"The Occultists, however, know that the traditions of Esoteric Philosophy must be the right ones, simply because they are the most logical, and reconcile every difficulty." — Helena Blavatsky
So here I am, home from the gates of hell, where I was forced to pee, to breath, to walk, and to crap because apparently your body wants to focus on healing and nothing else, so it needs to be reminded to fill its other obligations with the help of a militant nurse. So much for my stay at the hosital.
I had the upper right lung removed from cancer 5 years ago, this time I had the lower left lung removed. After they got in there, they saw that the cancer had made contact with a lymph node, and so I will start a chemo therapy soon. I get a check up this Friday with a lung X-ray, so for those of you interested in my second victory over the Big C, stay tuned.
Before I go any further, let me set the record straight by saying I've never taken this cancer lightly for a second, although It may have appeared so in my previous "Cancer Post." While I was underneath the knife this time, wrestling with the removal of a cancerous lung lobe, I imaged I was in a ring fighting the big C, and as a condition to him accepting another defeat, I have to tell you: Cancer is the shit, the big kahuna that should never be taken lightly by anyone for a second.
Having said that, Cancer can be beat if you are willing to fight, I mean to really fight, to give it everything you got, and of course, have faith in process as being part of the divine plan. In my case, I had all the tools I needed in one easy format: Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. It created all the "mystic" events that had to happen, while guiding me through the process as I chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
I've giving my Nam-myoho-renge-kyo experience before, how it got me quick medical care from the VA hospital which saved my life, and so I dedicated my life to Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Apparently, the same thing has happened again. I heard the doctors talking about how amazed they were that my blood- oxegen levels are normal after losing the equivalent of half a lung. One doctor mention how I had attributed it to my chanting. They chuckled, but they will always have this experience to share, as will I.
So I need time to heal now, I plan on reading, sleeping, watching old episode of Colombo. A guy who knew a thing or two about reading signs.
Speaking of signs, my birds are back. I can hear them chirping outside my bedroom window in the morning, and they are eating out of my feeder again.
That's right, birds leave, I get cancer, they return... you do the math.
Okay, onto phase two now, which I'll update you on after my next Doc visit.
Things are moving right along, my lung lobectomy is tomorrow. If it is successful, I take two steps forward, if not, I try something else. All signs are pointing good. On my last update I told you about birds, a favorite sign of mine. And it took awhile, but yesterday a few returned. After I cut back the tropical forest, and then changed out the feed, a few returned. Not the cluster that use to feed, but enough to know that that part of my life is back in balance with the universe. Like I said, Birds stop coming, I get cancer, they return... you do the math.
Before I go any further, I've seen comments about my reading signs in everything, like it's not practical, or it's superstitious. I disagree, for one, according to ancient sanskrit text, during his six years of austerity, the Buddha had reached a point where he thought he might turn around and stop seeking enlightenment, and so he placed a golden alms bow in a river and said to the universe, "...if I am to go on and reach enlightenment, let this bowl go upstream, against the current, if not, let it simple float downstream." Of course the the bowl goes upstream, against the current, and Siddhartha Gautama becomes enlightened, or as we Nirhiren Buddhist know, became enlightened again for the up-tenth time as he had done numerous times before -- according to the Lotus Sutra, that is, the most important sutra of them all in my humble opinion -wink, wink. But that's a conversation for another time.
All religions have signs given by their god/gods, in Matthew 2:2 God places a star in the the sky as a sign to the wise men looking for the birth of a savior -- of course, the wise men are actually the Magi which represent the essential stages of our inner transformation on the spiritual path, none-the-less, they were given a sign, and had not they followed it....
Emperor Constantine the Great saw a luminous cross of light in the sky while marching his troops, and took it as a sign from the Christian War God to go kick ass and take names for his new found faith.
Simply stated: signs are there for us if we choose to see them. So as they say in Vegas, deal with it... or is it deal the cards(?) All the same.
So the sign I yesterday was a kingfisher bird. The first one I've ever seen in my life. Actually, I thought it was a deformed bluejay that might have escaped from Chernobyl - for you young ones out there that's a reference to the Russian nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986 which evacuate a whole city with parts still inhabitable today. But this was no nuclear mutant bird, this was the kingfisher bird with its long beak, and he/she/or its nonbinary self was staring right at me. I mean given me the look like, "what took you so long with the food?" It wasn't moving, and so I went to get a camera, but it was gone. If you remember with my last post and the Avian Oracles, the kingfisher was a sign of peace and prosperity. So I'll take that as a positive sign.
Yes, tomorrow is the same surgery I had five-years ago when I first had lung cancer. I know the routine, it's difficult, excruciating pain to inhale, but they make you. Excruciating pain to walk, but they make you. But it's worth it, and I've never been happier to endure the suffering. For I am committed to being here for my family, friends, and you, both of you - hi mom.
That's it for today, here's the shower kit I have titled "Ready to Prep," for my surgery. And I learned last time to read the instructions. For this stuff is bad on your head and private parts down there, I mean, wow, especially down there. Not again, not me.
Please stay tuned, I'll post again as soon after the surgery as I can.
Today, I wish to talk with you about birds. Yes, those creatures in the skies we pay little attention to; however, if we did, our lives would have more meaning.
Before I was an Esoterist/Nichiren Buddhist/Nice Guy After Coffee, I worked as a banking software guy. On one of our install trips we hit a bird with our car while driving to the client. The driver thought it was funny, and said something like, "That 'ill teach it." For me it wasn't so funny, I knew it meant something, and it did, the trip was a disaster and we all ended up losing our jobs. I'm not saying it was a bad thing, but it was the warning that change was coming, in my book.
In the Navy, many moons ago, in San Diego one of those crazy Cuckoo Birds who are crying all the time, took a flying dump on my white uniform as I was headed for a Friday morning inspection. Because of the yellow crap on my hat, shoulder, and sleeve -- this must of been a sick bird --I failed inspection and got two-weeks detention which kept me from leaving the base. During that time, a few buddies I most likely would have been out drinking with, got into a terrible car accident. So that Cuckoo Bird with its undiagnosed bladder ailment, was really a stroke of good fortune from the heavens.
When my mom was dying in the hospital, of lung cancer, I slept in a chair beside her bed next to a window. It was a cold, dark, rainy day outside that window where I noticed a pidgin and her kids, cubs, chics, whatever a birds offspring is, shivering close together on a ledge. I knew it meant something; something like a message from the heavens reminding me that I needed to be thankful for the time I had with my mom, who protected me from the winds and rains with no help from a man, during a time they still called boys like me a "bastard child." A few minutes after seeing those birds, mom woke from her morphine-induced bliss, and spoke as clearly as ever, as she said, "Terry, I didn't give you much, but I did give you love."
Those were her last coherent words to me as she morphed into a living skeleton before finally giving up the ghost and dying. Seeing those birds was a sign to enjoy that last encounter with my wakeful mother.
I could go on and on about birds in my life, how a bird flew into our garage door and was suffering, and my wife took garden cutters to cut its head off and end its suffering. I buried that headless bird in the backyard, soon after that we divorced.
I have always been sensitive to birds, so sensitive in fact, that I've actually been feeding them from a bird feeder outside my bedroom window. And over the years they have even pecked at my window when their feeder was empty. However, something changed a few months ago, they stopped feeding, and my luck changed. I haven't won a a cent in daily-fantasy sports, something I do for fun, just a few dollars a day. Nothing big. Then there is my cancer, which I'll talk more about later, right now I was to talk birds.
In esoteric traditions, birds serve as living metaphors for our souls, some consider them psychopomps: a spirit, or deity whose job it is to guide our souls from Earth to the afterlife.
In Persian mysticism and Sufi tradition, the Simurgh is a giant bird that represents divine wisdom, unity, and the realization that ultimate truth is found within oneself.
To the alchemists, the firebird, or Phoenix, represented the rebirth of one's soul, rising from the ashes of failure.
The Native Americans honored the Thunderbird as a celestial being whose wings generate cosmic rumblings to alert us of trouble.
Then there are the Avian Oracles, tarot type cards of birds and the meanings of their chance encounters.
For a better understanding of bird symbolism you can go to Journeytreehealing.com, and be prepared to have your mind blown away. In their Bird Symbolism section you'll find that the kingfisher bird represents peace and prosperity; and that the crow, which is often linked to“darkness,” is actually a symbol of change and transformation. i.e., it was a crow we killed that day my software career unraveled.
The Humming Bird symbolizes the nectar of life and teaches us to draw on life’s sweet essence to sustain ourselves through challenging times.
Seeing a sparrow is a sign to recognize your inner strength and use it to bring about the change you need in your life. i.e, dump the guy.
Birds are always around us. And everyday we should take a moment to stop, look, and listen to them, for they really are messengers to help guide the way.
Now, let's turn to today's post, titled, My Birds, My Cancer(?)
I've been feeding the birds around my condo for ten years now. Actually, they've been fed here since my neighbor, Goga, was feeding them before she died around the time I started feeding them.
I call them my pets because they are always chirping outside my window, and sometimes they look at me from my window ledge to remind their feeder is empty. They've even tapped on the glass a few times.
The problem now is that they've stopped chirping and eating. There are a couple reasons to consider why this has happened:
One. I changed feeders when the bottom fell out of the old one they had been feeding out of for ten years.
Two. The store ran out of the cheap stuff and so I used the more expensive seed.
Three. Global Warming - yes, I'm old enough to call it what it is.
Okay, "Climate Change," that word we are not allowed to say in Texas anymore without being looked down on as a radical... Who cares, what I want to tell you is that there is this tropical plant that grows next to the bird feeder, and it has been there since the place was built. Every year it starts out as nothing but little plants and by the end summer, it is a nice shade bush just above the feeder that the birds sometimes land on to keep the rain off them. Every winter, it dies, and starts over again the next year. It has been that way since 2007, the year I moved into this condo.
Last year, for the first time since I've been here, the tropical bush didn't die, it just kept growing because of the mild winter. And so it was already full grown when this summer started, and within a few weeks It had grown over the bird feeder with a cave of tropical leafs.
I kept telling myself I would trim back the leafs so the birds would use the feeder again. But I didn't. Too busy. That was about three months ago. Since then, I have had no luck with sports gambling, as I said, and, most notable of all lung cancer.
Are the two connected? Who knows, but what I do know is the cancer in my lung is now the size of a dime, and I am scheduled to have that section of my lungs removed, just as I did five years ago. I'm confident I'll survive this, that is, if my birds return.
Another Labor Day Weekend. Remember when "Labor" meant something? I do.
In the late 1800s, many Americans toiled 12 hours a day, seven days a week, often in physically demanding, low-paying jobs. Children worked too, on farms and in factories and mines. Conditions were often harsh and unsafe.
It was in this context that American workers held the first Labor Day parade, marching from New York’s City Hall to a giant picnic at an uptown park on Sept. 5, 1882.
The America Labor movement had begun and over the next century we would see a minimum wage, 40 hour work week, child protection laws, etc...
Personally, I celebrate Labor Day by relaxing and hiding from the world. It's MY day. I do this for my grandmother, who in her early twenties, back in 1922, had the misfortune of working in a Detroit auto-factory where one of the giant presses skipped a beat and took three fingers off her right hand. A hand you wouldn't see because she kept it hid behind her purse, or wore gloves whenever possible.
I can't imagine the pain she must have felt that day as they took her away screaming with a greasy rag over her hand. She didn't speak much about the accident, but she did speak about the employer who gave her a one-week's pay before letting her go because she no longer had two good hands. That was all she got. She would join in labor strikes after that, showing off her hand as a reason to fight for justice from greedy employers who choose profits over worker's safety.
Why am I writing about Labor on an Esoteric blog? Truth is, the Esoterics have always been for workers.
For example, the argument that, Pythagoras and his students were for the workers of the day can be made by his philosophy that the basic property of numbers was expressed in the harmonious interplay of opposite pairs, and that, harmony assured the balance of opposite forces. This obviously means there must be a balance between the workers and the profiteers.
Freemasons like Uriah Stephens who created a "brotherhood" to bring together every laborer, mechanic, and artisan who desired professional improvement, was founded in 1869, and was inspired by the ritual and lessons he himself had learned as a Mason in his Philadelphia Lodge.
Probably the greatest testament to esoterist involvement in Worker's Rights is none other than Madame Blavatsky. That's right, the woman who gave us the Secret Doctrines which is the foundation for most esoteric studies today, was also a supporter of worker's rights.
Annie Besant was a Theosophist who studied under Blavatsky during the last years of Blavatsky's life. In her biography, Besant gives a written documentation of Madame Blavatsky's support of the early labor movement in England. Besant writes, "Thus was ushered in 1889, the to me never-to-be-forgotten year in which I found my way 'Home,' and had the priceless good fortune of meeting, and of becoming the pupil of, H.P. Blavatsky."
Besant goes on to explain her personal growth in Spiritualism from her studies with Blavatsky, but also tells of her involvement in fighting for the working class people, more precisely, the "Female Labor" called the Matchmaker Girls, which Besant called "White Slavery" in an article in which she points out: "A typical case is that of a girl of sixteen, a piece-worker; she earns 4s(English Shillings) a week... out of the earnings 2s a week is paid for the rent of one room. The child lives only on bread and butter and tea, alike for breakfast and dinner...."
Besant's article title "White Slavery" got the girls fired and Besant sued for libel. The factory owner won the law suit by paying the workers to lie, and painting Besant as an evil atheist -- worked every time in 1882. Without jobs the workers were thrown out on the streets and Besant trashed in the newspapers. Still, Besant wanted to give the woman a home filled with "comradeship, and self-respecting freedom." This is where H.P. Blavatsky steps in.
Besant writes in her autobiography: "On August 15th it (the women's home) was opened by Madame Blavatsky, and dedicated by her to the brightening of the lot of hardworking and underpaid girls...Very tender was H.P.B.'s heart to human suffering, especially to that of women and children. She was very poor towards the end of her earthly life, having spent all on her mission, and refusing to take time from her Theosophical work to write for the Russian papers which were ready to pay highly for her pen. But her slender purse was swiftly emptied when any human pain that money could relieve came in her way. One day I wrote a letter to a comrade that was shown to her, about some little children to whom I had carried a quantity of country flowers, and I had spoken of their faces pinched with want. The following note came to me:
My Dearest Friend, I have read your letter...and my heart is sick for the poor little ones! Look here; I have but 30s. of my own money of which I can dispose (for as you know I am a pauper, and proud of it), but I want you to take them and not say a word. This may buy thirty dinners for thirty poor little starving wretches, and I may feel happier for thirty minutes at the thought. Now don't say a word, and do it: take them to those unfortunate babies who loved your flowers and felt happy. Forgive your old uncouth friend, useless in this world!
Ever yours,
H.P.B
That's my Madame Blavatsky Labor Day story. On an interesting note, I will leave you with this passage written by Annie Besant about her work in 1882. It was written over a hundred and forty years ago, but seems like something written today.
This branch of our work led to a big fight -- a fight most happy in its results. At a meeting of the Fabian Society, Miss Clementina Black gave a capital lecture on Female Labor, and urged the formation of a Consumers' League, a pledged only to buy from shops certificated 'clean' from unfair wage....
