Accepting a Physical Transformation
I am to spend the next 2 weeks flat on my back day and night healing a slipped disc and strengthening the muscles surrounding it. Healing completely so as to one day return to battling 4” nails and aged oak, finishing the workshop-temple, manifesting other construction projects.
It is a strange commitment to make, to resist movement, even those once most-basic bends reaching down or turning over or sitting up. Every pass now slow and calculated or quickly advised against with nerve flashes of electricity and aching; my own body in conflict with itself. And muscles fatiguing without use, that physical therapy isolate in order to strengthen. Frustration and concentration to rebuild the fibrous wall that broke or bent along my spine beginning some 2 and a half months ago with a night fall from our loft and then aggravated by my daily chores and projects. I am shocked at the effort to lift my right leg while lying down, where the sciatic nerve had been most pinched. I recall how I had bounced about the past year, in retrospect actions bordering vain arrogance, with my physical body enjoying possibly its most fit state, flexing biceps in mirrors, leaping up and down stairs, hauling boards and beams, sawing and hammering any and all angles, carrying heavy loads from town up the graveled road, splitting firewood in one blow. And now reclined, made quiet, observing and waiting, on to another schedule out of time where artistic hobbies take precedence, meditation replaces thought, pushes away worry, because I am on my path, exactly where I am supposed to be, the Universe guiding and sending me the exact care necessary.
Hadn’t I asked for physical transformation? Here I am, a serpent shedding old skin in stages, on many levels. But slyly taken care of, the support pieces almost premeditatedly arranged so that my collapse falls exactly within Christine’s summer vacation and one of our closest friends is a professional physical therapist, not only offering to guide and orchestrate the healing process, but also giving us a room in her home in order to stay in town and receive my daily treatments of ultrasound and electrical current and isolated muscle rebuilding. Accompanied at every pass, this serpent eases into a new skin unhurried, unpressured, able to listen to and heed every call from the body to rest, to grow, to heal. The Universe lovingly bestowing hard lessons with gentle care and I know myself to be more than fortunate, more than privileged.
I watch as other members in our universal family struggle with their own back pain, resigning to life-long limitations on their movement, trying to compensate with brute strength and a stiff upper lip because there are bills to pay, mouths to feed, no nest egg to cover examinations, no connections to call on, no options, no other path. My reposed vacation from my life appears pampered and I know the shame and envy that hangs at the edges, has evolved unfairly across world empires and economic history. It sets my resolve further to heal completely. Anything less would be an insult to these gifts, a mockery of their pain and a disgrace to the Universe’s unique opportunity. I know not what else I can do. My path carries this dimension ever-present for a reason yet unknown and I can not deny nor claim ignorance to the injustice. I can only follow this path, invoke humility and sacred gratitude, and set my heart towards a future consciousness in which such marked differences do not exist.
It is a strange commitment to make, to resist movement, even those once most-basic bends reaching down or turning over or sitting up. Every pass now slow and calculated or quickly advised against with nerve flashes of electricity and aching; my own body in conflict with itself. And muscles fatiguing without use, that physical therapy isolate in order to strengthen. Frustration and concentration to rebuild the fibrous wall that broke or bent along my spine beginning some 2 and a half months ago with a night fall from our loft and then aggravated by my daily chores and projects. I am shocked at the effort to lift my right leg while lying down, where the sciatic nerve had been most pinched. I recall how I had bounced about the past year, in retrospect actions bordering vain arrogance, with my physical body enjoying possibly its most fit state, flexing biceps in mirrors, leaping up and down stairs, hauling boards and beams, sawing and hammering any and all angles, carrying heavy loads from town up the graveled road, splitting firewood in one blow. And now reclined, made quiet, observing and waiting, on to another schedule out of time where artistic hobbies take precedence, meditation replaces thought, pushes away worry, because I am on my path, exactly where I am supposed to be, the Universe guiding and sending me the exact care necessary.
Hadn’t I asked for physical transformation? Here I am, a serpent shedding old skin in stages, on many levels. But slyly taken care of, the support pieces almost premeditatedly arranged so that my collapse falls exactly within Christine’s summer vacation and one of our closest friends is a professional physical therapist, not only offering to guide and orchestrate the healing process, but also giving us a room in her home in order to stay in town and receive my daily treatments of ultrasound and electrical current and isolated muscle rebuilding. Accompanied at every pass, this serpent eases into a new skin unhurried, unpressured, able to listen to and heed every call from the body to rest, to grow, to heal. The Universe lovingly bestowing hard lessons with gentle care and I know myself to be more than fortunate, more than privileged.
I watch as other members in our universal family struggle with their own back pain, resigning to life-long limitations on their movement, trying to compensate with brute strength and a stiff upper lip because there are bills to pay, mouths to feed, no nest egg to cover examinations, no connections to call on, no options, no other path. My reposed vacation from my life appears pampered and I know the shame and envy that hangs at the edges, has evolved unfairly across world empires and economic history. It sets my resolve further to heal completely. Anything less would be an insult to these gifts, a mockery of their pain and a disgrace to the Universe’s unique opportunity. I know not what else I can do. My path carries this dimension ever-present for a reason yet unknown and I can not deny nor claim ignorance to the injustice. I can only follow this path, invoke humility and sacred gratitude, and set my heart towards a future consciousness in which such marked differences do not exist.
posted by Carol Bushar at 2:21 PM
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