How and Why Did This Happen?

One thing that the Integral approach reminds us of constantly is that events are a four-quadrant affair which tetra-arise.  For those not familiar with this lingo, it means that whatever arises in our lives comes about from the interaction of the following four manifestations: the individual singular, or the "I",  that who feels, thinks, and possesses an executive function that we call the ego;  the exterior of the individual, which reflect the habits, structures, behaviors, and organs of my insides; the culture in which I consider myself part of the "we" and which I follow perhaps subconsciously when it comes to taboos, norms, or mores; and  the structure, function, and rules of the exterior of this collective, such as laws, systems, and medical protocols.

So how and why did I come to "win the cancer lottery" as one lung doctor told me? 
Why were both cancers UNIQUE to the point that as of this moment, no one really knows what type of lung cancer it is?

 How did I come to shift from deathly fear of my circumstance of imminent death to one of understanding my own bodily impermanence, and of being held by the understanding of the fact that I and we do not die, really, ever, from our essential beings?

I have no answers.  I am adrift and afloat in the Mystery of life, but just as we understand that the substantiality of the water beneath us keeps us afloat, so I too have come to feel supported, regardless of the possibility of an imminent happy ending to my tale of two cancers.  All of us meet death some time, after all, and to call someone a "cancer survivor", noted one curmudgeonly person, means that you wind up dying of something else.

What I do acknowledge is that after the body/mind/spiritual crushing years that I endured from the petty administrators after an honored 24 year teaching career, I had a major presencing of post-traumatic stress disorder.  The PTSD did not, as I have noted, come from these attacks and attempts to crush me; they only re-ignited the prolonged stress that I had been under as I honored others' needs and ignored my own.  I would be stopped in my tracks if anyone asked me, "But Lynne, what do YOU want?" It made me an excellent advocate as an attorney, since I could pour my heart and soul into another's salvation; I just had no idea that I had a right to save myself or to honor my personal needs.

Someone hypothesized that this type of personality "gets" cancer more than the narcissistic or balanced personality.  I asked Ken Wilber about this issue directly.  The scientific studies, he explained,  might factor in a small percent of psychological causation as a co-factor with genetic mutations, so i cannot assume that I in any way "caused" either cancer to manifest.
But healing, he stated, is definitely influenced by the psyche.

There is no attraction to masochism within me.  I hate having to go through pain. I cannot stand to suffer although I have learned to go deeply inward to avoid psychological or physical pain.  It is what made meditation so natural for me.  More likely than any desire to be hurt is the fact that I "put out" energy as a victim.  When I see how I reacted to the humilitation and pain that followed the school harassment, I can in retrospect see how someone NOT attuned to being a victim would have acted forcefully and directly to stop the diminishment and ultimate negation of my contribution to and expertise within Integral education.  So being a victim begets continued treatment as the victim.

How did I finally heal from this life-long syndrome? Enter my series of heros, to whom I owe so much. 

After ineffective sessions with an social worker during the worst of the school's treatment of me, I reached out to a woman who listed herself as a Phoenix Rising instructor.  I was so disconnected from my body that I realized that during meditation I conceived of my body as an empty turkey carcass---OUCH!  I needed to finally ground myself in my body, and I called her for an appointment.  Her name is Lorraine Antine, and I owe her the turning point in my healing, of body, mind, and spirit.

She realized that I had more going on than just a disconnect from my body, and began to work on the obvious PTSD that drove so many of my actions.  She began doing a perfect Integral balance of body/mind/spirit reclamation of my true Self, which took 3 years to complete.  My understandings of the complex and complicated interactions of my family of origin with the family I married into had to be retrained. 

Both the instances of insanity and the powerful love from my family of origin had to be stitched together properly so that I could place them behind me in a supportive position.  I came to rearrange my family, my ancestors, like bobsledders behind me with their arms wrapped around me, and then with me wrapped around Erica with her little "kidney bean" inside her right now.  Thus I came to replicate the vision I had on the day I gave birth to her----I saw myself as the midpoint of my ancrestoral line going back into the mists of time, and then telescoping forward into the far reaches of the future. I touched the Life Force---the Eros and Agape that signal evolution and involution, manifestation and potentiality, no-death and no-birth.....

When I was at my most vulnerable in the hospital with that ugly staph infection under my skin, racked with fever and contemplating  that I had but a few months left of my life, I spent hours in my room and in the hallway contemplating what I had been told by my oncologist and by the radiologist.  But as I faced a truncated life ending in abject pain, I also "saw" my mom and dad hovering above me RAGING against any harm that might come to me.  Their strong parental devotion and "momma and daddy grizzly" protective love felt so strong as it rushed through me that I had no doubt that their love was being directed to me at that moment.

I had time to muse about that breast cancer: it puzzled the doctors that although it showed up clearly on the mammogram, not one could "feel" it inside me. No matter how hard they palpated that breast, it felt as clean as the other.  Strange.....What effect might all of this deep personal psychological work have had on that circumstance?  I keep wondering.

My mother and her sister both had ductal carcinoma in their late 80s and early 90s.  Both women had small lumpectomies followed by taking Tomaxafin (sp?) and I presumed that such a  modest health event might come to me in my 90s as well.  Hadn't the doctor put my "chances" of getting breast cancer at 16% a decade ago? I had felt so reassured that this was not something I really had to pay attention to, yet the absence of my left breast belied the encouraging statistics. 
My thoughts, my musings, about my own cancer led me to the possibility  that perhaps I felt that a debt had to be paid for switching from obedient servant to owner of her own life.  I have considered that perhaps the sacrifice of a breast was the price I had to pay psychically to own and live the rest of my life.  I had made such strides in owning my own body, my personal needs, and my non-ego-entranced self, and perhaps the Kosmos requires recompense.
Once the breast was gone, I really took little note of it---until the infection set in.  I had come to identify with the Amazonian warriors and the 'goddess" who speaks of and to me, Athena.  I do feel like the warrior, and since I have a hefty amount of  competitive energy and a large life force, I feel stronger and more in charge of my life today than I did two months ago. 

My style of dress has changed since the surgery as well.  I thought perhaps it indicated a compensation for feeling mutilated as a female, but I now believe that the warrior spirit has come into me, and I intend to live into that feeling in every way.  My mother at her most vital and healthiest was such a strong woman, a true force of nature. 

So did this disease manifest from within that maternal bloodline to pass along the embodied warrior in charge of her own destiny, or is this merely a story I have concocted as a great chapter for a memoir??

The lung cancer is a really strange manifestation in every sense.

Once I knew I had cancer and hinted at the diagnosis on a listserv, a wonderful woman and author, Patricia Kay, reached out to me and asked if she might work with me on a cellular level.  She is another hero who set in motion the shift that I underwent in the hospital, and that stays with me now as my Self-self. 

By working on the smallest level of my interior, the cell, Patricia got me to plunge even deeper into the holon (whole-part)of which I am a part (and the dominant monad for Integral readers).  I connected with the healthy cells; met and entered into the cancer cells; saw the entire orchestra of cells going about their business and differentiating the healthy from the diseased fellows.  I entered into the noise that out of control cells might make, and how the healthy cells could build up barriers to the cancer cells, kill them off, and sweep them away.  I came to feel empathy for my organs that were being taxed in dealing with this chaotic mass of disease, and comforted them as I thought that chemo was approaching to interrupt their brilliantly orchestrated working of my body.

I sailed through the mastectomy. 
My mental state was strong and resiliant.
My loving other daughter, Andrea, an experienced LPN, came up to care for me, and she showed her expertise again and again in my care.  This is another miracle, a story that might bring the reader to tears, but I will leave that one for another day. 
Just trust me when I say that our loving mother/daughter relationship, where I am SO PROUD of her as nurse, wife, and mother, came from years of work, love, and forgiveness....
Friends and colleagues came through for me, and for the first time I was open to their love.
Of special note here are my two closest friends, both brilliant Integral minds, Joanne Rubin and Robin Reinach.  More of them later...

And then came the confusing lung cancer scenario.
The radiologist had told me it might be small cell lung cancer with a 2 year life span. I might have a few months of tortured living left.
The oncologist thought it might be a rapidly metastasizing breast cancer in the lung.  No more than 5 years expected for that scenario.
I dissembled......

I am now situated back in the hsopital in this retelling:
The 10th floor of Sloan-Kettering is devoted to women's cancer health issues such as breast, ovarian, cervical, and metastatic cancers.
It is my second time on this floor from Dec. 11-18th after the mastectomy Nov. 4th.  I know the ropes.
The floor is a huge rectangle bisected by the medical staff,  banks of phones and computers, and the bank of elevators.  We women who can, trudge around in shuffling or brisk laps accompanied by our IV poles and monitors in an attempt to get some exercise.  Some women meet eyes briefly, but for the most part, each woman is in her own space, her own reveries, fears, hopes, doubts, and so we walk...

I am walking around and around the rectangle, getting a bit dizzy, and I go off into a reverie.
I have but a few months to live, I fear.  I cannot bear that thought. 

Here again is the ultimate frustration of my life---EVERY DAMN TIME I GET A PROJECT GOING REALLY WELL, SOME EXTERNAL FACTOR MESSES IT UP AND CAUSES ME TO WITHDRAW FROM IT.

I could, but will not, detail examples of this dynamic from the past.  Let's just deal with my present frustration and terror at the thought of death, be it months or 5 years from now.

My dream had been to create the first Integral Mentors and Ministers program, and now at One Spirit Learning Alliance thanks to Michael Pergola and others, we have a vibrant program started!
So what happens? I geet diagnosed with breast cancer the day the program begins.
And now that we have put so much love and preparation into this new ground-breaking program, where I became the first Integral Minister ever ordained, I will die before it develops to its potential.

My darling daughter, my only natural-born child, is pregnant.  How divine!  Except the child will never really remember me since I will be gone in a few months or before s/he turns 5.

I have a book that needs to be finished, and papers to be written for the journals that will never be manifested.

All this taken from me just as I have first tasted my essential self, just as I have righted soooo many years of emotional suffering!  How could this be?  So unfair!

I am walking, walking, around and around......

But what if.....what if  I Do die before I get to fully create and refine the seminary program?  Won't Joanne and Michael and Marc and Terry and Deborah be there to run it?  So the entity that is really pissed off is my EGO, that I would not receive the kudos and ego gratification for having started it.

Let it go....

What about this precious little fetus growing within my daughter?  Doesn't s/he have a great grandpa, and two marvelous, relaxed, and loving parents to raise this child?  Of course.  So what is really kicking and screaming "not fair"?  My ego.

Let it go....

I did this with everything on my mental list of complaints. 

With each letting go, I saw myself dropping a sheath off of my body to the floor...Until I found my little self standing before two giant oak doors, towering above my small self.

And then...

I floated away from that mental image.  I felt as though I did not know anything, and it felt so freeing and good and light and right.  I giggled to myself that I could not have answered any question put to me then with an answer other than "I don't know"....yet with a smile.

Some time during these walking torus I also envisioned my parents above me with that raging protective love letting me know that nothing would or could ever really harm me.  And under them appeared a golden vibrating infinity sign.

I returned to my room unafraid, placid, free, rested, secure.....

More later.  I am a bit spent right now in this retelling.

The Breast, the Lung, and the Tick

After my diagnosis of breast cancer and the mastectomy on Nov. 4, I opted for breast replacement surgery which begins the day of the surgery with the placement of a tissue expander next to my chest wall.  Then over months saline is injected until the skin expands enough for the transplantation of my own abdominal tissue and blood vessels as a new breast.

As a result of the diagnosis I also underwent a bone and a tissue scan.  Around Thanksgiving my oncologist called to tell me there was a spot on my lung that was probably nothing but required a lung biopsy.  I went back to Sloan-Kettering for the biopsy Dec. 4.  The radiologist confessed that he and the staff had been totally puzzled by the image on the scan and had no real idea what they were dealing with.  It appeared as a ghostly image, totally translucent... Right before sending me to sleep I asked what his hunch was.  He told me it was probably small cell lung cancer....and off I drifted...

Home later that night I looked up what that meant..it meant survival of 2 years.

Saturday Dec. 5 I got my hair cut very short in anticipation for my first chemo treatment Monday Dec. 6th.  I was in such fear that ( I thought) I began to get cold sweats... 

Monday I went off to my first chemo treatment.  The nurse inserted the IV and showed me the door where i would receive the first influsion.  Just then the oncologist entered and said that there would be no chemo, that the biopsy revealed that it was indeed lung cancer.

She took out the IV and sat me down.  It was NOT small cell lung cancer.  I was positively giddy at the reprieve.  Then she told me that it was probably metastatic breast cancer that had traveled to my lung.  I asked her what that meant in terms of survival.  She said with luck, 5-10 years.   The other "good news" I received is that chemo was now out of the question for me.  I will be treated by hormone therapy since this breast cancer is very very sensitive to the use of hormone cessation pills to stop any new tumor growth.

Tuesday Dec. 8 I ran a fever and felt terrible.  Flu-like virus, I thought.....No further news from the biopsy all week.

Sat. morning I woke to find my involved breast turning reddish.  I waited until 10 pm to check it again.  It was bright red and swelling.  I called the plastic surgeon who instructed me to pack a bag for 3 days and get to the Sloan-Kettering ER immediately.  I had cellulitis, an infection of the skin, common when a foreign object (the chest tissue expander) is placed into the body.  1 in 5 women getting reconstructive ssurgery get this condition.

By Tues, my condition had worsened.  No antibiotic could stop the infection and I ran a fever continuously.  I needed another surgery which I had by 4 pm.  They took out the tissue expander, flushed the infection.....
I then spent 5 days recovering on heavy IV antibiotics.

But consider this---but for the lung cancer, I would have had that first shot of chemo which would have significantly decreased my infestion-fighting white bood cells.  And unbenownst to anyone, I already had a raging internal infection of cellulitis inside me. They told me that my healthy immune system really dug in and protected me until I got to the hospital.  That shot would have been fatal to me in trying to stave off the infection, or at least led to an ICU-level infection.

Wed. the lung cancer surgeon stopped by to introduce himself to me.  He had preliminary results from the biopsy.  It was NOT metastatic breast cancer.  It was a sneaky early stage lung cancer probably from 2nd hand smoke from all the years in my father's house.  Since it is translucent, it cannot be found on any x-ray.  It only shows up on a body scan.  Which you are only given if you already have cancer.  I asked what would have happened if it had not been for the scan spotting it.  He said it would have grown until it would have caused symptoms, andby then it would be too late. IOW, but for the breast cancer we would never have found the lung cancer....

He told me that I would have surgery this Jan. to get rid of it, then follwed by pills that will stop it from any further impact on my health.  The surgery is done robotically thru 3 small cuts.  I go home after 2-3 days with 3 band aids.

And then there was the tick.

On Wed. night as I prepared to shower, I thought I spotted a caraway seed on my arm.  Except it was a tick.  I knew how to get them out which I did, and then demanded preventative medicine.  The next day they brought in a beautiful Lab dog to sniff out the room.  Emma is the hospital's official bedbug and tick detector.  No new ticks.

Tonight is Friday and I leave tomorrow at 10 am for home.

I have written this quickly and without analysis of the stage and state shifts I have gone through this week.

Your prayers and good intentions helped save me this week.  I will add the spiritual context in a later post, but I wanted to get this up and public.

Blessings to you all.

My Treatments--chemical, emotional, spiritual

Yesterday I had a  panic attack.

Friday I had the lung biopsy which was nothing to fear.  I felt nothing, and just had to stay there for 5 hours afterwards to make sure my left lung did not collapse.

But the radiologist who performed the biopsy left me with such red hot and freezing cold fear that I was incapacitated for 24 hours.  He said he could not make out what that blotch was on the scan.  He said it was 50/50 that it was small cell lung cancer.  Ever the nosy kind, I looked it up and found out that it is a rare lung cancer seen only in 20% of cases, always among smokers (never smoked once in my life) and FATAL.  Thanks for scaring the hell out of me.

I realize that Drs. at S-K are there FOR CANCER.  I realize that they cannot afford to just cheerlead their patients since they do have to pronounce death sentences on some.

But for God's sake, how about giving me the other 50% probability??

I remained in hot/cold sweated fear, conceiving that my death would be measured in horrible pain-filled months.  I could not stop shaking, and when I went out to lunchwith Erica and Simon (daughter and son-in-law) I shook so badly that I spilled juice and drinks all over the table.

Then I went off to get my hair cut very very short, awaiting the inevitable hair loss.  Until the news of the lung spot was received, I had grieved more about my hair than anything related to treatment. My hair has always been a source of pride for me.  Born a blondish red head, I have been told that blonds have more hair than other shades, and that I have 3x the follicles as other women.  So although my hair does have a mind of its own, once handled by Rossana, my stylist, I feel as though I had had a complete makeover, and walk out of the salon feeling renewed.

Ro did a splendid job, giving me a pixie cut rather than a buzz, which would have looked ugly.  With stylish long dangly earrings, i can pass for, well, OK.  I will go retrieve my new wig this week, which makes me look like my "old self."

So what is the "old" and "new" self, this fiction??  It does not exist, and I really acknowledge that at this time:

Ken from One Taste, pp. 465--468
"The world is illusory, which means you are not any object at all---nothing that can be seen is ultimately real.  You are neti, neti, not this, not that.  And under no circumstances should you base4 your salvation on that which is finite, temporal, passing, illusory, suffering-enhancing and agony-inducing.

"Brahman alone is real, the Self...alone is real---the poure Witness, the timeless Unborn, the formless Seer, the radical I-I, radiant emptiness---is what is real and all that is real.  It is your condition, your nature, your essence, your present and your future, your desire and your destiny, and yet it is always ever-present as pure Presence, the alone that is Alone....
                   "There is neither creation nor destruction,
                     Neither destiny nor free-will;
                     Neither path nor achievement;
                     This is the final truth." Ramana Maharshi

What led me to abandon my gentle abiding and go into a panic attack?  Who panicked, and why?  Fear of suffering imminently.  Fear of dying  before seeing my grandchildren.  Fear of not-being.  Obviously the small self, the ego, considered its death, and as always, set into motion more suffering.

I wish....I wish I had a belief system that provided me with a tale of a wondrous afterlife with angels and harps and cherubs and God and me chatting....But that system would havge to include every sentient being, and everyone behaving themselves!  I suppose that is why we cordon off our belief in heavens...only "my" tribe can come into this heaven.  But hey, have we ever gotten along with our whole tribe at any time??

But I do not have such a calming story.  Much more do I demand of myself.....It is what I share with my "students" at Oner Spirit, yet in truth, I believe that we are all working to abide within IT which is already ever There with us.

At some point yesterday I "popped" out of the panic attack.  It had a beginning, a middle, and and end.  It was not "me", it was an emotion which my clever daughter fed back to me.  God girl!!  She is listening and thinking and absorbing!! 

I then spent the rest of the day back where I have been all along, Athena, Amazonian one-breasted warrior woman.  So how do I explain what happened for those hours of melt-down?  And how do I learn to live into those times, learn from them, and short-circuit their appearance?

Ken from One Taste, p. 533
" Resting int that Freedom and Emptiness---and inmpartially witnessing all that arises--you will notice that the separate-self (or ego) simply arises in consciousness like everything else.  You can actually feel the self-contraction, just like you can feel your legs....The self-contraction is a feeling of interior tension, often localized behind the eyes, and anchored in a slight muscle tension throughout the bodymind.  It is an effort and a sensation of contracting in the face of the world.  It is a subtle whole-body tension,.  Simply notice this tension.

"Once people have become comfortable resting as the empty Witness, and once they notice the tension that is the self-contraction, they imagine that...they have to get rid of the self-contraction....Just that is the second mistake, because it actually locks the self-contraction firmly into place....

"The only thing that wants to get rid of the ego is the ego.  Spirit loves everything that arises, just as it is....

"But the ego, convinced that it can become even more entrenched, decides to play the game of getting rid of itself----simply because, as long as it is playing that game, it obviously continues to exist (who else is playing the game?)...."

"and so, the practice?  Whe3n you rest in the Witness, or rest in I-I, or rest in emptiness, simply notice the self-contraction.  Rest in the Witness, and feel the self-contraction.  When you feel the self-contraction, you are already free of it...."

And that is precisely what I did yesterday.  I went into the icy hot contraction radiataing out of my stomach and manifesting into cold sweat.  I noticed it.
And popped out of the panic attack.

Tomorrow I drive down to Basking Ridge, NJ to S-K's beautiful regional out patient center amidst a corporate campus surrounded by forests and streams.  They have come to understand the effect of enviornment on the body-mind intersection.  The main campus hospital in NYC is furnished tastefully with enough to drink and munch that you can imagine sitting in the Continental Lounge at Newark awaiting a flight.  The outpatient center is tranquil, open, with fish tanks and areas to sit and do work looking out of the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the woods.  Last time I was there I saw a hawk fly by the entire lenth of the room...gorgeous creature....

  I understand that each treatment center is a little cubicle that provides ultimate privacy so that I do not sit in a line similar to a hair salon with a row of women under the dryers, or in this case, hooked up to IVs.  I'm supposed to brting a bag of snacks, lots of water, and things to keep me busy during the--I think--1 1/2 hrs. I will be there.

I will bring Ken's and Patricia's book and read them.  They are my tutors, my reminders.

Into the Tunnel

I am approaching two events with much trepidation: Friday I must return to Sloan-Kettering for a biopsy under local anesthesia of a spot on my lung discovered in a body scan some 2 weeks ago.  My oncologist, Dr. Graham, is not terribly alarmed, since 70% of these spots are benign.  But then again, I was told that 80% of people with my mammogram do not have cancer.  Statistics really do nothing other than tell me what a group of "others" tallied, and do little to speak of me individually. 

I fear the years with my family when my father chain-smoked.  We would drive for days during our summer vacations with me gasping for breath in the car as he smoked away.  I recall my doctor when I was 10 showing me an x-ray of my lungs and seeing that they looked like a patch-work quilt of whites and deepening shades of grey.  He exhorted me never to smoke, since my lungs were already so damaged, and I followed his caution.  But today 2nd hand smoke kills hundreds of thousands.  Will I be one of them?  After 5 years, the survival rate for lung cancer is 15%.  I am sympton-free, and this spot never showed up on any x-ray; does that auger well, or is that a neutral fact?  Can lung cancer ever be caught "early enough" to have a positive prognosis?  I have returned to the cancer roller-coaster at UncertainPark, where every ride is a lethal risk and the finish line is either safety for a few more years or a death sentence with a known terminus.

I have a grandchild or two safely nested within my daughter, so I learned on Thanksgiving.  Will I be alive long enough for this child to remember me, or will I be the grandma who is too ill to play with, a woman haggard and drawn, lying on a sofa, until she passes, and the little one fears seeing her?

Death is on my mind, again.  I cannot see into the fog to get any clear sense of my destiny.  I am soooo way past "why me" that I see balanced scales that can tip either way.  I am not immune, no magical thinking will help me escape even long enough to accept the "you'll be just fine, I just know it" from friends.  Even they have moderated their hopes for me recently by sayuing they will be praying for me; and I am no longer shy about asking for their prayers.  PLEASE pray, I am scared, I can do nothing to aid myself beyond what I am doing, and I so value the community's support at this time.

I wish I could cut-paste portions of the forum at cancer.org.  It appears to be a safe venue for women to express their open and authentic feelings.  One woman actually laughed and directed us to read her chipper and upbeat blog, and then remarked that this was the only place where she could be her real self, and could vent her fear, pain, and honest questions.  One woman, an Orthodox Jew, told us that although she has worn a wig since the day she was married, she still had a terrible emotional reaction to losing her hair.  There is a venue on the site for Stage IV cancers, the women with Treya's diagnosis, and some of them are still alive at this point after 5 years.  The statistics speak of no progress with Stage IV, but even these survivors give all of us a whisp of hope, wherever we might be on ther cancer grid.

What am I doing during this time of not-knowing, which is a bit more serious than the normal state of not-knowing?  I have worked so hard over the past 3 years to recover from life-long PTSD.  I have confronted my own personal nightmares, freed up energy for more Persephonic (how is THAT for an adjective??) dives into the underworld of my own creation.

Last night my fear of having lung cancer unearthed a felt-sense of a familial tie.  First I had connected the dots between the breast cancer and the toxic aspects of my maternal lineage.  Then last night my insight revealed that my dad and his unanswerable grief over his life has been lodged in my lungs.  When I felt into that terrible and lonely grief, I felt a wave of hot, hot energy begin in my 5th chakra and radiate up, filling my head and exiting my crown chakra.  That was followed by great quiet and emptiness...

I continue to dig.  I continue doing vipassana with the Witness, on a moment by moment basis.  I continue reality-chcking my personal story line, my self-created narrative, and seeing into the pervasive negativity.  This permits me to reframe as I did today with my hopelessness, which has been my personal salvation against chronic disappointment and crippling suffering throughout my life.  No one who knows the full extent of my life has ever denied that it has been one of personal, generational, and cultural suffering.  It is hard for me to look that totality head-on, but I have been counseled to do just that.  No spiritual bypass this time.  LOOK INTO IT ALL.

Yet with all that duly noted, I am free, freed from the nightmares, accepting of the  responsibility for my own stubbornness in refusing to comply with the authorities' inane demands on me at work.  I had lunch with 2 school friends today, both now retired.  We shared stories of the "old boys' club" functioning, of the scared fragile "little men" who run the place and the departments, who are so obviously at very low stages of ego development that they see any move by the females to work for the betterment of the school as a direct attack on their "power".  It appears to be endemic throughout the school, and I wonder if the same pattern repeats throughout much of k-12 in the US. 

Check out 12/1/10's Tom Friedman's Op Ed piece in the NY Times today----he has a marvelous satirical piece on what a WikiChina dump of cables between their embassy in D.C. and Beijing might read like.  See, it's all about our appearance rather than our reality, he notes.  Obama gets trashed by Palin and Huckabee for not acknowledging our national exceptionalism, even as it evaporates as quickly as the Alaska ice sheets.  Congress knows what is true in the LL and what should be enacted in the LR, yet refuses to do so lest they fail to be gifted with the corporate billions that permit them to buy more airtime so they can tell more blatant lies about their opponent than their opponent can launch.  We can't get out of Afghanistan which costs us $170 million per day because then Obama and the Dems will be labeled as wimps and will not get the cotrporate billions to throw away in the next election cycle.  So let me get this straight-----they cannot DO anything, really, because it might risk their ability to get corporate billions to throw away on their attempt to get re-elected and continue getting corporate billions for the next election cycle so they can return to Congress where they cannot do anything substantive or else they will not get corporate billions......  Hmmmm.

The marvelous book Idiot America says it best: we are fighting all the wrong battles...Nothing of substance can ever be debated rationally any longer.  We are again in a raging period of anti-intellectualism, except science can indeed reflect certain parts of reality with far more truth thaqn ever before, and instead of moderating it with valid UL and LL wisdom tradition offerings, we get magical thinking and pre-rational beliefs touted above science or conflated "as" science..

So biopsy Friday, I either have lung cancer or do not....Then Monday I begin chemotherapy and begin losing my hair which grieves me as well.  Then Tuesday a return to S-K for a shot that will result in severe bone pain.  That will be followed by my body's idiosyncratic reaction to the toxins sent in like LF's SWAT team to track down errant and out of control cells that escaped surgery. 

I haven't even gone into the whole breast reconstruction issue.  That will come after I get through the next week.

I AM thankful that I had the mammo that led to the biopsy that led me to S-K that led me to a great surgeon that led me to a great reconstructive plastic surgeon that led me to a caring oncologist. Consider the alternative, Rick reminds me.

So what are the themes of this post? 
Authenticity and how difficult our culture makes it for us to reach self-truth. 

Meeting the truth-claims of all four quadrants, and the cultural inability or refusal to reach rational and/or post-rational analyses. 

The difficulty of holding onto worldcentric perspectives when our institutions are governed by those with egocentric world-views.