Alana's Dharma Blog

I had a mole that my doctor said needed removal, only I had to wait a few weeks before I could get back in for an appointment.  During that time, I panicked and contemplated, panicked and contemplated, panicked and contemplated. I’ll spare you guys the full panic details (do I have skin cancer? Am I dying? Again? I was just dying of something else last week…) and share a bit of the contemplations because they ended-up being the thoughts that really sunk a nail in the coffin of my constant, daily,  fear of death and disease.

I was in a yoga class and came to a particularly challenging upside down pose. I had practiced for a while, worked-up to it, but I was afraid. My teacher came over and said, “don’t be afraid, just breath”. It worked, I got up in the pose and focused on breathing instead of fear. After class I was thinking, that hippy dippy advice had some value; I always believed fear was a fixed part of the experiences I was afraid of. That it was built into the situation (instead of my perception of it). But when I breathed and wasn’t afraid it showed me fear is not fixed it can come and go, it is not built into the situations where I am afraid.

My life was a series of fearful moments. I jumped from one situation to the next worrying that something was killing me. If I was lucky I got a few weeks off before the next bout of imaginary cancer, ebola, killer bee invasions, etc. This was a horrible way to live, but I did it anyway. I thought it was normal. I thought I had no choice. But if the fear was not fixed, not built-in to the situations, a few conclusions followed:

1. Just because I will die, it does not mean I need to constantly worry about it. In any situation I may die, I may not, my death in fact will occur whether I worry about it or not. If situations don’t have fear built in, I don’t have to fear any given situation. Moreover, since my fear won’t necessarily impact the outcome (death or no death), I am suffering for free with all this paranoia.
2. Impermanence is not necessarily negative — it is not the enemy to be fought. I fear change, decay, like its something unnatural. Like its after me. Like there is something real and fixed in my body, something I can be attached to and that I can protect and preserve from that enemy impermanence. But really, is there some fixed, unchanging Alana I can really keep safe and preserve? If Alana was so unchanging how could I be afraid of a yoga pose one minute and then not afraid the next. That’s change right? And, it was change for the better in this case.
3. I was choosing fear. On some level, I believed that fear was practical, that it functioned to serve me and protect me.  That it was my weapon against that enemy impermanence. But if fear really worked, staved-off the horrible outcomes I worried about, then why did bad things sometimes happen when I was afraid of them? Why when I worried I was coming down with a cold did I sometimes get a cold? Why when I worried about failing a test did I sometimes fail the test? Not such a great weapon after all huh?

Because this was such a biggie contemplation, I’ll write-out my major take away concepts from my notebook. i.e. the big picture wrong views that I identified during this contemplation:

Wrong View 1: Change, impermanence is bad/  it has  a specific value —  negative. change, particularly in regards to me is bad, that there is a solid, real Alana. That changes to that Alana, particularly bodily changes, are problematic in that they erode that Alana self.

Correct View 1: Change is a universal truth. I, like all other things in this world am subject to it. It is not negative or positive, but I, especially when the change involves me or my body, view it as negative. In reality though, even in my body, changes I view as positive take place: I heal from illness, bad haircuts grow out and I don’t still walk like a 2 year old. Moreover, there is no unchanging Alana self or I would still look like an infant, act like an infant. Change is inevitable whether I view it as positive or negative.

Wrong View 2: That emotions can be ingrained into an experience, that all experiences of a similar type always trigger the same emotional response.

Correct View 2: Just like with the yoga pose, it is my perception that interprets a situation as scary/not scary –if the pose were scary by its own nature, I would have never been able to do it without fear. Fear would have always remained part of the pose.More evidence is the dentist, I used to believe it was scary and then was OK with it. When I went away to college at first I was scared, then excited. As a kid I was afraid of the dark and now I find it relaxing. I have changed, my sense has changed. When  something goes from scary to not scary or not scary to scary, it is my perception that causes the shift.

Wrong View 3: That anything I do or say can avert nature, the laws of karma and impermanence. That I can battle impermanence and win,  that any given situation, especially the scary ones, are in my control.

Correct View 3: My control is limited, not ultimate. Just like with the airplane, I can take steps I believe help keep me safe, but in the end, if my plane is going to crash my fear, my prayers, my superstitions, my standing over the pilot’s shoulder and seeing it happen are not going to save me. Using fear to motivate some action that will give me absolute control is crazy because, in the end, nothing gives me absolute control. I get all the negatives of fear and no secret weapon of immortality.

Plus, look at the costs of living this way, how much I worried, how often my controlling had unwanted side effects (peeing myself), how I stressed out the people around me that I love and care about, how I close-down and think only about myself when I’m afraid.
The biopsy results came back negative. No skin cancer. After the Dr. called to tell me,  I started collecting evidence in my head, thinking about my life and experiences.  That’s when I saw it —the TRUTH — There is absolutely no necessary relationship between the things/ experiences that I fear and their actual outcome.  I was afraid of the mole, but it was not skin cancer. I was afraid of stomach cancer, but it was hemorrhoids and IBS, I was afraid on each flight my plane would drop from the sky, hasn’t happened yet. Clearly, just because I fear something it doesn’t mean it comes true. Then I considered all the stuff I was never afraid off, my new cell phone breaking, pain after my dentist appointments, getting run down by a Rhino in Kenya (long story), getting food poisoning in Italy when I had managed Mexico, China and 1000 other places problem free. Obviously, not worrying about something did not mean that something bad wouldn’t happen. Sure, sometime I worry about something bad and sure enough, sh** happens. And surely there are all sorts of perils lurking that I don’t worry about and never result in something bad (we have all watched that horror movie..the killer is behind the shrubs, the well dressed lady walking by, and the killer never jumps out, and the lady walks away).

That then is the full story — my worry and certain outcomes are really only linked in my head. In reality, there is no causal relationship between my fear and bad things happening. I was, finally, free in one small but tremendously significant way, crazy insomnia Alana is dead.

I was strolling around one of those poppy art galleries in the Mission and there was an exhibit composed entirely of quotes on the wall.  Front and center was 1 line of text that really struck a chord in my heart – “I am always afraid my umbrella will get wet.”

Immediately my mind started racing, after all, what’s the purpose, the nature, of an umbrella, it’s something that gets wet. Being afraid of that is just crazy right? But look at me, with my fear and paranoia around health and death.  What is the purpose of my body? What is its nature? A body is something we use to move through the world, and in the process it gets worn, it breaks down, gets sick, gets injured and dies. No matter how well we try and care for our bodies, the wear and tear comes hand-in-hand with the purpose of body. Just like getting wet comes hand-in- hand with the purpose of umbrella. But me, I live in fear of the nature of my body and I am always running around trying to find the most ridiculous ways to fight it…squiggly fade-out to past memory…

Last time I had been to the Dr. my blood sugar was a touch high, not diabetic, not pre-diabetic, but slightly above the goal that “Life Extension” magazine suggested I should target in the hopes of living just shy of forever.  So I decide I’m going to ‘fix-it’ with the latest greatest national supplement, green coffee extract.  I started feeling the “energizing” effects of the coffee extract almost immediately, still who wouldn’t trade a little jitteriness and insomnia for near immortality? Then, 3 days into ‘treatment’, I started peeing myself. Yup, apparently all that stimulating green coffee was over-stimulating my bladder too, result — incontinence. Perhaps you can imagine my mortification of discovering this tiny unwanted side effect while in the middle of a meeting with my boss…

I was so busy ‘controlling’ my blood sugar I lost control of my bladder, one of the most basic of bodily functions. Let’s just say, this was a trade-off (a cost, a consequence, suffering), I was totally unprepared for.

But here, with this story I really started to ask myself how much can I control my body? To what extent and at what cost? What are the tradeoffs, the risks (besides the unpleasant state of constant terror) of holding on so tightly?  Can I really live in this body without decay? Can I walk in the rain with an umbrella and avoid it getting wet?

I am a real globe trotter, I travel almost every chance I get. In just the last few years I have been to Kenya, China, India, Italy, Iceland, France, Japan… So, it might come as surprise to y’all that  I really don’t like flying at all, in the past I was down right terrified. No, it never really stopped me from getting on a plane, I love to travel after all, but I did manage to worry the whole flight long that that huge hunk of metal would fall from the sky. To be fair, I didn’t really care for driving much either, but at least when I drove, I was driving. With the plane all I could do was sit in my seat and mutter prayers under my breath hoping that my will, the power of my mind, alone could keep the plane aloft.  Unless of course…

I was talking to Mae Yo and Neecha one day about my fear of flying. A bit of probing and prodding and out came the real question. Do I really think I could fly the plane better than the pilots? I stopped in my tracks —  the extent of my flying experience was the old space invaders video game — of course I would not be better off if I were the one flying the plane. Still though, a part of me, on some level thought, if I were in control, if I were the one flying, the experience wouldn’t be so scary. Why else would I be doing all that prayer muttering? Moreover, I saw that I wanted to know, I wanted to see, I thought if I was aware what was going on it would be OK. But since all that flying is happening behind the sealed cockpit door it is an unknown and, by definition, scary by nature.

With a little more thought  I realized that before the plane story, I had begun to grapple with the limitations of my control –I couldn’t control my friend Sue, my teeth, my body or my phone –I just can’t control everything. Still, I had the sneaking suspicion that if I could control something I should control it since I would be better off for having done so. Plus,  if I just knew what was going on I would be safe. But could that really be some immutable fact? If I were flying the plane would me, or the rest of the passengers,  be better off?  If I was standing over the pilot’s’ shoulder, watching — knowing — their every move ( How can my husband say I’m a  backseat driver) could I rest easy assured I would have a safe flight?   

I saw that when I fly the best I can do is exercise my limited control. I can pick reputable airlines, buckle my safety belt and maybe sit in the exit row if the seat  is free. But after that, I need to accept the risk and the fact that it’s not something I’m in control of and that it actually wouldn’t be better if I were.  The risk, in fact was part of my decision to travel, it’s built into the trip and the activity I love so much –but that is a topic that came a little bit later in my practice.

My cell phone died. I dropped it on the street and when I picked it up I couldn’t get it to start again. It was an older model, had served me well for a few years. I knew it would be a pain to replace (have you ever been to a Verizon store?), it would take time to reload it with all my aps, with the cute icons and live wallpapers that made the thing ‘mine’, but it was alright, I knew it was time.

I got my new phone…spent the money, spent the time…1 day later, the phone stops working and I was so annoyed. I tried all the usual techniques, I surgically removed the battery, restarted, reboot. But nothing, dead. I think to myself..hows this possible?

A Little Background: Around the same time as this I was having stomach problems. One afternoon I went to the bathroom and out came a ton of blood. Between that and the pain I was having, my Dr. thought it was best to get a colonoscopy and rule-out stomach cancer or inflammatory conditions. I was so scared, scared of the procedure and even more scared of the cancer or serious disease. Plus, how is it possible, someone so young (early 30s) getting cancer or other crazy broken diseases?

As I was looking down at the dead phone, I realized, it was exactly like me. It is like my body, a tool, a device I need to get by in this world. I imagine that it’s something I own, I control, but in reality it can control me. It breaks and I need to run and replace it, find a way to fix it. When my body breaks there are surgeries, pills or a new birth to replace it. I invest so much time and energy in the phone, I make it mine with icons and ornaments, I imagine, like I do about my body, that it reflects “me”, my personality, my unique specialness.

Of course, I’m not a fool, I know phones break and people die. When it happens at the right time — when I dictate it is acceptable, when it aligns with my perception of how the world is supposed to work, when it retains my perception of control — it’s sad but OK. But this new phone, my stomach issues, it was evidence that duration is not certain, not under my control.

It’s easy to see once or twice or 10 times that control is limited, things are uncertain, but my mind is so used to its habits of thought; the same wrong concept will hide in slightly different permutations, different twists. So this story here showed me a new fact to consider, a different misunderstanding of impermanence that I needed to correct — I had to see impermanence  is something that exists ‘out there’ and does not abide by my terms, my expectations of when cessation, brokenness, death, is acceptable and when it is not.

In the end I was able to exchange the phone for a new one, manufacturer’s defect. I had the colonoscopy and turns out I had hemorrhoids and IBS, no warranty on the body so I just have to live with the broken parts.

I had a very dear friend, we’ll call her Sue, who was quite overweight (FYI I got Sue’s permission before writing this). Try as I might, nothing I did could convince her to drop the pounds. I invited her to exercise classes with me, insisted we eat only healthy foods together, I nagged and pestered, but to no avail. I worried constantly about Sue since she is a friend that I love and depend on in my life; I was so afraid she would be fat forever and then die, very young, from weight related complications, and leave me behind (since overweight people never die like us thin folks, from car crashes, or skydiving accidents, or getting run over by a charging rhino). I couldn’t imagine life without Sue and I just didn’t understand why she didn’t love me enough to stop killing herself by overeating.

So hopefully,  just reading this story starts cluing you into the many points of crazy in my thinking. Clearly, I had a ton of permanent beliefs here: 1) That when someone is overweight they will be so forever, that it will necessarily be the cause of their death, soon.  Needless to say this is all ridiculous –my own weight is all over the place, higher during my monthly ‘lady time’, around Christmas and vacations. It gets lower when I’m sick, when I get extra turbo in the gym, or when my husband–an amazing cook–isn’t around to cook for me.  Moreover, there are plenty of overweight folks that live long and full lives, skinny folks who die young and also who die old. My Grandma May was a ‘full figured’ woman when she died in her late 80s. My other grandma, a waif of a woman, died in her 90s. I look at cancer patients, like my dad, and they can get so so skinny; sudden unexplained weight loss is  a warning sign of cancer. This idea that health and life and death are all necessarily linked to weight in a fixed way is nuts.

Crazier still though, is that I believed that it was my ‘job’ as a friend to to make Sue lose weight. That if I could figure out the right thing to say or do I would control her and her actions. But really, is that what a ‘friend’ is, is that their ‘job’ — a weight loss coach ? Even if it was my job..could I do it? Could I control Sue? I thought back to when I used to smoke. I knew my family and friends wanted me to stop, it’s dangerous, but did I stop because someone else wanted me to? Of course not — I stopped when I was ready, when I had had enough,  when I no longer wanted the risk. Why should I insist Sue be any different?   

Craziest of all though was the belief that if Sue really loved me she would just become an  anorexic gym rat, like me.  First off, how in the heck did I make a friend’s struggle with their weight about me? About my loss and my needs? Moreover, this idea that love always looks a single way –that there is a correlation to being loved and to having the person who loves me do exactly what I want, defied so many of my experiences of love. When I was a smoker, did I not love my family and friends? Or did I just take love breaks while I was out having a cigarette? Back when I didn’t want to go to school and my parents made me, did they not love me, or me them, because we wanted different things?  

In essence I wanted something, someone, to be different than what they were. This is the very foundation of suffering. And suffer I did, with all those nights awake worrying about Sue, with my sense of inadequacy and frustration not being able to change her. And what about Sue? I certainly didn’t think she just loved being nagged by me; still, I jeopardized our friendship with my behaviors.  Honestly, when I look back at how I spoke to and treated Sue around this issue, I feel so fortunate she had so much more patience with me then I showed to her and that we are still friends today.

So If you will bear with another prelude…when I first came to this practice I suffered from extreme, almost crippling anxiety. I was afraid of almost everything, though disease, death, injury and abandonment certainly topped my list. It quickly became clear that without addressing my fear and the views that underlay it, I just wasn’t going to get anywhere. After all..extreme anxiety is not exactly a clear headed place from which to contemplate.

Looking back now however, I can see how much I owe my practice to the paranoia period (which least it seem so neat and buttoned-up now, lasted almost 3 years as a focal point of my practice). First off, extreme and constant  fear is quite painful  and pain has a way of being pretty motivating so I was fairly diligent and steady in my practice.

Addressing the fear also helped me begin to see how permanent my views of the world were; just like in the homeless story, I was so sure that what I imagined, everything connecting imagined A to imagined Z was sure to come true. I also began to see my tendency to try and control, to hedge, to protect myself, and I saw  the limitations and costs of those efforts. Ultimately these two things, my super fixed imaginings of the future and my deep misunderstanding of control,  have been cornerstones of my practice, tendencies of mine that run so deep I can almost use them as a key to begin unlocking every one of my stories..my wrong views. So, the next few posts will be stories from the Paranoid Period: