The Massage...

~*

Since yesterday is now today, I can say that I am scheduled for a second massage this afternoon.

I had my first one last week and it was an amazing experience. Over here, it is called "nuad bo'rarn". It is an ancient healing method, often used with herbal medicine. S and I went together into a small massage room off an alley in Khon Kaen. The young man who was to do my massage asked me to lay down on a mat on the floor. He was intense and solemn about his work. The minute he touched my body, I knew he was a healer. I could feel it in his fingers. There was no frivolous chit chat or make-nice conversation. He didn't use any lotions or creams. He had a job to do and took it seriously. S. sat in a chair along the wall and watched.

While I had a vague idea of what would happen, I was far from certain. I know enough about Thai massage to know it is rough, I'd get flipped around a lot and kneaded like bread dough ~ but not a clue beyond that.

My instinct was to cringe from the touch but also found that I got into a meditative state rather quickly. It was important to remain mindful. My mind and body were actually connected. That's often unusual for me since I tend to be rather dissociative.

He pounded and kneaded very slowly. Each point of my body. Again and again. He stretched my body, put me in some positions that actually reminded me of yoga. He worked a lot on my abdominal area. According to Thai medicine, this is the most vulnerable part of us and is the area where all the major energy pathways are located. The health of all the rest of our senses depend on the health of our abdominal areas.

When he began working on that, I began reacting. Strongly. I alternately wailed, keened, howled and tried to curl up in a ball. Not because he was causing me physical pain, but because it was loosening all the pain I've been carrying around for so many years. It released so many toxins into my system that I felt a bit weird and sick for the rest of the day. By the end of the session, I was softly weeping. It was such an amazing experience. From the sound of it, it would make sense that I would have disliked the experience but I didn't.

It was a good indication that I need more treatments and I go for another one this afternoon.

One of the things I've come to realize while I've been here is how touch-deprived I am over there. While I've been here, I've been massaged, hugged, touched, petted and there has been the inevitable "skin rubbing" that strangers often do when they meet me. Thai people touch each other and they love to touch farangs.

That led me to think about how it's going to be when I come back there. I will not be touched anymore and I need that. Really. Just common human touch.

It really does matter.

~*

Carry-on Baggage

So... the question this week is "what do you carry with you"?

It's a complicated question, depending on how it's framed.

I believe we come to this earth with some baggage already attached. We have lessons to be learned from previous lives and genetic memory. In that sense, we carry traits from our ancestors, both physical and emotional.

We come to adulthood carrying the baggage from our childhoods in this life. Since no one I knew grew up with Ward and June, I would assume nearly everyone has at least some.

We carry the lessons of this lifetime and the memory of circumstances which bring about our learning them. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow has no road map. We just learn, and learn, and learn a bit more. Eventually, we stumble on many pots in different locations, filled to different capacities.

Along the way, we make a lot of choices about what to do with our baggage. Do we bury it in the back of a closet and hope it goes away, tattered and beaten up as it often is? Do we give it away to someone else who might be able to use it? Do we throw it in the landfill, hoping to never see it again? Or do we continue to carry it around, pulling it behind us everywhere we go?

Maybe we dismantle it and use the parts to create something else. We use it to inspire, to educate, to comfort others. Do we use it to be in service or do we use it to firmly entrench ourselves into permanent victimhood?

They're all valid choices, each with their own benefit package.

I choose to integrate mine, rather than overcome it. The word "overcome" implies a psychic battle .. a winner and a loser. Victory and defeat. I prefer to think of these various things I carry around ~ from past life lessons, genetic memory, childhood and adult experiences ~ as tools that I can use to inspire others.

As we unpack our baggage, we can usually find nuggets of wisdom here and there, hidden in the corners and the side pockets, wisdom we've gained, reasons that make sense in retrospect.

I am a person with a great deal of faith. These experiences we carry and the wounds, unhealed and healed, bring us closer to the person we are meant to be. I believe that is true for each of us.

"We are all teachers, and what we teach
is what we learn, and
so we teach it over and over again until we learn..."

A Course In Miracles

Divine Justice?

I've had many thoughts about karma over the years, most of them misguided and a perception that really became little more than quid pro quo, a balancing of scales and visible retribution for wrongs I'd experienced.


In the eastern sense, karma is very different.


The karmic system of justice always moves in the direction of healing and redemption for those whose hearts have hardened toward others. Its purpose is always benevolent - to bring consciousness back to a path of truth. The means by which it does this is to create new experiences for a soul in need of healing that are specific and direct though often painful, so that the embodied soul can make new decisions concerning what is right and what is true. Coming to a new source of motivation may take many lifetimes and a lot of suffering, but each soul is purified of the darkness they have carried and can be guided slowly from cycling, to begin a new construction of personal values. There are souls who still refuse to change, even after experiencing so much pain and suffering, but even those people are offered the possibility of healing and redemption over and over again.

Regarding forgiveness of a soul including those who cause a lot of suffering for many, there is the human perspective which observes behavior. There is also the spiritual perspective that sees what happens to the inner being. From this perspective it's possible to see the degree of separation the inner being has from the role that is being played before others.

For example, on some levels, I am a very angry person. I would never consider using it as a battering ram against others but that doesn't fix it on the soulic level. Because I choose to behave in any given way doesn't imply healing. Anger is a sign that we feel violated and it can be anger at external events or anger at internal things, the things we perceive as missing. In my case, I am angry at a lifetime of seeming rejection by the people who surrounded me, particularly the ones who were supposed to love and protect me. I am angry about having been raised in a culture that diminished and commodified me. I am angry about those long years in the desert. I wondered what I could have done to deserve being so utterly and completely alone, so completely unloved. I am angry about external events such as war and violence in the name of consumer culture and capitalism. I am angry at the way women are treated by men. I have a whole list! Anger is a way to protect the soul in some respects. It keeps us separated from despair. It can be used to ward off feelings of humiliation and failure. It all depends on how much we identify with the outer self.

Most of the time we can not be aware of what is going on with another person on the soul level. It's not necessary to know specifics to know that something is always going on at this level. Forgiveness can be offered to other souls because there is this level - because we are all in this together. Forgiveness isn't offered to the outer self on a path of darkness, but to the higher self. Forgiveness allows us to believe that anyone can find the path of return. No matter what actions a person has committed, it allows us to believe their healing is possible and their openness to Divine justice and Divine redemption.

It is easy to apply all of this in the theoretical when we're not confronted with real violation. Under those circumstances, it's difficult to find the way to compassion. What we want is an easing of the pain and a way to symbolically undo the harm that has been done. Retribution can be comforting because it creates a soothing in relation to pain through the institution of ‘balance’ - through doing to the perpetrator what he or she has done to others. When we're in pain, the comfort of retribution is that it creates a sense of justice It balances the scales of ‘cause and effect’ so that the action that is the source of pain is met with an equal reaction. Dialectics. The comfort is often small and fleeting, but without it, suffering people are left with the feeling that their insides are screaming for a way to relieve the hurt. It feels like there is no remedy or action at all that can make anything better. Retribution may feel like the only way. I've been there. Sometimes in my darkest times, I still go there.

The need for retribution is understandable from a human perspective - from the perspective of a wounded heart - but it is not the response of a heart that is deeply in tune with the principle that no soul is exempt from redemption. Personally, I don't believe we will ever know peace, not individually and not as a human society, until we can perceive The Other as a soul – not condoning the actions that were wrong, but acknowledging the Divine essence with which each soul was created and the Divine justice with which each action will be met. These are the facts which make the possibility for healing and redemption an eternal reality.

Peace,


~Chani