CHAPTER 1
My beginnings
I was born of immigrant parents and spoke other than Englishfor the first five years of my life. My father passed whenI was only thirteen years old. We lived on welfare and thekind assistance of others until I left home to join the Navyas an ROTP graduate in engineering. Until then I had littleunderstanding or regard or time for things spiritual. I mowedlawns, shoveled snow, delivered flyers and shared a paper routein order to keep up with friends who got an allowance of amassive $5 every week. I started smoking at age eleven and hadbeen to juvenile court three times by the time I was fifteen,plus, once spent a few nights in a juvenile detention center(that was a game-changing bad place and I am grateful nowthat I was sent there).
My school marks were generally excellent. School was easy,almost boring at times. I had a lot of spare capacity to use forgetting myself into trouble. I finally changed and became a bettercontributor to the family. I was the oldest of four and my EuropeanMom really was not comfortable without "a man" around to dothe man stuff, though she was one tough person, a real she-bear,when it came to going to bat for her children.
Once married, Barb and I moved to the other end of the countryand began parenting three beautiful girls (Carmen, Cathy,Leslie) in our new home together. I became curious about allthis religion stuff at age twenty-six. Actually, I became quiteinconvenienced that I had to strip out of my coveralls, getwashed up and go to church in the middle of my enjoymentsworking on cars. Yet, as a logical type and somewhat practical,even if not always careful, I decided that I ought to check outthis God thing, just in case there was something to it. I washaving this thought walking down the road on a bright clearday and formed the idea of asking for "a sign." A drop of waterlanded squarely on my head. No, not a bird, I wiped it andsmelled it. It was water. No overhead wires or tree branches, nosource for this large water droplet. Wow, ask for a sign, boom,sign delivered. What was this?
I then volunteered to teach the Confirmation class, ninth-gradeyoung adults around fourteen years old, at our church. I chosethat group because that particular class was almost obligatory, atleast according to the parents, and, the participants were matureenough to actually think about things, if I could challenge andinvite them in the right way. I liked that idea. I didn't know whatI had signed up for.
Suddenly I was reading constantly and asking a lot of questionsmyself. There was a pastor from a different church living across thestreet. I asked him for help and he lent me two volumes by Barclay(a historian specializing in interpreting scripture) that review theGospel According to Matthew. I also read An Historian's Reviewof the Gospels by Grant. Well, talk about being released from thetyranny of the pulpit. These books showed me that it is withineach person that the idea and the relationship with God is formedand nurtured and grown. I came to know that there is indeed aGod and that He/She is more than friendly. She/He is Love and,beyond that, is only Love.
For a left-brained, male, military engineer this was a massivechange in perspective.
The main stream of this book is written around my stint withGuillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), one of the MS family of diseases,which I encountered near my fiftieth birthday. So many insightscame together, became clear, around that time. Though my bodywas unable to do much of anything, my mind was unaffected bythe disease. In fact, I found that my mind was hyper-alert, as if onsteroids. I had a lot of time to just think using that super-awaremind.
Up From Paralysis shares the learning I have found, not just atthe time of the disease but in the thirteen years since. I have beenprivileged to have come up from paralysis to a rare clarity, rarefor me, about what Divine is, how to interact with It and whythat has been a good thing to do. I want to share this with youand anyone else who might be interested.
My website still has the original story of my sojourn in year2000.
tinyurl.com/am2aj8w
The website version has been very slightly edited to make thingsclearer for use in this book.
Having offered the disclaimer in the opening lines of this book, Ican also say that the knowing that I am to share has been knownfor a long time.
The Universe is not outside of you.Look inside yourself;Everything that you want,You already are.
Rumi
Rumi lived centuries ago and he has just given us the greatestpiece of wisdom that exists. Einstein said similar things and manya sage has tried to show our species the way. For some reason,we won't listen. I think it is all about the persona of our ego thatis yakking away in our minds 24/7. It is trying to convince uswe are in grave danger and must and should and can't and neverand always and just any angle on a fearsome existence that it caninvent. It is a very inventive persona and can be quite convincing.Let us see what we can find by keeping that persona on notice. Itwon't stop yakking, but we can stop listening.
A very short guide to the code of this book:
• There are three different font styles from this pointonward. This type, which you are reading now, isused when writing about the course of the two GBSexperiences in 2000 and 2013. These are the chroniclesof my GBS disease, the hospital time and related events.I wrote a brief story about the year 2000 GBS, whichincluded insights from that time. Those are also in thissame font
• There are many paragraphs in this second font style,that you are reading now, covering my present insightsand discoveries in reflecting about the GBS in 2000and about the 13 years since then, plus, after GBS2which happened in January 2013. So this second fonttype is primarily reflection and discovery, all written inSpring 2013.
• A number of emails are included, verbatim, in their owntypeface as taken from the computer that sent and receivedthem. That means there are three different font types tohelp you to understand when something was written andfor what purpose.
My first days with GBS
It seemed an ordinary Tuesday (March 29, 2000), a gentlethree-mile run before breakfast and my usual one morning aweek of consulting support to SEIMAC, the company I sold tothree employee colleagues nearly two years ago. It was rainingand I didn't much enjoy wearing my rain gear because the endof March is still rather cold on the motorcycle. I decided not towear my gloves and get them soaked while I made a handfulof deliveries on my way home. The temperature was just coldenough that my hands became stiff as I rode from place to place.By the time I got home my left hand was feeling particularly stiff,from using the clutch I had surmised, but somehow it was morethan that. I wasn't quite sure I should engage the clutch one moretime to put the Harley into the garage. But I managed.
Something was not right.
Barb had opened wine for dinner and as I warmed up all seemedfine. But when I raised my left hand with the wine glass I nearlydropped it as I passed shoulder height. Hmmmm? What is this?
I went to bed early and noticed a slight tingling at the end ofthe center three fingers of my right hand. It would leave me bymorning, I thought, as would the hint of a flu that seemed to havebeen in my throat the past few days. I am not one to be sick.
I knew something was up when I tried next morning and failed,to put on my sock, thinking I would go to the gym, as usual."Barb, I think we have a problem." My left leg failed me in goingout the front door and down the two steps to the driveway. Iwas flat on my back faster than I can remember. I wept. I wasafraid.
Denial is the first reaction to "something" happening to me,like losing a whack on the stock market. I was in denial thatmy attention was being sought, big time.
My thoughts after falling down those steps continued along thelines of "this can't be happening to me." I like to understandand I could make no sense of this. Denial.
The insistence on having a logical trail to everything is one ofour downfalls as a species. It keeps us from much happiness.What would be wrong with someone helping me, a personI have not yet met, helping me to carry something from mycar, for instance? Must there be a logical reason for this actof kindness? Well, if I am female and this helper is a male,what thoughts could that ego of mine come up with? A simplesituation and a possible happy or a possible unhappy feeling,depending on which way my thinking goes. If I do not "notice"my thinking much I could find myself in with a lot of negativeand fearful thoughts as I go about my day. What if I didn't getany help with the package and many people just walked by?Let the ego do the thinking unchecked and a string of not-so-happycan come rolling out.
There is more to this. As I think, I then act. So if I decidethat the world is against me and the observation that no onevolunteered to help me is put into the pot, imagine where thethinking could go. Keep that scenario going and let my dayunfold. Let people need help from me. How am I likely torespond with this "world is against me" idea becoming evermore fully established in my mind? That "voice" we all havein our heads could be having a pity-fest and my willingness toengage and contribute to my world could be shrinking.
Our human condition includes that voice. We all have it. If Ipay attention to what it is saying, I can then take a thought orleave it. If I do not pay attention, the voice rolls and I believewhat it tells me. Results can go away from happiness and Imight not even notice until I am low enough to be seekingmedication or professional help. Sound extreme? I believe wehave all had a bout of down-spiral thinking where we are wornout at the end of the day because that negative fearful yak-yakwill not stop tearing me down.
Until I notice it, I am in the tentacles of my fear-filled internalvoice. Lesson one.
The doctor was afraid too when there was no reflex response fromtapping my knee or my elbow. He phoned the hospital, prepareda hurried note for the emergency staff and sent me off doing hisbest not to show his anxiousness.
The doc was in denial too, accompanied by a rising amountof sweat on his forehead. Was I dying? Was this an exit scene?It wasn't painful in a physical way but it was oh so unknownand separate from my understanding. I don't exactly recall mythinking on the way to the hospital. It was a kind of surreal trip.I was sort of detached from the world, feeling very alone andwithout control of anything. This brought forth more denial-typethinking and I had a list of possible trivial reasons allof this was happening. Pinched nerve, something blocked,imbalanced inner ear stuff. I was reaching but still had not hitstage two, anger. Denial was still king.
It took three guys to get me out of the car at the emergencybecause I was unable to use my legs. A hundred questions askeda hundred times, over and over. It was thought that I may haveGuillain-Barre Syndrome and by suppertime I was scheduled togo to the intensive care unit because they "wanted to monitormy breathing."
I had not yet been told that it was GBS. Why not? Was it tooscary a disease to mention as a possibility? Or was this theirdenial of the increasingly obvious?
We humans are not that good at listening to our intuition, ourSpirit, our Guides, our inner wisdom. For the most part we treatour body as a dumb object, somehow almost inanimate, withonly our brain telling it everything to do – pump the blood,breathe the lungs, wash the car, heal that cut, buy some eggs,etc. Not many notice that the body is an amazing antenna todetect "disturbances in the Force" way before the mind detectsthem. In fact, the mind does not do the detection of anythinglike that, but only interprets the signals picked up by the body(body as antenna). We hear the phrase, "he is totally in hishead" to mean awareness of the rest of the world is so low thatresponse to it is all but zero. We have that wonderful word,"solipsism," to capture this state. Solipsism is the conclusion thatthe world and other minds do not exist inside one's own mind'sinterpretation of the world, that therefore nothing besides myown thinking has any meaning.
It took until nearly 4 p.m. for me to admit that I was not goingto make it to the client site the next day to facilitate a workshop.Denial was starting to weaken. Yet my thought was that theworkshop would be rescheduled to next week or so. I couldnot bear any thought of a longer delay, meaning a longerhospital stay ... or worse.
I had just worked my very last day at my company, now soldto three employee colleagues. A chapter had ended on thatday in March. My ego had just been disconnected from thatwhich had defined much of its worth for many years. Part ofme had dissolved and no longer existed. This was change onsteroids, bigger than big. Though bravely putting on a face ofAcceptance, deep inside this little voice wondered how soonI'd be forgotten. Sheesh, what a thought. In such a state, whichI did not realize I was in at the time, is it any wonder that mybody resistance was down? I was vulnerable to any drive bygerm or virus and boom, GBS. But why this particular invasionof my body?
"Something we were withholding made us weak. Until we found out thatit was ourselves" —Robert Frost
What might I have been withholding? I now vote foracknowledgment that I was quite comfortable in my role asthe owner and leader of that company. We were successfuland the company was me. I knew what to do and could doit repeatedly. I was about to step off a cliff into an unknown.I was comfortable looking back and in denial about lookingforward.
It reminds me of the story where someone falls in a mountainclimbing accident. They are hanging by a rope. It is dark. Theypray. An answer comes, telling them to cut the rope. Ridiculousanswer, huh, cut the rope? No way. In the morning the climberis found frozen to death hanging from a rope less than a footfrom the ground. I was not even at the prayer part, let alonethe answer part. No wonder I was rudderless and didn't evenknow that about myself. Denial city.
It was Thursday, March 30. I had only slight movement in my toesand could still move my head. My voice was gone. My breathingwas being done by a machine through a tube into my lungs. I wasparalyzed from the chin down and lost. The doctor had said thenight before, "If we put a tube into you to help you breathe, youwill be here for at least four months, ready yourself." I told himI would not stay in the hospital for that long and would see himon the street within a month. It was my first argument with themedical staff, and I was not apologetic over it.
Drug-induced coma
The Emerg doctor was the last person to hear my final effortsto speak. In faint rasps I told him I was not staying four orfive months. If I could have lifted my finger, he'd have got thattoo. They had filled me with morphine because I did not wantthat breathing tube put into me. My fight response was in greatform, yet my ability to actually do anything was so near zerothat, with the drugs added to the mix, I passed out.
Whom or What was I arguing with? No pain to speak of, justa drifting down to involuntary physical stillness and now themental journey to "somewhere else" to be given images that Icalled dreams. These dreams were extraordinarily vivid in theirdepth of color and sharpness. Very, very IMAX 3D. I was "out"for about three days and had some particularly clear dreams inthis stunning Technicolor surround sound format.
Barb had somehow held it together, at least in front of me. Ilearned later that she was doing her crying in the car on the wayto and from the hospital so that she could be strong while withme and the girls. What a woman.
Leslie wasn't told until it was absolutely clear that this was goingto last a while, as she was in the midst of her final productionand needed to perform in a significant role in the fourth-yearuniversity play as part of her drama degree.
By Thursday afternoon it was time to get past denial. Leslie lookedat me as I lay paralyzed and said "This one is for you Dad," as shewent off to do her duty, as I indeed wanted her to do. Her voicewas thick. She collapsed as she entered the preparation room andsaw her friends. Her troupe conducted an energy healing circlefor me the next evening. I certainly needed it.
That was also the day the priest came. Oh boy, did I freak. Heoffered to give me the sacrament of the sick. Well for an oldBaltimore Catechism Catholic that meant I was about to die. Myfather had died within hours of receiving the same sacrament,which was then called Extreme Unction and was only given ifdeath was a very real possibility. My father had died when he wasfifty. My fiftieth birthday was only a few days away. It took mea minute to update myself about the new spin on that sacrament(for any who are sick). I stopped holding my breath and acceptedhis offer to give me this sacrament of healing. But I was angry.
