A STRANGE AND WONDERFUL THING

The more I delve into my guts, the things that lie below my everyday waking consciousness, the more impressed I am with the way it keeps track of everything.

Even the stuff that happens when I am unconscious!

I had a pretty profound experience of this a couple of nights ago, and had to consciously puzzle out the meaning; but I have, and I share it here because it’s likely you, if you’ve ever undergone the rigors of surgery, may be dealing with the same kind of burden.

If you’ve read any of my scribbles about contracting and surviving stage four throat cancer, or have had to battle your own way back to some semblance of normalcy after falling gravely ill yourself, you are likely familiar with the physical trauma such an adventure entails.

But in the process of surgery, our conscious mind checks out because it simply is unable to cope with that level of pain.

The subconscious, however, apparently parses EVERYTHING, and often buries the experience deep in our memories where it hopes we will never find it, sort of the way the military likes to dump radioactive or toxic wastes in the deep ocean.

It eventually becomes a problem.

Well, my problem surfaced as extreme tightening of the solar plexus, the jaw, the neck, the hip, indeed most of my left side.

I try to cope with the distress from this by practicing my own little specialized form of Yoga.

When I am not busy being Jungle Dave, Super Dave, or Dave the Writin’ Fool, I assume the persona of Yogi Dave-Ananda.

Yoga is a practice I absorbed as a kid watching my sainted mother follow Richard Hittleman, a yoga instructor who hosted one of the first ever television programs on the subject in the US, a type of very thin and lithe Jack LaLane for those uninterested in the usual calisthenics.

It’s something that has been a part of my makeup for quite some time, and became doubly important after the beating I took as a cancer patient, when I went from 185lbs to 120lbs in the space of a month and a half.

I often awaken in the middle of the night in ridiculously extreme positions, as my body copes with the aftermath of joints and muscles in pain at the core level. It is astonishing because it shows me beyond doubting that my conscious mind does not really rule, even though it makes the most noise.

Well, just such a thing happened the other night, which in itself isn’t weird to me any more.

But as I woke up during the process and passed back into conscious awareness, I heard myself calling out desperately “NO! Wait, wait, wait, wait! No, NO!”…repeating these phrases over and over.

It was shocking, and the emotions were incredibly raw and intensely strange.

What in the name of Hittleman was going on here?

As I sat fully awake that night in my homemade twin bed (pallets, baby!) and contemplated the meaning of what I was experiencing, it came out, the secret thing causing so much of the trouble; and the realization made me weep from my deepest well, almost uncontrollably.

I am weeping and whimpering in about the same way, at this very moment as I write this, because it was apparently so scorching to my subconscious, which thought it was doing me a favor by burying the experience.

I feel it throughout my entire being, and I am determined to bring it fully into the light of examination so I can understand, then release it once and for all.

Although under the blanket of powerful surgical drugs when my compromised teeth were broken out of my mouth, to give my throat the chance to heal properly, and a hole the size of a nickel made through my solar plexus so a stomach tube could be inserted to sustain myself when it would be impossible to swallow anymore…my true awareness, the one really in charge, felt and recorded It all, then hid it from me hoping I wouldn’t ever notice.

Turns out I did, anyway, and it showed itself in the physical issues I have been experiencing.

This is a hard thing to relive right now; as I mentioned, I am blubbering like a little girl as I type.

The “No, wait, WAIT!” I was hearing was me screaming at the height of my capacity, only non-verbally, inside myself, powerless to prevent the pain of surgical invasion that must have been complete torture to my psyche as well as my physical body.

It is more than a little overwhelming. But now I know.

Boy, do I have a love/hate relationship with this kind of thing.

But I am fairly sure that the conscious understanding now available to me will help me heal and release the terror in that part of my mind traumatized by holding such a secret.

And as I weep I ask forgiveness of my body, my friend, my most precious animal, without whose help I could never navigate the physical world.

This may take a while to get over; I didn’t expect these ramifications.

But Hawaii has done just such a thing to me before, almost forty years ago when I came here after the deaths of my brother Mike and my dad, Dave Maxwell. I’ll write about that sometime, too, as it was equally profound.

Perhaps a good part of my journey here was to have just this experience, so it would no longer hinder me, and so I could tell you too, in case such a deep hidden problem is messing with your ability to live and thrive and heal.

I’m already feeling a little more relieved; so for now God bless you, my friends. I love you.

But I have to stop writing for the moment, finish crying, blow my nose and eat; because dang it, this sort of ordeal makes me hungry for some sweet tropical fruit! 

Then I’m gonna check fer eggs. Usually about 25 a day.

And man, do I ever have some interesting stories coming up soon… 
Aloha!

(This may be worth sharing with someone you know, who may be in similar distress…)