What have been your HEALING MOMENTS?

[gracenote]

Im curious about your experiences of these times Im calling healing moments. Im less interested in what these moments mean in a theoretical and theological sense, and more interested in how they impact our experience of being a human while living with a difficult disease.

Others have referred to these moments as:

the moment
the eternal now
the sacred pause
moments of grace
the stillpoint​

. . . a veil has been lifted and we see . . .
behind the faade the world has built round us . . .
It is impossible to put into words; it is something beyond words . . .
in the language of theology they are
moments of grace.

Bede Griffiths


Theyre like moments when a river is very calm
and for an instant you can see to its depths,
and then the currents pick up again and the clarity dissolves.
We become liquid in these moments.
We lose our sense of discrete self and feel
a profound connectedness to the universe.

Gabrielle Roth


Healing is entering into the transcendent, timeless moment
when one experiences the divine.

Jeanne Achterberg


Beyond all concepts and striving,
there is a point of peace in each of us.
It is our only true sanctuary and is immediately accessible.
Resting in the sanctuary of our own peace,
we are left with no beliefs and no religion.
We are left instead with love within a feeling of aliveness
a passionate presence.

Catherine Ingram
​

Ive only had fleeting glimpses of these kinds of healing moments. Some have been embodied where I sensed it as a physical experience. Others have been more like an image coming into my mind holding disparate thoughts in an altogether new way. At times they have marked turning points for me in my life path. Mostly these moments are reassuring as I become aware of a connection to something much larger than myself.

I told about my tree experience in the dream thread and the tree thread so I wont repeat that one here. I will share one other healing moment that came to me as an image several times and left a calm in its place. I had come down with a bronchial and sinus infection in addition to my usual overwhelming symptoms. I was feeling very miserable and discouraged and stuck. These images allowed some healing respite in the middle of my storm.

I am in a small boat, floating in the middle of a small lake at the edge of a bayou. The sky is blue grey. The water reflects this grey and is calm and smooth. The air is still. I am aware of grass and trees growing around the edges of the water. There is no before to this story I dont have any idea how I came to be in the center of this lake. Nor does this story have an after I have no idea where I will be going. I am just here, sitting in a boat in the middle of a lake that is calm and smooth.​

This image comes back to me many times shimmering with possibility.

I see myself in the boat in the middle of the lake and then I become one with the boat and the lake and the sky and the trees. This is a lovely moment suspended out of time. It just is.​

What have been your healing moments? (Feel free to interpret this any way you like.)

 

[Katie]

That's a beautiful healing moment, Gracenote.

I've sort of shared my life turning healing moment in my intro thread but I'll share it again as it resonates with all the little moments I've had since.

It was my 18th birthday and I was bedbound at 0% and had been for five months at that point. I'd been suffering from depression but by that point I'd had a breakthrough a month or two earlier which had lifted me out of that darkness but I was still very lonely. Then, on my birthday I'd sat up in the campbed my mum had set up in the living room where I spent my days and a whole bunch of cards arrived. As I opened one after another I realised they were all from friends I'd met at the first online support group I'd ever been apart of. I'd never met any of them and hadn't been online for months but here they were in cards and thoughts, a specially made card with messages as well as the separate ones. I smiled and I was happy. My family came over shortly after I opened these cards and I got dressed for the first time since October (this was March) and we ate dinner all together.

Even though I was so ill I had never been so happy enjoying everything I had that day. I didn't need to be better to be happy, I didn't need to be smarter, more attractive, thinner or prettier to be happy. For so long I thought I needed to be healthy to be happy or some other unobtainable future goal that I would forever move because I'd never allow myself to be happy.

That epiphany has stayed with me until this day but sometimes I just feel that bliss I did that day, an absolute peace with all that I do have a just sheer happiness in one moment. Being in Venice was a week full of those little moments, holding hands with my boyfriend who then became my fiance Oddly, I went to Venice for my 21st birthday, there must be something special about that week! If only I could tell the lonely girl that she would get engaged in Italy just three years after being housebound! Other times, sitting outside in the garden watching my niece play after a picnic, making my older niece and nephew giggle by doing silly impressions or the times where I was just walking around uni completely content with life even though it wasn't perfect and a lot was going on, I was happy and didn't need anything else in the world.

I don't know if this makes sense, I'm feeling quite MEish tonight but sharing this has made me feel lighter inside as most of my blissful moments have come when I'm doing well and it's harder to achieve when poorly but if I can find bliss at 0% I can find it anywhere. Buddhism helped me out a lot with this, in particular a book called Buddhism for Dummies!

 

[Victoria]

I have had many healing moments (if that's what they were).

Sitting on the couch (off work in great pain) looking out at my garden & feeling incredible joy & warmth rising through my body.



Once time I was using my Nepalese "singing bowl" & felt something like energy vibrating in my spine & afterwards felt great lessening of pain & very uplifted.


And of course, when I finally, after 16 1/2 years in this job made the major decision to stop full time work & concentrate of some therapy & healing. This feels like I have finally been "set free" & no matter what "ups" and "downs" appear in the future, this is/was the most amazing feeling of "letting go" (like I often read in my Buddhist or meditation books).

Feeling (& seeing in my mind as I do right now) my Grandmother's presence & feeling imediately calmed.

Feeling uplifted & euphoric after the nerve block procedure when I was lying in the recovery room. I remember thinking "so this is what it's like to feel no pain" - it lasted about 6-8 hours at home if I remember rightly.

I also had a very, very good acupuncture session last night. Didn't resolve my headache/eye pain, but I felt like some blockage in my body was removed. I felt very ....umm......like a great weight had been lifted from my body - as though someone had cut the chains free. I can still feel it now (at work this morning).

I assume she unblocked a channel which was very congested.

I hope to continue with this (new) acupuncturist for some time. It's been a few years since I've had acupuncture.

I also feel some sort of healing when I watch or experience something so funny that I can't stop laughing. There's been a few of those moments on the joke thread.

There have been many more, like when I was about 11 & my Mother (we didn't have a lot of money) bought me some material to make a new pair of slacks. I remember writing in my little diary that "today is the most wonderful day in my life" - I rarely had new clothes. My Mother (a very good dressmaker) made most of my clothes out of her old dresses. I do remember that moment of great happiness (rare in my childhood).

 

[gracenote]

thank you Katie

Even though I was so ill I had never been so happy enjoying everything I had that day. I didn't need to be better to be happy, I didn't need to be smarter, more attractive, thinner or prettier to be happy. For so long I thought I needed to be healthy to be happy or some other unobtainable future goal that I would forever move because I'd never allow myself to be happy. . . . That epiphany has stayed with me until this day but sometimes I just feel that bliss I did that day, an absolute peace with all that I do have a just sheer happiness in one moment. . . .

I don't know if this makes sense, I'm feeling quite MEish tonight but sharing this has made me feel lighter inside as most of my blissful moments have come when I'm doing well and it's harder to achieve when poorly but if I can find bliss at 0% I can find it anywhere. Buddhism helped me out a lot with this, in particular a book called Buddhism for Dummies!

Katie, I love your response. You've expressed it really well. For a long time I didn't think that I could "feel" happy while also "feeling" sick, but it has been a revelation to find that bliss in the midst of physical pain and unwellness. And it's such a gift to realize that happiness can be mine right now and doesn't need to wait for the perfect set of circumstances, although I find myself waiting anyway. That's why I just love these moments that break into my present imperfect reality. To get to experience them is such a gift.

How great that you've gotten to experience this at such a young age. I'm glad that sharing this has made you feel lighter. It's made me feel lighter, too. Thank you.

Gracenote

 

[gracenote]

luminous moments

Victoria,

You brought up so many "mundane" experiences that became luminous because, I think, of your way of seeing looking out on your garden, hearing the "singing bowls," thinking of your grandmother, even seeing something funny. I don't know if we need to call them "healing" moments, but they have a very beautiful quality about them.

I love your description of yourself at age 11 writing in your diary that "today is the most wonderful day in my life." That evokes such a lovely image of a young girl being open to the gifts that life offers which you continue to feel now in your adult self. It's very sweet.

And of course, when I finally, after 16 1/2 years in this job made the major decision to stop full time work & concentrate of some therapy & healing. This feels like I have finally been "set free" & no matter what "ups" and "downs" appear in the future, this is/was the most amazing feeling of "letting go" (like I often read in my Buddhist or meditation books).

I like how you said this: "no matter what 'ups' and 'downs' appear in the future, this is/was the most amazing feeling of 'letting go."

I'm also resonating with your descriptions of physical sensations as "energy vibrating in your spine" and blocks being removed. It's like the ripples in the pond that keep spreading and it's great when we have the capacity in our bodies to experience them and really feel them.

A great acupuncture session sounds really good to me right now. I will have to just imagine it. In fact just reading what you wrote and writing this has made me feel a bit of warmth begin to spread throughout my body.

Thank you, Victoria, for sharing your moments with me.

Gracenote

 

[Sing]

I am really appreciative, Gracenote, for your beginning this thread, and for the contributions also of Kati and Victoria. What you have shared here evokes, amplifies and sustains our connections to these healing experiences, or I might say, healing potentials, which we all can have access to.

Last night such a peace and fulfillment flowed over and into me--I have never ever felt quite this way before. Perhaps, being given some good bodywork and support earlier that day precipitated this? Which I added to with more self massage and stretching into the evening, then working to go into a meditation. But I am often not successful with meditation and my bodywork tends to achieve only limited aims. Yet last night an energy overtook and filled me in such sustained peace....this was grace at work.

The strange part was how I could recognize that I was finished with "my" life, "my" history. My mind wanted to move with this knowing, to make a sad story out of it about my dying. But that did not accord with this spiritual energy. Thinking like this was completely irrelevant.

I think I was having--or there was here--an experience of life without that "I", and being shown how very full and complete it is, through this flow of gentle energy, light and warmth which engulfed my body and consciousness.

After my attempt at dramatizing the idea of the arrival of the end, I could have smiled at what I was being shown. THERE IS NO LOSS HERE. But, rather, endless flow in a stream which contained its own fulfillment.

So whose life was then, or is, being lived now? The same one's life, the same source which has always been true and there--only I didn't fully know it, but instead made up a surrogate, a persona with a story, history, relationships, that I have been believing in . This life is ending, like a chapter, that is all.

Sing

 

[Sing]

As I was walking away from the computer last night after this post, I remembered what else happened before this influx of energy and grace took over. I'd been facing my big fears about upcoming surgery--a hip replacement operation scheduled in April. I'd been trying to plan for my specific needs. As I've lived alone for years, in order to have a very quiet life, I have no one to help other than paid professionals, so I have to figure a lot of this out on my own. After surgery I expect to be very disabled, if not in real trouble, and expect my brain function to be minimal. You know what I am talking about! So heading straight into this subject responsibly took some courage.

When I got as far as I could, I just went into the stretching and meditation above, and you see what happened!

Sing

 

[Marlène]

I was very ill, in a dark room and completely bedridden for 14 months when I asked for euthanasia in December 2009. A few weeks later an appearance showed up three times in my room. At first I thought I was hallucinating but the third time 'it' spoke to me. The voice resonated inside of me, very strange. His question was: "What is essential to you now?" And he was disappeared. About two weeks later I walked again for the first time and things slowly started to improve from that day on.
The 'thing' didn't show up anymore but strange things happen since then once in a while. I'm no longer afraid of death.

 

[heapsreal]

i like to have a good laugh and i have a whacky sense of humor. I have had days sitting on the lounge feeling crappy watching tv when something funny happens and i get into one of those big belly laughs, the mrs and kids are sitting beside me, laughing at me, laughing with tears rolling down my face. I then realise that silly little things like that are great moments and i seem to be more aware when they happen now. I think even the kids are aware of this and they will sit with me watching old episodes of something like 'cheers' waiting for me to crack up laughing. its a nice little pick me up and once again its the little things that can bring happiness, and for a moment that crappy feeling doesnt exist.

cheers!!!

 

[rosie26]

I am like you heapsreal a good laugh. Quite the opposite to the hell of ME. I guess laughing for me is a truimphant expression that I am winning, not ME.