Life is about Change, Let it Flow

Awareness, in itself, is curative - Fritz Pearls

 

During my 20 days retreat for Vipassana in 2008, I met the teacher Mr Baburam Yadav. During the 19 days of silence I had thought he would be around 60 to 65. On the 20^th day after the metta when we came out of silence, many of us wanted to express our gratitude to both the conducting teachers. That is when I came to know that he was 82. If that piece of information was startling even more fascinating was his journey of letting go. 

While listening to a meditator’s physical problem and how that was making it difficult for him to meditate, he was explaining about equanimity and letting go. In that conversation he talked about his own experience of physical difficulty and meditation and healing. 

When he was diagnosed that he was at the last stages of cancer and in doctor’s opinion he had a month to live if he does not go through a surgery. And what was his chance of survival post surgery? It seems the doctors were hopeful that he will survive another six months.  That is when he despite intense opposition of the family members he decided to go for a Vipassana retreat for 30 days. His own reasoning was if he has to die in any way, why to die on a surgery table in a hospital, why not being aware of the footsteps of death and consciously embracing it. 

There opposition all round. Even the fellow teachers of Vipassana also were of advice to take rest. But his will was focussed and he went ahead.  He was bleeding profusely from his anus and it was difficult to sit on his sit. So most of the time in his own words he was meditating in the toilet sitting on the wc.  One day the bleeding was so much that he thought that to be his last day of this life. He was watching the blood and pondering smilingly over the form of his impending death.  But he survived the day. And day by day he survived all the 30 days which the doctors had given as his span of life. 

He went back home but refused to go to hospital and surgery. He survived the next six months.  And then he said that he survived much beyond.  When finally he went for a check up, he had no cancer in his body. “I am now in front of you and that retreat of 30 days was in 1998!”

Each dis-ease is psycho somatic. If there is a thought  in the mind it leaves its imprint in the body, both being part of same energy field and so each disease which is physically manifesting has a root at the mind and spirit. If one can equanimously watch the waves of these energy flow in the body and allow the blocked energy packets to unfold and flow, the healing automatically happens. 

This deep connection of body and mind and the process consolidated my faith that any disease can be healed by simply watching it. And that is why when a small itchy red patch of inflammation surfaced on my upper chest during my Vipassana retreat of 30 days in 2009, I convinced myself that it will go on its own.

That was my truth then – of the conscious mind. Was my sub conscious aligned?

That is the life. It flows and we learn our lesson when the time comes. What is our truth of today changes tomorrow with a fresh learning and by the time we grasp to that truth it changes again.

Life is a flow, the only constant here is ‘Change’.