How easy it is to delude oneself. I was told the debilitating effects of therapy would accumulate and the two weeks after therapy ends would be just as bad as the last week of therapy. In spite of this I found myself feeling I would be bouncing back this first week after therapy. My intent to attend the Friday gathering of Snowflower Sangha did not come to pass nor did other anticipated outings. In retrospect I was setting myself up for unnecessary suffering. Implicitly I was thinking in terms of how I wanted things to be rather than being with whatever was the case.
In spite of the self delusion described above there are definite little recovery signs scattered about. When we lived out in the woods I saw spring evolving from winter in sporadic ways. Spring never arrived at once with some heraldic event. A tiny wildflower showed itself in a sunny spot a few yards from the remnants of a snow drift. The early arriving red winged blackbirds sometime found themselves singing as late snow blew off the marsh. I'll have to keep this in mind as I await my "Spring" and not expect some heraldic event.
With respect to both recovering from treatment and also how this period relates to the rest of my life I can't help but think in terms of the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the bardo. Bardo is an in between or transitional state. It came to Tibetan Buddhism from the earlier Tibetan Bon religion. In that context bardo is where consciousness reside between lives. I think of it in metaphorical terms. Is this illness experience telling me I am tied to an obsolete idea of myself that I need to shake to move on to a new version?
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