Commitment

A day of getting my ass kicked. Therapeutically.

Got a couple of particularly nasty points at the acupuncturist today. II/III entry/exit block, for those of you keeping scorecards. There's pretty much no way to get those treated without it hurting. A lot. Thank God he treated them, though; I feel so much better now—and that has nothing to do with "better now that the needles are out."

But life is worth living, now. Life is live-able, now. Are any of the neurological nasties fixed by these treatments? Legs working better? Other surprise malfunctions, functioning? No. But life is worth living. I'll take that, any day.

A brief interlude; a small but ugly toe infection, antibiotics were prescribed. An antibiotic that I've had before—and one with no side effects. How often does that happen? A small gift. But I'll receive it, gladly.

Spent some time with a beloved and trusted spiritual adviser. He asked me about a few things I had said were annoying me in my relationship with other people, and his response to each one of them was, "Yup. That's you. That's all you." Nothing about who was right and who was wrong—as if there is an absolute right and wrong in the way I'm relating to the world—except that choosing to relate to the world the way I am is not morally wrong, but "why are you causing yourself so much grief" wrong. He used a lot of technical terms in his analysis (omitted for brevity, they wouldn't make sense to anyone not in this spiritual practice anyway), but I gotta admit... he was right.

And the bottom line: You want this stuff to stop? You need the spiritual practice. If you really want these things you know are karking out your life to stop... practice.

Well then.

A lesson I've been unwilling to really face, most of my life. "If you really want this (whatever 'this' might be), work for it. Because if you don't work for it, you won't get it." It has always been easier dealing with this when I was working on external things... years ago, I spent uncountable hours renovating an organ, and I'd say to myself to get myself into the organ chamber, "The organ won't renovate itself."

And somehow, I find it hard to cop to " 'I' won't renovate itself."

Percussion, I loved to practice. Kyudo, I loved to practice. If you do those right, those are spiritual practice, but those roads will take a very, very long time. There are other, faster, roads, but they take a lot of work. A lot of work.

So, there we are. Multiple sclerosis forces me to deal with my unwillingness to fully commit to a powerful spiritual practice.

As a wise man once said to me, "You needed to get M.S."

Perhaps... He was right.