Jungle fever

Last year at this time I was probably sitting on floor number –1 of Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem getting infused with Cisplatin intravenously, mentally clenching my teeth in thought of the week I would have ahead of me, filled with nausea, puking in the morning, lack of appetite, no sense of taste and a weakness and fatigue which left me basically lifeless, pale and skinny for months to come.  My only solace was my loving friends and spouse,  and my daily 11AM snack of highly potent medicinal marijuana brownies, which enabled me to lift up my head from the deep, muddy waters of feeling like a victim of cancer.

Now, one year later I am sitting on the terrace of my rented house in the jungle on the beautiful island of Koh Phangan in Thailand. So that means I’m all better ,right? Cancer is gone? Well, no. It’s not gone it actually came back, and as it usually does, with a vengeance. An innocent pain in my lower back late last August turned out to be a stage 4 tumor 6.5 over 3.5 cm eating away at my Ilium bone and heading rapidly towards my sacrum. For cancer cells to jump from the salivary gland, also a non typical type of head & neck cancers, straight to bone tissue is extremely rare. Usually the cells metastasize first in the lymph glands in the upper part of the body, and slowly migrate down. A case like mine where in manifested so quickly and violently in a very lower part of the body is something so rarely seen in Oncology that the head Doctor in the ward said he had only one case similar to this in all of his 40 years of medical practice. Well, I always knew I was special…

Putting it plainly without sparing the bad news, the Doctor said this cancer is incurable, and that I have about 6 months until this cancer spreads to other parts of my body and kills me. If I undergo aggressive chemotherapy, more potent than the one a had last year, it’ll take 1.5-2 years until it kills me (that is if the poison doesn’t kill me first). Not very optimistic to say the least.

So this is my reality now – I have a terminal illness. Or is it? I’m 32. I’m happy. Why? I don’t know why but the Doctor’s news came to me as a fresh call for awakening rather than a death sentence. It was crystal clear to me that from that moment on I am dedicating my life to healing. First of all healing on the physical level, in every natural and harmonious method available today and which is generally out of the scope of modern medicine, which is the only reason they can give such grim predictions on people lives. Their scope consists of 3 methods for fighting cancer: Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. In natural “alternative” medicine we see things differently and the statistics and narrow sighted predictions aren’t as scary as they may seem to one who is familiar only with was the Doctors tell them and blindly trust everything they say. This is why I’m not worried and I have a lot of faith in the healing power of the universe and my body’s natural capability for regeneration.

So that is what brought me back to Thailand, to the wonderful community of Agama Yoga on the island of Koh Phangan. Before coming here I underwent 2 weeks of daily radiation treatment to gain control over the tumor and save my bone from rapid deterioration, while buying myself time to deal with the cancer in a natural way, which can take longer than Chemotherapy. Getting chemotherapy wasn’t even an option to consider as far as I’m concerned. I’m still getting over the detrimental effects of the previous round last year, and this time doing it would keep me dependant on the medical system until I die. If I have a short amount of time to live (which I don’t), then I want it to be the best time of my life, not having spent it hooked up to hoses pumping me with poison and making my life unbearable.

3 days after finishing radiation treatment, with practically no immediate side effects, I got on the plane to Thailand. Landing on the island I reunited with Gali who had just spent a month and a half in India teaching in the Rishikesh branch of agama and spending time with a great spiritual teacher, and with a lot of friends, some of whom have been keeping track of my health condition and some surprised to learn about the recent developments. But everyone with no exception is giving me full support, love and understanding. I was immediately put into the attention of the entire teaching staff and under the guidance of Swami, all teachers were asked to preform a blessing for me in the beginning of each class. This is a technique practiced often in the school when one of the students or someone related to a student is suffering from an illness and is in a far away place. This time it’s even more powerful since I’m here in the school and people know me personally. I was deeply moved by this gesture and I can honestly say I feel the healing energy permeating more and more everyday into my etheric

I feel I am most definitely in the right place for healing. I’ve received a long list of Yoga practices, nutritional guidelines, herbal and homeopathic remedies, various natural therapies such as magnets, light, oil pulling, urine therapy and spiritual practices like positive thinking, affirmations, prayers and guiding love as my medicine for this journey. But above all I have faith, which I believe is the most powerful source of healing in the universe. I don’t believe the doctors in their pessimistic predictions. I choose to take responsibility over my own life and I’m motivated to live a long and full life, opening up to all the forces in the universe that support me saying a big YES to life. I choose not to be a victim of this illness, but rather harness the powerful energy this illness has given me towards awakening and realizing what I was put here on this planet for and essentially who I am. I’m still in the process of finding out, as I always was before, but now the speed has accelerated and the universe is asking me, quite impolitely I may add, to trust god. To trust the power of love and surrender completely to those powerful truths. There is so much love and beauty in the world, and for some reason we choose not to see it most of the time, focusing on what we want to be different in our lives rather than seeing that everything is perfect as it is – even cancer, with all the ugliness and nasty stories we affix to that word. 

Cancer for me is a teacher, a guide, a powerful manifestation of the divine taking me into the unknown realms of the mind and heart and allowing them to awaken into the reality of light and oneness, filling my heart with love and pure light from the divine source of which it is a part of. Reality is not what is perceived through our minds and senses. It is vaster and much more luminous than what we think and as we peel off our limiting ideas about it and layers of obscurity we can truly open up to the powerful current of love and light of which it is made and is the true essence of who we are.

Back on the island!

Back on the beautiful island of Koh Phangan, back in Agama and within 2 days I got reminded why love this place so much and why I was so determined to come back after spending most of last year here. This rediscovered love is raising new questions about my future plans and direction for the next year. I'm in a a completely different place in my life than I was last year. I have a new direction, a clear purpose and motivation to go deeper in Macrobotics and spread it far and wide among people everywhere I go. My idea was set on going back to Israel and building my practice there (i.e. workshops, cooking classes, consultations etc.) while continuing studies of holistic nutrition and living in the north with Gali. Sounds ideal, right? But then I came back to Koh Phangan and withing 24 hours opportunity started knocking on all my doors! Many people knew that I have been spending the lat 3 months at KI in the USA and were deeply interested in what I have learned and had to share. People in Agama think that Macrobiotics is mainly about Ohsawa's #7 diet, and a little about polarity between Yin and Yang. Obviously it is much more than that and if macrobiotics is to be taught at all in this school, it should be done right, in the correct context and with proper modification to a tropical climate, depending on who is living here long term and who spends most of his time in north America or Europe.

But what happened is a switch of my paradigm. Regradless of the fact that Gali was pushing to come back here next year, I realized this place is a fertile ground for me to base my Macrobiotic practice and start my career in holistic nutritional healing. People here have come for spiritual transformation and that naturally includes diet, which changes as we evolve and we become aware of the subtle energies embodied in the food we eat. This requires a certain amount of guidance for creating the right balance in our diet with the unnecessary cravings and adopting of nutritional dogmas as many people do. My aim here would be to guide people in creating further balance in their lives through creating an awareness to the subtle energies of what they are eating, and more essentially, how to prepare it.

I can see myself spending another year on this island practicing and teaching Macrobiotics and becoming a huge success, expanding wider than Agama alone but to others on the island and maybe off it too. Being here I can continue my spiritual path and study more with Agama and the Tantric path, while not having to worry about many things I would have to worry about in Israel. It is definitely a lot easier to create workshops here than in Israel, and it is a good base to begin where the audience is most receptive, as well as being tourist who wouldn't mind paying money to hear these things, a fact which can sustain our being able to live here for another year.

This is all new and overwhelming, but it feels great. And if there is something I have learned in the past year is that if I think about something and it makes me feel open, alive, free, that is an proper indication that it is the right thing to do. It is harmonious and all else will come into place accordingly.

Obscured Human evolution - By Sri Aurobindo

It is not very easy for the customary mind of man, always attached to its past and present associations, to conceive of an existence still human, yet radically changed in what are now our fixed circumstances. We are in respect to our possible higher evolution much in the position of the original Ape of the Darwinian theory. It would have been impossible for that Ape leading his instinctive arboreal life in the primeval forest to conceive that there would one day be an animal on earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate nature's forces, sail the seas, ride the air, develop codes of conduct, evolve conscious methods for his mental and spiritual development. And if such a conception had been possible for the ape-mind, it would still be difficult for him to imagine that by any progress of Nature or long effort of will and Tendency he himself could develop into that animal. Man, because he has acquired reason and still more because he has indulged his power of imagination and intuition, is able to conceive an existence higher than his own and even to envisage his personal elevation beyond his present state into that existence. His idea of the supreme state is an absolute of all that is positive in his own concepts and desirable to his own instinctive aspiration, - Knowledge without its negative shadow of error, Bliss without its negation in experience of suffering, Power without its constant denial by incapacity, Purity and plenitude of being without the opposing sense of defect and limitation. It is so that he conceives his Gods; it is so that he constructs his heavens. But it is not so that his reason conceives of a possible earth and a possible humanity. His dream of god and heaven is really a dream of his own perfection; but he finds the same difficulty in accepting its practical realization here for his ultimate aim as would the ancestral ape if called upon to believe in himself as the future man. His imagination, his religious aspirations may hold that end before him; but when his reason asserts itself, rejecting imagination and transcendent intuition, he puts it by as brilliant superstition contrary to the hard facts of the material universe. It becomes then only his inspiring vision of the impossible. All that is possible is conditioned, limited and precarious knowledge, happiness, power and good.

(The life Divine P.60-61)

New Decade

1/1/10

It seems to me sometimes as if it me who is the one experiencing all of this. Like there is some higher overlooking presence looking at this body and all the shit its going through, the mind which is influenced by what the body is going through. When the pain and the suffering start becoming a daily ordeal, it's as if something realizes there is more to the reality right now than this.
Last night, when I was Djing for 7 hours straight in our New year's eve party here in the village, I felt the best I have felt yet since I began radiation and Chemo 2 weeks ago. The flow of energy between me and the people and the music instilling positive vibrations in my body had a tremendous healing power and I was not busy with nausea, throat aches, mouth sores or any of the other little but annoying things I have to deal with these days. When i'm totally present and alive in what i'm doing, and if I love doing it like a love Djing, it creates release, true freedom from suffering. It's the goal of meditation, to be free of Dukha (in Pali – unsatisfactoriness for lack of a better translation. This is why I like to use the Pali word because it so specific). I am free in the present moment from any discomfort related to bodily issues or other issues because essentially, they do not exists in the present moment. Physical pain is a derivative of space and time. Only if time is in the picture, can I experience the suffering behind pain, otherwise it is merely sensations and vibrations, pulsating in consecutive moments we perceive as occurring in linear time and thus creating the illusion of a continuous sensation, which added up can accumulate to pain, according to its intensity, or any other sensation. Not to say these sensations do not exists, they do, but on a level which we can consider illusory, or very mundane. The future time continuum exists only in our minds, and does not exist in the truth of things. The only moment which can possibly be present in fact is the present one. All else is the projection of the mind. This deep insight allows us to see behind the matrix, in this case being our automatic patterns of reaction to external stimuli. Once that veil is removed, we can be free from time and thus from the projection of our own experiences which produce suffering.
The beauty of it though is that this cannot be seen and cultivated by thinking all these things out and saying: “right, this sounds logical, i'll do that”. It just doesn't work like that. We have to cultivate a actual experiential seeing into the nature of reality, again and again, so our mind body gets the hang of it and starts doing it on its own, spontaneously. The more we are able to experience moments of full presence in meditation or in doing something we love doing with deep awareness, the more those moments of pain will not seem so bad. It develops an inner-seeing, an innate quality in us which will slowly transform our way of thinking and reacting to things. These is no way we are supposed to react or not react or try to convince ourselves mentally the pain is just pain and is not really that bad, it a cultivation of deeper insight which naturally and organically becomes our nature.
This quality is what allows healing as well. It's the same quality which enables us to come into contact with the higher aspects of the universe and the forces working behind it. When we are not caught up in future projection, in the continuity of space and time, we realize what lies beyond it, and that has tremendous amount of energy, since it is the source of all energy and manifestation. It's the source of who we are, the atoms of which we are made of and source of healing any physical or psychological disharmony we may have. It's worthwhile to take a period of time each day and dedicate it to this aspect of reality.

Shabbat Shalom. Happy new year!

Green trees - White robes

Every morning for the past 2 and a half weeks I find myself walking through the white flourescent lit corridors of the Oncology department at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. The Radiology technicians, young, intilligent and religious, greet me with their first-thing-in-the-morning good mood and give me a sense that they care about me as a patient. Weather its part of their training and done systematically or true kindness, it doesn't really matter, it feels good to have a caring environment and a human touch when your'e blasted with 2.2gy of radioactivity every day. They put on my custom made CD with relaxing music and I lie there, with my custom made mask over my head and neck, on the table, receptive to the enormous machine's radioactive blows. It's painless and lasts about 10 minutes. Things start to become evident in the days that follow: dryness in my mouth, sore gums and throat and general fatigue. In the waiting room I socialize with the other people who also come for there daily dose of nuke. The American Bible Professor who was with me in ear-nose-throat ward when I had surgery 2 months ago, accompanied by his Philipino helper; the Russian grandfather, whose daughter practices meditation with a group that convenes in Armenia once a year; the bald kid in the wheelchair, accompanied by his english speaking brother who looks like he just got off the plane from New york to visit his sick brother back home. A mix of cultures and languages finds itself here in this small waiting room as a microcosm of Jerusalem; Arabs, Russians, Ethiopians, religious and non religious jews, americans, old, young, soldiers, cops, speaking a plathora of languages you would not even hear in a crowded train in New york city.

The Hospital itself is located near the old village of Ein-Kerem, once inhabited by Palestinians until they abandoned it in the 1948 war, when it was annexed to the new state of Israel and populated by immigrants from Morrocco, Iraq and Iran and later in the 70's started housing young students from the nearby university hospital, bourgeois yuppies who redid the old arab houses and turned parts of the village in to a high class neighborhood, enjoying its quaint little alleys and picturesque views to the Judean mountains, and not to mention the presence of the churches, monastaries and missions, which give this part of Jerusalem an unparallelled and unique character.

In the hallways of Haddassah hospital you don't really feel Ein Kerem. It seems very urban considering the rich natural surrounding including several national parks, natural cold water springs and spectacular views. The place is expanding rapidly and recently a mall and a hotel have been built on its premesis, in addition to a huge parking lot and a new main building to the hospital due to be finished in the next couple of years. It has taken its toll on the environment and the nearby Ein Hindak, a beautiful natural spring is forbidden for swimming due to large amounts of biological waste dumped into the hospital's sewage pipes and pouring into its sources, and an alarming statistic I heard recently that the emmisions coming out of the chimneys of this establishment were recorded as being 8,000 times the legal amount according to the Israeli Environment ministry. Scary to think a lot of these toxic chemicals are considered to be medicine for humans...

But you can feel Jerusalem here, and Israel in the 21st century, where you can find state of the art medical technology and free wi-fi side by side with the uniqueness of people's backgrounds who all find themselves here thanks to social medicine, their faces hoping for better days, for their suffering to end, and for a human touch behind this huge system.

The words "Sarcoma", "Carcinoma", "Metastasis" and more cancer terminiology is used freely in these hallways, and I can't help but feel a bit out of it, not connected to this genreal feeling of having cancer, feeling sorry for myself and talking about disease all the time. When I walk into the hospital with my Hippie attire as if I just got off a plane from India (not so far from the truth...), peope here look at me as if I don't belong. Young people of my kind don't get cancer, it doesn't fit with the image of your old 60+ year old whose body is giving way to death and decomposition. I moved my daily meditation practice to the time when I sit in the waiting room waiting for my name to be called into the radiation room. It's an interesting place to observe myself and the relationship with the outward environment which is so charged with emotion, sadness, helplessness and confusion. It gives me a sense of center, being in this thing together with all of these people and keeps me out of the downward spiral of feeling sorry for myself. Hopefully it inspires some people along the way.

5 more weeks to go.

It is not how much we do,

but how much love we put in the doing.

It is not how much we give,

but how much love we put in the giving.

~ Mother Teresa ~

Cold winter days

Winter in the Jerusalem mountains and it's finally really cold. A spell of rainfall, which is surprisingly abundant this year makes way for a few days of clear, crisp cold sunshine and an opportunity for the flowers to blooms, and man are they blooming outside our little doorway in our quaint little village. Everything is lush green and herbs are ready to pick and eat, mushrooms waiting to be picked and fried up with onions and pesto (yumm...).

And all of this is the background to the time when I'm beginning my daily radiation treatment at Hadassah hospital, a 20 minute beautiful mountain drive away from here, and a weekly dose of Chemotherapy which has left me feeling depleted and nauseous throughout most of the week. I wonder sometimes how necessary this is, how such an awful feeling physically can actually be the result of a method meant to heal and cure cancer. The cancerous tumor i've been diagnosed with is dangerous in its potentiality and not so much felt in actuality. It was a bump on my cheek until surgery, and since then all the reprecussions have been the aftermath of surgery and treatment, nothing to do with the thing itself. The lump removed which allegedly left behind some microscopical cellular units which have the potential to develop very fast and turn into another Carcinoma, the kind no surgery will be able to remove and will spread fast to my lymph, lungs and liver. This sounds so terrible that the effects of Chemotherapy and radiatiom seem a small price to pay for the spreading of this things in my body. But keeping that in mind is not what brings this while experience into context or some kind of positive outlook. It's no logical empiric deduction that enables me to see the good and necessety of this treatment; it's my whole hearted decision to go through this willingly and learn from it. It's not a blind decision to do this just since the doctors said it's necessary. It's a wise integration of modern science's wisdom together with the wisdom of my body, mind and spirit which sees the benefit in all ways of treatment, and doesn't delude me into thinking this is an easy task.

Spending these days in the Oncolcgy ward at Hadassah, I can see the unfortunate manner in which people blindly subject themselves to suffering, accepting Doctor's words as gospel from heaven and not taking responsibility for their lives. And the medical system is not helping! It appalls me every time I go out to the parking lot on the -4th floor of the hospital to see blind cancer patients buying themselves a butter and sugar pumped Croissant and a Coke to give themselves some comfort after their session of radaition or chemotherapy. Little do they know the effect sugar has on the development of cancerous cells. These cells thrive on an imbalanced acidic envorinment in our bodies and feed off it. These people may be comforted by the sweet taste of the pastry and chemical drinks, but they're actually countering their cancer treatment. The fact that the hospital has these machines and vendors on its premesis is an alarm to me and a sign for much progress that needs to be done in the medical system.

That said, i've been surprised by the open-mindedness of the medical and psychological staff at the Oncology ward. Nurses and therapists were very open and senstive and knowledgable in the various methods which can improve the lifestyle of a cnacer patient such as Yoga, meditation, relxation and breathing excercises, medicinal herbs and oriental treatments. I was even offered Medicinal marijuana by the head nurse!!! A dream come true fro my 22 year old self. We've come a long way and this must be accredited as well.

The effect on my energy level and motivation is even more evident than the effect on my physical strength. The past month, since fully recovering from surgery up until last week have been characterized by an upsurge of energy unparalleled in the last few years of my life. New clarity and vision are in the forefront and exploring new ways of expression and creativity, with boundless entheusiasm was what occupied my mind most of the time. But since the chemicals have been running through my bloodstream, i've been feeling like the world offers me but a limited selection of opportunities and I have the ablility to choose only a thing or two, and give up, at least temporarily, on plans to see people, go places , take courses, play music and utilize my fire and energy I love so much. I feel it requires a lot of modesty and letting go of expectations to get through these times. My patience is small, my ability to listen and be with other people is lessened because i'm preoccupied with my basic sensations. Somehow this simplicity doesn't seem as wholesome as it did before and there is a lot fo unrest. This is where my Yoga practice and meditation come in most handy; relaxing the mind and the body into the experience which the present moment is manifesting right now. The deep realization that nothing else is to be experienced right now; there is no other reality, only now. I helps me see things in a wider perspective and open up to the love that is around me, the people supporting me and the universe, which along with this challange it's giving me, is embracing me with such amazing gifts. In the end, the way i'm going to get through this period of time is totally determined by the way I choose to experience it. I am the master of my emotions and my reactions, and it is in my power to transform this seemingly negative expereince into golden gems of realization and power.

Happy winter days, Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christams.

Love Love Love

Another Gem from Savitri

Admit the thousand queries and the calls
And the messages of communicating minds
And the heavy business of unnumbered lives
And all the thousandfold commerce of the world.
Even in the tracts of sleep is scant repose;
He mocks life's steps in strange subconscient dreams,
He strays in a subtle realm of symbol scenes,
His night with thin-air visions and dim forms
He packs or peoples with slight drifting shapes
And only a moment spends in silent Self.
Adventuring into infinite mind-space
He unfolds his wings of thought in inner air,
Or travelling in imagination's car
Crosses the globe, journeys beneath the stars,
To subtle worlds takes his ethereal course,
Visits the Gods on Life's miraculous peaks,
Communicates with Heaven, tampers with Hell.
This is the little surface of man's life.
He is this and he is all the universe;
He scales the Unseen, his depths dare the Abyss;
A whole mysterious world is locked within.
Unknown to himself he lives a hidden king
Behind rich tapestries in great secret rooms;
An epicure of the spirit's unseen joys,
He lives on the sweet honey of solitude:
A nameless god in an unapproachable fane,
In the secret adytum of his inmost soul
He guards the being's covered mysteries
Beneath the threshold, behind shadowy gates
Or shut in vast cellars of inconscient sleep.
The immaculate Divine All-Wonderful
Casts into the argent purity of his soul
His splendour and his greatness and the light
Of self-creation in Time's infinity
As into a sublimely mirroring glass.
Man in the world's life works out the dreams of God.

(Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, Book VII Canto II)