How we Heal -- Transcedentalism

 My World

I sent my son off to war today. Not war, but my heart cried this morning. He and his father are going on a Great Basin motorcycle ride -- 2000 miles. My son is only sixteen. When I hugged him goodbye, and stifled my tears, I could feel his acne skin through his t-shirt, and his veal muscles flexing back a hug. Is this remotely what a mother feels when forced to send her son off to war? To the World, he is insignificant; but to me, he is a significant part of my world.

“No!” I would yell when he would slam a door with his little fingers. I taught him that fire burns, and jumps from too high of a height will hurt, or break bones. This is what experience has taught me. 

If a child survives childhood, life span dramatically increases. Between prehistoric times and up to the 1900s medical revolution, there was a thirty percent mortality rate in infants and children; average life expectancy was age thirty-five. Life span; however, was seventy-years-old. If you lived to see age thirty-five, men in particular, had beat one in three odds (33%) (Adedeji 2016). Today, childhood mortality is seven deaths for every 1000 children (7%) (Roser, Ritchie, & Dadonaite 2013).

Experience teaches us to avoid hurting ourselves, but an inciting incident must happen to learn from it. It is impossible to live and not be affected by external factors. Healing is a response to an affecting incident. 

I envy people of faith. Handing over trust to a healing spirit. Those who can “fear not for I am with you” (King James, Isaiah 41:10). I fear for my son, and that fear is derived from experience. I don’t want pain to befall him, and I also don’t want to outlive my son. I have experienced remaining in this World after the death of a loved one, and it is very lonely.

“There are no atheists in the foxhole.” ~President Dwight D. Eisenhower

God is in our healing spirit. As if we are a clump of divine clay modeled into our own image. Carved, trimmed, collapsed and rebuilt into a vessel. In order to work clay, it needs water and pressure. Clay, manipulated and affected, formed into an existence. A conglomerate of mind, body and spirit. Impossible to descry.

We become vessels of healing. Our body never regenerates into a new piece of clay. I do not believe we ever completely heal. Instead, we adapt to external forces and rebuild our vessel. By the grace of god, or by our healing spirit, thoughtful awareness and recognition of the need to heal -- mindfulness -- embalms our experience into a rationally repaired vessel. 

Once upon a time, there was a man named “Scurvy.” He was a sailor with little to eat, on a boat, out at sea for months. He had rotten gums, and open wounds from healed scars. He landed in paradise, and was given a lime; his old wounds stitched back together with the help of Vitamin C. Henceforth, he was known as “Limey.” He was living proof our wounds never fully heal. 

The only power we have is how we heal. Not all maladies are physical, our mind can be affected, too. Just like changing our nutrition can heal the physical, changing our narrative is our power to heal our mind -- our mental sustenance. Mindfulness rises from our spirit, our subtle heart, to promote positive healing. Versification from the heart is nutritive healing. Versification is an art which grows from our heart song. 

… the trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and; tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love (Muir 1938). 

Love exists in churches, synagogues, ashrams and 

sweat lodges. Despite your belief construct, enter a 

place of worship and your heart will sing; the hairs 

stand with bumpy flesh; or you could cry for its 

beauty. But, without their adornment, without the 

worship, without you to appreciate the beauty, it is a 

vanilla box. Appreciate the Intention and you have a 

sacred space -- a place of ritual that buffers you from 

the tremendous storm.

Ritual is the act of harnessing intentional energy and filling your heart. Ritual creates a bulwark for your spirit. Everyone has a different means of ritual. Everyone can harness the subtle energy of intention. Everyone can heal through ritual. Writing for healing is a ritual. Writing for healing is harnessing mindful intention.

Wonderful how completely everything in wild nature fits into us, as if truly part and parent of us. The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. (Muir 1938)

I sit upon a rocky mountain top, and the World moves me. My insignificance is awesome. The vulture spies me as an intruder in his world. My heart vibrates beyond my physical shell, my spirit sings. This is my house of worship. But I became physically wounded, my back damaged, and I could no longer climb. My house of worship became elusive. My world collapsed, and the vulture circled me. My song lay silent. Healing is finding your house of worship within your heart. 

God, please guide my son to make good decisions. Ganesh, please remove any obstacles in his path. Om, shanti, shanti -- give my mind, body and spirit peace. I am only ever, this moment in the World, I am forever in my world of a healing spirit.

References

Adedeji, W. (2016, December). The Treasure Called Antibiotics. Retrieved August 20, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5354621/

Muir, J. (1938). Mountain Thoughts. Retrieved August 20, 2021, from Muir, J. (1938). Mountain thoughts (1450990687 1051958660 H. Chinn, Ed.).

Roser, M., Ritchie, H., & Dadonaite, B. (2013, May 10). Child and Infant Mortality. Retrieved August 20, 2021, from https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality