This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on healing, awakening, and personal things. These are more spontaneous and less comprehensive than the regular articles. Some may be made into a regular article in time.
FORGIVENESS
Why would I want to forgive? For me, the answer is that it feels better.
Does forgiveness mean not having boundaries? Not at all. Forgiveness and boundaries go hand in hand.
How can I find forgiveness?
One answer is specific approaches like understanding, heart-centered practices (tonglen, ho’o, metta), inquiry like The Work of Byron Katie, and so on.
Another answer is more general. I find it through finding forgiveness for myself. The more I can forgive myself, and live in that forgiveness, the more I can find forgiveness for others.
Is it easy? Not necessarily. Wounds can go deep, and wounds make it difficult to find genuine forgiveness. Healing opens up for forgiveness. Those two too go hand in hand.
SEPTEMBER 1, 2023
BRAIN FOG
How do I experience the brain fog?
It has several aspects.
It feels like cotton in and around my head.
It makes it difficult to remember.
It makes it difficult to take in information. (And my brain gets tired quickly.)
It makes it difficult to process information.
It makes it difficult to string words together and communicate.
In general, the more drained and exhausted my system is, the less energy there is for my executive cognitive functions. (Thinking, talking, making decisions, intentionally relating to what’s coming up, etc.)
It really seems that life wants to experience brain fog through and as me these days.
The baseline brain fog is from the onset of CFS in my teens, following a mono-infection.
When the CFS dramatically worsened 10-15 years ago, following severe and long-lasting pneumonia, it got a lot worse. My memory got a lot worse after Covid last year. (Teflon brain.)
And I suspect severe Lyme some years ago and septic shock last summer also play a role.
CFS MIRACLE CURES?
There is no lack of stories about people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) who found a miracle cure.
What’s going on? What about all the other people who tried a huge number of approaches with no such success?
I think a few different things may be going on.
Some self-diagnosed their CFS and they had something else. They had a kind of burnout. Or food intolerance or allergy. Or something else. And they happened upon something that cured it.
They were misdiagnosed, had something else, and found something that cured it.
Some attributed a cure to what they did, and it was correlation and not causation. There was another reason for the cure, perhaps unrelated to anything they did or what they assumed cured it.
Some had a temporary improvement, told the world about it, and then relapsed.
Some indeed had classic CFS – perhaps with a viral trigger – and found something that helped them. That particular cure may work for some but not all in the CFS category. (Likely because many different conditions fall into that category.)
Some with CFS who think they “tried everything” didn’t. For instance, they may have gone gluten or wheat free, but didn’t exclude all grains. They may have tried something half-heartedly and missed out on a possible cure.
I assume the answer is a mix of these and likely more.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2023
A FEW PODCASTS
Here are a few podcasts I listen to these days. Mostly just entertainment and random info, and very little about healing or awakening. (I haven’t been able to take in or process much on those topics for the last decade or so.) Not in order.
A Way with Words – about the English language
The History of English podcast – a chronological exploration of the English language
Word Matters – from Merriam-Webster
Big Picture Science – well-produced and interesting topics
Science Friday – well-produced and good current-science topics
Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda – good conversations on interesting topics
Outside podcast – from Outside Magazine
Judge John Hodgman – fake internet court with John Hodgman and Jessie Thorne
Lateral with Tom Scott – often fun and interesting odd facts
No Such Thing As A Fish – the QI elves
Witness History – from BBC
The Unmade podcast – two Australian guys talking about podcast ideas (always entertaining)
Planetary Radio – from the Planetary Society (have listened to this since they started twenty or so years ago when it was “just” online and before podcasts)
Patented: The History of Inventions
In Our Time – history
The Unexplained – occasional interesting episodes but a lot of “anything weird is interesting”
The Delta Flyers – Star Trek podcast
Richard Lang: The Headless Way – good interviews etc.
Buddha at the Gas Pump – very good interviews but haven’t listened for a few years
Love is the power podcast – The Work of Byron Katie, good topics but don’t listen so much
SEPTEMBER 19, 2023
CFS AND GIVING MY SYSTEM AN OPPORTUNITY TO HEAL ITSELF
I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), and it’s very easy to fall into a pattern of spending energy as soon as some energy is available. After all, there is so much I want (and need) to do, so when I can, why not do it?
That means I am often living right on the edge of what I have energy for, and sometimes it tips over and I crash. (Although much less often than before, I have learned to manage my energy levels and life better.)
There is also another side to this. The more I can live well within my energy means, the more energy is available for my system to potentially heal itself.
When I live on the edge, there is little extra energy available for anything other than basic functions and whatever activities I engage in.
And if I live well within my means, there is energy available for my system to work on healing itself.
This is something I need to remind myself of and something I can get much better at.
How much can my system heal itself given the opportunity? I don’t know, but I would like to find out.
HEALING EXPERIENCE WITH VORTEX HEALING
LIFE PRIORTIZES INNER GROWTH?
DRAFT
IS DRAMA EXCITING?