Dear Reader,
I am back, apologetic for being away so long, and bionic! On June 16 an implanted cardiac device was zipped into my chest. It is a precautionary step, in case the heart begins to fibrillate, in which case I will receive a massive shock, similar to being kicked by a horse, they say. Fibrillation isn't likely however; the best thing about this device is that they put in an extra gizmo (I got the Porsche, not just the loaded Buick) - which makes the left ventricle beat simultaneously with the right. It has given me my energy back. It is wonderful! I will learn to fly next.

My other excuse for being away so long is that I have become a grandmother. Here he is, at just two months, Max Quentin Baehr:

Max lives in Montreal - it's not just a day trip, but I have visited twice, and he will be coming to Rockwood around Thanksgiving. Can't wait!

I am back to work on my show, "Affairs of the Heart". I have ten works ready, with 8 or 9 to finish. You will have to come to see it!  The opening will be January 11th or 12th, and it will run to February 17th, 2013, at Greenwood Gallery, 275 Woolwich, Guelph, Ontario. More details later.

I am going to use another Rumi quote I came across: "They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door if there are no walls?" 

Love to you all,

Susan

I'm Back!

Dear Reader,
I can't believe it's been nearly 3 months since I last posted some news. Things have been buzzing since then.

First of all, I have had a lot of acupuncture - about an hour every one or two weeks. Jason is really good at it. My breathing and energy have dramatically improved, and on February 8 I had another echocardiogram. It showed that my ejection fraction had improved, but only to 25% (where the heart efficiency norm is between 55% and 70%, and doctors are concerned when it is below 40%). It was still up from 20%, when I first got sick, but I didn't think that was much of an improvement.

So on top of the regular acupuncture, I fasted a few times - between 18 and 36 hours at a time - just to give all the organs a rest. I changed my diet some more, adding hemp hearts and spirulina, and I gave up alcohol for Lent. I learned some breathing exercises, which are supposed to massage the diaphragm, spleen and heart from below, and I did some gentle training with weights. And all the while, my friends were saying prayers for me as well.

The time came for me to see the surgeon about whether or not I was a suitable candidate for an implanted defibrillator and CRT. He didn't feel that echocardiograms are as accurate as the MUGA test (which is a nuclear medicine test, using technitium, a radio-active element), so that's what I had a couple of weeks before my appointment with him. The result was an ejection fraction of 41%! My new regime and all the acupuncture had kicked in, and I had made major gains! I knew it was going to be a good score because I feel so much better, but that kind of increase actually gets me out of the danger zone, over that nasty 40% line.

Well, I proudly went off to the appointment, and told the surgeon what I had been doing to improve things. He basically said it must have been a mistake because I could have got that much better that fast!  It kind of confirmed the stereotype of the western doctor (and a surgeon at that, who fixes things by cutting and stitching) discounting the benefits of Chinese medicine. He ordered another echocardiogram, so that "apples" would be compared with "apples". Frankly, I don't see why it makes a lot of difference how the heart is photographed, whether it's by sound waves or by radiation glow - surely it's all in how you measure it, and how good your math is. Anyway, after THREE doctor/technician experts looked at the photos, they decided that 31% was probably more like it. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall - I am certain they bargained between them - "No, I don't see how it could be so high - suppose you re-drew the line like this - how would that work out?"

Personally, I don't care - I know I feel 150% better, and I am going to get the defibrillator implanted on or around June 18. It will be a pretty cool computer - a pacemaker to regulate the heart rate, a defibrillator poised to fire if the heart stops suddenly, and the CRT will make the left ventricle fire at the same time as the right, which will give it a major break. It has been working a lot harder than the right ventricle all these years, and maybe the CRT will allow it to recover even more. So - I am going bionic!

Here is a picture of the kind of thing I am going to have inserted below my breast bone. It is about 4 cm long!


The second thing is that I have booked my show. It will be called Affairs of the Heart, and it will be in Guelph at the Greenwood Gallery, opening during the first week of January 2013. I have a lot of work to do - about how amazing a heart is, and about things and people that I love, and about all the questions that still remain. Stay tuned!

The third thing I have tried to do has been quite hard for me. I have tried to be a more loving person, because I am positive that has something to do with a healthy heart. Alice Hay and Gregg Braden might agree with me too!

I was reminded the other day of the writings of Adler and Dreikurs I read when I was a new parent. Adler said that all behavior was goal directed. We learn to do what gets us what we want. For example, if a child always gets what he wants by whining, he will continue whining-type behavior as an adult. If he always does what he is told because he gets beaten up by someone bigger than him, he will learn to beat up people smaller or weaker than him when he wants them to do something - i.e he will become a bully or a very disciplinarian type of parent.

Adler also said that you can’t just change the way you feel about something but you can change the way you behave about it, and that a change in feeling will follow. For example, if I really dislike someone, I can’t change the way I feel, but if I can be nice to that person or “act lovingly”, that will actually end up changing the way I feel about him/her. 

The thing is that you have to do it with absolute sincerity. People, especially children, will see through a false sincerity. The only way I can say something sincere is to believe it, and for me to believe it, it has to be true. So, if I dislike so-and-so because she is a gossiping busybody, for example, but I have to learn to work with her, even like her, I have to say something nice to her that is a) true and b) kind. Like “I really like it that I can come to you and find out what is going on. You are an unending supply of information.”

So that's the other thing I have been doing. I try to banish every judgmental or critical thought I have and instead say something positive about the situation. The funny thing is that people have been saying I look a lot better! "When did you get so bouncy?" "Boy, you must be feeling good." Who would have thought? And people who I thought were really unlikeable - one in particular - have turned out to be quite normal people. Who would have thought they'd change so much?! I guess it's a miracle.

SO HOW ABOUT MIRACLES?

This question of miracles has completely occupied my attention during the last week. I haven’t been doing too much art lately. All I seem to do is read, have a little nap to let it percolate, and then read some more. Why haven’t I come across this stuff before?

 “A Return to Love” is amazing. It is so simple and so profound and somehow indubitably true. Williamson is commenting on A Course in Miracles (by the Foundation for Inner Peace) and the course can be summed up very simply, she says.

“Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.”

She further translates this for us: “Love is real. It is a creation by God and nothing can destroy it. Anything that isn’t love (like its opposite, fear) is an illusion. Remember this, and you’ll be at peace.”

Fear is illusory. Other people teach us how to feel fear. Hollywood creates movies about fear. Fear was not created by God – there is no need to feel it – it is not in the world with us. If we all believed and lived by this there would be no war, no competition, no greed, no starving children, no planet damage, and we would all live in peace. Period.

I talked to an old friend (a youthful friend of long standing) after a funeral yesterday, and she told me that my old spiritual advisor had come back to this province. How extraordinary that I should see her, (and that she has a new computer and actually gets e-mail again) and that she should tell me out of the blue that he is back again, when I have been thinking how much I would like to see him.

He was once asked by a child whether dogs go to heaven when they die, and while I can’t remember all of his answer, this is what I took away with me: 

   1. Heaven is all about love. It’s not a place but rather an awareness of peace and being surrounded by that love. We are not judged there – just loved unconditionally.

   2. Dogs give us that kind of love: even when we get angry at them, or shout, or feed them late, they still love us, and wag their tails and want to be with us.

   3. If they already know that kind of love, they don’t need to go to Heaven because they are already there - here, with us.

We have been babysitting a friend’s dog. She is gentle and obedient and she licks your face if you put yours close to hers. All she wants is to be in the room with you, and if the sun is shining, or the fire is on, she doesn’t fret – she just finds the best spot available and is at peace. I could learn a lot from this dog.

So, what does Williamson say about miracles? Well, for one thing she doesn’t believe that they can be directed (e.g. “I pray that your broken leg will instantly heal”), and I am not so sure I agree with that now. But she does believe that if you are in perfect peace, miracles can occur. Miracles reverse physical laws.  Time and space are under His command and he can break the rules when He wants. 

And being in perfect peace? How do you do that? I haven’t got there yet, but will let you know when I do!

HOW PRAYERS ARE ANSWERED

As I mentioned, I have been reading the books of Gregg Braden. In The Divine Matrix, he describes a visit to the abbot of a Tibetan monastery, whom he asks "What connects us with one another, our world, and the universe? What is the "stuff" that carries our prayers beyond our bodies and makes a difference?" The answer he got was "compassion".

Braden then asks another question: "How can that be? Is this compassion a force of nature (like some sort of energy or magnetism), or an emotional experience?"

The answer was "Compassion is what connects all things." Braden had gone half around the world, had an intensive dialogue through an interpreter involving the deepest elements of Tibetan Buddhism (as he describes it) and that's all he got.

So he goes on quizzing the interpreter (also a monk) and asks the same question "Is compassion a force of creation or is it an experience?" And the monk thinks for a long time and then says "it is both." So finally Braden understands something about what connects us to everything in the universe, as well as the quality that makes our feelings and emotions so powerful - they are one and the same.

I believe this is what was happening when Christ performed his healing miracles; it was the power of his compassion that rearranged the molecules (or whatever) that made the blind see and the lame walk and the leprosy disappear, and in his deep compassion, he was able to do this instantly. I also think that it was his training of the disciples that allowed them to do the same – and that it explains other modern “medical miracles”.

I think Braden is right when he says that this knowledge was known to the early Christians, but "tremendous liberties were taken over the centuries with the ancient authors' words and intent" (when translating the writings into our modern day Bible). The example he gives is the “ask and ye shall receive “ passage from John 16:

“Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask and ye shall receive that your joy may be full.”

In the Essene gospel (of Thomas?), however, there is more: "All things that you ask straightly, directly … from inside My name … you will be given. So far you haven’t done this … [here is the bit missing from John] - So ask without hidden motive and be surrounded by your answer - be enveloped by what you desire, that your gladness may be full".

I have found one other reference to prayer already being granted as we pray, and that is in Mark's gospel. Translations vary slightly, but in my Standard Revised Version, Mark 11:24 reads: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Other translations, like the American Standard Version read "Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

I am less certain that the last meaning was what was intended, because this clearly doesn't happen. I believe Christ wanted more from us when we pray than just giving him a shopping list, and I also believe that some of us are better "pray-ers" than others. If we knew how powerful we could be and were able to empty ourselves of all our personal agendas and other emotions, and fill our hearts totally with compassion, I think we could do it too.

(This reminds me of that passage by Marianne Williamson:

 "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles", Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3)

As I am writing this, I have just received Williamson’s book from Amazon. All this may be already known to many who read this, but I am learning how much I need to learn.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! Well, if it doesn't turn out to be a happy one, then at least it will be a significant one.

I have had three acupuncture treatments so far, and you know what? They are making a difference. My acupuncturist’s name is Jason, and he trained in acupuncture after doing martial arts as a boy. Which actually I think is rather cool - it’s not such a stretch, when you think about it; the vulnerable points on an opponent’s body are also the sensitive ones, and those are the ones when the chi energy is apparently the most accessible. He showed me a tai chi move called (I think) Rolling the Ball, and when he prepared his stance, you could see the martial arts warrior!

At our first appointment, I told Jason about my heart problems, and what western medicine so far had revealed - the underperforming left ventricle, the bundle branch block, the shortness of breath, etc. Then Jason checked me out and said it seemed to him that it wasn’t the heart that was so much in trouble as the pericardium (which Chinese medicine considers an organ, but western medicine does not). It’s the sheath that surrounds the heart, and Jason said it seemed very hard and he wondered if it was actually constricting the heart. He also said that maybe we should begin by treating the spleen, where the fluids seemed very turgid. I think that was the word he used – it didn’t sound very pleasant, anyway, and he clearly felt this needed attention. Okay.

The spleen filters the blood and does other useful things like help to fight off infection. So there is a connection to the heart, and if the spleen is in trouble, the heart and liver have to take over some of its duties. That it should need some TLC makes sense to me, especially since while I never felt any pain or twinges in my heart, when I was really sick I did sometimes get little stabs under my ribcage on the left side. And wouldn’t you know, that’s where the spleen is.

Now, I try to be a compliant patient. So I asked about diet, and what I can do to help the spleen. “Congee” says Jason. What? It’s slow-cooked rice, like cooked all night in a slow cooker. You eat it as often as possible throughout the day, warm, especially first thing in the morning. Cut out the dairy products (which I know from experience causes phlegm to collect in your throat). Cut out the extremes of hot and cold. (Oh boy, there goes ice cream AND cheese!). No vegetables or fruits eaten in a raw state. (No salad, no nibbling while I am cutting up veggies, no apple a day! This is going to be harder than I thought.) No “over consumption” of animal products. Well at least I have a bit of latitude here – that means I can still have chicken (it’s a bird) and fish. I ask tentatively about chocolate, with warning in my tone. Jason considers this, and says a little a day is okay because it’s good for the spirit.

So, I am now trying to restore balance to the spleen. I go home and since we don’t (or didn’t then) have a slow cooker, I cook a cup of long grain rice as slowly as I can in a double boiler, and store it in the fridge. Each morning I sprinkle it with slivered almonds and raisins and zap it in the microwave for 30 seconds, have it for breakfast, and this I proudly tell Jason at the next session. WRONG. It seems that zapping it damages the chi. Okay then for the next week I carefully warm it up in a small bowl in water in a saucepan instead of nuking it (I am still working through that first cup of rice].

I am missing the point, says Jason. I need to eat warm food that has been carefully prepared for my spleen and not just warm it up in a hurry and get on with my busy day. You can get a slow cooker in Zehrs for $14.99, he says. I give in (in spite of the fact that my husband has said he’s not going to bed to sleep for 8 hours while there is a electric kitchen appliance doing its thing all night, especially if it’s only cooking some minute quantity of rice) and go to the biggest Zehrs in town. There indeed is one slow cooker sitting on the shelf, priced at $14.99. So I get it. In both senses of the phrase. Congee isn’t that bad, and I can cook it first thing in the morning and then eat it throughout the day.  And I can vary rice with oatmeal, which I can probably get my husband to eat. And I can add it to soup which His Lordship will eat as well.

Well, things are getting better. I do have less phlegm. And the other day I was able to run up the 10 stairs from our basement without stopping. And I can walk down the slight hill into the river valley and then up the other side without breaking my stride. I wasn’t able to do either of these things two months ago.

Here’s a picture of the meridians than govern the spleen. I noticed when I first saw this diagram that they are shown from the right side, and this brought me up with a jolt. Every major injury I have ever had is on that meridian, on my right side: the big toe I am always stubbing, the ankle I injured on stage, the knee cap I broke in a car accident, me appendectomy, and this little cyst thing on my shoulder!

Which brings me to something else that happened on Wednesday. Jason put a ring of needles around this little lump (which my doc has said is harmless, and just a little fluid filled cyst) and after 20 minutes about half of it had disappeared! This is something I have lived with for about a year and a half. He called it circling the dragon. I am becoming a true believer. My baby sister, who knows it is hard for me to do what I am told, says she is sure Jason will fix me one way or the other – either with the treatments, or with a martially artistic blow if I misbehave.

A couple of days later I went to see a friend who asked after my health. When I told her, she asked if I had “vented my spleen”. I was a little taken aback (it sounds so rude!) and then I thought that if that means being really angry about something and getting rid of it by totally losing control, yes I have often lost my temper in the past. Oh dear, do I now need to see a shrink or do more meditation to figure out what I am so angry about? More reading, more work! I am still thinking about this - more soon.

Heal the Heart, Heal the World

So what is so special about 2012? Well, funny you should ask that. They say that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I had been trying to contact a homeopathic healer and acupuncturist through a friend of mine, but first I got her e-mail address wrong, and then she didn’t reply to my telephone message. I discovered later from my friend that she never does reply to voice messages. So I got her e-mail address right, and tried that again, but still no response. However, my friend suggested that I could join her Monday discussion group, where they were focusing on the work of Gregg Braden. I googled him, and watched a video interview of him on the web talking about his about-to-be published book Deep Truth. What really grabbed me was what he said about the human heart, the range of the magnetic field around it. 

So if the heart can have an influence on the matter immediately surrounding it, could I facilitate the healing of my own heart, and how could I learn to do this?

Then I bought three books by him: Fractal Time, The Divine Matrix and Deep Truth.

Well, where to begin. I’d have to be the best editor in the world to encapsulate all the marvelous knowledge I have read so far in these books. First, I have to admit to a fair amount of skepticism about New Age stuff, because I wasn’t raised that way. My father was a doctor and a scientist. I am married to a scientist, and I grew up and studied “The Scientific Method” as part of my education. So did Gregg Braden. He trained as a scientist and worked as a computer engineer and around the age of 40 switched to studying the wisdom of the aboriginal ancients, new discoveries about human history, and then related all these to new understandings in quantum physics. His books follow the logical step-by-step argument style one would expect, but you don’t have to be a scientist to understand them.

Braden soon realized that new knowledge about the nature of time and the discoveries of ancient civilizations had not changed the way science was being taught in schools, 40 years after he was there, even though there was well documented scientific knowledge that contradicted a lot of what was in the text books. Why? Perhaps because of the entrenched culture of competition, war and economy by “survival of the fittest” that we live in?

In Braden’s first book, he moves from documentation of ancient civilizations that have been shown to exist well before the Sumerian age (previously thought to be the beginning of civilized Man); to the cycles of time revealed in the Vedic scriptures and the Mayan calendars; to how we can read cycles in our own lives. He takes us carefully through the Bible Code, and how it predicted the two great wars of the 20^th century and how both the attacks on Pearl Harbour and the World Trade Centre fit into a cycle in such a way that both could have been predicted. (Yes, he is American.)

He starts with the documented 26,000 odd year cycle we are in, which separates into 5 similar cycles, each governing one fifth of the earth’s wobble on its axis. We are in the last days of that fifth cycle, which ends on the Winter Solstice on December 21^st, 2012. Then the wobble turns and slowly heads back toward the centre of the universe. Does this sound crazy? You have to read the book.  (When I think about it, it’s also kind of crazy that when I had periods, they were governed by the phases of the moon, as are the ocean tides.) Braden takes you through the physics and his research so methodically that it all hangs together.

Apparently, the end of a cycle is a period of great chaos (Braden gives examples from history of previous cycles). We have global financial crises; wars, insurrection and demonstrations all over the world; scary climate change; desperate poverty and fabulous wealth: the world is indeed in chaos.

But there is a message of hope; while the conditions are set for disaster in December 2012, we can change things for the better, if we use our hearts. And this is where healing and the extraordinary new discoveries in quantum physics come in. Read the books!

Goal: Heal this Heart by December 2012

I have congestive heart failure. It was a shock when I was told this at the beginning of May 2011, because I am only in my early sixties, I am not overweight (well - maybe 15 lbs) and I have always been relatively fit. But apparently my left ventricle has just worked too hard all my life, and its ejection fraction is only 20-25%. This is in the really serious range - it should be between 55% and 75% - like get out your pen and put your name on the transplant list.

So, I was prescribed Apo-bisoprolol (a beta-blocker which keeps my blood pressure low), Coversyl (an ace inhibitor which keeps the heart rate down) plus Lasix as a diuretic to stop fluid retention. I spent the summer behaving and waited for an improvement. Nada, nothing, no change. I still eat a low sodium diet, drink only minimal amounts of red wine and no hard stuff at all, watch my fluid intake. I can't exercise much, so I watch the fats, although I do allow myself two chocolates a day. For my mental health. But I am not getting better.

I didn't like the diuretic at all, and one cavity later (I couldn't get to sleep because of the dry cough so I would suck a throat pastille after getting into bed) and a hemorrhoid (yuck), my doc said I could stop taking it daily, as long as I have some at the ready if I start to see signs of edema. So far so good. But now what?

I am an artist. I still have another 20 years of art to do, and I want to stay around to do it. So I decided to document what was happening to me and create some artworks that would speak about my journey.

So here's the first one, and it's called "Journey":

When the going gets tough, maybe the tough should get spiritual. So that's what this piece is about. Since I am into recycling, and using organic matter wherever I can, the angels are made out of wild cucumber seed pods, and there are actual rose petals in it. And the EKG chart is of my own heart (and boy I had to fight to get that!)

The nurse doing my nuclear medicine test said I couldn't take medical data out of the hospital without written authorization, but this printout couldn't be used because the paper was feeding crooked, so she was going to throw it away anyway. I said why couldn't she just throw it into my coat pocket, because I wanted it for a piece of art. But she still said no, it was against the rules. Then I said I would just raid the garbage when she left the room. She said that was even worse because I'd end up with some other patient's record, and that was against the privacy laws, and when I gave her a determined look, she just thrust this paltry scrap into my husband's hand and said "don't tell anybody." So I haven't, right?

Anyway, the text on this piece says "When the roses have faded and the heart is troubled, look for angels in the seed pods, for a heart that does not love the divine in all things will fail the test." I think I will put text on all of them. I have found some amazing bits of verse from Rumi and Khalil Gibran, and they will give me inspiration as well.

Have you heard "Affairs of the Heart" by Marjan Mozetich? If you haven't, you are in for a treat. A friend of mine heard this violin concerto on the way over to my place and she rushed in and said I had to turn on Radio 2 because it was so gorgeous. And it is. We both live in the country, and the way this music washes over you and then jags up and down is like the rolling hills and stark barns and silos we see all over the place. I went on line and found the playlist and immediately ordered the CD. It has already sparked off some ideas in my mind for another two or three pieces of fibre art.

Next time I'll tell you about some new reading I am doing on Fractal Time. This is all happening for a reason, I am convinced, and it has to do with 2012 being just around the corner. The other thing that I have started is a course of acupuncture treatment, with a diet change that incorporates many aspects of Chinese medicine.

More soon.