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.