I Keep Forgetting CF Is Invisible

[paul-met-debbie]

For me it is just the other way around: I hardly ever remember having cf.

Don’t get me wrong: my body experiences the symptoms on a regular basis. But for me that does not mean that I identify with cf. I don’t “have” it. It is not about me, who I really am. Nor is my appearance. There is no need for these identifications and they have only disadvantages. But most important: they are not true. It is all a matter of perspective.

If you think that you are your persona, your personality, the sum total of all your thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations and conditioning, including everything related to your body, then of course everything that happens or any bodily (dis)function will directly have its influence on “you”, that is: the one you identify with as being you. It will shape you as a person, it will feel like the totality of your (im)possibilities, it will feel like (facets of) your personality. For the person, this perspective has certain advantages. The best one is, that without these identifications, it would feel non-existent. And in that, it would be right, because the person is an illusion of the mind which does not actually exist. It only lives through these identifications, it is a set of beliefs, habits, automatic thoughts and conditioned reflexes that believe it into existence, that create the power for it to assume the form of this fata morgana. It uses the identification with the body to “prove” to itself and others that it really exists (“look in the mirror, there I am”). Doing all of this will give the person a sense of being someone special, separate from everything and everyone else. Someone great, healthy, rich and powerful, or someone small and sick, but in both cases: a very special person! Of course this is lonely, and so it also wants to feel connected, but it has to establish these connections itself with hard work and a lot of decision making, judging and need for control and a lot of disappointing fails because all these connections are transient.

This is the minds perspective of life and it comes with a lot of troubles. This imaginary person with his/her frail body now is at the mercy of circumstances, health, age, opinions, judgements of itself and others, it will constantly feel the need to defend itself, to rebuild any perceived damages done, to increase its importance, to feel the so-called highs and lows of life and the need to pursue happiness. This is living like everything is about you. You make yourself into the center of your universe, and that amounts to a lot of fear and effort. You need to fit everything in the story of you and you have to constantly re-wright and adapt this story to everything that happened. This is the prison of the ego. You then get a very limited living experience that is constantly threatened by everyday life (and eventually by death) and only gives you a small glimpse of reality. It is a repetitive and much copied life full of comparing, competing, complaining, judging, controlling, failing and fear, with a few short lived small happinesses in between. It is totally not the same as loving music or loving your dogs, which comes intuitively and effortlessly from the heart, and has nothing to do with identifying, mind or person, judging or comparing, sickness or health. Notice how you can enjoy music and love your dogs even if (or perhaps even more) you totally forget who you are, you don’t need any personality for that. In fact, loving makes you forget who you are, that is why it is such a compelling experience. It lifts you beyond the person.

Talking about the person again: this is the limited perspective that most human beings have on life. It is their interface of connection with reality. We are taught to live like this by our parents, society and educational system. We can see around us to what kind of lives this amounts and what impact it has on our planet.

The other perspective is, to not identify with the person. To lead a life where nothing is about the personal you. This is the perspective of wholeness. We all know how it feels, we have lots of small moments of this when the mind is still for a short while. When we are in awe of something beautiful like nature, a work of art, a new born life, when we feel compassion or when the mind has no words like when a loved one dies, or when we are in the silence of a church or other temple of religion, when you are feeling love. These are the moments of wholeness-in-action. In these moments we experience super-personalness. Another word for this is Divinity or wholeness. You are directly in touch with the miracle of nature and being, without the interference of the mind. If you learn to still the mind, these moments eventually grow out into a permanent experience of peaceful steadiness and the mind will reside more and more. You are no longer at the mercy of that what happens. You are in the soft and caring hands of the unknowable limitlessness in which everything happens. You can rest in the aliveness of being that is constantly there, the presence of existence. That what happens does not define you anymore, nor does it trouble you.

Even from this perspective, cf still happens. But it does not happen to you anymore. It is no longer problematic, there is no fight, no fear, no worries. You find yourself dealing with it as best as possible without effort, without making stories about it in your mind. It is dealt with like your body deals with blood pressure, digestion, breathing etc. on a second by second base without you even feeling the effort or having to think about it. Instead, you feel the aliveness of being, which is so much bigger and all-encompassing, no single little experience will really disturb this. You will feel connected with everyone and everything in a way your mind is totally incapable of grasping. You will feel a surge of completeness. Everything will be the same, yet your experience of it will be totally different than before.

It is a choice, really. It is simple, but not easy because the mind is strong and our identification with it goes a long way back. But just contemplate the possibility: could it be, that I am more than the mind-body? Is it possible to make this work in practice, to shift my perspective from the limited mind to the boundless aliveness of being? Wouldn’t it be great? What do I have to loose, except my little personality and the troubled ego? Do I really need them? And more important: how true is the life that I have now, compared with that? Just contemplate. Give some attention to it, some presence, for instance in a short meditation. It starts with that. You will be surprised where it leads to.

I still am.