I gave a class last week at the Staten Island MS Society. For those of you unfamiliar with Multiple Sclerosis, it is a particularly insidious disease that destroys the myelin sheathing around nerve fibers.
Whenever we repeat an activity, nerve cells fire together in a predictable pattern. Then they form bundles that get covered with this fatty tissue called myelin which acts like the insulation around electrical wires.
“Nerves that fire together, wire together.” Its cause is unknown, but may be autoimmune. Some symptoms listed by the Mayo Clinic website:
- Numbness or weakness in one or more limbs
- Partial or complete loss of central vision, usually in one eye, often with pain during eye movement (optic neuritis)
- Double vision or blurring of vision
- Tingling or pain in parts of your body
- Electric-shock sensations that occur with certain head movements
- Tremor, lack of coordination or unsteady gait
- Slurred speech
- Fatigue
- Dizziness
MS is particularly insidious because it feels like your body is betraying you. Things that came so easily most of your life are now incredibly difficult. An attack may be triggered by heat or stress, and suddenly you find yourself unable to drive your car because you just lost your vision.
You need to go to the bathroom and your legs won’t move. After a while, it becomes harder to get yourself to do anything and your body slowly erodes. You feel like you’ve been dealt a bum hand by life and there ain’t nothing you can do about it.
Half of this particular group were in wheelchairs and most were over fifty. I began by saying that the most courageous decision any of us can make is the decision to BE. Until we make that choice, we are just objects experiencing entropy like any other object. (See my previous posts on Negentropy and Entropy.) That is, as objects we break down and decay.
But when we choose to BE, as autonomous sources of creativity in our own lives, we reverse that and generate pockets of negentropy. We bring order out of chaos. Wherever you are in life, that is your starting point. Knowing what that is, and embracing it fully, lets you know where you stand. The decision to BE empowers you to share your unique gifts with the world.
Energetic coherence returns us to wholeness. In wholeness we are capable of much more than in our more fragmented states. Fear, anger, self-pity, self-doubt, apathy are emotional states that result from energetic fragmentation. My simple way to access heightened coherence (as many of you know) is to point and reach with the index fingers.
Well, I demonstrated this for the people in the room, then went around to each of them so they could feel it for themselves. All were surprised by how their weakened limbs were suddenly able to withstand considerable force. One woman said, “I haven’t been able to use that arm in three years!” Several got up from their wheelchairs and found the new strength in their shaky legs to keep their balance even while being pushed.
This instant power is great, of course, and it does get your attention. But the really important lesson is that returning to wholeness is essential to be fully present in the lived life.Your body-mind organizes around that wholeness to permit healing to occur. You attract the generative force of an abundant universe.
Where the will adheres to one thing, the spirit collects its power. Zhuang-zi
