THE CAVE,

MY TEACHER

The shades are drawn.   A lone bird calls out.  A steel grey morning awakes. I am preparing to go for my second treatment at the cancer infusion center.  Perhaps it will not be as intense as it was last month when I felt so unprepared and frightened by the journey, resisting it, imprisoned by it, hating it.  Perhaps it will be gentler this time because I have made peace with my situation, because like the river I am being carried by the surprise of the journey, by its flow.  We shall see.   

I know this.  My healing will be strengthened if I accept my circumstances, hard as it is.  Not resist, deny or choose to look away.  Bravery requires the unaverted gaze, a fierce commitment to seeing the situation as it is, not wishing it otherwise.  To do this I must befriend my treatments, receive them into my body from a place of deep gratitude, knowing that they are doing their healing work.  My resistance could be an antidote to the medicine I am receiving.

And what of the cave?  What is it that cave offers?  Lucid silence.  Solitude. Secrecy. It is a mythic descent into the hermit’s cave where the darkness speaks and reveals its gifts.  I arrive here to see myself in the mirror of fierce honesty, to reckon with the demons of fear and anxiety that seek to devour me.  In this subterranean world, secrets that I have held onto will show up, faded memories long forgotten will appear, the threads of my life story will reveal themselves.   I am asked to see.  I am asked to listen.  I am asked to receive.

David Whyte, the English poet’s words echo through me:   “Find that far inward symmetry to all outward appearances.  Apprentice yourself to yourself.  Begin to welcome back all you sent away.  Be a new annunciation”.  

Cancer is now my new annunciation.   The Cave, my teacher. 

Painting: Annunciation (acrylic on paper)