A Year to Live - A Stillness Keeps Calling Me.

A mysterious stillness is calling me. Within it lies deep ecstasy.

~ my journal, April 20

Chronic Fatigue is visiting me after having been away for some years now. Since my return from Hawaii I've spent more time asleep, or at least in bed, than I've spent out of it. In that time I've also experienced fevers, joint pain, and a rash that covered the bottom of my face and spread down my neck. I had to cancel a trip to Florida to visit my folks and a trip to Chicago to spend passover with my in-laws. All of this has made my personal experience of A Year to Live very real.

My intention for starting this experiment was to find out who I am when everything else is stripped away. (something I've only witnessed in loved ones who are close to death) I wanted to discover my priorities, my deepest values, to feel things more intensely and love completely before I got near to the end of my own life. I had plans (how I laugh at that now) of how the year might go: I would swim in the wild with dolphins, which I did. I would spend more time with the people I love, I would vacation for a month in Vancouver. I would continue on a path of health in spirit and body and feel vibrant and alive by embracing death.

If I had been given a real diagnosis of a year to live, it's quite likely I wouldn't be in any kind of shape to fulfill all the plans that I had. I might very well be at the mercy of a disease that would keep me close to home and perhaps in bed. Having fatigue that keeps me in this states is enabling me to get so much more out of this experiment than I even thought possible. While my energy and plans have been stripped away I am discovering who I am at a deeper level. I am wrapped in a mysterious grace as this experiment unfolds.

The irony is not lost on me that I spend hours a day lying in bed in savasana (corpse pose). There is a death that is underway. Just as the caterpillar becomes the butterfly, I am in the chrysalis of transformation. I am still, wrapped tight, unable to see what lies ahead. While I wouldn't have chosen this on a conscious level, I know that my soul's longings are being met in this process.

In this stillness of exhaustion I have become clear on my priorities. I have become aware of what I want to do,and how it differs from what I need to do for my own fulfillment in this life. I have learned to trust the divine even more and see life as ever abundant. I am practicing not just noticing my intuition, but acting on it. Mostly I am enjoying the deep connection I feel with the life that is teeming within me and around me.

One day last week I was so exhausted that after showering and eating breakfast I went back to bed. I couldn't sleep, but neither could I stand nor walk. I lay in bed with my eyes closed and enjoyed the sounds of the world outside as I often do. But this day everything struck me in a different way. In an instant I was engulfed in a state of ecstasy, in which I not only heard the birds singing, I was the birdsong. I didn't just feel the breeze, I was the air touching my skin. This intensity of alertness, attention and stillness lead me to this experience that was so overwhelming I cried tears of joy. I even became the tears. It lasted a long long time.

People reach this state without experiencing months of fatigue, but right now, fatigue is my path and my body is my guru. The journey to what I really want and who I really am, is the purpose of this year for me.