| by
Harry Palmer
from Inside Avatar®: The Book
One
of the positive effects of Avatar is that it awakens in a person
a disposition to relieve the distress of fellow creatures. More
than one Avatar graduate has found himself or herself with a moral
conflict between compassion for the suffering of a fellow creature
and honoring the confidential materials agreement. More than one
has confessed to attempting an emergency CHP initiation (Creation
Handling Procedure) on someone in distress. Sadly, almost all
have reported that without instruction and practice in the skills
that are integral to running the CHP, the person’s distress
was not relieved. So
what can you do?
The
answer is Exercise 12 of ReSurfacing®, “Releasing
Fixed Attention.”
Let
me reconstruct a session that I ran for a man who knew nothing about
Avatar. It is a good illustration of why CHP fails as an emergency
assist, but Exercise 12 works. He was happy to let me help him,
but was skeptical. His right knee hurt so badly that he couldn’t
sleep, yet his doctor could find no obvious fault with the knee.
Exploratory surgery had been suggested. I suspected, rightly as
it turned out, that it was a persistent mass.
I explained
that I was going to have him focus attention on the knee and then
on something else and that we were going to go back and forth at
least ten times or until he felt some relief. I asked permission
to take research notes for an article and assured him that his name
wouldn’t be used. He agreed.
*
* * * *
We
settle into lounge chairs on a screened porch for the session. We
start with attention on the knee. He moves it around a little, grimaces
and says, “That’s it. It hurts that way most of the
time. Especially at night. Sort of a shooting pain that starts here,”
pointing at the inside of the knee, “and goes down the leg.
Sometimes I can feel it all the way to the ankle, and it makes my
right foot ache. It’s hard to describe.”
“Okay,”
I say and point at the bird feeder in the yard. “Look at that.”
One squirrel has climbed into the bird feeder and is throwing out
sunflower seeds to a squirrel on the ground.
“She
looks pregnant,” he says. “I wonder if that’s
her mate in the feeder.” And then after another minute of
watching, he says, “It’s sure easier than gathering
acorns.”
“How’s the knee?”
“Oh,
it hurts like always.” He takes a few seconds to focus on
the knee and moves it several times. “If I move it just right,
it hurts.” He tries to show me. Almost immediately he has
his first realization. “Funny thing is, it’s not always
the same movement that causes it to hurt.”
“That’s
interesting,” I say, and he has another realization.
“Yes,
it seems like it is caused by something other than movement. Movement
just seems to aggravate it.”
“Can
you describe what that something is?”
Several
minutes pass before he answers. “Boy, I just don’t know.”
I figure
it’s time to draw his attention out. “Where did the
squirrels go?” I ask.
He
opens his eyes. “I don’t know. I guess maybe they saw
a hawk.”
“Do
the hawks bother them?”
“No,
I think they’re just being cautious. Mostly the hawk eats
lizards. There’s one hawk that comes sometimes and sits on
the bird bath. I’ve actually seen the squirrels chase him
away. I guess if he found a young squirrel, and found him alone,
he’d probably be dinner.”
“How’s
the knee doing?”
“Oh,
it hurts. You know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“It
hurts worse when I try to take my attention off of it than it does
when I put my attention on it.” He rubs his knee thoughtfully.
“I
guess it wants attention and doesn’t like it when it doesn’t
get it.” He closes his eyes and seems to drift off.
“What
are you thinking about?”
“Oh,
just thinking about how kids sometimes hurt themselves to get attention.
I was wondering if that’s why my knee hurts.”
“How
does it feel?”
“Oh,
it still hurts. It depresses me.”
“How
so?”
“Oh,
it just makes me feel bad. I can’t find a reason for it, and
nothing seems to work. I just feel...helpless. I feel like some
old beggar on a crutch. I hate it. I really hate it. I try not to
let it get me down, but I really hate it.” His voice is getting
shaky. “Sometimes I think it must be some kind of punishment.”
His face is contorted behind his hands. He tries to hide that he
is crying. “Sorry.” He shakes it off. “I can’t
go on with this. It’s not going anywhere.”
“Feels
like there’s some strong emotions connected with that knee.
How would you describe them?”
“Oh God.
I just can’t. It hurts so much. It’s bigger than me.
There’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve tried. I’ve
really tried. It has brought me to my knees.” His mood suddenly
shifts. “That’s funny. It’s brought me to my knees.”
He’s laughing and crying at the same time. I wait for the
emotion to work itself out.
Finally, looking
back at the bird feeder, I ask, “Do you ever see any cardinals?”
“Oh,
yes. There’s a whole family that comes around 4 o’clock.
It’s still a little too early for them. There’s also
a little brown bird that has a top knot on its head like a cardinal.
I don’t know the name. They’re real tame. Sometimes
they sit on the window sill.”
“How’s
the knee doing?”
“You
know, it’s better. It feels like it had a workout. I think
it was the idea of being brought to my knees that made it feel better.
I think I really fight the idea of being brought to my knees. I
don’t know who it was, maybe my dad, use to say, ‘Get
off your knees.’”
As if on cue,
a bright red cardinal appears at the bird feeder. “There he
is. You can tell by his color, he’s a male. The females are
more washed out.”
We both watch
the cardinal for a minute.
“What’s
the knee doing?” I ask.
“Not
much. It actually feels pretty good right now. But it does go away
sometimes and then comes back.”
“When
did it do that?”
“I don’t
remember. I really only think about it when it’s hurting.
If I’ve had a real hard day, it hurts all night. But then
some nights—not many—I don’t notice it at all.
It reminds me of farmers that were suppose to predict the weather
by the pain in their joints.” He drifts off again.
“What
are you thinking?”
“My grandfather
had a big outdoor thermometer and just for the hell of it, I threw
a stone at it, and it smashed all to pieces. Little shards of glass
everywhere. Sometime my knee joint feels like it’s filled
with those shards of glass.”
“What
did your grandfather do?”
“I don’t
think he did anything, but I remember being real scared that he
might.”
“There’s
the little brown bird,” I say pointing.
“That’s
him. See how he’s got a thing on his head? He moves differently
though, a lot quicker than the cardinals.”
We watch for
awhile, and then his attention drifts back to his knee. “There’s
still something there,” he says.
“What’s
it feel like?”
“Well,
it feels like I got shot in the knee. I imagine this picture of
a civil war soldier charging across a field and getting hit in the
knee. Boy, with one of those old musket balls that must have really
hurt. That would get your attention. Maybe my knee still hurts from
a past life or something. Do you believe in that?”
“Yes,
sometimes.”
“I’ll
tell you, if you got hit in the knee with one of them musket balls,
it would hurt bad enough that you wouldn’t ever forget it.”
He’s examining his knee. “Look at that. There’s
a red patch right here just the size of bullet. Or a tooth.”
“A tooth?”
“Yeah,
I was just imagining why my knee might hurt, and I thought about
how much it hurts when something bites you and a tooth strikes bone.
That makes my knee hurt just to think about it. Makes me want to
get away. That’s the fear again. Do you think pain and fear
always go together?”
“I don’t
know.”
“I think
they do. That’s that something that I couldn’t see before.
It’s something scary. Boy, I can feel it. Look.” He
shows me he has given himself goose bumps on the arm.
“How’s
the knee?”
“So far
so good. This really tires you out, doesn’t it? I feel ready
for a nap.”
“Is the
tired feeling coming from your knee?”
“I don’t
know.”
“What’s
it feel like?”
“It feels
like I just want to lay here and not move.” He’s slumped
down in the lounge and is lying completely motionless. His eyes
are open.
“What
are you thinking?”
“I picture
myself on that civil war battlefield again. And I’m just laying
there—wait, that’s not quite right. I’m laying
outside a field hospital, and they’ve cut my leg off. They’ve
cut my damn leg off! Oh, Jesus. I just want to go to sleep. I don’t
want to think about anything. I just want to sleep. This is a very
familiar feeling.”
After a couple
of minutes of silence, he thinks of something and starts laughing
and shaking his head. “You want to know what I told the doctor
the other day? I said if he couldn’t do anything for the knee,
he ought to saw the leg off.”
“That
is funny.” We laugh together.
“You
know what this is?” he asks pointing at the knee. And then
answers his own question. “Have you ever heard of a phantom-limb
pain?”
“What’s
that?”
“It’s
when an amputee has a pain in a limb that isn’t there anymore.
Like he can still feel his hand, but his whole arm is gone. He’s
remembering. That’s what this is like. It’s a phantom
knee pain.”
We sit quietly
while the idea sinks in. It feels like something has changed.
“Well,”
he says, “I said I was never going to forget it and I didn’t.
You know, I feel fantastic. What did you do to me?”
“Look,
the squirrels are back.”
(A
follow-up a week later confirmed the knee was continuing to improve,
and there was a strong interest in doing Avatar.)
CHP:
Creation Handling Procedure, an advanced exercise from
The Avatar Materials that deliberately parallels the operation of
awareness in the universe.
This
article was taken from
Inside Avatar®:
The Book
Achieving Enlightment
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