Thursday marked two days and finally Friday evening. I’d be leaving for Providence Zen the next morning, Saturday. And it begins… Just do it The first three days went by relatively easy! I was surprised. I was able to control my aching back with yoga during each ten minute walking period. I would slip into my room and fold a pillow under my back as I lay on the floor with arms outstretched and head hanging towards the floor. Then a little twisting each side, plow pose, put my robe back on and head for the dharma room for the next session. Over the days I had developed a searing pain in the middle of my back, which again felt like someone stabbing me with a screwdriver and twisting it deeper. I fidgeted, I sat taller, rounded my back, cocked my head this way and that, took the Zen sword hit when the HDT came around, but this nagging pain persisted no matter what I did. It was becoming a problem, my sole focus. This pain, this pain, this pain….how can I get rid of it? I have to get rid of it! On Wednesday, 5 days into the retreat, during the afternoon sitting I was struggling with my pain and it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to get rid of this thing. Nothing was working to relieve it. I sat looking out over the pond and the idea came to me to go into the pain, lean into it, stop trying to run from it. I remember reading somewhere that pains in the front of your body are worries about the future and pains in your back body are past problems surfacing. Perhaps? I don’t know about that but I closed my eyes to focus on this pain. What is this? When I closed my eyes I came face to face with an orange pulsing light in my minds eye. I thought back to a time when I might have experienced sharp pain in my back. I came up with a memory of scurrying under a barbed-wired fence when I was a kid and having a barb stick in my back. I came up with being hit in the back with a baseball while playing backyard ball. I looked back www.southshoreandcapecodmetaphysics.com/
into my memory banks for an earlier time. Nothing. Still hot searing pain and the orange light pulsing in my mind. I looked into this orange light, focused on it and the middle of the light parted to create a circle of hazy orange. Within the haze an orange winged form appeared in the middle of the circle. It seemed to be in the form of a beast or dragon with teeth. The hazy circle was beginning to close, but I forced my will on it to keep it open. This beast with teeth was trying to close the circle and keep me out. I forced and fought to keep the circle open and suddenly I was pulsing orange bursts of light at this beast. I fired a burst to its body, a burst to the head of it, a burst again to the body of whatever this was. The hazy circle was all the while squeezing and trying to shut me out. It was strong. I started yelling at this beast; “You will not shut me out!” yelling at the top of my lungs, “You will not …. NO, NO.” I’m screaming with everything I have in my lungs and bursting pulses at this thing to kill it. All the while the pain is fired molten steel in my back. I fire off one final burst with an ear splitting scream; I simultaneously hear a clap of the chugpi behind Continued on Page 22...
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