Bladder Cancer

[Lilou]

Hi @Angchop , it's nice to hear from you again. I've often wondered how you were doing. Thanks for the update. I look forward to seeing you around more often. Congrats on being 12 years cancer free! Hopefully the source of your infections has been taken care of.

Merry Christmas!

 

[Angchop]

Thank you Lilou I have been just lurking for too long I will be around more for sure!

 

[Angchop]

Hello! I just wanted to share a bit, I don’t ever do it, and it is just because I feel I don’t have anything important to share.
I have now been cancer free for 15 years and that’s amazing because I didn’t think I would live this long after my diagnosis. But here I am…must be a reason I’m still around.
I just wanted to share how I have been feeling for the past year or 2. I feel numb?..I don’t know how to really explain it. It’s like…this crazy world going on around me, and I have no fear or no real feeling about it. I’m just observing it all without feeling. It could be that the schedule of my life seems never ending. I work Monday through Friday …an hour commute each way. I leave at 6 am and get home at 6 pm and after cooking dinner and eating, it’s generally 7:30-8 o’clock and in bed by 9 to do it all over again. The weekends are spent getting ready for another week. I have become unfeeling about everything.
Some days I feel like I’m ready for 5th density…at least it would be something different..lol. Anyway, everything in my life is quite fine…all healthy and for the most part happy, but I can’t shake this apathy towards it all. Anyone else feel like this?

Thanks for listening!

 

[Magnolia]

Anyone else feel like this?

At other times, yes, I've felt like this. The mind-numbing, go no-where, routine-boredom, routine-boredom, routine-boredom..... And everyone around me in the same boat, even though they might be pretending (deluding themselves) otherwise. And I have squandered so much time and energy living it, despising it, entrapped in it, sucked dry by it.

But right now, no. I feel differently now.
I realized (far too late) that the problem I had was not the routine, but my perspective. I needed to enlarge my perspective. I needed help to do that. But that kind of help is hard to find, and I didn't find it. I got a lot of advice. Most of it was bad.

During those years of grueling routine, I could have studied, contemplated, meditated, realized "nothingness" (in the Zen sense) or "fullness of being" (in the Christian sense), but instead I just felt bored, mechanical and underemployed. Now, I have regrets about my squandered time.

My parents died a few years back, and I think about them. I have had some insights (or fantasies -- depending how one sees it) about their after-death journeys. Based on these images and dreams, it seems that "death/after-life" may not be the la-la land that people make it out to be. It can certainly be colorful; it has its joys and immense reliefs, for sure, but it also seems to have its tough moments. I think the "life review" is real, and it occurs at an appropriate 'time' (not necessarily immediately on death). From what I have "seen," it is not easy.

It seems to me that the hardest part of the life review is knowing one can do nothing once one has "seen" one's idiotic life objectively. I have a sense that once dead, there is no hope. One can do a life review, recognize, understand and regret everything one did with one's life, and to others (out of ignorance and self-centeredness - no matter how well intentioned), but nothing can be done about it. One is stuck with one's past thoughts, one's past actions and one's entire past, with no hope and no chance of changing it. It is a hellish situation, even for one that has gone to "heaven." Like the film Nosso Lar illustrates, it involves crawling through the mud.

But when one is alive......one can recognize, understand, regret and re-orient. That opportunity to "re-orient" is the hope of us all. It is an option offered only when one is alive. Only while living do we have the opportunity to contemplate Divine Mind, seek to grasp what is true and discard what is false, discriminate between what is real and what is fantasy, and partake in the often subtle or miniscule miracles that rain upon us while we are alive. Despite appearances to the contrary, Love permeates the earth; we live and move and have our being in it. But it must be seen.

In my situation, I just had to get my focus off my stupid little life (which took me many years) and begin to become interested in three questions: "who am I," "what is life," and "what is 'God'." My routine did not change. But I did (at least a little).

Of course, this is just speculation based on images and ideas. It seems I ain't never was nothin' and I really don't know a damn thing. And the more I learn, the more those statements pertain.

Advice often sucks. However, I'll join the club. Memorizing and mentally reciting Paul's letter on love is a worthy task. Especially when it is recited slowly, contemplating the meaning of each phrase, and considering oneself in relation to the words. Kind of like a daily life-review. There is something very special about that letter.

 

[Angchop]

Magnolia, thank you for your response. I do know when I shift my perspective and stop dreading the routine, and rather embracing it…then I actually enjoy it and do some deep introspection and thinking. I’m very much a do-er…I love to get things done. Aside from my day to day job, on some weekends I clean houses for a few different people and I really love that. I’m alone in my own head and am able to tune out the noise and just be. I think my main issue right now is not having enough of just me/alone time. I need to carve more of that out for myself