Stripped down to its essential core, everything I have ever
learned has led me to one simple idea.
Full stop. Just one.
That idea is: “Don’t take it personally.”
Don’t take your life, circumstances, situation,
relationships, or process personally.
That means not just the bad things, but the “good” as
well. Nothing about Life is
personal, despite how desperately personal it all seems to us, in our infancy and confusion.
The most recent test of learning to live life from an
impersonal perspective, for me, came on the day that I discovered that I was a
diabetic.
Diabetes is not only a life threatening disease, but one
filled to the brim with deeply unpleasant potential…things like amputation,
blindness, kidney failure, and much more.
On the first day I grieved.
I grieved the loss of innocence that led me to believe that
I was OK. Despite all the
worsening symptoms that had been plaguing me for many months, extreme fatigue,
excessive diarrhea, worsening vision, pain in my feet, and much more.
Later that same day, I was given a formula for reversing its
effects. That formula was one of
considerable change in diet and exercise.
Despite the fact that I had eaten a “cleaner” diet than the average
American for many years, it still contained enough carbohydrates in the form of
breads and pastas to keep my blood sugars in the red-hot danger range.
I immediately embarked on changing all of that, and dropped
all sugars in every form (even fruits), and all breads and pastas from my diet
and there was an astonishing drop in my blood sugar, and concomitant rise in my
energy and well-being. Exercise
once again became a daily part of me life, and I thought I was well on my way
to ending and reversing a very dangerous health risk.
Now, 30 days post that decision, and much very effective action…I am dramatically
improved, but by no means, out of the weeds. I am still in ranges that are unacceptable for optimum
health, and I notice a creeping desire to take my somewhat lopsided success/failure,
personally.
Pride in that I have made so many changes, with no
resistance whatsoever, and sadness that I did not get totally back to “normal”
ranges of blood sugar.
Because I am not taking medication, I now know that I might
never again be able to eat a dessert or have a sugary mocha latte, (oddly the
thing I miss the most), I may very well, have to live in this highly restricted
realm for the rest of my days.
That is hard to not take personally.
But that is the greater lesson, the one no one notices…as
they bounce from one goal post to the other.
Our lives are meant to be a journey of releasing ourselves
from the burden of a personal self, to grow beyond viewing every event and
every outcome, from the egoically centric stance of being the center of the
universe. We are not.
We are the Everywhereness, stuffed into the shell of a
single human journey. Mapping our
way through the galaxy, as a point of perception for the vastness of creation.
And creation has no problem with illness, poverty, death, or
disease. These things too, are a
source of abiding awareness, of deepening sensitivity, of life being informed
and shaped by every form of expression.
I am, in this body, 58 years of age. I now know, without equivocation, that
my youth and resilience is finished…and that the coming years will bring many
forms of debilitation and dysfunction.
I need no longer guess at the decline of my physical form. And yet, I must respond to life as it
expresses itself through me now, just now, and not the way I had hoped for, or
wished for, or prayed for.
There is yet another layer of opportunity for me to mature
into leading a transpersonal life.
I want that for myself. I want that for you too.
I have not been here before. I do not know the way.
But I do know that others have gone before me, and if they can find the
door, so may I.
In Transpersonal Love,
Adayre R. Miller
4/30/14
