Shielded from the mind
I'm going through changes. One of the heaviest is that I couldn't make love work so I'm mourning the now finished relationship. I'm living in a new apartment and I enjoy being here. Some nights are long and full of terrors, mostly related to health issues I had to go through a year and a half ago. I'm mourning that as well.
I see people recovering faster than me. I make that comparison. It's stupid. My mind does that. I noticed lately that we have this eternal holy war were it says things to me and I suffer when I believe it. I assume most minds work more or less the same way in the sense that they talk to their, let's say host, meaning: the human body.
After my surgery, something changed. It's not like I was immediately changed (which I believe I may have but that's for another day) but as time passed, I started to feel more... I don't know, spiritual. I mean, just six months ago I was defining the purpose of life in this very blog. That's as spiritual as you get. Or at least the kind of spirituality I was accustomed to NOT believe.
Anyway, one of the pillars of my health treatment is excercise. So I changed that almost immediately after the surgery. They kind of make you, and I complied. I was determined to do anything and everything in my power to recover and don't lose hope. I did recover pretty fast, but that was physically. Mentally, psychologically, that's another story.
So, again, physically, I went through private kinesiology sessions, then what they call rehabilitation therapy (my gym buddies doubled my age and I'm in my early 40's), I stayed there 3 or 4 months extra, I felt insecure, I felt pain, I was scared.
Now, my mind is always making noise, and I was able to silence that noise, voices, what have you, through breathing, meditation and mostly trying to be present. The more present I was, the less noise I had from my mind. That presence is awesome but I don't get it constantly, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. The times I don't, guess what, the mind takes control. Not like a full control but it makes noise and tries to trick me into thinking about all the things that can go wrong (here is were this ressonate with you).
That's my relationship with the mind. But today, today something happened. I had scheduled a medical exam because my mind convinced me that I was not well and that I was about to get to the same place where my trauma is. They called it PTSD, seems that it also happens with heavy duty health issues, especially if they touch your heart (wich is kinda literally what I went through), but I digress.
My mind can produce all sort of changes in my body, even inflict pain, so it makes pretty convinging arguments. That's why I took the exam. I don't know how it went, they said good but my cardiologist has yet to revise it. I also need to get some blood work. So yeah, the mind is not quiet.
But it was quiet earlier. After the medical exam I went to grab a bite and then to my calistenics class (which is actually the source of my pain, if only I could see this reality more often) and I aced it as I always do. I like excercising, getting stronger, feeling better, more secure, and all the things that they say excercise do to you that I didn't believe or I didn't want to believe but they are right.
So when I was coming back home, super tired from the training session, my mind and I were having a conversation where it said something like we got the results too early, maybe there's something wrong. And as I was trying to explain that it's not like that and if it is it doesn't really matter in the present moment and... silence. Absolute silence. I put my phone in my pocket without even thinking about it. I was not thinking. I was just walking. I could feel the air entering my lungs, it was fresh. I could hear all the sounds. I could see all the people. I could feel my steps and how all my muscles or whatever reacted to the motion. I didn't check my hear rate or my walking pace. I just walked.
I felt like the mind was trying to say things but it was like I was shielded from it. This is an experience I heard about but I hadn't experienced yet. I thought what I read about stuff like that was real but not quite real if you know what I mean. I always say reality is a subjective construct but man this felt real and at the same time it didn't matter because all I knew is that I had to keep walking and... I don't know, being.
This post got too long, I just let myself write whatever came into mind and this is what I got. Hope you get something from it, I know I did.
Thank you for reading.
A|