mmmm…. this poem brings tears to my eyes…. On this pilgrimmage that I am on there are moments when I feel sure of the path that I am on…when I am in touch with the NOW and the essence of who I am…. when I know that dying and death is not something to be feared but rather a process to which I can surrender and that, in fact, opens me. And then there are many other moments when I lose sight of the path to follow and it seems like I have entered a dark forest…. My ego takes over. I get scared…. I imagine the destination, if I am triumphant, might have cheering crowds or it might have very scary beasts…. in these moments I forget who I am…. who we are…. I step out of NOW and seem to lose my way….. and sometimes I am on the path and although it slips from sight around the next bend in the road I am still carried…. perhaps buoyed by loved ones around me…. by wise prophets that offer their loving words…. they remind me of the path. And I remember that it is the path that I have always been on and that I have always returned to. I am reminded that the destination is a coming home to where I first began — knowing that has me relax the muscles of my shoulders and allow them to just drop, and I exhale.

….my current pilgrimmage is navigating IPF, a terminal illness, toward death — and, it is a transition of a major sort. It is a pilgrimmage for me in the sense that I am seeking something…. an opening… greater capacity for gratefulness along the way…. greather stretching open of my heart. The grief comes when I forget who I am and when I lose sight of the pilgrimmage that this is…. when I become confused about my name and think that I am THIS BODY…. or I am CONSULTANT… or I am (many other roles…..)…. and when I forget the NOW of this moment. On this pilgrimmage I also give up, bit by bit, my independence and the notion that I can somehow “do it alone” — and I surrender and embrace the loving kindness of others, my caretakers and friends…. Somehow I know that there is a gift in that that goes all the way around.

I am showing up whole-heartedly in the process that I am in navigating a terminal illness…. IPF….. In choosing to not pursue a lung transplant I have chosen a different path which will progress toward and to my death…. A primary reason for that choice is because I want to live my remaining days “wholeheartedly” — present, moment by moment…. in connection with others and with the divine unity of which I and we are a part. I loved in the reading the comparison to the swan…. on dry land a bit awkward waddling about…. who is drawn toward the elemental water…. the place she belongs….. and the easing into the water happening with a surrendering to it…. the allowing of something natural to occur as it wants to occur…. to allow processes to unfold as they are destined to unfold. That is precisely how I want to navigate this process of dying…. to have it be a process that opens me to the inherent nature of things…. my own and ours…..