It Begins with a Call: Psyche's Story (Part 11)

Psyche’s story calls me once again.  Like her, like everyone, I have been given challenges. Which of Psyche's challenges occupies me now?  They all resonate, but the one that leaps out at me is her needing to seek the golden fleece.  Looking for the gold, to me, is finding the soul’s calling, what Seena Frost in my beloved SoulCollage® process calls “Soul Essence,” which I like to think of as how Spirit comes through the individual.  The psychic told me that I need to see beyond the obstacles and to cleanse myself of collective and astral energies I’ve taken in.  A good friend confirmed that she definitely sees me as empathic.  I’m looking at that.  I know I have taken on emotions that are not mine.

My Soul Essence card

Back to the cardiologist.  I dreaded seeing this guy because I’d seen one some years back who berated me for not being on statins (even after I had been on them and started developing neuropathy from them), who didn’t believe in CoQ10 supplementation (although everything I read said anyone on statins REALLY needs them).  When my tests back then all came back normal, I didn’t go see him again, or feel the need to see another cardio doc.  But now there is a reason to check things out. 

This new one was a pleasant surprise, soft-spoken, low-key, kind.  A mature African-American man who did not alarm me, but wanted to do some tests and who recommended a new non-statin drug for my familial hypercholesterolemia.  I liked him.  His tests all, thankfully, came back normal.  The new drug doesn’t appear to have side effects.  He explained all of the results and why I was getting the palpitations.  Then he told me that a new doctor was joining his practice, a specialist in lipid issues, and he wanted me to see him after I’d been on the drug for a while.

Several months later I went in to see the new specialist.  I was surprised to see a man close to my age, having expected for some reason that the “new” expert would be young.  He expressed deep concern for my health and really wanted me on a statin, even though my LDLs had dropped 130 points on the new drug.  Not enough, according to him.  He also wanted me to get a heart scan to see what damage had already occurred to my arteries, and he told me to take a daily low-dose aspirin.  He refuted everything I brought up from my own research; after all, he was the expert and knew all the data.  And his research pointed to my demise by stroke or heart attack unless there was serious intervention.  Finally, he cut me off saying he had no more time.

I left in a daze.  Walking to my car, I felt like a ticking time bomb.  I was overwhelmed and terrified.

I investigated getting the heart scan.  I took the daily baby aspirin.  I didn’t want to go back on statins again – I didn’t trust them or the pharmaceutical industry that make them such big business.  I’d been so proud of being in my sixties and not being on any pharmaceuticals.  Now, I was on two, with them wanting me on a third.

My acupuncturist and friend’s response was clear.  “Any time you leave a doctor in that much fear,” she said, “it’s not the right doctor for you.”

I agreed, but could not shake off the fear.  I understood that the cardiologist intended to get me to conform to his program by scaring me into agreeing.

A week and a half after beginning the daily aspirin I began getting large, ugly bruises for no apparent reason.  I went to see my primary care doc.  I told her about the baby aspirin and about my experience with the cardiologist.  She thought the bruising could be from the aspirin, but to be safe had me get a bunch of blood tests.  She had heard other complaints about this lipid specialist’s bedside manner.  The test results were normal.  I stopped the aspirin.  The bruising stopped.

I investigated the heart scan, but after a lot of back-and-forth, it turned out that my insurance wouldn’t cover it.  Considering that it would cost me $700 and shoot me full of radiation, I declined.  Plus, all they would do if the results came in as problematic would be to stuff me full of more statins.  No thanks.  So far, nothing recommended was panning out.

I decided to fire the second cardiologist.  I broke my scheduled appointment with him and made one with the first guy.  Dropping my fear and anger has not been easy.  I’ve processed, meditated, started an EFT/tapping practice, and still have felt distressed.  Really, wasn’t this worse for my heart than any high cholesterol issue?

With some trepidation, I went to my appointment with the first guy.  He is personable, easy to be with.  We don’t agree on everything, but I don’t feel like a “case” with him.  He tells me he’s conservative with pharmaceuticals and even with supplements (thinking I take too many), but push come to shove, he ultimately agreed with the other guy.  It was just easier to take it in from him.  I left feeling a little teary, resistant to going back on even low-dose statins, but I told myself that it’s just one more med, that I can try it and see if I get side effects from it or not, and go from there.  I calmed down.  My genetics are what they are.  I do what I can with diet and exercise, but some conditions may require more serious intervention.  He was holding off on the heart scan.

Part of my quandary is, of course, over these specifics about my physical problems.  But there is an even deeper issue: How am I working with my fear, my habitual responses, and my tendency to catastrophize?  These are apparently increasing as I age.   I might have expected that when I got older I would be wiser, more at peace.  That I’d have learned how to work with my core issues – or even transcend them.  Right?  What has actually happened is that they have come into sharper focus and are now in the forefront of my life, not just in the background.

Maybe this is one of the secrets about aging.  I certainly saw it in my father, whose tendency toward cranky, short-temperedness increased as he got older.  At the time, I chalked it up to him not doing inner work.  Certainly not like me.  And here I am, aging and replicating the pattern of intensified negative qualities of personality.

Maybe, as awful as it is, this is the wise gift of growing old.  This is the work.  It is clear and undeniable.  Do it, or descend into bitterness.  Look, this is hard.  Friends are dying.  People are getting cancer.  My symptoms, all the strange ailments I have had in the last few years have given me ample opportunity to catastrophize.

It isn’t how I want to live my life, whatever time remains to me.

I tried the statins again, despite the fact that I don’t trust or like them and that my LDL numbers had dropped considerably.  Not long after, I began experiencing some neuropathy in my hands.  No more statins for me, thank you very much.  I sent the cardiologist an online message, but got no response.  I already knew he wasn’t diligent at returning emails, but I decided if he wanted to talk to me or change treatment, he or someone in his office would get back to me.  Never happened.  My primary care doc agreed that statins didn’t seem warranted.  So, that’s that, at least for now.  There is definitely a place for western medicine; if you need surgery or help with a broken bone, it is a godsend.  But I distrust it because the whole set-up is not truly about health and well-being.  It’s about unquestioning adherence to the “experts,” throwing pharmaceuticals at every problem, and not looking at underlying issues and health of the whole person. (Sorry for the rant.)

And so, back to Psyche.  With help, she managed to collect the golden fleece.  It involved knowing when to do it and how to be tricky.  I hope I can trust my own knowing on issues with my body.  That would truly be collecting the gold.  

It Begins with a Call - Part 9

I had a session with my friend, a medium who channels.  We hadn’t done this in a long time.  What emerged was that I was the same age when my health problems began six years or so ago that my grandmother was when all her trials (death of her husband and oldest son and the ensuing shock therapy that followed) happened.  Interesting.  The theory is that I took on some of her fear.  Not that I don’t have plenty of my own, but not all of what I carry is mine.

Something moved me to go back to the Psyche story.  My version. 

Another Psyche Story

Here is what I know:

Persephone’s path is

a downward spiral into

the core of my heart.

She took me in hand

when I was just a child,

led me to the darkest remote

chamber contained therein

where I interred the box

of grief and shame I bore,

the one bestowed on me

by a loving mother

who wished only for me to thrive,

who constructed the cask

with hands of humiliation.

All these years

Persephone has kept it for me,

tended it, aware that

I would need to claim it one day,

that one day I would recognize it

as treasure and be astonished

by its beauty.

What I know:

The underworld is in

the core of my heart.

I must believe

that what led me in

will also guide me out,

that love and a certain tender kindness

will revive me when

I open that box.

 Suddenly, I was struck with insight about my last SoulCollage® card (the one with a tower on it).  

As is often the case with making cards, I had no conscious understanding of why that tower had to be in the background.  Aha!  Psyche’s last task, to go down to the underworld and retrieve the box of beauty from Persephone, involved her ascending a tower; she had decided to throw herself off in order to die and so to get to the underworld.  But the tower gave her instructions that helped her descend without dying.  

So, I had a little conversation with the tower in my card.  One of the ensuing revelations was that my fear began even earlier than the incidents with my grandmother; it started in utero.  My mother had had several miscarriages and one infant death from hyaline membrane disease before I came along.  She must have been terrified throughout my pregnancy, and her fear ran through the umbilical cord along with blood and nourishment.  I was grown on fear.

Everyone insightful that I have consulted, including the gastroenterologist, has told me not to worry about the enlarged pancreatic bile duct; no one is seeing red flags.  I, however, am in constant fear.

I thought to look up the symbolic significance of the pancreas.  Get this (from the website humanityhealing.net):  “The pancreas is the main organic structure that processes the emotion of fear because its function is to maintain the stability of the organism and any threat at the emotional or physical level can cause a structural imbalance to the entire system.”  This is all starting to make a certain amount of sense – my blood sugar issues, this duct problem, my fear….  Truly, I do feel I could be getting to the crux, the hub, the core. 

My dangerous, beautiful assignment.  Beauty?  That’s what was supposedly in the box for Psyche, right? Right now my assignment seems to be waiting, sitting with the unpleasant sensations in my body, and attending to the fear.  Dangerous, I get.  Beauty, not so much.

The other curious aspect of that tower card is the fire being, hand on heart like the figure I associate with myself.  Another mystery.  But the subsequent card I made also has a fire spirit on it.  I made it in a session focused on shadows and light.  I had had a dream in which my man chose me over another woman.  This woman wore a horned headdress and was young and beautiful.  She looked down on us from the roof of a tall building.  She looked powerful and clearly did not mean me well.  I found an eerie picture of a horned woman and one of a woman with an owl on her shoulder, looking concerned – the chosen one.  But behind the horned woman was a third figure, a powerful fire spirit, with flames emerging from her outstretched hands.

So, somehow I am back - or still - in the realm of fire.  It is quite mysterious to me why these figures came to be on my cards.  But they are protective, strong, empowering.  What exactly they mean or bode for me I do not know. 

It Begins with a Call - Part 3

As I have said, this is a story without an end, at least for now. The teacher warns me to reject easy resolutions and happily ever after endings.  It is not a story like that (once again, you don’t just get the flower-picking girl).  I apologize for not providing that, for don’t we all want it?  Wrapped up in a neat little package with a bow on top?  We want – I want – the heroine’s journey that resolves with a return, bringing wisdom and gifts back to the community.  I do not know if I will return.  I don’t say this to be melodramatic; I say it because I need to hear myself say it.  I need to admit it, accept it, endure it, maybe even say yes to it.

           

Persephone tells me that She herself is at peace now in the land of the dead, that She can fully hold and offer this gift.  She says, “Gifting is everything.  What is in this box will change you.  You will have to die again, and if you are lucky, love will bring you back to life as it did for Psyche. This is a gift concerning memory, ancestral and personal.  You must open the box.”

           

“Not yet!”  I cannot bear to open it now.  The teacher has also told me,

“Go down, go down, go down.”  Yes, her, too.  I resist.  I will hold the box, but I’m not ready to open it.  Psyche did and it killed her.

           

And so, the call.  Here is what it was, at least this time.  I had a dream unlike any dream I’d ever had.  In the dream, I am discussing with another person the healing properties of a plant, perhaps marijuana.  I am given a symbol and some words.  The symbol is the hub of a wheel-like form, with spokes radiating out.  The edge of it is not round, but instead more segmented.  The words went something like this: Fix the hub of the wheel and healing will radiate to the whole structure through the spokes. 

           

In addition to the dream, I harbored a question rooted in longing:  How do I maintain a deep and true connection to Spirit?

           

I took this question and this dream south, to the teacher. 

           

Smoke from the Santa Barbara fires filled the air, obscuring the ground, as my plane landed in Burbank.  June in Topanga.  A few days later, another fire in the canyon almost caused us to have to evacuate.  Solstice arrived at 3:30 PM and 112 degrees.  We did ritual then in the courtyard, in the heat of that day, the times, our personal and collective heartbreak, and our commitments.

           

After I returned to the bay area, fire found another home - in the back of my head.  I became aware of another goddess, Kali Ma, who had planted her foot firmly on my neck. I felt and indulged the headache.  I went for cures and healing.  Kali, foot pressed firmly in place, screamed, “You cannot shove everything into the dark recesses of your mind.  The repressed returns.  I come with a vengeance.  You cannot avoid the dark.  You cannot avoid me!”

Go down, go down, go down.

All of this experience – the fires, the headache, the underworld dissolution – all of it was in the context of fixing the hub of the wheel.  What is and must be repaired is connection to Spirit.  I called the teacher.  She asked, “What is your Zeusian headache bringing to bear?”