In April 2009, my husband almost died from an anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting. As a beekeeper, he had been stung many times before. But this was the first time he ever had a severe reaction. So it was quite a shock. It was probably hardest on me because he lost consciousness after the first five minutes and was unconscious until he woke up in the hospital an hour later.
I won’t go into all the terrifying details. It’s enough to say that it was very scary for me and the kids. If you've ever seen someone convulsing in anaphylactic shock, you know what I mean. Even worse, the paramedics couldn't find our house for about 15 minutes, and they barely arrived in time to save my husband. That was the longest 15 minutes of my life.
However, I don’t necessarily label the entire experience as “bad”. Overall, it was "neutral but intense". If I had to give it a label, I would call it “enlightening”. I kept a journal of my thoughts during that week, and I want to share a few ideas with you because I think that this is a story of personal growth.
The first night, after I came home from staying with my husband in the hospital, I wrote in my journal about the vivid details of what had happened. I said, “It was so horrible! I can’t tell you how horrible it was!” After comforting the children and tucking them into bed, I tried to sleep. But every time I started to drift off, I was hit by a wave of panic that swept through my body like an electric shock. Each wave of panic was preceded by a vivid flashback, a visual image of something I had seen that day. Fortunately, I had learned a technique for dealing with emotional trauma called EFT. I did a round of EFT for each image as it arose. Eventually, I fell into a deep sleep.
I spent the next day talking to my husband. I told him everything that had happened (since he couldn’t remember anything), and I cried a lot. I went to bed feeling fine, but I woke up in the middle of the night with another panic attack. This time, in addition to doing EFT, I listened to my Holosync meditation cd. By the third day, I had stopped having panic attacks. That was a relief. In the past, I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder because of another difficult experience, and it took many years to get over it because I didn’t have the benefits of EFT and Holosync.
On the third and fourth days, I began to think of how this experience affected our extended family, neighbors and friends, as well as the doctors and nurses at the hospital. At the time of the crisis, everyone seemed to drop their ego shell for a little while and become more real. There was a palpable feeling of love that surrounded us, and I felt God's comforting presence.
On the fifth and sixth days, I started to see the experience as a metaphor for the suffering of all mankind. I realized that all suffering is part of the same thing, a concept that could be called Suffering. With this universal realization, I felt a connection to all people, regardless of race, religion, social status, etc. I had a feeling of oneness with all of creation.
At this point, I thought I had reached the peak of my understanding of this experience. I had just gone through several levels of awareness in one week. But on the seventh day, I had a new idea. I realized that there are many different ways to interpret an experience, and different people will interpret situations with the perspective of whichever level of awareness they are currently at. There is no right or wrong way to interpret an experience. All ways are valid. But some ways of interpreting an experience lead to fear and paranoia, while others lead to peace.
On the first day, when the experience seemed very personal, there was a lot of fear. The fear decreased as my awareness expanded outward to include other people and, eventually, the whole universe. With this "big picture" awareness, I understood how an individual can be both very important and very insignificant. It's like the grain of sand and the whole beach. You can look at a grain of sand, or you can look at the whole beach. It's just a shift in perspective. Neither way of looking at it is right or wrong. What counts is being able to shift your perspective back and forth freely between the two. Both the individual and the whole are important. If you get stuck in either of these seemingly opposite perspectives, you cause suffering for yourself and others.
Each of us is an individual, but we are also part of a group. If you've seen the Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan, you may recall when Spock says, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." In the sequel to that movie, James Kirk risks his crew to bring back Spock. When Spock confronts Kirk with this apparent lack of logic, Kirk replies, "The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many." Kirk is saying that your group is only worth sacrificing for if the group respects the needs of the individual. This is why political systems like communism fail -- they lack respect for the individual.
On the day of my husband's accident, many people worked together to help one suffering individual. These people did not belong to any particular group, but they were united in their humanity. This realization helped me to go beyond egocentric and ethnocentric thinking into a worldcentric and eventually a Kosmic point of view -- the big picture.
Since that day, I have been trying to integrate other aspects of my life into the big picture. I have experienced a shift in perspective that has changed my interpretation of the world and everything in it, including my relationships with other people. I feel peace in areas of my life that used to be painful. I now think of the levels of awareness as the concentric rings of an onion, expanding outward. And I want the whole onion.
Ken Wilber says, "When my identity and sympathy expand from me to my family; from my family to tribes, communities, even nations; from nations to all of humanity; and from humanity to all sentient beings without exception: what have I done?, except take more and more souls into my own, and increased thereby my own depth, by moving increasingly out of me and into the Kosmos at large, until what I call my "self" and what I call the "Kosmos" are one and the same undeniable Fact, and the Love that moves the sun and other stars now moves me just as well; and we are all embraced in a gentle compassion that knows no others or outsiders, that refuses fragmentation and cannot remember sorrow's many names."
So, what does this have to do with gardening? Well, besides the obvious lesson that if someone in your family is allergic to bee stings, you should keep a couple of EpiPens on hand (We had one EpiPen, and it malfunctioned), there are some other things that I learned.
First, don’t take everything that happens to you personally. The universe is neutral. The world isn’t out to get you. Paranoia comes from an egocentric view of the world. Once my awareness expanded beyond the suffering self, I got over the panic attacks. That was remarkable, considering that not long ago, I suffered from chronic anxiety. One thing that helped me to get over this problem in the past was gardening. I’m not sure how it helped, but it did. Maybe gardening expanded my awareness and decreased my fear of the “not me” part of the world. Certainly, gardening is a meditative practice. There were days when I only felt peaceful when I was in the garden.
I sometimes get customers who attack me personally. Either their seeds got lost in the mail, or something failed to germinate because they didn't follow the instructions. So they write me a nasty e-mail, accusing me of ruining their garden. It’s always a bit of a shock when that happens. You’d think that any logical person would simply state the facts and ask what can be done about it. But looking at these customers with expanded awareness, I see that they are stuck on the egocentric level. They must be very miserable (not to mention, making everyone around them miserable, too). But I don’t have to be miserable. I have a choice. I can see the whole picture and choose how to think about the situation. That's freedom.
In the weeks following my husband's mishap, I found myself being entertained by the comments of other people. None of them had been present at the time of the crisis, but they were all sure they knew why it happened and what it meant. As a student of psychology, I found this very intriguing. I saw that the meaning that people assign to situations is a result of their level of cognitive development and their own "map of reality" or belief system.
The funniest perspective was from someone who claimed that my husband survived because he was a good church member who kept the commandments. Maybe this person had forgotten that my brother-in-law died last year from accidental electrocution, and he was a good church member, too. I wonder how many people go to church because they think it will prevent them from dying.
Well, this just demonstrates that people make their own meanings. When they can't see all the causes and effects involved in a situation, they make up causes. This is called magical thinking, and it's how children think before they develop the ability to think rationally. Some adults still confuse God with Santa Claus. I acknowledge the Lord's involvement in my personal life, and I'm very grateful that my husband survived. At the same time, I don't expect God to save me from the law of cause and effect. If I touch an electrical line with a metal pole, like my brother-in-law did, I expect to be electrocuted.
For now, I've chosen not to put any meaning on the bee sting experience. I know that any meaning I put on my experiences comes from me. And the meaning will change as my perspective changes over time.
Have you noticed how your interpretation of things that happened in the past changes over time? The situation itself does not change. What is, simply is. Only your perspective changes. Eventually, you may be able to look at difficult situations in your life and say, “It’s okay.” You will see the big picture and how everything fits together. This is enlightenment -- the experience of Reality. I like to think of the Serenity Prayer by the theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr.
"God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference."
Bill Harris says, "Let whatever happens be okay." This is my favorite mantra. You can't change what is -- what has already happened. You can only change your thoughts and your responses. Change your perspective. Change your life.
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