During this time, I was seeing a patient that had breast cancer. Ruth had been my third patient in my first practice. Her daughter, who was close to my age, had been my second patient. Ruth’s mother and her husband had soon followed. They were a very close Jewish family and had become good friends. Each year I would send them Christmas cards and each year the father would punch me in the arm. If I had a cold, Ruth and her mother would bring homemade chicken soup in a jar...and the grandmother would always ask for her jar back. I had helped them through a number of health issues over the previous nine years, but that was then, as she wasn’t responding well to treatment, medical or mine.
One Sunday evening around 6:00 PM, I received a call from Ruth’s daughter. Her first words were, “Steven, is my mother going to die?” I didn’t know what to say. We had a very emotional conversation for an hour or so and when I hung up, I was feeling so much compassion and love for this family that all I could do was sit down where I stood. It was as if my body had shut down as I found myself in a deep stillness...and that is all I felt for the longest time.
I finally made it to bed and woke up the next morning thinking the night had been quite intense and a bit unexpected. As I thought about it, I began feeling a deep compassion once again. I sat down on the floor, and after an hour or so of feeling this space, my mind went from compassion to thoughts of life and death and how we come to be who we are, and in that moment I realized that every thought, every way of defining myself was based on the past. That led to a very clear and strong realization of myself as an illusion...that everything I considered to be me, everything I related to wasn’t real. It was an illusion created out of fear...fear of being alone.
At that instant, I felt an intense compassion pour from my chest, but instead of emanating outward, it turned back into my chest, and all of a sudden I felt as if I had been kicked from the inside almost knocking me over. I instantaneously burst into tears because for the first time in my life, I completely and unconditionally loved myself and surprisingly enough, I felt embarrassed for doing so.
My consciousness instantly moved into an awareness of simply being, with absolutely no desires or needs, and with it came a deep knowingness and familiarity. It was if I had met my oldest and dearest friend who had been by my side for eternity, truly for the very first time.
My awareness had now lost all separation within the moment. I could barely discern where I ended and space began. I wasn't looking out into the moment, but more like being melted into it. It was as if the moment was looking through me. I, or my "awareness", was immersed in an experience beyond unconditional love...where love implodes and all that is left is infinite compassionate space...a space of complete knowing that all is perfect and infinite...a space in which knowing and wonder are one and the same.
However, all that was “me”, all that I had ever been or wanted to be...the “me” that had felt embarrassed...the consciousness of my past, my fears, my desires, was now a bystander, a memory of past experiences and learned behaviors that was quickly fading out of existence, and feeling fear...fear of nonexistence...fear of dying. In that moment, I realized my greatest reason for wanting to exist was also my greatest desire...my desire for love and intimacy...for connection. It was a strange paradox. Letting go of the consciousness that had been “me” would mean I would never get what I wanted. And, I knew that if I did not get it, I would miss it...that the life I had been living would be incomplete. For all intense purposes, I was facing my death. The need for survival was so strong that the consciousness that had been “me” since infancy did everything possible to come out of the experience and back to separation.
Over the next hour or so, I thought about what I had just experienced and being left knowing that the geometric relationship of the fourth dimension, of the cube turning inside-out, was a focal point of Awareness within the Moment. But, I was surprised at the “loss of self” and how strong the sense of self was...how much effort and determination I had to expend to remain as I had been. I sat with the experience for a bit, then composed myself and headed to my office.
I walked into the building and as I walked to my office door, I thought, “I need to take my name off the door. That just isn’t who I am”. As I opened the door, my receptionist immediately asked what was happening. I simply said, “Nothing”, and went to see my first patient.
As life would have it, I opened the door to the exam room and said, ”Hi Ruth, how are you doing?” Ruth had always been very sweet and the strength of her family. Ruth never asked anything for herself. But, today of all days she sat straight up on the exam table and said in a fearful anxious voice, “Steven, I don’t want to die. You have to help me.”
With those words, I felt compassion once again fill my chest and that which I had just come out of no more than a couple of hours previously was coming back. So I looked at Ruth and said in a hurried tone, “I can’t talk right now”, and I left the room, left my office, left the building, and I left Ruth...to stand on the curb, catch my breath and compose myself once again. After 15 minutes or so, I returned to Ruth feeling horrible for leaving. I apologized and we talked about family and dying as I held on.
The rest of the day I had a number of patients ask what was going on, that I seemed different, a few cried, but I remained. I also remained at the edge of that space for a few weeks, slowly drifting further away and back to my reality. Ruth passed away a few months later.
In the months that followed, I focused more and more on the evolving consciousness, how we sense our world, and why we experience separation. It was also during this time that I developed metabolic and dietary protocols that were resulting in real improvements with a number of chronic diseases, typically within weeks. I was developing a model and understanding, at least for myself, of wellness and disease, and what it meant to be truly healthy. But, even with seeing various chronic diseases resolve and real improvements with the dry cell, I was beginning to feel an almost unbearable effort and not exactly sure why.
During this time, I began noticing that the pelvis and base of the head moved differently with breath depending on whether my patients, or myself, were standing, sitting, lying on our back, or on our stomach. I was curious as to what it would take to allow proper movement regardless of position or posture. What I discovered was the only thing required was to completely relax; to let go of the tensions that come from the stresses of living; to get the muscles to relax as much as possible and let the breath simply expand the body as a whole...like blowing up a balloon. I developed a series of conscious cues to allow that to happen. I began performing the breath myself, simply for health benefits.
I would bring my attention to my breath throughout the day...maybe 2-3 minutes a number of times as it crossed my mind. I quickly began noticing a physical feeling of ease over my chest that translated to a sense of stillness and peace. With that, I decided to introduce the breath into my practice and was very surprised to find amazing improvements with dry cell in a matter of days without applying any other therapies. Needless to say, breath soon became a focal point of my practice.
After a month or so of feeling the ease and stillness created by my breath, I became more and more aware of the effort in my life. I began feeling effort in discussing ideas, in wanting to be understood, even in having a thought...in everything but the simple act of being. I began having one core urge, and that was to simply “be”.
One evening I was watching an episode of Nightline about men on death row. They were isolated in a cell by themselves, were allowed to walk in a cage in the middle of a very small courtyard of about 15’x15’ only a few hours a week, and the only human contact was occasionally with the guard on duty. I was profoundly struck by the loss of humanness of their lives as dictated by the way these men lived. They seemed to be just an empty shell.
At that moment, I had a distinct awareness between the isolation and desolation of their lives, and the ease and stillness I had been experiencing. This triggered a process within me. I was sitting on the floor...in my living room...and looked over at my bookcase and the books I had accumulated in my search for knowledge and answers. For some reason, I decided to pay attention to the quality of depth, the three-dimensional quality of vision. My awareness was immediately drawn to the empty space and not the bookcase. Suddenly, I felt as if I moved into stillness, and became very aware of me and all that was not me. It was so noticeable that it felt as if I physically moved in relation to the room.
With that, I simply asked myself, “Could I freely give up my books? Could I give up my desire for knowledge and wanting answers?” I was surprised to find a great effort underneath my desire for knowledge, and the effort was in direct conflict with what I had been experiencing over the past couple of months. I then realized that if I could let that desire, that “need” go, I would not want it, and if I didn’t want it, I wouldn’t miss it. As simple as that may sound, it was a turning point in what had kept me from surrendering to my previous experience. Once again, I felt as if my being physically moved from a place of effort and tension into a place of greater ease and stillness.
Being a bit amazed and curious at what had just happened, I asked, “Could I give up wanting intimacy?” I knew that was a primary reason that kept me from allowing my previous experience to just unfold and enfold. Now, realizing that if I didn’t want it, I wouldn’t miss it, I simply let go of the desire for love and intimacy, and immediately moved into even greater ease leaving behind tension once again. It was a degree of tension I would have never been aware of had I not moved out of it, had I not moved toward stillness.
I then asked myself, “Could I give up the need for acceptance? Once again, I found myself moving into even greater stillness. In that moment the only effort I was aware of was that of my senses...the effort it took to see, to hear...to be.
There I was, sitting on my living room floor...with no wants or desires. I was completely willing for the first time in my life to let go of my existence, to let go of all effort, to let go of holding on...to let go of me. I could find no survival need in my being, no attachments to any wants, needs or desires.
The tension and murkiness that was created from the effort required to want and to desire, to define myself and control life to the best of my abilities was gone, and with it came a deep clarity. At that instant, it was as if life, the experience, almost became conscious...enough so that I experienced myself as merely a reflection of my wants and desires separated from the moment by a thin veil of effort. The effort it took to merely sense my world and to be.