wandering wherever my mind takes me … good luck finishing this one ;)

Written By kaitlyn roman

10/23/24 - 10:25 am

(sitting outside the clinic’s lobby on bench under a beautiful tree in between treatments, being hugged by branches full of fluorescent green leaves) 

So, God put Jimmy (the man with bone cancer I referred to in the last blog post) and I alone together in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber this morning after my emotional meltdown that revolved around him last night. Yet again, God has gifted me with another divine synchronicity. Jimmy is still struggling and in deep pain, but he is a fighter. He is holding onto hope. His dream of being able to live a slow and simple life revolving around health and surfing on the beach near his new place that he just bought in Puerto Rico is keeping him alive. I hope and pray he gets to live out those days. I spent much of the time I had in the chamber praying for him, begging God to intercede on his behalf. He needs a miracle … and I believe he can and will receive one. Anything is possible.

We spoke quite a bit. He opened up about his illness and marriage. His wife hasn’t been as supportive as he had expected during this time of immense struggle because her priority is taking care of their children. She is finally coming around and is at least visiting him here and there, but she continues leaving him to go to the bar and grab drinks (which he obviously has not been able to do for a long time now). “I used to drink, too. We did that together… but now that I’m looking from the outside in, I see that lifestyle so clearly. It’s… different,” Jimmy sighed, “I feel bad for her in a way. Life without drinking is filled with so much more clarity.” I nodded.

Every patient has experienced this. We are going through something life-changing every moment of every day, so naturally, we are changing at a heightened rate. The other people in our lives are often changing at much slower rates (not better, not worse; just different). This often results in us falling off the same wavelength as loved ones that we used to be so in sync with. Sometimes, we just become different and have to go our different ways. It’s hard, especially during illness. Losing a connection with a loved one is already heartbreaking enough… Losing a connection while going through a near-death experience feels impossible.

I pray that Jimmy’s partner continues to show up. This is the single most important time of his entire life to have his partner to lean on. We take the vow, “in sickness and in health… til death do us part,” for a reason. When I take that vow one day, I will mean it.

Jimmy also explained that he regretted spending his entire life working, despite being an entrepreneur and loving his job(s). “I want to travel the world… I want to focus on what really matters: health.”

Everyone close to death or wrapped up in disease always comes to this same conclusion. Blinded by shiny distractions (that never truly make us feel whole) like wealth, status, image, career, etc., we lose touch with the simple fact that it’s the “little things” in life that are the most important of all. It often takes tragedy to wake us up… to motivate us to remove ourselves from the eternal treadmill of fake dopamine/pleasures and to immerse ourselves into the real bone marrow of life: the present moment. As one of my favorite human beings (my Yoga teacher) says, “You have to get sick and tired of getting sick and tired before you are brave enough to make a change.” Unfortunately, for many of us (including myself), this is true. People have to WANT to change; we cannot force them to… and sometimes, something catastrophic has to happen to kickstart that change into motion… and keeping the ball rolling is not easy either. It takes a whole lot of willpower and action.

Getting Lyme Disease definitely forced me to up and drop so many “pleasures” (A.K.A. addictions) like food, exercise, drinking, drugs, etc… For example, I gave up gluten, dairy, sugar, artificial / non-organic foods, alcohol, weed, and more before I even received my diagnosis. At that point, I was in so much relentless pain that food felt like the only true pleasure I had left. It was really challenging for me… but it has also been more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. Now that it’s a formed habit, it is easy and enjoyable for me to eat like this, even though my choices are extremely restricted. I wouldn’t choose it any other way.

Food is medicine, and everything that I put into my body fuels my cells, which determine my health. As my dear friend KaLisa says, “I am a Ferrari, baby… and you only put the highest quality fuel into Ferrari.” Food is sacred. It is our life force; it quite literally delivers the energy of the sun (a symbol of God / Christ in so many religions) directly to our bodies. Today, I choose to eat only foods that are directly of this earth, just like our ancestors did.

Each time I eat, I silently pray over my food and give thanks to the hands that grew it, picked it, shipped it to the grocery store, and prepared a meal with it… A.K.Aa the entire assembly line that helped get the food to my plate. I also show my gratitude to nature and each element (earth, water, fire, air) for their role in its creation… and of course, to the Creator of the Universe. Finally, I thank the food itself for nurturing each cell of my body and restoring my health on all levels (while visualizing all of this happening within me). We have lost touch with just how important and central to life food is. Our entire world gathers around and is completely dependent on it.

Sickness may inspire people to make the lifestyle changes they’ve known they have needed to make for years… but it sure as hell doesn’t make following through with that decision any easier. Still, strictly living an extremely healthy life feels like the only choice I have if I really truly want to have a second chance. For me, it’s all about getting past that initial mental resistance to engage in healthier behavior (ex: getting myself to go the gym), coined “limbic friction” by neuroscientist Andrew Huberman. The more we challenge ourselves in dealing with this friction, the better we become at dealing with the challenge. We are basically re-conditioning our minds to better habits. No matter what, we are bound to have addictions, or at least preferences… we may as well choose “healthier” ones that benefit our overall well-being… and try not to become too attached to those behaviors. Our happiness and value shouldn’t depend on what we are doing. We are enough in every state of Being. We are reflections of a PERFECT God. (Recommendation: The book “Atomic Habits” is a very helpful guide to creating and carrying out healthier habits).

:)

Spending so much time at this clinic is teaching me the art of patience in a world that is consumed by instant gratification. So much of my time spent inside and outside of the clinic is spent in stillness and silence. I am almost always at rest. I often use my time in treatments to meditate and contemplate… to retrain my brain to be present. Ultimately, my journey here feels like a dopamine and addiction detox just as much as a physical detox of unhealthy toxins from my body. Every day I am faced with a choice: give up and fall back into my old self-limiting patterns … or use positive thoughts, emotions, and sheer willpower together to interrupt and rewire my neural pathways and self-destructive habits (I think, so I feel, so I act — “the trivium… it all starts with the thoughts). In a lot of ways, it feels like my mind is a wild animal that I am constantly training. I am learning to keep it on a leash so that when it wanders too far into the past or future, I can gently tug it back to the Here and Now, while maintaining equanimity and compassion. It’s an imperfect and often exhausting practice… but I trust in its ability to eliminate my learned, self-perpetuated suffering.

Anyways, back to Jimmy. I think of him getting diagnosed with Cancer and it brings me to my knees. Cancer is a hell of a disease, and our direct association of it with death in the west creates even further fear. Sometimes, I wonder how much of disease is a placebo effect or psychosomatic to some degree. I have studied psychosomatic illness in depth the past two years and I have to say, it is fascinating (Book recommendations: “The Way Out” and “The Divided Mind"). I personally believe that disease begins with the soul being out of balance. This then travels to the mind, which impacts the emotions and eventually manifests in the body.

But this is in NO WAY saying that illness is anyone’s fault.

Illness is the result of trauma left unhealed. Trauma can be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. It can be a real wound, or stress, or something your ex said to you 20 years ago, etc. But in the end, trauma is trauma… and it no matter what kind it is, it obstructs the flow of our energy through our body, which eventually makes us sick in one way or another.

We are currently facing a mass chronic health pandemic in our country… and it is horrifying. Disease is taught. It is conditioned into us. The way we live in this society breeds it. The 9-5 hustle mindset, processed + pesticide-filled food / water / air, toxic body care products, social media / technology addiction, striving for unreachable expectations, etc. are the perfect recipe for sickness. We are overstimulating ourselves to death. My doctor here says that if we keep living the way we are, our species will go extinct within a few generations. Let that sink in.

Being healthy these days feels like a full-time job in and of itself. It takes constant research, energy, motivation, an excess of money and time, etc. Our state of health relies most on the depth of our knowledge and awareness. I spend at least an hour at the grocery store every time I shop for food now because I read every single label of every single product I purchase. I stay updated on which brands are bought out by big corporations. I try to stay away from food packaged in plastic. I only allow myself to be treated by functional/naturalistic doctors and medicines. It is my dream someday to have my own chickens and to grow my own herbs, fruits, and vegetables. I’m going to be that little old witch-doctor lady who has a natural remedy for every illness in the book.

It is also important to mention that our health largely revolves around our thoughts, emotions, and behavioral patterns. What we think eventually becomes true for us. It all starts in the mind. Our inner world is projected upon our outer world and as a result, greatly influences what we perceive to be our reality. “As within, so without. As above, so below. As the Universe, so the Soul.” Your external reality is a mirror projection of your internal reality. A healthy soul creates a healthy mind creates a healthy body. So, feed your soul and be kind to your mind (and body). It’s just as important (if not more) than eating healthy and working out. I believe the mind ultimately rules over matter.

I know — it takes a shit ton of time and effort for all of this to become automatic behaviors, but I cannot think of a more worthwhile way of spending my time.

Grocery Store Tips:

(Here is a wonderful podcast on the health crisis striking America by Casey and Calley Means… I think everyone on planet earth should listen to this one — https://open.spotify.com/episode/1gaa5mOEUdQgl3EgoYIXPJ)

I thank God every day that more and more people are awakening out of this mass psychosis / hypnosis and taking their health into their own hands. This clinic is a real life example of that. Everyone here is so impressively educated on nutrition and holistic health. We have to be. We had no other choice but to become our own advocates — unless we wanted to succumb to western medicine, which is focused on symptom treatment rather than truly healing the condition by finding out its root cause. None of us wanted to take any more pills, endure any more surgeries, or be given one more blanket-statement false diagnosis (all of which would likely end up making us sicker)… so we taught ourselves how to heal all on our own. Doing so was one of the most challenging parts of this entire journey for me. Learning about biochemistry, pathology, and nutrition while having neurological problems (brain fog, forgetfulness, inability to learn new information), constant debilitating migraines, arthritic aches in every bone of my body, and debilitating fatigue felt almost impossible… but I knew I had no other choice. My fight was worth it… and now I feel it is a massive part of my purpose to share this knowledge about health with others… to teach others to take their healing into their own hands. I cannot watch one more innocent person suffer and die at the hands of western medicine.

This clinic administers only natural / functional medicine… and it saves people’s lives with a much higher success rate than conventional medicine does. So many cancer patients here have told me that people often die from the after-effects of chemotherapy rather than the cancer itself. I admire their brave decision to go against the grain and place their health in the hands of an unconventional doctor. I know they will be rewarded greatly for doing so.

The ancients knew what they were doing when it came to healing. I am glad we are finally listening and returning to their wise ways. We aren’t built to live such artificial, busy lives disconnected from earth, ourselves, each other, and God. It is totally against our nature. I hypothesize it is why we are so sick in the first place. We have forgotten how to nurture our spirit and it has rapidly snowballed over time into our current health decline.

Interestingly enough, the more time I spend around everyone here, I see that so many of us unexpectedly got sick during the highest peak of our lives. It’s a recurring trend that patients fall ill during or directly after a period of highs (as well as lows of course). Take my new friend Samantha who just moved to Florida six months ago to live her dream life with her partner. She is teaching horseback riding lessons by the sea, as he is fixing up a sailboat that they had planned to live on someday. One moment, she’s living her best life, and the next, she happens to find a lump on her chest. The next week, she is unexpectedly diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer and told she needs to have a piece of her breast removed if she even wants to have a chance at survival. She cannot be a day over 40. I cannot even imagine what that must have felt like.

When I got sick,  I had just returned from traveling the country with my cousin for two months… It was the best two months of my life. We created an alternate reality that I will never be able to explain in words to another human being. Not to mention, I was falling head over heels in love for the very first time, having just reconnected with my soulmate in beautiful Portugal. It was the happiest and closest to God I had ever been up to that point. I felt truly in love with life (after many years of feeling so depressed and anxious). Robert experienced the same phenomena; he was traveling the world as a yacht deckhand one moment and bed-bound the next.

The timing feels deliberate.

So many of us have the same copy-and-paste story. Perhaps the pendulum of life must compensate for rhythm and swing as low as it did high. But why does it happen so all of a sudden? It feels intentionally planned. The stark contrast of being the happiest you’ve ever been, and then at the drop of a dime, becoming the most lost, ill, and afraid you’ve ever been is gut-wrenching… but I think it forcefully slingshots us into a deeper, more profound healing and appreciation for the miracle that is life.

“The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!” (-Dostoevsky … this one gives me chills.)

I almost wonder if it happens when we are the happiest and freest because our body finally feels it’s safe to release all of the trauma it has been holding within for so long. On the flip side of the coin, when we experience unexpected tragedy, the unexpected stress is the domino that knocks down all the other dominoes… the drop of water that causes the tea kettle to finally boil over… and we almost always get BURNED (or knocked down, too) in the process. It makes sense to me that radical highs and lows are the most common entry points for illness… Somehow, they both open doors up to God. It’s one of those things that makes sense intuitively, but I cannot explain why.

In Hermeticism (a beautiful ancient Egyptian philosophy), The Law of Rhythm is a universal principle that states that everything in life, including energy, moods, and experiences, is cyclical. It explains that the ebbs and flows of life are a natural part of the universe’s process and that one cannot exist without the other. It specifically says: “Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.” (–The Kybalion... A.K.A. one of my favorite books EVER). In simple words, what goes up… most come back down.

The secret antidote to this pendulum swing exists within another Hermetic law: The Law of Polarity. “The universe operates on a principle of duality, where opposing forces like light and dark, hot and cold, love and hate, and success and failure are interconnected aspects of the same reality.” So, basically, what we perceive to be “opposites” are truly varying degrees on the same scale, measuring the same thing. For example, take hot and cold. They are simply varying degrees of the same thing: temperature. Therefore, one can be converted into the other. The same goes for emotions. All negative emotions are just forms of positive emotions; the only difference is that they are vibrating at a lower frequency… thus sadness can be converted into joy, fear into faith, hate into love, etc. There really is no seperation at all between “opposites…” Division is an illusion of the mind.

  • "Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites. Like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree. Extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.” The Kybalion — The Law of Polarity

The Law of Rhythm encourages us to follow the natural flow of energy and harmony of the Universe (the eternal tao- “the way of things”). While we can't change the patterns/laws of the Universe, we can change how we can change how we respond to them… and we can choose not to resist what is Law, but rather to ebb and flow with it. Nature is our greatest clue as to whether we are in harmony with the heartbeat of life. It teaches us via pleasure and pain. When we are given pain, we are not in harmony with what is. When we experience true liberation and pleasure, we are dancing hand in hand with existence itself.

Yoga teaches this. In fact, Yoga is the outward expression of “Prana” (our very life force / universal energy that flows through and around all living beings, connecting us to each other). In other words, the asanas (postures) were specifcally designed to mirror the patterns and movements of our Prana, therefore syncopating our bodies with the rhythm of life (which frees us of resistance and suffering). It also teaches us to maintain inner peace and equanimity throughout physical discomfort by breathing through the poses. This helps us remain detached from both pain and pleasure. This is the reason breath-work is so powerful as well. The breath also mirrors the flow of life: in and out, in and out … rise and fall, rise and fall. It’s the same energy constantly being recycled to appear as something new (which gives off the illusion of separation). It also keeps us connected to this present moment; it helps us train our brain not to wander or get stuck/attached to anything. I

Meditation teaches us to compassionately witness these patterns of the monkey mind with a detached loving awareness. Through consistent practice, one begins to clearly see the true nature of life: impermanence, non-self, interdependence, and dependent origination, which frees them from the illusions the human mind has created: identity / “self,” separation (duality), permanence, suffering, etc.

How can one suffer after they realize are ultimately undying and eternal, and that this life is an illusion? 

When the Buddha says we are “empty,” it isn’t meant to sound cold and nihilistic. It means that we are empty of permanent form. The individual self is an aggregate of different parts that are constantly changing, hence there is no permanent “self” or “personality.” Our true nature is pure awareness, or “God.”Our current body is just the most recent manifestation of that awareness… it will one day be discarded and transformed into something new yet again… just like everything else in this world. Before I was born, who was I? After I am born, who am I?

Verse 11: "We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that makes the vessel useful” (—Tao Te Ching) … Turns out emptiness and fullness are one and the same, too. Paradoxes, man… I love them. Our God is a humorous God. :)

  • “In attachment there is pain, and in pain deliverance, so that at this point attachment itself offers no obstacle, and the liberated one is at last free to love with all his might and to suffer with all his heart.” —Alan Watts

    (detachment from and total embracement of suffering as neither “good” nor “bad” is the ultimate liberation).

  • “It is high time to ask whether it is really any scandal, any deplorable inconsistency, for a human being to be both angel and animal with ewual devotion.” — Alan Watts

    (our humanity and divinity must both be embraced. the two can coexist without contradiction. we will not be free until we accept every version of ourselves - each shadow, light, and every in between. humanity and divinity also are varying degrees on the same scale).

Yet, as I spend most of my time around all of these weary sick bodies, I still can’t completely wrap my human mind around the depth and pain of disease and suffering as a whole that exists on this planet. It’s like… HOW and WHY would a all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God allow this? On the human plane, I feel heartbroken for all of these people who are struggling… but on the spiritual plane, I have to believe that it’s for some greater purpose, and that this is simply our souls’ curriculum in this lifetime. It’s simply phenomena rising and disappearing. It’s just an unfolding of energy. It’s the ebb and flow of the Universe… and we all have the ability to work with it rather than against it. Through this lens, everything appears to be a vehicle for expansion. Ram Dass calls it “spiritual sandpaper.” It’s our “Karma.”

I think the West has a tainted view of what Karma really is. Pema Chödrön says, "The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart.” The book, “How Yoga Works” (another good read), explains that the seeds you planted in the past through thoughts and actions (good and bad) later bloom, and take effect on your life. The cliche, “What goes around, comes around” summarizes this explanation. However, the author goes even deeper, explaining that the conditioned, blurry lenses through which we perceive reality are also our “Karma.” Ultimately, any illusions preventing us from witnessing the divine perfect present moment are Karma. Anything that separates us from God / our TRUEST nature is Karma. He then implies that because of this, “ … EVERY GOOD THING THAT EVER COMES TO US IS LITERALLY CREATED BY TAKING CARE OF OTHERS.”

i hope it works this way… because “ it would be a perfect kind of justice, in the entire universe, really – if what you did to others always came back to you; and if, looking at it the other way around, everything that ever happens to us only happens to us because we have done the same thing to someone else.”

Even understanding the role of Karma, one still has to feel all of the feelings and experience the Karma firsthand… not to mention, the physical pain itself. There’s no escaping that; there’s only surrendering to it. And through that ultimate surrender comes a gentle peace that steadies one’s spirit and ultimately evaporates the suffering as a whole. Fighting against the pain only strengthens and validates its existence… accepting it disempowers it because there is no longer any illusion of separation. Your energy is no longer feeding the illusion of suffering. There’s another paradox: the way to win the battle is to surrender.

There is truthfully no battle to be fought… only a “letting go” and communion with our true nature that needs to take place. Wu wei, baby, wu wei. The way to transcend your Karma is to accept it and understand that reality is not at all the way your mind is making it seem to be. Do not react to or label anything as good or bad. Just let it be. Let yourself be. Effortless nonaction. Nothing on this planet has a permanent nature or identity. Everything is inherently “empty.” It is the projections of our mind that imbue everything that we think about and see with meaning. Beyond this dream within a dream is an eternal and vast emptiness that is overflowing with INFINITE possibility… and that… that is your true identity. Remember who you are, truly.

from “How Yoga Works”… again. :) 

“The Yoga Sutras ask us to practice seeing the emptiness of all things.  To see, in the words of William Shakespeare, that ‘… there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’  To learn to see things as neutral and to watch as our mind judges and assigns value to things.”

:)

<3

Anyways, forgive my wandering mind. I am all over the place with this post, but am honestly loving every second of it. It feels raw, unedited, and real. This world desperately needs more of that authenticity.

I am totally exhausted. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. My mind and creativity were awakened by all the great conversations and giggles from dinner with my girlfriends. My writer’s and emotional block(s) finally lifted. I just wanted to make the feeling last a little longer and get all my thoughts down on paper.

Today, I am choosing to embrace the tiredness, fatigue, brain fog, and delirium… the imperfection. My body is a guesthouse, and right now, these simply happen to be my guests … so I will be a good host and show them kindness. Who knows -they may be doing me a favor by clearing out space so that joy and bliss can visit me tomorrow. All I know is that my body holds the holy blueprint, and it knows how to heal itself. I just have to allow it to. Today, I choose to flow with it all.

I choose to be FREE.

If you made it this far, wow. Thanks for listening to my ramblings. You rock. 

kaitlyn roman
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