Gandhi And Gestone

I read in Autobiography of a Yogi that Mahatma Gandhi had his appendix out without an anaesthetic.  All the while chatting cheerfully to his devotees!  It’s truly possible for people that have mastered the art of self hypnosis and also people that take their meditation practice to great heights.  Gandhi apparently meditated for 3 hours a day and took a day of silence once a week to help still his mind.  I believe that we are all capable of separating ourselves from our pain, but it takes devotion to the practice of stilling your thoughts and getting into a very calm space.  The guru I visited in India, once held a hugging session (remember she hugs up to 50,000 people, one by one, in the space of about 24 hours) with a rusty nail driven right through the bottom of her foot.  She didn’t tell anyone and her devotees only discovered it much later. 

I think it’s kind of a mind power thing, although mind is probably the wrong word.  I think it’s learning the difference between pain and the association we have with pain.  Pain is something that exists in your body, and at some time there comes a moment when you start to become concerned about it, turn your focus towards it, and make it yours.  So for instance, you might walk past a thorn tree, scratch yourself, and draw a little blood.  You notice that it happened, but you no longer react to it the way a small child would, by panicking and bursting out in tears.  In all likelihood, you rub your arm and carry on walking, you aren’t really associating yourself with that pain.  I think that that is a little bit of the philosophy the great saints use.  They see the appendectomy/rusty nail as a little scratch and keep their mind out of it.

Now you know where this is going… wouldn’t it be great if I could be a bit more like Gandhi about these upcoming Gestone injections, instead of like the blubbering three year old that emerged in my brain this morning.  I had a real good sob, just let it all out.  I should be so grateful, this cycle is going fantastically so far, but I’m just scared now, and feeling tired and my mental energy is low. 

It’s like that time I did the London to Brighton bike ride with no training, on a whim with a friend.  We hired some bikes (on the morning of the ride), mine actually had a basket on the front of it.  Hers was a racer, looked fancier, but she discovered on a downhill that the brakes didn’t work.  We thought we were in with the pro’s because we had made ourself some pasta for breakfast in the morning and called it carbo loading, yep, that was the sum total of our preparation.  Bearing in mind that those were my heavy partying days, there wasn’t a whole lot of health going down in my body as it was, in fact looking back I sometimes wonder that I was functioning at all.  I had no idea how far a mile was (I come from a country made up of kilometres), nevermind 60 miles, and I had no intention of finding out.  Logic also didn’t play a great role in my life back then  

By the half way mark, I’d had two burst tyres and I’d lost my friend.  I just had enough, put my bike down and lay on the grass on the side of the road “for a minute”.  I felt so wiped, and the other half of the journey wasn’t even making an appearance in my mind anymore.  Some old guy (OK I was in my twenties, he might have been in his early fifties but I saw that as old back then) stopped next to me.  Sat down and drank his cooldrink, then offered me an icecream if I finished the race with him.  Anyone who knows me, knows my deep passion for all things sweet and how easily I can be bribed with them, so the only other thought I remember having before I got my sore arse back on that bike was, I wonder if he’s serious about the ice cream?  What if he’s not, how can I stay polite and still get the ice cream…  Well, that lovely man walked with me, cycled with me, and ignored my whinging pleas about my burning calf muscles for the remaining miles.  Then he bought me the scrummiest ice cream at the end, I could have kissed him.

The point is, when you are in a ride like that, and you are half way, you don’t really have the option of just giving up, and you can’t sleep in the grass pretending the race doesn’t exist, and finish it the next day.  It’s a bit like how I feel now, I’m two days away from finishing the first round of injections (yep, 23 down).  Today, I’m lying in the grass on the side of the road, “just for a minute”.  The gruelling last leg of this race still lies ahead of me, and I can’t even let my mind go there right now.  I’m scared and holding out for a man with an icecream.

I think his name is Gandhi.

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