Soul Guidance

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When I called Walden at our appointed time, he said, "Okay, Ria, so tell me what's happening." I told him that I had advanced breast cancer, and I had to make a decision about whether to submit to Western medical treatments or to pursue alternative healing methods. His immediate response was, "Why, you do both, of course. You know, very few people die of breast cancer these days." Then I sort of whined, "But I'm so tired of suffering. I've had chronic problems with my health, and this feels like too much to take. I don't want to lose my breast. I'm just not sure that I want to live any more." He said, "I know how you feel. I've just been through open heart surgery. If it weren't for my partner, my dog and my work, I wouldn't be so happy about being here. But souls don't come here for a vacation. We come to grow and learn through life's challenges. Whether we like it or not, suffering is a powerful teacher. Ria, you need to accept what's happening and surrender to this part of your life's journey. When you emerge from this initiation, you are going to be a completely different person."

Walden's Enchanted Cottage

Although I had been avoiding a proactive stance in dealing with my cancer, Walden's words resonated deeply with truths that I hold within my own heart. In fact, I've been working on a manuscript about inner alchemy, the art of transforming the lead of suffering into the gold of compassion, and just the night before, I had come across this passage that I wrote about a year ago:

To help us accept loss, illness, or any intense challenge, we are called upon to sacrifice our image of what we wanted our life to be. To sacrifice means, "to make sacred." The real magic of inner alchemy requires that we willingly offer in sacrifice that which has been taken from us. How do we do this? By accepting our wound, by releasing who or what we have lost, by flowing with the unfathomable forces of fate instead of fighting against them, and by surrendering whatever hardens our heart - our resentments, our anger, our envy, our regrets, our self-righteousness, our perfectionism, our pretensions, our desire for revenge, our denial of forgiveness, our refusal to accept what is - to the flames of transformation.

When I read that passage, I realized that I had written those words to my future self. In fact, my entire manuscript was like a message in a bottle that had unexpectedly washed up onto my own shores. Let me be clear: it wasn't like I wasn't practicing what I was preaching. I have been brought to my knees countless times in my life, and I've learned how to surrender to my fate and carry on with a resilient spirit. But cancer? On top of everything else? That was just over the top. My inner adolescent had announced, "Sorry, but I don't want to play anymore. And you can't make me."

But during the eighteen minutes that I spoke with Walden, my resistant, adolescent self surrendered to the more mature, wise part of me. In some mysterious way, my conversation with him implemented a constructive shift in the very foundation of my being. Although I was speaking to a man whom I had never met, a part of me recognized Walden, and I felt like I was at the receiving end of an empathetic reprimand from one of my soul teachers. It was as if I had fallen asleep in class, and he woke me up with a gentle rap on my knuckles with his ruler. As I listened to his words, I realized that it was my responsibility to accept the challenges of my situation, and to do whatever I could to heal physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. At the end of our talk, Walden asked me to email him periodically to let him know how I was doing. I thanked him, and after hanging up, I sat motionless for a few minutes trying to absorb what had just happened. Was it possible that my attitude had suddenly flipped 180 degrees? Intuitively, I knew that yes, it was. The tectonic plates of my psyche had suddenly, unalterably, shifted. In a deep, quiet place inside, I knew that I was going to go through the entire firestorm of the Western cure. In those life-changing eighteen minutes, I had surrendered to my fate and agreed to endure the tortures of purgatory in order to give my tender, wounded body a chance to survive.

Walden never asked for my Visa number. He had spoken to me from a generous place of true compassion as a friend, brother and teacher offering loving support to a pilgrim who is treading a dangerous path through the Valley of Death, and I will be forever grateful to him.

Later that evening, a number of projects came to me that felt like assignments, and this spiritual breast cancer blog was the first one. Then I closed my eyes and contemplated the creative power that weaves together opposing forces like light and darkness, health and disease, purity and poison, joy and suffering, and birth and death into an enigmatic Gordian's Knot, I was reminded of a magnificent painting by Hilma Af Klimt, an early 20th century artist whose refulgent work communicates the essence of the mystical experience. My favorite of her paintings depicts two intertwined swans, one black and one white, whose sensuous, ceremonial embrace beautifully embodies the mysterious, sublime and paradoxical fusion of two opposites into a united whole.

Final Picture From the Swan Series by Hilma Af Klimt 1915

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