I sheepishly put my green spiral binder to the side and held the big beautiful pink one on my lap. Someone, somewhere, is thinking about the patient experience.
It's good that they are. Because the patient experience is profoundly unnerving. There's something that happens when you put on that gown that eliminates your identity, your spunk, your nerve. You become a large piece of organism that people are now scientifically interested in. The ultimate Buddhist lesson of no-self. This is not me. I am not it.
My body is now a collection of cells. Most of which are functioning at a very high level that benefits the organism as a whole. Others are also functioning at a very high level, but in a way that does not benefit the organism as a whole. (Hmm. What does this remind us of? The work place? The family? Non-profit arts organizations? Our own psychic landscape?)
I have four doctors now who are interested in getting the non-helpful cells out of my body. I do find it interesting that the non-helpful cells are really just doing what they need to be doing. THEY think they are doing a good job. THEY think they are going to be able to do this forever. THEY are following their destiny. But what they don't get is that, if they follow their destiny to its ultimate fulfillment, they will kill their superstructure and their whole world will be totally hosed.
Why do the little rebel cells not get it? Why doesn't everyone understand that working together is far more beneficial, as a whole, than following one's inner compass when it's pointing in the wrong direction?
Going deeper... those little expanding invasive cells, they are just kind of going a little awry. Isn't the bigger problem that conscious brain that drives us to guilt, and anxiety, and overwork, and self-aggrandizing anger, and destructive behavior, and wrong action -- all the things that damage us on a cellular level?
The homunculus -- the little man of consciousness that sits up in the brain and thinks he's running the show -- that guy who pulls the levers and pushes the buttons and makes it his job description to tell our brain that he's totally in charge -- why does he not always get that it's in his best interest to work towards the benefit of the organism of the whole? We go/he goes. Our brain shuts off, and his job of providing consciousness and direction to our lives is over and he's back on LinkedIn sending out his resume. It's in no one's best interest to actually undermine the health of the organism as a whole.
That guy, that consciousness, desperately wants us to believe it's in control. Isn't he a bigger enemy than those little cells? And maybe those little cells are following in his footsteps, believing that the end is near all the time, twelve minutes till doomsday, or that that motherfucker in the Toyota in front of us should've used his motherfucking blinker, or -- worse -- that we are unworthy of taking care of ourselves, that our job is to shut up and row the boat like good little oarsmen, that there is no time to stop, to rest, to just BE.
In our bodies we have millions of things going right. But we have this ego/self/consciousness sitting in the control booth feeding us stories that it absolutely needs us to believe. And we have a few rogue cells inside of us that, maybe, are taking those instructions seriously, ignoring their common sense and the obvious logic that killing the host is no good for the community as a whole.
Thank god for outside forces, like doctors, whose destinies and expertise are all bound up in taking care that the multitude of good cells prevail. Thank god for outside forces, like meditation and yoga and nature, that teach us to step outside of the ego/self/consciousness' stories long enough to question its motives. Thank god for all the multitudes of internal forces that continue to work for the good of the organism. And thank god that the homunculus can sometimes be humble, and learn his lessons, and accept that maybe, just maybe, the former approaches might be self-destructive and that tomorrow we're going to get up fresh, try it again, only a little differently this time.
This life. This sweet and precious and incredible life. It is so totally painful and messy and convoluted and stressful. And, at the very same time, it is so exquisitely beautiful and sweet and poignant and challenging and exciting and full of love. It is both. It is the rogue cells and the good cells. It is the misguided egotistic homunculous and the inner workings of harmony and health. It all goes better when we work together -- when the little green notebook works in concert with the big pink notebook. It all goes better when can ride the wave of the inner rhythms, ignore the dire prognostications, and energetically work in concert with all the things that are going right with the world.
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