Flash of Insight

A personal story – This last year brought the unexpected, a surprise diagnosis of breast cancer, unexpected because there was no way I could have known without the new digital imaging technology that is capable of finding lumps to small to be felt.  That, of course, was good news, because the cancer was caught very early.  However it meant a big shift in my agenda for the last eleven months.  I joked about taking on a new hobby – medical appointments! 

I thought I was doing well in responding to this health threat.  I did research and became aware of all the different aspects of breast cancer and its treatment.  I consulted with knowledgeable people, who gave me excellent advice and whom I deeply appreciate.  I made choices about treatment and changed my life style so as to give my body the best advantage in discouraging any further cancer.  And I wanted very much to be able to put it all behind me, and get my body back.  As a modest person, I had never exposed myself to so many strangers!  Yet the stress manifested itself.  For example, it showed up last week when I finally dug my way down to my desk top only to discover to my chagrin a pile of thank you notes from Christmas written but never mailed!

Now long after surgery and radiation I continue to deal with the aftermath of the treatments that brought their own new hitches in my desire to eliminate medical appointments from my calendar.  None of this is really of any great consequence – except one that I found particularly distressing.  No longer taking estrogen I began experiencing hot flashes.  They were of such intensity and number that they could not be easily ignored or tolerated.  They disturbed my sleep, left me dehydrated, broke my train of thought and concentration, and became the focus of irritation.  Even in meditation as I sat deep in silence they came.  I got so I could detect the first very subtle shift that marks the beginning of a rise in temperature.  At least then I could throw off my sweater or jacket or shawl, so as not to soak them when the sweat began.

I tried many different herbal remedies and acupuncture with only marginal improvement.  The hot flashes were sapping emotional energy as well as the physical discomfort, and my resentment was growing.  I knew that people didn’t die of hot flashes, and that while they were a nuisance, they really weren’t all that harmful.  But they were making a big impact on my equilibrium and general disposition. 

Something had to change, and if the hot flashes couldn’t stop, then it was my attitude that had to change.  How was I to pray about this?  What could I ask God for?  It was clear to me that even as I asked for mercy and to be relieved of this benign affliction, I had a sense that I needed to learn from this also.  An easy out from the situation would not be in my best interest spiritually, since the whole of life for me is offered into the mercy of the Lamb of God.

                  A few of weeks ago I complained to my spiritual director about the hot flashes, and he started to tell me what I already knew had to be done – to look at reframing my reaction to the hot flashes.  And just as he was saying that, there was a flash of insight.  It was a moment of revelation in which everything shifted.  Suddenly I was seeing the situation from a whole new perspective and meaning framework.  Matthew 3:11 flashed through my mind, the words of John the Baptist: "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  Incredibly those hot flashes were now being presented to me as a gift, a sacramental sign and reminder of the spiritual work of purgation being done within us through the grace of Yeshua and the work of his Spirit.  Now they were intimate and incarnated reminders of God’s mercy arising in the midst of meditation and all the various daily activities, markers alerting me to the inward spiritual process that is continually going on.  Now they have become moments in the day in which attention is drawn to God’s presence and divine intervention in my life for cleansing and purging.  Fire is rich in scriptural reference: burning the chaff, fire as the energetic radiance of divine presence in burning bush and pillar of cloud, tongues of fire on the Day of Pentecost, purifying fire, empowering fire, all consuming fire, the Fire of Love. 

The point of all this is that this breakthrough in my attitude came not because I thought and reasoned it out, or that I had turned my will to the intention of making myself have a different attitude.  Rather it was a merciful intervention, a revelation, and in that moment of recognition I said yes to it.  After this my attitude changed effortlessly, naturally, and without trying or intention.  And I have actually looked forward to the hot flashes.  They now are instant messages of purgatorial love.  And interestingly their intensity and frequency have decreased.

This is one of the reasons why we sit and do nothing and practice meditation.  When we practice sitting awake and watchful without self-concern, we become more alert to our own self imagination, game playing, and self-delusionary tactics for avoiding reality.  As we sit in that mercy of Yeshua, Lamb of God, we can face this about ourselves and we open more and more in trust to the salvation being worked out in us.  We end up discovering that everything, everything that happens to us, everything we encounter, can therefore serve us in our awakening into wholeness, can serve us in our realization of our full potential as children of God.

                  Keep meditating!

                                                                        Blessings in the Lamb,

Beverly

For indeed our God is a consuming fire.

Hebrews 12:29, Deuteronomy 4:24, 9:3