07-22-2010, 07:26 PM
A story of personal death, rebirth, and sanctifcation via the savoury experience of "pain".
I am a Wounded Healer. Breaking my usual silence to testify on this thread, having had some wonderful, down to earth correspondence with Carla some years ago... For the record, I am a cynic and a Lover, and while I like to share, am a terminal critic of all aspects of spiritual practice that lead to dogma — especially dogma of the self (which explains why I am posting here, breaking my own rules). This is another perspective on the original painting posted at start of thread. That of Half-man-half-beast being attended to by an angel with a rather scary weapon.
![[Image: journey.jpg]](http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/8-24/journey.jpg)
"
alexgrey.net
This awesome painting by Alex Grey stopped my heart when I saw it for the first time... It is a perfectly eloquent depiction of my own journey. I would have to say that experiencing "senses" beyond the most violent extremes of pain, and "life" beyond the spectre of death, would be THE MOST liberating thing a person could ever know or feel...
In October 1992, I was involved in a motor cycle accident where I was run over by a 'big rig' semi trailer. In an experience that begs the telling, 'Death' came rushing up to embrace me, but I was NEVER in doubt of 'Life' as such. To say that I was profoundly 'broken' does not begin to describe this kind of experience, where "I" died on all fronts except the spiritual.
I spent eleven days in an intensive care unit, with tubes stuck into every orifice (and then some) on life support, and suffered through 10 different surgical operations. These operations included the insertion of much steel into many broken bones, including a multi fractured pelvis, a compound-fractured femur, mutiple rib fractures which happened to tear through my left lung and aorta, filling my damaged lung with blood. Along with this, I suffered a perforated bowel, and most painfully, an excruciating skin graft behind my right knee (the size of a dinner steak) performed to replace tissue that had died due to an extreme bruising. I also suffered other miscellaneous nerve and soft tissue damage that pales for comment here. Amongst a range of debilitating prognoses made by 'educated' doctors, I was told that I would permanently lose the function of my left foot (my wah wah foot no less!!). I suffered gross psychosis coming off the morphine, and was totally bed ridden for the best part of seven weeks.
After I got off life support and out of intensive care, I suffered acute paranoia and experienced some truly horrific visions and an extended period in an 'altered reality'. This altered state was as "REAL" to me, as the computer screen and keyboard that you're using seems to you at this very moment.
During my hospitalisation, I simply sobbed like a baby, as my massive youthful ego was crushed right along with me. I regressed into infantile emotions and wept for the pitiful loss of what had promised to be a life without pain, such was my confidence in my artistic talents and savvy drive. My identity and expanded capacity for conceit was made void, and I was forced to rebuild my self from 'ground zero' up. This process, was slow and painful. Simple things like sitting upright in a chair became excruciating ordeals in themselves, I kid you not. Eating solid food, and keeping it down, and passing it through my damaged bowel (which had stopped working for a while), became major hurdles to get over. Nurses showered me with "tough love" in order that I get over my dependence and learn to take a s*** by myself. Dont forget, I could barely sit up without literally crying in pain, but I was expected to hobble to the toilet and back to take a piss... very nice.
That said, with my hospital experience being so soul destroying, I was desperate to get out and "get on with it", and had my self discharged earlier than I should have. I determined to meet the physical requirements demanded by my physiotherapist, and she admitted to letting me go against her better judgment. As I busted my butt to prove my readiness, she literally exclaimed, "Oh my God Charles, you've got the determination of an Olympic athlete!"... Maybe I did, but I didn't give a damn, I just wanted to get the f*** out.
I sobbed like a baby on the day I finally got home, and was truly thankful for the simple joy of being on home turf once again (And then I sobbed forlornly because I wanted to get back to hospital realising my dependence on its facilities!)...
Despite the overwhelming experience of having my life (as I knew it) wrenched away from me, I see my 'accident' as a profound blessing today, and arrived at this conclusion not long after.
I learned that: Death is nothing to be feared; Even the most nauseating physical pain has its limits as our nervous system shuts down in merciful defence; And, after consciously wishing to 'give up the ghost' (at a point when I was physically stable but emotionally empty), I had a revelation that "God is Life" and that by simply being alive, I was a living part of (what the masses are in the habit of calling) "God". Furthermore, I learned that it is impossible to 'give up the ghost' since our living spirit IS immortal, for we 'Art' an inextinguishable part of "Life" itself.
Life is All or Nothing, and Nothing is impossible, and regardless of what physical state I found myself in, to "be" was Everything, and nothing at all mattered beyond that awakened moment. By the stage of this re-cognition, I was still profoundly bed ridden, but the unadulterated joy I found was that I was 'Aware' (with a capital "A") that I was profoundly AWARE OF BEING 'ALIVE'!, thus forming a resonant feedback loop of self awareness... i.e., Aware of being Aware of being Aware, etc ad infinitum.... And, more than this, I was NOT AFRAID to die!... BRING IT ON you lusty Devils!!!!!... NO FEAR!!!... The loss of mortal anxiety is extremely liberating to say the very least.
When I think about the magnitude of the accident and my having survived it intact, I literally wonder whether I AM dead, and existing in Purgatory (after having literally died on the road way back in 1992). You could say we are all "dead" in a sense, if you are able to grasp that material reality is an illusion (Hindu "maya") that separates us from being AWAKE to our own inalieable divinity.
During my stay in the trauma ward I experienced a massive surge of what I have come to recognise as awakening "Kundalini" energy. The sanctifying healing power. My body 'blazed' for days on end. I went profoundly 'insane' (which was as terrifying for my loved ones, as it was for myself), and the top of my head felt as if it was literally ON FIRE for days. In one particular hallucination I experienced an out of body "trip" and taken on a guided tour through "heaven" and "hell"...
I describe the "heaven" of my hallucination as profound connection with 'divine being' accompanied by the sonic "ringing" of the choirs of all the hosts of angelic love in the universe... "Hell" on the other hand was an intensly physical experience (a realised awareness of our incarceration to the physical plane, in what Hindu mystics call "Samsara", i.e., the inescapable cycle of death and rebirth). In "hell", I was being minced from head to toe by immeasurable numbers of tiny razor blades. Each blade hurt. Each blade was effectively the result of the alien will of the conscious Cosmos working interminably on 'my' precious "soul", i.e., MY precious "SELF"... I was still earnestly Christian at this time, but have come to recognise that "Heaven" is existing in a state of bliss without "need", or, "holding without holding" a conscious, harmonious, re-cogntion that ALL things exist in a holistic state of multiplicity of the "One" macrocosmic mind...
And the lesson here for Lovers is; "Hell" only exists for us when we try to hold onto what is not ours to control. The tighter we grip, the more painful the experience... Everything is free of us as we are free of it. All "possession" is manifest delusion. "Letting go" is the fastest route back to bliss...
"I" came back from my 'whacky adventure' knowing only that; to "LIVE", is to 'be', at One with that sacred Love that exists beyond its mere conceptions of "Good and Evil". For all of life is "God", seeking communion with its self, and, ALL of Life is perfectly perfect in its time and place.
6 years after my accident. I had an acute spiritual 'Awakening'. An experience that continues to evolve for me in the 'Here and Now'. Known in some schools of esoteric philosophy as the opening of my "Third Eye", I literally "saw God", and received a dispensation of inner 'sight'... Amongst other things, "He/She/It" told me, "EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL". Because "IT" can, IT does – without limit... IT acts without fear, and without partiality since it loves everything in turn. Through death and rebirth, Life may measure itself against its "idea" of death - for there is NO DEATH... Hence, I have surmised: 'Death' is God's Immaculate Conception. A "concept" ONLY... A divine door in our mind's eye for passing to rebirth.
Even from the earliest days after getting home, I was thankful for having had the accident experience. The most exciting and miraculous event of my post-accident experiences was the 'willing to life' of a paralysed foot. I was told I would never regain the function of this limb (check out that funky Wah Wah action in "All I Wanna Do")... Even as I accepted doctor's diagnosis without critical attachment, finding myself happy to "be" here at all, I refused to stop willing my foot into life...
Insert drum roll here...
I willed my dead foot to work less than 6 months after the accident! A real miracle, effected despite a 'severed' nerve.
You read it here, "PAIN is the challenge of LOVE", and everyone needs a little crushing pain – for in the 'breaking down' of our precious sense of "self", we may find something much deeper and infinitley more indomitable than the phantom personality with which we usually identify.
It's not what happens to us - it's how we deal with it that counts.
"Dr Chuck" (AKA Black doG) at your service, telling it like it is...
"I AM"
Dr Chuck Logo.jpg (Size: 39.67 KB / Downloads: 1)
I am a Wounded Healer. Breaking my usual silence to testify on this thread, having had some wonderful, down to earth correspondence with Carla some years ago... For the record, I am a cynic and a Lover, and while I like to share, am a terminal critic of all aspects of spiritual practice that lead to dogma — especially dogma of the self (which explains why I am posting here, breaking my own rules). This is another perspective on the original painting posted at start of thread. That of Half-man-half-beast being attended to by an angel with a rather scary weapon.
"alexgrey.net
This awesome painting by Alex Grey stopped my heart when I saw it for the first time... It is a perfectly eloquent depiction of my own journey. I would have to say that experiencing "senses" beyond the most violent extremes of pain, and "life" beyond the spectre of death, would be THE MOST liberating thing a person could ever know or feel...
In October 1992, I was involved in a motor cycle accident where I was run over by a 'big rig' semi trailer. In an experience that begs the telling, 'Death' came rushing up to embrace me, but I was NEVER in doubt of 'Life' as such. To say that I was profoundly 'broken' does not begin to describe this kind of experience, where "I" died on all fronts except the spiritual.
I spent eleven days in an intensive care unit, with tubes stuck into every orifice (and then some) on life support, and suffered through 10 different surgical operations. These operations included the insertion of much steel into many broken bones, including a multi fractured pelvis, a compound-fractured femur, mutiple rib fractures which happened to tear through my left lung and aorta, filling my damaged lung with blood. Along with this, I suffered a perforated bowel, and most painfully, an excruciating skin graft behind my right knee (the size of a dinner steak) performed to replace tissue that had died due to an extreme bruising. I also suffered other miscellaneous nerve and soft tissue damage that pales for comment here. Amongst a range of debilitating prognoses made by 'educated' doctors, I was told that I would permanently lose the function of my left foot (my wah wah foot no less!!). I suffered gross psychosis coming off the morphine, and was totally bed ridden for the best part of seven weeks.
After I got off life support and out of intensive care, I suffered acute paranoia and experienced some truly horrific visions and an extended period in an 'altered reality'. This altered state was as "REAL" to me, as the computer screen and keyboard that you're using seems to you at this very moment.
During my hospitalisation, I simply sobbed like a baby, as my massive youthful ego was crushed right along with me. I regressed into infantile emotions and wept for the pitiful loss of what had promised to be a life without pain, such was my confidence in my artistic talents and savvy drive. My identity and expanded capacity for conceit was made void, and I was forced to rebuild my self from 'ground zero' up. This process, was slow and painful. Simple things like sitting upright in a chair became excruciating ordeals in themselves, I kid you not. Eating solid food, and keeping it down, and passing it through my damaged bowel (which had stopped working for a while), became major hurdles to get over. Nurses showered me with "tough love" in order that I get over my dependence and learn to take a s*** by myself. Dont forget, I could barely sit up without literally crying in pain, but I was expected to hobble to the toilet and back to take a piss... very nice.
That said, with my hospital experience being so soul destroying, I was desperate to get out and "get on with it", and had my self discharged earlier than I should have. I determined to meet the physical requirements demanded by my physiotherapist, and she admitted to letting me go against her better judgment. As I busted my butt to prove my readiness, she literally exclaimed, "Oh my God Charles, you've got the determination of an Olympic athlete!"... Maybe I did, but I didn't give a damn, I just wanted to get the f*** out.
I sobbed like a baby on the day I finally got home, and was truly thankful for the simple joy of being on home turf once again (And then I sobbed forlornly because I wanted to get back to hospital realising my dependence on its facilities!)...
Despite the overwhelming experience of having my life (as I knew it) wrenched away from me, I see my 'accident' as a profound blessing today, and arrived at this conclusion not long after.
I learned that: Death is nothing to be feared; Even the most nauseating physical pain has its limits as our nervous system shuts down in merciful defence; And, after consciously wishing to 'give up the ghost' (at a point when I was physically stable but emotionally empty), I had a revelation that "God is Life" and that by simply being alive, I was a living part of (what the masses are in the habit of calling) "God". Furthermore, I learned that it is impossible to 'give up the ghost' since our living spirit IS immortal, for we 'Art' an inextinguishable part of "Life" itself.
Life is All or Nothing, and Nothing is impossible, and regardless of what physical state I found myself in, to "be" was Everything, and nothing at all mattered beyond that awakened moment. By the stage of this re-cognition, I was still profoundly bed ridden, but the unadulterated joy I found was that I was 'Aware' (with a capital "A") that I was profoundly AWARE OF BEING 'ALIVE'!, thus forming a resonant feedback loop of self awareness... i.e., Aware of being Aware of being Aware, etc ad infinitum.... And, more than this, I was NOT AFRAID to die!... BRING IT ON you lusty Devils!!!!!... NO FEAR!!!... The loss of mortal anxiety is extremely liberating to say the very least.
When I think about the magnitude of the accident and my having survived it intact, I literally wonder whether I AM dead, and existing in Purgatory (after having literally died on the road way back in 1992). You could say we are all "dead" in a sense, if you are able to grasp that material reality is an illusion (Hindu "maya") that separates us from being AWAKE to our own inalieable divinity.
During my stay in the trauma ward I experienced a massive surge of what I have come to recognise as awakening "Kundalini" energy. The sanctifying healing power. My body 'blazed' for days on end. I went profoundly 'insane' (which was as terrifying for my loved ones, as it was for myself), and the top of my head felt as if it was literally ON FIRE for days. In one particular hallucination I experienced an out of body "trip" and taken on a guided tour through "heaven" and "hell"...
I describe the "heaven" of my hallucination as profound connection with 'divine being' accompanied by the sonic "ringing" of the choirs of all the hosts of angelic love in the universe... "Hell" on the other hand was an intensly physical experience (a realised awareness of our incarceration to the physical plane, in what Hindu mystics call "Samsara", i.e., the inescapable cycle of death and rebirth). In "hell", I was being minced from head to toe by immeasurable numbers of tiny razor blades. Each blade hurt. Each blade was effectively the result of the alien will of the conscious Cosmos working interminably on 'my' precious "soul", i.e., MY precious "SELF"... I was still earnestly Christian at this time, but have come to recognise that "Heaven" is existing in a state of bliss without "need", or, "holding without holding" a conscious, harmonious, re-cogntion that ALL things exist in a holistic state of multiplicity of the "One" macrocosmic mind...
And the lesson here for Lovers is; "Hell" only exists for us when we try to hold onto what is not ours to control. The tighter we grip, the more painful the experience... Everything is free of us as we are free of it. All "possession" is manifest delusion. "Letting go" is the fastest route back to bliss...
"I" came back from my 'whacky adventure' knowing only that; to "LIVE", is to 'be', at One with that sacred Love that exists beyond its mere conceptions of "Good and Evil". For all of life is "God", seeking communion with its self, and, ALL of Life is perfectly perfect in its time and place.
6 years after my accident. I had an acute spiritual 'Awakening'. An experience that continues to evolve for me in the 'Here and Now'. Known in some schools of esoteric philosophy as the opening of my "Third Eye", I literally "saw God", and received a dispensation of inner 'sight'... Amongst other things, "He/She/It" told me, "EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL". Because "IT" can, IT does – without limit... IT acts without fear, and without partiality since it loves everything in turn. Through death and rebirth, Life may measure itself against its "idea" of death - for there is NO DEATH... Hence, I have surmised: 'Death' is God's Immaculate Conception. A "concept" ONLY... A divine door in our mind's eye for passing to rebirth.
Even from the earliest days after getting home, I was thankful for having had the accident experience. The most exciting and miraculous event of my post-accident experiences was the 'willing to life' of a paralysed foot. I was told I would never regain the function of this limb (check out that funky Wah Wah action in "All I Wanna Do")... Even as I accepted doctor's diagnosis without critical attachment, finding myself happy to "be" here at all, I refused to stop willing my foot into life...
Insert drum roll here...
I willed my dead foot to work less than 6 months after the accident! A real miracle, effected despite a 'severed' nerve.
You read it here, "PAIN is the challenge of LOVE", and everyone needs a little crushing pain – for in the 'breaking down' of our precious sense of "self", we may find something much deeper and infinitley more indomitable than the phantom personality with which we usually identify.
It's not what happens to us - it's how we deal with it that counts.
"Dr Chuck" (AKA Black doG) at your service, telling it like it is...
"I AM"
Dr Chuck Logo.jpg (Size: 39.67 KB / Downloads: 1)