Too Gray Now

Good comments. Forgive me for butting in, I have not been by here for quite some time. I have had my own math to solve. :) The fact I am alive and doing great is whole 'nuther story! I have spent much of my time the last few years researching alternative treatments and approaches for cancer. Certainly the topic of belief (mine) and its impact upon my longevity has come to my mind MANY times over the years. So I am not writing this without a lot of introspection. Anyway, Broken Arrow, on this topic of believing and living which you brought up I would like to add that we were taught that the ONLY thing preventing us from being healed was our believing. Do you remember that? And that there was no condemnation if we went to Third Aid. It may turn out that this Wierwille teaching is true... only NOT true in the way we were told it was true. It may be that belief in "faith healing" actually gets in the way of certain healing techinques. Yes. Its ok. I will pause until everyone reads that line again. I am not offering this info to start a thread-war about the virtue (or not) of believing - - and the role it plays in a person's life - - or not - - It turns out, there is some very good research being done in this area of healing of cancer by William Bengston. His work is a game-changer IMO. He has gone about his work in a very professional way and his results are pushing hard against conventional wisdom in both science and circles of faith. For example, he has noted that in using his healing technique that if the people 'believe" that God will heal the person, or that they will perform the healing... then the healing results are lessened. This is certainly opposite of everything we learned in our days in the Way... or nearly any church for that matter. His results are clinically confirmed. Bengston video intro I will butt out now. Thanks for considering this remarkable piece of information. Many people may be dying to know it. And the topic seemed an appropriate segue for me to introduce it. This is an excellent thread and deserves to carry on. If this was a de-reail... forgive me, please.

TommyZ, Thanks for offering prayer. Of course I will receive it with open arms! Regarding your situation, I do wish you the very best outcome possible. Facing all the things we need to in order to get through these situations without relying upon denial is a powerful lesson in self honesty. Anyway, there are MANY great lessons I could ramble on about. Best to you...

I am happy to hear that she is getting along well. And that is good advice. Look to the future. Indeed. It is wonderful, if you can see it with your own eyes. Going through it again. Yes. The recurrence. I can certainly identify with the rush of those feelings. I told my wife "I don't want to get in that saddle, again, honey. I thought those days were behind me." But, honestly, (and to borrow a phrase from Sara Palin: I am not putting lipstick on a pig, here) I am really feeling great now on my de-tox program. REALLY! Truly. For me this situation could be said to be an even bigger blessing than the first time. I know that may sound like propaganda, but it is not. On this past Thanksgiving I gathered everybody around and talked about their fears... their fears for me and what it might mean if things don't work out. I told them that everybody can ask me ANYTHING. Anything about my cancer. Not to worry about my state of mind. "Believe me", I said, "I have already thought of all the worst." It turned out to be a wonderful, most wonderful Thanksgiving. Listening to doctors and specialists and people with lots of training and experience, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Very easy. But, they can not do my living or dying for me. That is up to me. And I choose - LIFE. I know I could still loose this deal, see. I am not a fool. But, I am not going sit in despair. I have felt the despair. I did not run from it. I felt this thing tackle me from behind. I felt myself loosing the struggle to live. It would sneak up on me several times a day. It was horrible. I know what it feels like to be ignorant of what choice will or might help me. I also know what it feels like to have the constancy and life of Christ well up - and stand for me, in me. To calm me. To save me from the dread and cold-stalking dis-ease. I am not special in this regard. Countless people have experienced what I am going through now. They were beacons for me. May we pass on whatever light we actually find in this life. After all, life is not about finding what I wanted to find - at least it has not been for me - but it has been about how I respond to it. In that regard, we are ALL very much alike. Best to all -

Thank you WG! Nice to post again. Been a long time. :) Nice to see you, too - I see your moniker says "Go Bucks". So I am presuming that you are a Milwaukee Bucks fan - I lived in Milwaukee and the area for a good many years. Lots of great memories. Best to you!

Tommy, I have been on a wild ride with my own cancer experiences. The medical take on cancer, and often our own first hand experiences with it are the reason it scares many of us. It should. It is very often deadly. I am 55 (well 54, actually). Let me sum up in the event that my experiences can be of any help to you. Who knows:) 1. My Dad died from mat. prostate cancer when he was 59. He was the same age as I was when I was diagnosed with the same thing. Mine, like his, was also very aggressive. His death was a horrible downhill experience. The biggest issue for me was thinking that my end would be just like his. And why not? Right? See, I had to fix that. I got it resolved with EFT. (Google it if you want to know more.). 2. Prior to choosing what I would do, my Dr. (who is a DO) told me to get a book called: "Outsmart Your Cancer" by Tanya Pierce. Very well researched. Has many non-toxic alternative treatments that work. 3. I had surgery. Prior to that, I changed my diet. Exercised a lot. Put my life on hold, more or less. Oh yes... and I had no health insurance, either. The surgery seemed to be a success. 4. Almost two years go by. I am doing "great". Lost some functionality due to the surgery, but I was grateful to be alive. Then.... .... Two weeks before Thanksgiving of 08... I get a "bad" report. The cancer is "back". Only they don't know for sure where it is. I visit 4 doctors, including the best oncologist at Emory. Everybody gives me crappy news. They will only be able to "make me more comfortable." Crap!!!! 5. So, I have re-grouped. Now, I am doing a very serious de-tox program with a Doctor in LA. Eating raw foods, juicing. This Doctor used to run a Nautropthic Cancer Clinic. I am also de-toxing my emotional states of being. It's ALL gotta GO!! :) Here is where I am at right now. I am pretty sure I will be one of those who make it. And I am not just whistling past the grave yard, if you catch my drift. Cancer has been, by far, the worst/best thing that has happened to me. It forced me to face my WHOLE life and deal with it. I am freer today than any other time in my life. Sometimes I weep for joy when I stand outside and breath in the fresh air, sunshine, and feel the breeze as it plays around my skin and hair. Life is so ALIVE!! now! The mundane has become a portal to wondrous moments. This is quite a change from my engineering type of persona I have had for many years. If I were you... and I am not - of course - I would get the book.

WW: You found this word spelled "yahlal"... I do declare! Any good Southerner knows he mispelled "y'all". Or he is dyslexic and meant to say: "All y'all". Either way, down here in the 'ole South - we know... I say, we KNOW how to spot a Dam* Yang-Key - and if they mispellt "y'all" they ain't worth payin' attention to.

Cman, Agreed. Not loosing one's youth - but having the energy of it "roll-over" and be part of the transformation to the next phase. Let me talk to myself here - not directing this towards any poster or post in particular... Just a bunch of rhetorical questions. In my metaphor of Recapitulation one could say it offers a basis for the book which started this thread: Ye Shall Be Holy. Now I have not read the book. Just pointing at the phrase - the title. How is it that we become holy? Performance? Keeping of external behavior rules? Being infused with holy spirit? New Birth? (Of course, most of us on these boards spent years with a pre-packaged answer to that question of "how" - God makes you Holy - period.). Is it not possible for one to become holy by multiple means and processes? Must there be only one answer or component in this process? A tragedy of Christianity, IMO is the notion that Jesus did it (does it) all - When it comes to dealing with the energy which is in one's own heart - we have a very significant role to play. And the energy which is in us has a huge bearing upon our performance and our becoming. Can one become or Shall Be Holy by some means which includes paying no attention to transforming what is within? As SG said, a moment to light all the candles and a lifetime to open all the seals. Certainly, transforming what is within us is one of those life-time type of events... which can and does from time to time, happen in a moment.

This sub-topic discussion of teenage "old people" is right on, in my opinion. Energetically speaking we need to be resolving energetic issues - energetically. But most people do not know how to do such in their lives. Therefore, most people do no such thing; generally people blame others for what moves in their OWN hearts. This is vey immature and irresponsible. Yet, we see it all around us. Road rage. Politics. Even people who stay ....ed a life time because of some offense (which is living in them). Without the guidance of the mature people in our lives, we simply ride the not-so-merry-go-round again and again. The energy which pumps through one's body when we are teenagers is not to be enshrined. It was to be resolved - transformed if you prefer - - when and if we resolve it - it will not be abandoned. But it will morph into the next phase of development. The energy of a teen, properly matured and transformed – will blossom into the next phase and so on. But it is in the aspect of the transformation phase where people seem to get lost... we wait for others to transform us because we do not know how to do it. We find others who want our energy – but can not help us. Still we recapitulate or re-visit those energies again and again. But when we do, we only find we are gaining more and more neurosis through this process and are resolving little or nothing. Recapitulation is something we see in the development of stages of the embryo and has good scientific footing. It means: The principle that living organisms develop only from other living organisms and not from nonliving matter. I bring it up as a metaphor. We develop our next phase of energetic living from these living energies in us, now. We (Western Man) may appear to be "stuck" in perpetual puberty thinking and feeling... but maybe we are merely recapitulating. :) If we would resolve instead of try and re-capture the youthful feelings we would no longer need to recapitulate that feeling state. We could move on.

Thanks to one and all.... really. I continue to be grateful and somewhat stunned. On a different note, I know that some of you have gone to J R. new Way Corps site. It is cool to see all the faces, kids, etc. Almost like a virtual Corps Week without the teachings. Of course with no fake avatars and names to cover for us, it seems as though most people are genuinely glad to see ya. So, I joined the 11th. And a couple of others from here have done so.... (we know who we are)... but, I mean come on... Polar Bear, Dot Matrix, Tonto, Vickles, and heaven knows who else... give it a go. :)

Belle & Bramble; I am carrying no water for XYZ, here - meaning I am not a therapist or rep... - but I have found EFT to be a very remarkable tool. I use the various techniques regularly and I have noticed everything from nothing to astounding results in my life and in the lives of others. I have done it myself - meaning I have never been to see an EFT therapist. I ordered the DVDs and read and just started using it. This speaks to me about the user-friendly nature of the tool. I tell others "Look, just start using it. Your belief is not necessary to make it (EFT protocol) work... so don't spend a lot of time trying to get your logic to buy into it or explain it all before you decide to use it." Yeah, we should probably take this part of the discussion off line - PM - or email - or phone... I will PM you guys. CMAN - I like that about smashing your faith. Heck, learnng to enguage with life (without the felt need to first dress up all of one's daily events in tired, old, hand-me-down straight-jackets of doctrinal explanation) sure is a lot more real. I find I need very few beliefs in order to function these days. I just don't need them for this part of my journey. So, I dumped 'em and said Goodbye.

Belle, Thanks. In your quote, at the bottom: "Your ability to influence people may grow more sophisticated because others sense that you respect their right to be themselves, but you will likely spend more time gazing inward, into the one person you can change: yourself." Ok. NOW I am gonna de-rail this puppy! :) I used to travel a lot - much less now. But I still like to enguage people at the airport, on the train, etc. right in the eyes - pure strangers to me. When I do, I practice different active thoughts - my intentions towards them - I intend to accept them. Just to see what happens. Sure as can be - if I am intending acceptance... and let my face muscles do the natural things that those intentions tug upon - people do respond. Often, with a perceptive softening in their face - or in some cases, a very broad smile. Or they may say, "Do I KNOW you??" It is fascinating to watch. But, if I just sort of keep to myself and use the "Urban Glazed - I-don't-give-a-shi*" expression which is so common... Nothing happens. But, I have had to do a lot of inner work to get a place where I could broadcast a coherent message. If change on the other person's part is not required for acceptance... that gets communicated. If something in me is offended by "them" - it is literally something in me. It is not them. It is my problem. Not their problem at all. Then I use EFT or some other mechanism to deal with it and clear it. We are marvelous creatures - complex - sensitive... People have the circuitry to get all of this info - so why not broadcast it? But, our "communication" gets full of static when we have not done the work to reconcile our own offenses. What I am saying here is not some new thing - it has been around for ages. Thanks, Bell.

Sorry for the derail. I did not mean to turn this into a different discussion. Loosening one's grip on a world view - is a process, indeed. It can sneak up on ya, if you fiddle around with the fundamentals.

Bell, Yes. Yes. Yes! (I like saying that word ) These days I tend to "feel" what surfaces inside of me when I read a thing and comment on that basis. What surfaces is not often what the other person intended - and I do not mean my comments to be a re-statement of nor an expounding upon what the other person meant at the logic level. But, often what surfaces is not wholly disconnected from their meaning, either. Certainly, your comments had me nodding in the affirmative direction. :) Affirming a thing with our insides - our very lives, if you will - is as close to a full agreement as I can honestly produce. Cman, I hear ya - I am with ya - nothing unclean of itself. It is for that very reason that I "attached" the notion of death to isness and notion of "life" to becoming. Only scaffolding, my friend, only scaffolding to try and describe a "felt" reality. A meeting of the minds upon specific meaning does not dictate inner affirmation. I have found that I can agree in mind, but my mind can be way out of phase with what is inside of me. Sirguess has a way of using scaffolding - maps - structure... etc. to try and excavate and solicit comments. It is one of his trademarks that I have enjoyed for years - Once one stands upon the scaffolding, I guess one could comment upon thejourney... the width of the plank upon which one stands... there are many ways to respond. Recently, I have chosen to simply report what I "see" after crawling up the scaffolding. That is the thing about Sirguess - you can see a LOT of different things if you take his invite to "Come on UP - and Look around!" Heck, I just looked in one direction and ran smack, dab into something else I have been wrestling with, over the last year. Actualy, I must admit to putting my mind through the equivelent of a game of TWISTER when I considered, deeply, the implications of the Hebrew language not having a verb "to be". For a dyed-in-the-wool techie, like me, that rocks the whole boat. Enough from me -

Hey +odd - Been a while, my good friend since I have popped in - I must say - I would like to twist your first post - just a bit - to see if it jars any fingers loose and weakens the death grip you mention. Let me fiddle with the verb "is" and all the forms of it in your post – One can replace it with the appropriate form of the verb "to become". If we do, the altered meaning points to a way out of our dilemma of feeling that we have encountered THE “correct” world view. Our very use of language unveils the unnoticed bias… we say “My view of such-and-such IS…..” when we could admit to our progressive realization and say “My view right now is BECOMING…” Our notion of "is-ness" is very Greek or Western. One has to push the button and create a stop-scene moment in order to say “is” with any degree of authority. But life does not stop; for if it does stop, it ceases to be life. For me, “become” is more descriptive of what I live – I can not look in the mirror and forget the continuum I see and feel in my own life or the opinions that are becoming or ever-forming within me. Who here can only see themselves as others say they perceive them “to be”? Who here would not trifle with anyone’s 3rd party assessment of them? Who here does not bristle any longer when their spouse says “You ALWAYS are ________ !”. We all know we change. We all know we can not be “consistent”. We are not an instance of “is”. Think of a pretty flower - that turns into a seed - that falls - that gets in the soil - that sprouts - that .... That flower is an instance of a becoming-seed. It becomes. It never only is JUST a flower – except to the 3rd. party observer – who doesn’t really know what they are gazing upon. Certainly, if the flower dies - it may become an "is" with brown pedals that never matures to a seed body - but if its progress remains alive – then it becomes. Anything alive... becomes. Anything dead… is. We all live in a picture world. We take photos. We put “subjects” into the “frame” and then we wait for “perfect light”. We gather grandma, grandpa, the kids, and all for a Holiday picture and take 5 shots until we get one where EVERYBODY is smiling. Why? Because we like to remember things "as they were" at least so we say. Bull-butter. We most certainly do NOT WANT to remember kids crying, grandpa drinking and cussing out grandma one more time, etc. We want only happy memories. We do not want ALL of the memories. We like to remember things the way we want to think they are – or the way we would like them “to be”, Since most people feel powerless to interact in the process of everything they are becoming and can not seem to bend their total existence to their own will, they gladly settle for a fake picture. They hold onto these pictures for years. They frame them. Hang them on their walls. They pass them down the family line. These are the images they savor. They prefer to pretend their lives to be full of moments just like the picture. But is this picture a slice of their collective becoming? Can they truthfully say “Here we all ARE on Christmas day!!” ? I think not. We do the same sort of thing when we hold onto our world view with a death grip. It is our picture of the world. Our view is filled with isness, it is filled with fiction. These days, it is not fashionable to have a world view that has any sort of hope in it – better to have a picture of everyone perishing. At least so it seems. Is this worldview what we all are to become? In part, our fascination with “isness” is a pre-occupation with death – or at least – a not-so-true picture of life. Is it any wonder we have despair by the bucket loads? Possibly we could get over our death grip as you say (good choice of words, in my opinion) of our world points of view one step at time - if we got rid of the photo mentality - and rid ourselves of the "isness" that causes us to assume that we have discovered the very nature of a thing (or someone) - by seeing it in just one of its many, many, many phases.

Hey there you guys - - - I know that some of you have been praying for my Cancer situation - and I just got my latest results back last week - (just in time for my 30 anniversary with Mrs. Too Gray... :) ) and I am Cancer free!! for 9 months Now!! I am headed forward for sure !! - Thanks to all. This has been the MOST remarkable part of my journey in life so far... really. It has been the best thing that has happened to me. My life has turned over - - - and inside out - - and I get to have the rest of my future - see - and I so much want to live it!! Live it like I have been born again, again. I am not waiting for Christ to return - for me, you see, in a way, it has already happened! Thanks. Really.