Starvation

There was no deeper pain that the realisation that I was not able to love... that love was only a concept... Something that the good people do, and I should as well... This was something too difficult for me to come to terms with... It was needed to be taken with paramount and very subtle care... as if opening a door little by little, because the reality of that vision was not only going to burn my eyes, buy my whole being.
There was so much pain in my heart! And so much anger... And it was all frozen... unreachable to my feelings... to the extent that I came to believe that I was completely numbed. It was from this frozen place, from this icy land in my heart that the scream came through when I touched the lump for the first time. But the scream was frozen instantly, and I entered into total denial. I told myself - "it is some muscle inflammation..."- This could not be even possible... cancer? Me? What a joke!!! There is no one that had cancer in my entire family; why me? But a little whisper answered:
-"Why not?"-
I pretended that I didn't hear. That was something that you could read in books, newspapers, or you just got to know through friends or acquaintances. I had all the logical explanations to be sure that the lump was only a temporary issue.
Although the pain was strong, and at times even reverberated as a sharp an intense attack, I managed to keep it secret for a few days. However deep inside, I knew what it was... and somehow, I also knew why.
When I thing back, and I remember all that was happening at that point in my life, the countless losses that were pilling up in my heart, I wonder... was death a better dear than an empty, soulless life? Because when you loose a property, or money, or someone you love, or your citizenship, or your health, you can still live. But when you loose yourself when you loose the connection with your inner love, when you no longer remember who you are, then, you are already dead; at least, that is what I felt. My life was a total pretending to be someone; a total fake, and my inner essence was fading away... silently... Something in me was suffering deeply from starvation.
Whatever we call it soul, higher self, Buddha nature inner wisdom or just name it, it is this part in us, that even almost suffocated is always, unconditionally, calling us back home. It is that whisper that keeps on being buried under the myriad of projects that we think we "should"be attending-to, moment after moment.
Have you heard this whisper? Have you ever sat on that edge where the mind seems to lose all familiarity with the environment around, seeing itself grasping at nothing... and suddenly there is that stillness, that quiet in here, that quiet in the now... and there you know, you really know that something is very wrong with your whole life? Of course, this happen only in a fraction of a moment and by the time you start reflecting on it, you are brought back into the endless mash of responsibilities, talks, commitments, musts, shoulds, and shouldn'ts, and the stillness is completely forgotten, printed not even in your memory... but somehow, deeply inside something is longing... something is whispering... something is rearing...
When they told me that I had cancer, I started to listen.
This story is not a story of external events. This is a story of internal dynamics. This is happening within us. It is the story of how we cut ourselves off from our own essence, how we build walls to keep inside then all what we value as socially acceptable of us, leaving the rest starving and crying outside the gates (1). We bury whatever is not acceptable of us, we forget it, and in the process we become disconnected from our own wholeness; we live a fake life, a life of commodities (or needs), but without love; a life of efficiency (or negligence), but without trust; a life of success (or failure), but without freedom.
Of course, whatever happen within it will surely project outside. Can you see the picture?
And there I was... sitting in that edge... now listening...
I was feeling heavy, stagnated, congested lacking energy and having poor physical activity. My diet was undisciplined and imbalanced. Eating as something "I should do" out of hunger- or anxiety, instead of "something to enjoy with love and gratitude", out of choice. There was no planning, no responding to my real needs. Emotionally I was disconnected from my feelings, consequently, the deep, long seated internalised anger was affecting most of my body. It was as if an enormous bonfire was burning and pushing through walls that were heavily closed and protected. These contradictory feelings of anger and inertia were giving me the sensation and feelings of drying up, of growing older rapidly, and of being suffocating in the flame.
This mind, when fixed in the past is judgemental, dualistic and fatalist. It sees only in black and white; things are wrong or right; good or evil; and needs to know everything in order to be in control of the outcome.
Yes... there I was... listening... finally listening... Are you?

Note: The number (1) in this reflection correspond to the metaphor number one in in the page: Metaphors and Dreams