believe Galileo and Copernicus about the rotation of the earth giving the illusion that the sun rotates around the earth instead of the other way around.
So, are there any atheists out there who want to add something to this? As long as you don't bring up “flat earth” and “sky god” and call me a moron... yes, it usually happens. I won't disrespect your views either. Just want to know what you are thinking about some of these posts. Just my opinion, but most atheists I have met are rebelling against the popular mythology of sky gods and heaven in the clouds above. I don't blame you, I rebelled too... but the "cloud" referred to in the bible is the Chekinah Glory, not the white vapor we see in the sky. It took me a while to unlearn all the crap that popular Christian theology had taught me about the bible. Like the Ten Commandments, which are only the first ten of 613 laws and ordinances of the Mosaic Law, and was ONLY a covenant with ancient Israel. Paul says in Galatians we were never meant to keep the Mosaic Law, yet popular theology is still teaching the Ten Commandments. That is just one fr'instance.
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sky gods
hold on... while im on the subject of sky gods... Zeus dwelt on Mt. olympus, Odin was in Vallhalla, Where was Jupiter? The Romans wouldn't allow their sky god to dwell in Greece on Olympus. And where was Osiris? I don't think I have ever heard that... just wondering.
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great post
I do not think of God. I only think of Higher Spirit. To deny that there are higher spiritual choices is to deny an obvious fact. To kill is a low choice. To love is a high choice. If high and low spiritual choices exist, then there always must be a Higher Spirit. Make low choices and you suffer. Make Higher Choices and you move closer to Higher Spirit. Only the foolish can deny the presence of Higher Consciousness. love Swami Rakendra
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U2Grinder said:Atheism?
Wondering if the old saying “there are no atheists in foxholes” can be paraphrased to “there are no atheists among PC survivors”? If there are any here that believe the Darwinist atheist paradigm that “you live like a hog, you die like a dog, and that's the end of it”... I would like to hear what you have to say. I myself believed that, but after enough experiences with altered states that isolated soul from body enough to understand that the mind is the soul's using of the brain and the senses to “interface” with the physical plane of existence, that all changed.
After getting my undergrad degree in Psychology and Philosophy, and spending a year doing research and experimentation for the PhDs at the Psychiatric Research Institute, I dropped out and just hitchhiked around the country for a while. I appreciate what they were doing there, but they only saw the one side, the physical reality.
That's why I am curious if there are any atheists on this forum who don't believe in the potential of another plane of existence. I am not putting down your views, I am just curious. I usually don't make any headway in such conversations, because I realize if you haven't experienced yourself, you probably won't believe it.
In fact, that “experienced it yourself” has made me realize I had not understood what Paul was saying in such passages as 2 Corinthians 5:1. We studied rationalism and empiricism in school... Aristotle, Locke, B.F. Skinner, Nietzsche, etc. etc. I had read everything pertinent... the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, Be Here Now, Three Pillars of Zen, etc... and the Bible. But I realized I don't believe things unless I experience them for myself.
So I get why an atheist is skeptical of another plane of existence. I was too. But reading some of what Paul said, I think it helps to assume that he did indeed have those experiences and if he is telling the truth, I should give them fair hearing. You know the saying... “Men will die for a lie they think is the truth, but no rational man will die for a lie he knows is a lie”.
“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, and house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven
If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked
for we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.” .... 2 Corinthians 5
Just to clarify the King James English... naked is referring to disembodied spirit/soul, we won't be just isolated awareness or soul, but are promised a spiritual body to interface with the spiritual realm, the same way we have a physical body to interface with the physical realm right now. As for the groaning, been there done that. As for “eternal in the heavens” this does not mean up in the clouds with a “sky god” as I heard one atheist put it. It means eternal (outside of time) and the heavens (outside of this physical realm).
Side note: A lot of misinformation about other planes of existence have been straw man arguments in the past, such as “sky god” references to heaven. This is a misnomer created when the Roman and Christian religions amalgamated and Jehovah and Zeus merged, creating the sky god and heaven in the clouds in the sky shown typically in art and literature, like the Sistine Chapel and Dante's Inferno. Though they were meant as allegory, popular theology at the time embraced them as representative of the truth. There are other straw man arguments as well... like the whole “flat earth” misnomer. The ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantine, etc. believed the earth was an orb. I can't find any culture beyond that believing the earth was “Flat”. The Romans, and the Byzantines displayed the earth as an orb on their coinage. The orbis was typically held in a emperor's hand showing he had authority over the entire earth. This continued on when the Catholic Church put a cross on the orbis, suggesting that the Pope had that authority as well, after the “donation of Constantine” that may or may not have been legitimate. Admittedly, the Popes may have believed the earth was round, but Paul V did not believe Galileo and Copernicus about the rotation of the earth giving the illusion that the sun rotates around the earth instead of the other way around.
So, are there any atheists out there who want to add something to this? As long as you don't bring up “flat earth” and “sky god” and call me a moron... yes, it usually happens. I won't disrespect your views either. Just want to know what you are thinking about some of these posts. Just my opinion, but most atheists I have met are rebelling against the popular mythology of sky gods and heaven in the clouds above. I don't blame you, I rebelled too... but the "cloud" referred to in the bible is the Chekinah Glory, not the white vapor we see in the sky. It took me a while to unlearn all the crap that popular Christian theology had taught me about the bible. Like the Ten Commandments, which are only the first ten of 613 laws and ordinances of the Mosaic Law, and was ONLY a covenant with ancient Israel. Paul says in Galatians we were never meant to keep the Mosaic Law, yet popular theology is still teaching the Ten Commandments. That is just one fr'instance.
Wonderful, Grinder.
As I wrote, I have studied this stuff from a multitude of perspectives my whole life. I believe people instinctively seek truth, even when they deny it.
I always loved a line from a hit by U2:
I believe in Kingdom Come,
that all the colors bleed into one, bleed into one
But yes I'm still running.
We continue to ask and question till the end. The name of this mega-hit is Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. In this life, most never do.
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