My Life, My Way

There is, believe it or not, a way out. I learned once while studying the Tarot that the way out was the way in. This is probably akin to appying the 'hair of the dog that bites' as an antidote. Homeopathy applies minute amounts of what ails you to heal you. I have also found that the only way to cure myself of fears is to face them, or rather, disregard them as having any significance. Change my mind about them. But in order to know what I'm changing my mind about I have to look closely at those fears. Very closely. Go back in. Be confrontive just enough to inquire deeply about the nature of those fears.

Fears are associated with beliefs that are under attack. Beliefs are associated with choices. Choices come from experience. How we experience a thing is based on our interpretations. Our interpretations are filtered by our beliefs. Uh, oh. We've come full circle. Which came first? The choice or the belief? This is not really a chicken and egg kind of question, for it has a known answer. The choice came first. How do we know? Is there any empirical evidence of this? And so what?

Let's consider the 'so what', and let the rest of it fall where it may.

If choice came first, then it seems to me that the statement 'the way out is the way in' can be seen as a set of choices - the choices we made "going in" are associated with the choices to make "on the way out". If by choice we have come to be what we are and if we don't like what we've become then by choice we can seemingly erase all that has been and be different. I doubt that anyone, other than myself because I've had direct experience with this kind of thing, would be too ready to accept such a 'belief'. When you are down in the mud, it is hard to think that you can choose to be clean and dry in an instant. I can agree with that. But why, I ask, is it so hard to give yourself the benefit of the doubt that you can, step by step, come out of the mud and get cleaned off just because you decide that's what you are going to do? Many people I have talked to insist that there is always something in the way keeping them from doing what they want to do, or that there is someone or something out there that is throwing mud on them no matter where they go or what they do.

Yes, I've been there, too. For many, many years I pined in my self-pity creating myself as a victim of everything and everyone. My health was the reason for this. My low income was the reason for that. My bad marriages was the reason for the other. My lack of a college education was the reason for almost everything that kept me down. If only... If only.

Then came that fateful day I learned of my cancer. My choice was simple. Live or die. And it didn't seem like I really had a choice. Up to then, dying seemed like a wonderful way out of my ill-fated life. I could easily accept that the choice was taken from me. I had cancer! I was going to die! The odds were against me. My cancer was the most aggressive of its kind (Squamous cell carcinoma of the throat - squamous means scaley-like in appearance), or so the doctor told me, and so it was described to me in the several books I read about it. Hey, I thought, six months from now I'm worm food. That was in March of 1994. It is now August of 1999.

In the next couple of weeks while fending off the doctors who wanted me in the operating room NOW I began searching my mind for why I wanted to die. I honestly couldn't come up with anything good enough. Just because I had five bad marriages, just because I was always too poor to buy a decent car or a house, just because I never had real close friends, just because I was in poor health (with asthma, hay fever, allergies of all kinds, and now cancer), just because I could never get the promotions I wanted, just because all my attempts to get a college degree were thwarted by demands on my time from my boss, just because... the list went on and on like that. Well, I said to myself, so what? What would I miss out on if I let this thing kill me? How do I know something great isn't just around the next corner? Who am I to decide I should die now?

So, just like that, I decided I was going to live.

The result of that decision has given me freedom from my health problems (no more disabling asthma, hay fever, or allergies). I am free from financial problems (and I paid off a $15,000 hospital bill in the process). I am enjoying owning two houses, three cars, three computers, and it seems like I can buy anything I want anytime I want it. I am free of guilt, shame, worry, and yes, even fear. With none of the hassles I used to have, the depression is gone. The anxieties are gone. The wishful thinking is gone. And to top it all off, I have a wonderful relationship with my close neighbor, Jackie.

For me, the way out was the way in. I can clearly see that now. All I needed to do was to reverse my decisions that led me into the condition I found myself in.

Of course, there were 'things' I did while processing my decision to live. I sought out all kinds of alternative therapy. I changed my diet. I changed my exercise habits. I change my mind about all kinds of things. And I got all the help I needed in making those changes from close friends I didn't know I had, from professionals who were willing to stick with me for as long as I wanted their help, and from myself, for whom I was most willing to do whatever it took to see things differently.

So it seems that the many years I spent studying religion, philosophy, metaphysics, and psychology have finally paid off. I see those things differently now. They are not some weird, 'out there' stuff, fathomable only to the elite. They came home to me in my mind as personal experiences. I see them as decisions I can make. And every day, I renew my decisions to things that would otherwise eventually pull me back down to where I once was. Making decisions like this is a kind of death and rebirth. In each decision a belief dies. In each decision a new possiblity arises. I am a life worth living, and I intend to live it fully.