Latest / The Horsehuman Connection Matrix / Sarah's Blueprint Serries #2

Transcript

Sarah's Blueprint Serries #2 · The Horsehuman Connection Matrix

• 0:01
  Hi, this is Ishi Abel.
• 0:03
  I want to give more context to the Sarah series.
• 0:09
  So as a lot of you know, I did a podcast with my friend Sarah called Sarah's Weeping Pearl a couple of years ago, and it was about her cancer, and she called her breast cancer her weeping pearl because of the sore and that she had no treatment.
• 0:26
  I mean, no Western treatment for her condition.
• 0:31
  And she made a conscious choice to live with the cancer, not to fight the cancer, but to live with it.
• 0:38
  And a lot of her belief systems and her spirituality fed into how she went about dying very consciously.
• 0:48
  And in the process of it, she and I were both acutely aware that what she was doing was creating a blueprint and a pathway that could have an impact on our culture because of the way we treat death, because of the way we treat grief, because of the individuality of all of it, and the enormity of it, you know, jumping into the unknown.
• 1:16
  And so these conversations with her, they challenge us.
• 1:22
  They challenge our belief systems, and they might just change the way we do things.
• 1:28
  Because although I miss Sarah very much, she had a good life, and she lived a good life, and she died a good death, and that has left people with less grief, I think, than a lot of other situations.
• 1:44
  Um, a long time ago, long, long time ago, I realized that, that death, at least the way I think about it, has three main components.
• 1:56
  When someone close to us dies, there's a gap, a hole where they used to be, and we miss them.
• 2:07
  And And then there's a component of if the relationship wasn't great, and sometimes our relationships aren't fully healed with our parents, there's the what if.
• 2:20
  What if the relationship could have been healed?
• 2:22
  What if we could have had this in our relationship instead of that?
• 2:27
  And that creates grief.
• 2:29
  Um, you know, fortunately, a lot of people go to therapy and deal with a lot of those what ifs, so they're not there when a loved one dies, but not always.
• 2:39
  And I think the third component is it brings into sharp focus our own mortality and perhaps regrets that we have in life, or just fear of what our inevitable death and separation will bring.
• 2:57
  So thinking and talking about these things and being conscious about how...
• 3:05
  She was so conscious about how she asked her caregiver for things, how she asked her family for things, how she was able to receive things even if they weren't perfect.
• 3:15
  I, I joke about one of my worst fears about growing old is that I won't be able to put my own socks on, and whoever does it will do it wrong, and that will just be so irritating.
• 3:24
  But, like, of all the things that old age and a death can bring, it's minor, right?
• 3:32
  Uh, which is why I joke about it.
• 3:35
  We have so many belief systems around death, and there is so much denial about seeing people suffer.
• 3:46
  You know, there's, there's a, a, a Buddhist phrase,"Do not turn away from suffering." And yet so often we do that every day.
• 3:54
  The homeless people, the people in an emergency room that you might see, just everyday suffering.
• 4:02
  Instead of witnessing, we turn away, and that says something about our culture, too, and it is something we can change easily, though.
• 4:14
  So it is Day of the Dead last night.
• 4:17
  I celebrate this.
• 4:18
  My son passed away.
• 4:20
  Next week will be five years.
• 4:25
  And I honor the dead in my lineage, my family and friends, uh, with an altar that I put up on November 2nd, and it stays up most of November usually.
• 4:37
  And, um, being able to mourn for this month helps me.
• 4:46
  It helps me put it away for the rest of the year.
• 4:50
  And there's something that I wanna share.
• 4:52
  You know, when my son, when my son died, it was a suicide.
• 4:57
  And, um, I think it, it had some very different characteristics that, not necessarily a, a typical suicide.
• 5:04
  There were medical conditions, uh, that were...
• 5:08
  There were complications, and that had a lot to do with it, I believe.
• 5:12
  But I attempted to join a suicide, um, support group, and this woman reached out and she came to see me, and one of the first things she said was that,"You'll never get over this." And I resented that so much because, y- you know, dying is something that we all deal with, all of us, whether it's our own death, uh, someone who's close to us, our parents, our friend.
• 5:44
  You know, even if you die early, you're probably still running into death of someone else's somewhere.
• 5:51
  And, and so it is so integral to the human experience that it's remarkable to me that, that we push it away and that we create ideas around it like,"You'll never get over it." Well, you know what?
• 6:05
  I started thinking about that, and whatever happened to me yesterday...
• 6:10
  Some things happened to me yesterday.
• 6:12
  I, I went to town.
• 6:13
  I had some conversations that were unpleasant with a particular person.
• 6:17
  I set up my altar.
• 6:19
  I spent time with my chickens.
• 6:21
  But there are things that I did yesterday that affect who I am today.
• 6:25
  I mean, yesterday wasn't a drastic day, but some days are.
• 6:28
  Like, going to see the mustangs, that changed all of us.
• 6:32
  And so to be able to say,"Who am I today?
• 6:36
  How was I changed by my experiences of yesterday?" is a practice that I have.
• 6:43
  And so when this woman told me I would never recover from my son's suicide and I would never be the same, I thought,"I'm not the same...
• 6:51
  I'm not gonna be the same tomorrow, no matter what happens." This is just one more event in a stream of days in my life that changes me for tomorrow, and I have some control of how it changes me by how I grieve, by what I think.
• 7:11
  And- Yes, life has been different without my son.
• 7:18
  Life is different without Sarah But we can control to some degree with our thoughts, our words, our deeds, and our actions what our reality dictates.
• 7:32
  And that is key to how Sarah approached death.
• 7:38
  And at one point, I called this Buddhist guy at her request.
• 7:44
  We were trying to figure out, like, closing and opening chakras, uh, as she was leaving her body and unwinding things.
• 7:52
  And so I called this Buddhist person for clarity on Facebook, and his answer was It's not so much the phrase, you know, to die consciously as it is to live consciously because life is, you know, death is part of life.
• 8:14
  So anyways, that gives a little bit of background to some of my experiences with death, my philosophy, some of Sarah's philosophy, and why I felt it was important to record these conversations And I love listening to them and editing them because it's spending time with her again.
• 8:36
  And I definitely still feel her presence, as I'm sure a lot of her family does.
• 8:41
  When I went to her funeral, one of her sons, one of them that I didn't know very well, I, I approached and I, I gave condolences and he looked at me in the eye and he said,"I'm not sorry." And I said,"I'm not really either.
• 8:56
  She had a good life, and it's okay." What a gift.
• 9:07
  What a gift to have a different perspective What do you wanna talk about?
• 9:16
  Oh, I don't know.
• 9:17
  What do you wanna talk about?
• 9:19
  I wanna talk about, uh, the fact that I finished my book I've been working on for two weeks, my autobiography.
• 9:29
  That is awesome.
• 9:30
  Um, it's been three years in the making, and, uh, in the process, gosh, I've been trapped in different times of my life, you know, to recall and be there again in order to write.
• 9:47
  But it's a thrilling feeling to, to have accomplished this, including all the tech involved, um, which I haven't had to use in years.
• 10:02
  So was some of the tech brand new for you?
• 10:09
  Yes.
• 10:10
  Yeah.
• 10:10
  All the chat, the chat programs, the online publishing programs, file conversion programs.
• 10:20
  Oh my gosh, you mastered a lot in two weeks.
• 10:23
  Yeah.
• 10:23
  And did the thing.
• 10:26
  Yeah, that's a lot.
• 10:27
  And did the writing.
• 10:28
  Yeah.
• 10:28
  That's a lot.
• 10:29
  That's a whole lot, Sarah.
• 10:33
  I realized,, why I have no interest in writing an autobiography in terms of, uh, dates and things and locating my life in that way.
• 10:48
  But what I, what it did end up being- Successful and I think is describing the influences in my life that, caused me to make decisions the, road splits when you turn a corner on something.
• 11:10
  Yeah.
• 11:10
  Then you go down one path versus the other.
• 11:15
  So if I were, if I were reading my mom's, I would have appreciated hearing it more like that,'cause all the women in my family have left autobiographies.
• 11:27
  Oh, they have?
• 11:28
  I did not realize that.
• 11:31
  Yeah.
• 11:33
  Yeah.
• 11:33
  It's quite the record.
• 11:35
  Have your sons, um, read all of those?
• 11:40
  Yes.
• 11:41
  Yeah And so when you say all the women in your family- I have you mean your mother, your grandmother, your great-grandmother?
• 11:49
  Yeah.
• 11:49
  I have, not my great-grandmother, but I have my, my mother's and my grandmother's, my grandmother grew up in a castle in Switzerland.
• 12:00
  You know, very extravagant life.
• 12:02
  Traveled the world, um, servants beyond number, et cetera.
• 12:10
  And, uh My life has been so different in just that generational- Wow time span.
• 12:21
  Your grandmother, so yeah, that's, that's huge.
• 12:25
  Yeah.
• 12:26
  So- It, it was mind-boggling So I wrote, I wrote a little cautionary sentence at the end of that part of the biography to my sons who grow up in a world that equates, um, financial success with a good life.
• 12:45
  And I said,"Let this be an example to you.
• 12:50
  Fortunes can change quickly." Absolutely.
• 12:55
  And there is so much of that, so much of that materialism.
• 12:59
  Who was I talking to the other day about that?
• 13:03
  Oh, I, I guess it was my friend Tim, and we were talking about, um, a book that he read about, about greed and materialism that he'd read in high school and, um, how it had really impacted him and left an impression.
• 13:18
  And it's so true, and it's so true, like, today right now as we, you know, move into this faster world with more technology.
• 13:28
  And the people that are at the forefront of that, that's, that's kinda what's been going on in my life.
• 13:33
  Um, things, having some frustrations, like I love using my chat box but I'm also having some real concerns philosophically and ethically about where a lot of these startup techs are taking AI, and are we ready?
• 13:47
  And is it ready?
• 13:49
  Now, that's very much on my mind.
• 13:51
  But, um- Well, I ha- I'm having the same experience you mentioned, brought up the other day- Mm-hmm of having emails flood in that are somehow connected to my browsing and use of this tech- Mm-hmm for ancillary services that m- clearly marketers are trying to get in on.
• 14:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:20
  Yeah.
• 14:20
  Yeah.
• 14:21
  The, the whole, you know, personal, people being personal is harder and harder to find, and that, that concerns me.
• 14:30
  Mm.
• 14:30
  So what happened with the, um, if I can ask, about the wound and the con- the, um, getting What are we calling- Oh, yeah what are we calling permission now?
• 14:42
  We have a f- fancy word with a C for it.
• 14:45
  Con- consent.
• 14:46
  Sent it out a message to, my sons who are here- that I, I wanted to share some information with them, about my condition That I thought was important for them to know and Were they up for a conversation about that?
• 15:04
  And can you give this- Um can you give this conversation more context?
• 15:07
  'Cause if, if some- if I share this with someone, they're not gonna know what we're talking about Oh, we're talking about a, um, a progression of my cancer that recently indicates I'm dropping further into the prog- gnosis in terms of, of physical symptoms, um, that are disrupting my functioning to the point that, you know, I could be paralyzed tomorrow And I thought it was important to them to realize, you had brought up, Ishi, that, that, uh When things are good, which they have been pretty steady lately, um, there's a tendency to think it's always gonna be like that.
• 15:58
  "Oh, I'm in the clear." And my concern was that my kids had become lax in their, their grief and, and, uh, separation process knowing that, that I've been ill- Mm-hmm for so many years.
• 16:17
  And we ta- you and I talked about sh- about being more frank with them to kind of reactivate- reactivate each of them and, and touching back in to see what their process is.
• 16:40
  Are they in denial?
• 16:42
  Are they in suffering?
• 16:46
  Are they in- reality about it.
• 16:50
  So I got responses immediately, like within hours.
• 16:55
  Of course I am You know, so when it came time that they, they would come over to my, my cabana to, to have a conversation with me, I kind of outlined my concerns about wanting to kind of take the pulse on their grief processing and- And talked about the growth of the cancer sore and the bleeding events that have been happening lately, and offered to show them the sore.
• 17:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 17:39
  And every one of them said,"No, that's not necessary.
• 17:45
  I understand what you're saying and, and your description is enough to get your point across." How did you feel about that response?
• 17:57
  How did it feel?
• 17:59
  Oh, you know, multiple ways.
• 18:01
  You know,"You chickens." You, the bunch of you wouldn't make nursing school at all.
• 18:07
  Who s- who said men are tougher than women?
• 18:10
  You guys are wussing out on me here.
• 18:13
  That was one.
• 18:14
  And, uh, gosh, in, in a certain way I felt disappointed.
• 18:21
  I don't know.
• 18:22
  Yeah, I mean, it's human nature to wanna be seen, whether we're being seen in our joy- our happiness or whatever, right?
• 18:31
  In the ugly.
• 18:32
  Yeah.
• 18:32
  Yeah.
• 18:32
  Good, bad, ugly, indifferent, joyful, confused, whatever Yeah.
• 18:41
  But in the end, I felt good about it I felt the rest of our conversations from there were still very heart to heart and meaningful.
• 18:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 18:54
  I think even probably in many of them, their experience of saying,"Uh, no, that's okay," whether it was an emotional thing or just a, a really true,"I got it, Mom," um, that it created the same need for them to check in with themselves.
• 19:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:15
  That was the ob- objective.
• 19:17
  That was the point, right.
• 19:18
  And, and also- Yeah to see if, if checking in with everybody- Yeah to know what point you're at might have facilitated some conversations that otherwise m- might get postponed or passed on altogether.
• 19:34
  Right.
• 19:36
  So f- so one outcome I would, I suspect is happening from that is that the quality of their attention when they're with me, and the frequency or of their coming over to, to hang out with me in, in my room out there, Mm-hmm has a, A different quality.
• 20:01
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:03
  And one sweet aspect of that is that, there can, there's a burst of energy to continue making that place where I spend 80% of my waking time, in bed as comfortable, beautiful, accommodating as possible.
• 20:23
  I now have, um, heated mattress covers and blankets- Mm-hmm so that I can, I can make it, uh, comfortable when the rains come because m- I really wanna be out there when the cold and rain is coming.
• 20:42
  So you're spending most of your time outside in the hospital bed?
• 20:47
  Yeah.
• 20:47
  Yeah.
• 20:48
  It's a beautiful spot with the petunias and the little thing under the tree.
• 20:52
  It's just like- Yeah it's, it, it's the nicest outdoor bedroom.
• 20:56
  Yeah what a, what a gift to be, to have all that, and to have them be so accommodating for you.
• 21:03
  Yeah.
• 21:04
  They got new sheets for the bed, you know, uh, mounted a fan for the hot weather- Mm-hmm abo- above the framing so that the, you know, I stay cool.
• 21:17
  That's something I attribute to them being moved within themselves.
• 21:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:22
  That level of attention.
• 21:23
  Clearly we're at levels of extreme indulgence out there with With comfort qualities that are beyond my imagination.
• 21:39
  Yeah.
• 21:40
  That's awesome.
• 21:42
  That's awesome.
• 21:42
  But literally I couldn't do anything but take liquid forms of food- Mm-hmm for a week and a half Yeah, that's, that's, that's not good.
• 21:57
  Your face looks a little bit thinner than last time I saw you.
• 22:02
  You said something today that I did not hear you say before.
• 22:05
  You said that, um, you could be paralyzed any day.
• 22:10
  A- a- you know, and we haven't talked about what could happen.
• 22:14
  You know, we've s- we've definitely steered away from conversations that would create any kind of self-fulfilling prophecy or talk about things in those type of what's coming and when terms, and is, has there been a shift in that?
• 22:33
  Yes, my, my back spasms and have, have gotten worse, um, which also brings in new potent drugs that I'm having to take into my body, um- And I have tremors in my legs.
• 22:56
  I have sharp pains where I didn't used to.
• 22:59
  Um, I just feel like my skeleton is disintegrating.
• 23:07
  You know when you find old bones out in the woods?
• 23:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:11
  You know, and as they dry they get brittle and kind the marrow part- Mm starts looking like spider webs.
• 23:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:23
  That's how it feels to me.
• 23:26
  And I know from, from my long journey with back problems that there's no way to know, certainly at this point when it's going to go over that edge of me not being able to, to walk Yeah, that's, uh, the impendingness of it is getting weight, really weighty.
• 23:54
  You know, I mean, when you first found out and over the last few years it's been one thing, but the acceleration of Holding this thinking and anticipation is the wrong word, but, but maybe it's not, um, of what may happen.
• 24:17
  Holding that at bay is, is starting to disintegrate Well, I, I, I'll correct you a little bit there Thank you Um, for the Coming out of my studies with, with Buddhist teachings, the phrase of,"Welcome everything, push away nothing"- Mm-hmm has moved from an idea into a belief that that is the way to To look at this process we're talking about now.
• 25:03
  I know that that's likely to come.
• 25:07
  Um, obviously there's, there's some fears and sorrow and emotional business going on.
• 25:17
  If I, you know, imagine being in that state before it's actually happened- Mm-hmm um, I'm certainly prepared for it in terms of, you know, having bed pans and all the things that that represents in terms of my care.
• 25:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:39
  I don't experience I don't know.
• 25:45
  I hear my own voice when I said I could be paralyzed tomorrow.
• 25:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:50
  Um, and there is a bit of drama in that and, and some emotion behind it.
• 25:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:56
  But I, I, I don't experience the emotions of fear and anxiety right now when I am anticipating that.
• 26:12
  Who knows, when it happens, that that's a whole new page, you know?
• 26:19
  Right.
• 26:19
  So you're trying to s- And that, and that, that could well come in.
• 26:24
  Yeah.
• 26:24
  You're s- trying to stay as present as you can with what's happening right now, and the sensations, not the ideas.
• 26:30
  Is that still correct?
• 26:32
  Correct.
• 26:32
  Correct.
• 26:33
  So, well, last time we talked a little bit about feeling out of body and, and possible disassociation.
• 26:39
  When you're, when you see your own body, there's a certain amount of shock- Mm-hmm and disassociation.
• 26:46
  Of course there's a psychological reason for that.
• 26:48
  But it also occurs to me that in a spiritual sense you are preparing to leave your body, and that the disassociation is almost practice for that in some regard.
• 27:00
  That's interesting welcome everything, even the thought that I could be paralyzed tomorrow If I maintain that Well, it's like a, gosh, an image of being in a martial arts class just came to me, you know?
• 27:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:15
  Of, of taking, making sure your stance is stable- Mm-hmm before, before the action begins.
• 27:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:26
  That, that's a good metaphor for what I'm, I'm trying to say.
• 27:35
  In the phrase,"Welcome everything, push away nothing," that's my stable stance So when you say stable stance, like that's a groundedness that is quite opposite than disassociation or leaving your body or standing next to yourself or seeing yourself from above.
• 27:53
  They're quite opposite, right?
• 27:55
  Mm, yeah.
• 27:56
  They seem to be.
• 27:57
  I'm trying to Can you refresh my memory of that other conversation in terms of the, the disassociations that I was talking about?
• 28:07
  Well, you said, you said that you had looked in the mirror at the wound- Oh on your breast, and you were shocked.
• 28:14
  And then there have been times where you feel like you're standing next to yourself or looking at yourself from above, and it just doesn't seem quite real.
• 28:27
  Hm.
• 28:28
  Do you remember any of that?
• 28:29
  Yep.
• 28:30
  Yeah.
• 28:31
  Interesting.
• 28:32
  Because talking to you today, I could Rather than using words, to me, disassociation itself is a psychological- Mm-hmm you know, diagnostic Word.
• 28:51
  Um, and while it may be true in s- in certain And helpful.
• 29:00
  There's I think what I'm, I'm trying to say is that I'm, I tr- I've been trying to develop skills to have other words to describe Um, that experience of Of being surprised by how something looks or shocked That, that don't pathologize or shut down the process from continuing to be open.
• 29:37
  The struggle for me, Ishi, is, is when that happens or the day that I wake up and I can't get out of bed a- anymore, That whatever shock that gives me Mm-hmm the fact is I'm still alive And operative and processing intellectually and emotionally And for all we know, after you're dead, you may be doing those things still.
• 30:07
  It's hard to think of, of my mom and dementia when she was at- Mm-hmm these parts of her life, and I was caring for her, um, in the sense that she had no Ability to, to participate in framing her experience.
• 30:28
  Right.
• 30:29
  Because her brain was just gone Yeah.
• 30:33
  I'm fortunate.
• 30:35
  Yeah, and your sister is beginning to deal with that now.
• 30:39
  Yeah And she's, she's terrified.
• 30:45
  And she's in so much denial that it's almost constant state of distress she's in.
• 30:54
  So in that sense, the dementia when it, when it increases enough, they just have no idea what's going on, so it's not a stressful thing and, and supposedly it doesn't hurt, so.
• 31:06
  Right.
• 31:08
  True.
• 31:09
  Grandma used to say old age isn't for sissies.
• 31:14
  And Dad used to say,"Yeah, but it's better than the alternative." I, you know, I've, I think old age, we've talked about this before, I think it's fabulous.
• 31:24
  Yeah.
• 31:25
  You know?
• 31:26
  Yeah, I wouldn't trade the wisdom and the experiences for all the wrinkles or, or the lost youth.
• 31:33
  No.
• 31:33
  Would not.
• 31:36
  And you and I both have made, made, uh Made good use of all those things when we had them.
• 31:45
  We- Let's just- I.
• 31:47
  Okay.
• 31:48
  Okay, cool.
• 31:49
  We're good.
• 31:50
  Do you wanna talk about anything else?
• 31:52
  Hmm.
• 31:54
  Um- Well, something I'm looking forward to today is that a bunch of the guys are going fishing with Mike.
• 32:04
  Oh, nice.
• 32:05
  Which, which means I get left home alone or home with my son Daniel, who's not probably interested in going fishing, and he's here from Arizona for going on two weeks now, which is wonderful.
• 32:21
  Nice.
• 32:22
  Hmm.
• 32:24
  Well, good luck with your editing and post it some time in the future.
• 32:28
  Yeah, I think maybe I'll do that.
• 32:29
  Just depends on how far down the, the story you wanna go with this.
• 32:35
  Yeah.
• 32:35
  Well, we'll just keep at it.
• 32:37
  As a recorded, uh- Yeah.
• 32:39
  No, I think it's good to have a recorded, these recorded conversa- we have so many great conversations.
• 32:44
  Why not record them?
• 32:46
  Yeah.
• 32:46
  Yeah.
• 32:48
  Cool.
• 32:48
  All right, my dear.
• 32:49
  Well, I love you.
• 32:49
  Have a great day.
• 32:50
  Love you.
• 32:50
  Me too.
• 32:51
  You too.
• 32:51
  I'll talk to you soon.
• 32:53
  Bye.