| Eli Letter February 2008 |
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Eli Letter February 2008 Dear ones,
 Just a few weeks ago Gangaji and I had a retreat in Ashland. It was deeply moving seeing so many loving hearts gathered together in the realization and celebration of true freedom. Julia is working on posting a few minutes of the opening meeting of that retreat on YouTube. We are learning how to get it on the Leela website too. If you would like to help with this or other projects, please let Julia know.This is my last heavy chemo round, called consolidation, in the research protocol that I am a part of here in Arkansas. So far this has been the easiest round. I will have to return several times a year for testing and other possible experiments as well as continue on a regime of chemo at home, until something better shows up. My cancer is not knocked out but knocked down, and the best plan at this point is to keep it that way. Because of the severe osteoporosis caused by the cancer, I will be participating in a study of different ways of building bone mass as well. It is quite a surprise that I find myself publicly writing about the health of the body. This is quite antithetical to the animal nature of this body-mind and yet this exposure is part of the inscrutable, seemingly inevitable process that mysteriously controls the unfolding of all our lives.  Great saints and sages have their dark night of the soul in caves and mountaintops away from the public gaze. They emerge transfigured to a world that took no notice before the great transformation. Not being incarnate as a great sage or saint, this life-stream unfolds its chrysalis in shameless public fashion. Who knows what the result will be, but abiding insight is available for those who can use it well. The dark night of the soul is the cocoon that wombs the soul’s deepening birth into its source. It is reflected internally and in personal external circumstances. In an extreme example of this, during the inquisition, St John of the Cross was taken from his dungeon to be flogged in the dining room as the monks ate their meals. We never want the horror, and yet in his case it led to brilliant revelation, poetry and teaching of union with the divine. While appearance is not ultimate reality, it is the mirror in which infinite intelligent reality may be glimpsed. For this glimpse, all is worthwhile. Heaven and hell appear in satsang as nothing moves or changes and everything is revealed. As a young man, through nothing that I did on my part, I happened to find myself at a few historic junction points. I had no idea that the summer of Chicago in 1968 would be one of those points, I just happened to be there. I am karmically wired to be what marketers call an early adopter. At that time Ramparts magazine was the cutting edge of sixties revolutionary culture and I would try to find myself in the photos fighting the police. Now at sixty, scandal and cancer seem to be current on the world stage, and I find myself again playing the fool who wandered in. Life Extension , which has replaced Ramparts for some of us ow, just had an article on Myeloma, stem cell collection and transplants. I never heard of Myeloma a year ago and now I am one. The personal drama or waves that get generated in our lives are always tests of love. When I look out in my life now I see love, kindness and compassion. I see caring and clarity. This body was kept alive through the supporting love of the sangha. I am immeasurably grateful for this blessed life. To be faced afresh with death and to again find myself upright and prostrate in gratitude is a divine mystery. I will be returning here to Little Rock for additional testing and discharge in April. Along the way I will be stopping in Austin, Texas for public meetings and a weekend retreat. This will be the start of my new teaching schedule. Julia has been working on getting our schedule online and coordinating with those of you who have invited me to come. The body is run down and tired, but the flame of truth still commands communication through this flesh. I look forward to being with you again in form soon. What a mystery. It is all the grace of the Sat-guru. |