So when I first got sick I was in denial and I have to admit I didn't take getting better really seriously.  It was nice to not have to pay rent (living at home) and I had a year to think about what I wanted to do with my life. 

 

So I didn't take the doctor's advice.  He said, "do a bone marrow transplant," but I decided to go on a clinical trial in Washington D.C, which meant every 2 months I got to fly a private corporate jet across the country, see friends, (they threw me a kegger once in NYC), and consult expert doctors from all around for second opinions. 

 

This lasted about a year.  Meanwhile, I started doing Dahn Yoga, and my energy level came back to normal.  My blood test numbers were still really low, (red blood cells 20-25 out of a normal 40-50), but I felt like I had my old life back.  Finally, in December, I saw the last doctor on my list in St. Paul, Minnesota, to see if an "infant umbilical cord blood stem cell" transplant would increase my chance for survival at all.

 

She was my last hope, and she was really great Ð she listened to me for about an hour and a half, all my history and blood and bone marrow results, and then she explained why she thought my doctor in Seattle was right all along.  I should go back to Seattle and do the bone marrow transplant.

 

That night it was really cold and really clear in Minnesota, and I went out on the crunchy snow to take a walk by myself.  I went and found a frozen lake and climbed up on the lifeguard chair and sat there trying to accept this decision.  There really was no other option and no more reason to stall.  For a year I had been kept alive by having other peoples' blood transfused into my body every three weeks because my bone marrow wasn't working.  But I couldn't do that forever because of the risk of AIDS and iron overload eventually.  And the transfusion had a 50-70% chance of killing me or giving me something worse than what I had.  So it was a tough decision.

 

I don't know if you know much about bone marrow transplants, but basically they use chemo and radiation to kill your immune system and stem cells and then start pumping in another person's (closely matched) stem cells to hopefully take over and find a new home in your body.  In between, there is this "day zero" when you don't have any immune system in you.  Yours is gone, and the other person's is not in yet. 

 

I was thinking, "Holy crap, on day zero, I better have a pretty strong will to live, because if I even have a moment of not caring whether I get better or not, that thread could break and I won't make it!"  You might think it's weird to not care if I got better, but from even before I got sick I was going through this weird ennui where I didn't know my place or purpose in the universe and life/death didn't seem to matter.  So anyway, that's what I thought of while my butt froze on the lifeguard chair.

 

So I took off for the house I was staying at, needing to find a pen and paper, and there in the quiet, dimly lit living room, I made a list of all the things I was absolutely sure I wanted to do before I died.

 

My criteria went like this:  If I can't think of anything I have to do before I die, then it doesn't matter if I live or not.  But if there are some things I know I desperately want to experience in this lifetime, I better have them in my brain so I know why I have to get better!

 

The list was actually kind of long.  It had things like 'get married, have 2 kids,' 'learn to master body/mind healing,' 'get a master's degree,' 'become a published author,' and 'hitchhike to Argentina and learn to Tango.'

 

Then, I actually got excited about getting better!  I could look at the list and see my exciting life planned out before me!  So when I got back to Seattle, I saw the doctor as soon as I could, and I said "Ok doc (I actually called him that), let's do this bone marrow thing.  I want to start the process today so I can be coming into the hospital for the first treatments by the end of January, and be starting to get my strength back by summer."

 

So guess what happened.  He looked at me first, a little amused, then looked down at this stack of papers in his hand, and said "hold on a minute.  I have your blood test results here.

 

"I may have to check with other doctors on this, but your counts have suddenly gone up to 31.  I don't think I could give you a bone marrow transplant now, even if I wanted to.  It'd be unethical." 

 

 

So that was it, or a lot of it.  My numbers stayed up in the safe zone (above 27) for about a year and a half.  In that time, I decided to train more and became an instructor and master of the yoga and tai chi practices I had started.  Then, very slowly, my numbers started to drop again.  Just a little every month, but after 9 months they were back down so my doctor was talking bone marrow transplant again.  This time I retreated into myself, did some soul searching, realized it was time for me to turn my attention away from Yoga center work and focus on Harvard, and in one week I turned the numbers around again.  This time the doctor ran into the hallway, showing the results to his nurses like a little boy.  

 

I guess the secret ingredient I want to share with all of you for healing, getting extra strength, relieving stress, is "what you really want."  That's the secret ingredient.  If you can find it, connect with it, it can excite you, soothe your soul, help you breathe deeper, and if you're sick, it can heal you.  It's not easy to find it sometimes, and even harder to believe its possible.  But maybe imagine you're staring down a bone marrow transplant, and start dreaming. 

 

The following is the verbatim text of a letter written to the participants in the six-week summer program that I helped to create and today completed. 

A group of College students from around the country came to Boston this summer to train intensively in Yoga and Tai Chi, while putting that energy to good use serving the community and teaching yoga/tai chi classes to various groups, especially children from disadvantaged neighborhoods.  In all, 35 different groups and over 350 individuals were reached by our group of 20.

The following is a letter of reminder of our purpose, given as encouragement as we set out back to our various colleges and communities to invite others to join us in similar work this fall.

(Notes:  the subject material is graphic and personal to members of my family; please read with care.  *Mago is another word for Mother Earth.  **The summer program was called the Phoenix Project, and our participants addressed fondly as 'phoenixes.' The focal theme of the project was Action through Awakening, and vice versa.  More information on the program can be found at www.phoenixaction.org.)

---

TO READ WHEN YOU NEED TO BE REMINDED:

 

“Sons and Daughters of Mago awaken!

The future of Earth

The fate of humanity

Depends on what we now choose

Why have we come to Earth?

Did you come to heal or to kill?”

-         Song of Mago

 

Dear Phoenixes,

 

            Did you know that the law of our country says that if you stand by and watch a murder being committed without doing anything to stop it, you can be found guilty as an accomplice?

            There is one loophole, though: if you are nearby when the murder happens but don’t know that it is happening – even if you are just around the corner – then you are not considered guilty of anything.

           

            So it all boils down to awareness, and awareness is hard to prove.  How easy is it to hear strange noises but convince yourself they are normal.  How easy would it be to hear muffled cries and rationalize that it was just the wind, if muffled cries were something you didn’t want to be hearing?

            How many times have we chosen to ignore the signs that the Earth is in trouble?  How many times have we failed to take the difficult actions to change ourselves that could help the Earth?  How much do you see others around you exploiting the loophole, stuck in this same trap?

 

I want to tell you a true story, Phoenixes, about something that happened to my family.  And I want to thank you, because I never understood the meaning of this experience until listening to you present your visions today, the final day of the Phoenix Project 2006, imagining you taking on the challenge of finding partners with whom to grow.  I share this story because I never want you to forget the importance of the job you are taking on this semester of awakening partners…

 

 

On October 31^st of 1998, two brothers from the South Side of Chicago found an open window in my Grandmother’s house, climbed inside the kitchen, and found a kitchen knife to bring upstairs to cut the phone lines.  They quietly snuck into two bedrooms, taking the cash and jewelry they found.  One of the brothers entered my Grandmother Josephine’s room and found the lights on, as my Grandmother had fallen asleep reading the newspaper.  The brother began searching through my Grandmother’s closet and drawers.  Sensing something wrong, Nana woke up - and tried to stop the intruder.  She bravely stood up to him, as she was a strong woman, and still very active.  But, while they struggled, the other brother rushed in from the hallway with the knife and stabbed my Grandmother 27 times in the chest and abdomen.  They fled, while she drowned in a pool of her own blood.

 

The amazing thing is that her nephew, my cousin – a strong, grown man – was in the bedroom across the hall.  He claims to have slept through the whole thing.  It is still a controversy in my family.  It is impossible to know how much he really was unaware: did a noise wake him up, and did he ignore it because he thought it wasn’t important, or because he was afraid?

 

It is not really important in the end, because either way, my Nana died.  She could not win the struggle on her own.

 

But, imagine how he feels. 

How would you feel if someone you loved was murdered in the room next to you?  Would any excuse be good enough?

How would anyone feel?

 

I want you all to think about this, because this is what you will be doing for your members: Helping them wake up before something tragic happens.  Helping them to wake up to take the action they are capable of taking.  Helping them to wake up and do what their hearts want them to do to help the Earth, before it is too late.

 

It is risky to run into the hallway – and when we are afraid, sometimes it seems a better idea to just lay there with our heads tucked under the covers.  But even though it feels scary, running into the hallway is also the only chance we have to help.   Help them to not use the excuse that they were sleeping.  To be not accomplices to the killing of the world, but healers.

 

ESPECIALLY when you consider this: the person struggling in the other room is you.  You have awoken to the danger, and you have decided to get up and take action. 

 

But you cannot do it alone.

 

So please, call out to your members.

     Please, get them to help you. 

 

Together, you can do it….   We can do it.

It will require a fight.

But, if we all wake up, we can join together, and let the good prevail.

 

And then we won’t have anything to regret. 

 

Thank you all, so much.  I keep you in my heart, along with my vision of our healing this world.  WE CAN DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

                                                                                    Sincerely,

                                                                                   

Andy

                                                                      

 

The moment she kissed me, I began to feel the tickle in my throat.

I recognized the feeling as the same tickle she had in her throat, that had kept her coughing and clearing her throat all week.

If I were a subscriber only to the germ theory of medicine, I would have thought I had caught her bug...  but I know energy.

If I believed only in the medical model of virus transmission, I might have been worried. Ébut I know about healing.

"Doctors can experience their patients' symptoms nonlocally, and this can be unpleasant." Dossey cites the example of psychiatrist Mona Lisa Shulz, a medical intuitive, who "began to grow increasingly uncomfortable, feeling hot and flushed," while speaking over the phone with a feverish patient.Ó [full text quoted below]

Healing = The connection of two people circulates the energy between them.  Their individualized energy patterns in separate bodies become conjoined, trading places, as it were, as long as the open connection remains.  When I heal someone with energy, I donÕt need to do anything.  While touching the otherÕs body, I simply pay attention to the new symptoms of imbalance that arise in my body.  Subtle things, such as a new headache, lower back tightness, feeling flushed, feeling week or cold in my knees, for example Ð these all clue me in to what is going on in the otherÕs body.

Then I set about correcting the energy imbalance in my body.  I become centered and open to the energy flow through my meridian channels again, and this leads to a balancing of the other's body.  I receive their energy, clean it Ð as it were Ð and return it to them.  This is healing.

 

THE FURTHER STEP:

As Speck was kissing me, and I had begun to balance my energy again, healing us together (rather than reacting anxiously to the idea of a bug in my throat), the phrase entered my head: 

"Jesus Christ, who takes away the sins of the world."

The theology is that Jesus Christ somehow takes on the burden of our sins, leaving us pure again, to live as if we were sin-free.  The caveat is that we now accept the responsibility to keep our energy clean, ourselves healed: ÒGo, and sin no more.Ó (Jesus to those he has healed, many times in the Gospels.)

What is sin?  DonÕt think of it in the pejorative sense we have been raised with.  It is simply an energy imbalance, related to a disconnection from our Source.  Sometimes these imbalances and disconnections result from actions, sometimes simply from thoughts - as Jesus pointed out Ð but also, the theology reminds us that a ÒstateÓ of sin is pretty natural for us to fall into Ð simply by forgetting our connection and intimate relatedness to the Divine Imagination.

These energy imbalances and disconnections often result in physical symptoms of less-than-wholeness; hence the need for healing, and the unity of healing with Jesus' work reminding us of our connectedness to Yahweh. 

When we connect with a healer, we intuitively search out a healer who keeps her energy more clean and balanced than our own.  We trust her ability to also balance any of the energy imbalances we hand her.  Simply connecting with a person like this can heal us Ð through things as simple as a hug or a touch on the sleeve.  ÒSheÉcame up behind him and touched his cloakÉ and felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.  Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ÔWho touched my clothes?ÕÓ (Mark 5:27-30).

Physical touch is not necessary, however, for connection.  As the new book by Dossey argues - with scientific evidence - these connections can be made through a conversation, over the phone, with a glance, a prayer, or simply by thinking about another.  It was an act of the mind - faith - that Christ emphasized more than anything.

The risen Christ is available to us Ð if not physically, at least energetically Ð and if we simply trust his energy to be pure, we can feel our energy being cleansed and balanced whenever we think about him.  Thus Christ Òtakes awayÓ our sins by virtue of a connection to pure balanced power available to us every moment.  It is the same healing we can also do for one another, so long as we maintain a purity and balance in our connection as well.

©2006, andy varyu

Full review from Amazon.com:

Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing

by Larry Dossey

Cue the theme song to the Twilight Zone: Research shows your plants won't grow as well when you're depressed as when you're happy. Praying for someone else will improve your own health, too. The growth of E. coli bacteria is inhibited when a group of people merely think about stopping the growth. And qi gong practitioners in San Francisco can kill cancer cells in other peoples' bodies--by willing the cells to die. These ideas surely sound ludicrous, but these and other similarly mindboggling studies have been commissioned and replicated by researchers at Harvard, Duke, McGill, and other esteemed universities.

Larry Dossey is known as the father of mind-body medicine and perhaps best known for his advocacy of the role of prayer in healing in 1995's bestselling Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine. He admits that working on such seemingly impossible projects a few years ago would have ruined a researcher's career with "ATF," or "the anti-tenure factor." But things are changing. He wrote Reinventing Medicine to present proof that "the mind can literally change the external world" and how this "nonlocal mind" will change health care in the future. His argument for the existence of this nonlocal mind is as convincing as it is eloquently conveyed. Doubters, he says, merely need to examine their own dreams for proof this is true. When was the last time you had a conversation or found yourself in a situation you dreamed about the night before? Studies from as early as the 1960s "strongly suggest that dreams are an avenue of nonlocal communication between separate, distant persons."

Dossey's support of the nonlocal mind is sure to draw pooh-poohs from cynics, including M.D.s, but, he warns, health-care workers are bound to experience this force firsthand: "Doctors can experience their patients' symptoms nonlocally, and this can be unpleasant." He cites the example of psychiatrist Mona Lisa Shulz, a medical intuitive, who "began to grow increasingly uncomfortable, feeling hot and flushed," while speaking over the phone with a feverish patient. Dossey says this telesomatic event, extreme empathy, or whatever you want to call it, is dangerous, but that "empathic balance" is something that will be taught in medical schools in the future to ensure accurate diagnoses of ill patients. Dossey was one of the first vanguards of mind-body medicine, which is basically accepted as fact today; he's again presenting the future of medicine, as otherworldly as it seems. --Erica Jorgensen --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Energy Theory [series]

Energy and Environment

Tonight I taught my first yoga class in a long while.  Most striking to my personal experience was how little energy I felt, and how my emotions on entering my door afterward were sad.  This could be cleansing, I thought; no need to make more of the sad feeling than it needs to be.  Could be stagnant energy on its way out.  But unmistakable was how it showed me how low my energy state is, which parallels the borderline sickliness I have been feeling lately, more like the person who has the condtition I have than the person who lives as if he doesn't.

But that is not the point.  Upon opening my refrigerator door and smelling the stink that has been growing there for weeks, today I decided simply to find and throw out all the potential culprits.  It is a simple act, but one that I had not found the motivation to do for weeks.  After pulling out a number of containers into a trash bag, I walked the trash bag outside the half-block to the dumpster.  Normally, my trash makes it to the door and waits for me to depart for class to be taken to the dumpster.  Today, it went all the way.   This in the end is more telling about my energy state than my 'feelings' after class.  

Energy shows up significantly in the actions we take.  It is the difference between doing the small things that maintain our environments, our relationships, and our lives, and putting these small things off until later, until the problem has grown so big as to demand attention.  Simple actions to raise our energy levels have direct impact on the qualities of our lives because they enable minor acts that add up in the end.  Walking back into my apartment, having purged that stink from my refrigerator, my emotions were now happy.  The energy I gained from Dahn (energy) yoga class manifested in a tangible improvement in my environment.  

Next, I did some dishes.  For weeks, again, since returning from school, I have tended to leave the dishes undone until the problem of the kitchen cannot be ignored.  Today, while doing the dishes, I noticed an element of the experience of doing the dishes that was different than other times: I used less mind.  Less consciousness went into formulating a plan for which dishes I would do first, at what point I would stop sudsing and rinse some, and the best order of operations in order to conserve water.  Today I began and had a stack of sudsed dishes and was rinsiing them before the first thought (of how this was different from normal) entered my head.  What had happened?

The Yoga class had moved my energy from my brain down into my body.  Resting in my body, the energy was more available for immediated action.  Typically, the thoughts about how to do the dishes and the time it is taking add to the laboriousness of the process.  Often, this is the reason the dishes do not get started: The energy that would go into accomplishing the task gets squandered on considering and planning (or excusing myself from) the task.  So it gets put off.  The energy, on these days, has its home in the brain.  In order for the energy to transfer into my body and thus into action, a process of permission must go on before the brain allows the energy to move into the body.  If we pay attention, we can notice that the brain is actually very cunning.  For often, we make excuses and put off tasks until later.  In these instances, the task does not get done, and notice that the brain never had to give up its energy to the body and the accomplishment of the task.  Under the auspices of weighing the decision to act, the brain has actually used up the energy doing what it likes to do best: idly thinking.

Notice that the majority of lifestlyes that have evolved through modern convenience and stay-at-home information gathering and computer-based desk jobs actually promote a general trend of energy movement away from the body and toward the brain.  Our body does not need energy to accomplish tasks that can be done through telephone wires and radio waves.  We do not need to move.  At most, our brain needs to work to figure out how to operate the software or the machinery.  This is at least true of  my gradualte student life.  The prescribed activity involves uses of the brain while the body is sedentary: reading, writing, discussing around a table.  The reason my dishes do not get done is intimately related to the encouragement of my energy to be in my brain, ready to read or answer or process at the drop of a hat, rather than in my body, ready to empty my refrigerator when the need be.  

Of course this is not to allay responsibility.  My energy is my responsibility, as is undertaking whatever activities I personally require to keep enough energy in my body for purposes of everything from cleaning my apartment to creating blood to stay alive (which for me is also a conscious daily responsibility). The purpose of writing under the topic "Energy and Environment" is to show that our energy is not separate from our environments, but actually intimately influenced by and creative of them.  

One day when, last semester, I awoke on a Saturday morning in a deep depression, I thought long and hard of how to cheer myself up.  Something of the burden of responsibilities of indepenedent life and study and work weighed heaviliy on me, but I had no singular upsetting thoughts.  Actually, every indicator I could think of showed an immensely positive trend in my life.  I was happy with where I was at.  But still I was depressed.

Gradually, it dawned on me that I was lying, practically paralyzed, in an apartment that I had not cleaned the week prior.  Dust was on the floor, and the kitchen had not thoroughly been cleaned as I had been doing since moving in.  Lying there "depressed," I knew the apartment needed to be cleaned, and this had been adding to my burdened feeling about the day.  But, worried by the phantom depression, I was putting energy into trying to root out the source of my sadness before getting up and repressing it under a flurry of activity.

Finding no culprit for my sadness, however, I realized that my depression may be reflecting the abundance of energy stagnating within my un-cleaned apartment.  One of the ways we kept the energy fresh in the yoga centers was cleaning constantly; at least every day, and then to fill the time when there was nothing else to do.  This created a very clean and pure energy environment, and many students enjoyed coming to class just because it "felt good" inside the centers.  Sure enough, when I left behind my presumption of a psychological cause to my depression, and set about tidying, dusting, washing, scrubbing, and letting fresh air in, my condition was "cured."  I was happy as if nothing had happened.

We know - at least our bodies know - the difference between good (fresh) and bad (stagnant) energy.  While our intellectually-oriented culture often finds the sources of our displeasure in deep, grandiose scars or sweeping ennui about the future and our place in the world, it may often be that our emotions are responding to stagnation in our energy environments - small things that have gone untended - whether in our domiciles or our relationships - that are very much in our power to do something about.  In fact, we may be just one yoga class away from making a number of changes that will deeply change our lives for the better.






copyright 2006, andrew varyu
andywrites@yahoo.com
    

With taichi class magic

the healing began:

The illness subsided,

I saw through the pane.

Energy set the stage;

then I found Grace.

 

Surprise rediscovered,

the voice from the altar

stole fear from the chapel:

I had found Grace.

 

a heart full of purpose

a life full of song;

joy at the ready:

Grace all along.

 

Unexpectedly one night,

staring up at stars,

a moment of loving

occurred in my arms.

 

A new cup of offering

in goblets of pink,

Grace reties heartstrings

before you can think.

 

Yet anger resurfaced

a sheen of regret.

Will you be my habit:

this rolled cigarette;

 

Grace sung me a song.

Heart turned to ember

and smiling along

the cigarette lowered.

 

A warm welcome home

spread roses and produce;

Breathed fresh air and sodas,

infused with Grace modus

 

Spiral ever inward

where skeletons lying

succumb to the gray speck

of skeletons dying?

 

while life vibrates, flesh-to-form

peace birthing something warm

life chuckles, maybe 26 ways

and infinite smiles come from Grace.

 

 

 

Her name is Sarah.

 

But she calls herself Grace.

*    *    *

its just a piece of batik.  its here and I believe in it.  its beautiful, just nice, here on my lap.  I love it when i touch it, and i remember this was the feeling of love i felt toward so many things that came from the same person who this batik comes from.  i remember this feeling.  its here and i believe in it.  

i don't know if i believe in the person it came from.  i don't know if that person is real.  i don't know if the batik came from anyone, or maybe it just showed up on my door, packaged from God.  Maybe God put the other things in the box, and maybe God wrote the letter/card pretending to be from the person i used to feel love about from everything that came from her.

the card says the package will have a box with a ring in it, too, but I don't know if I believe in the ring yet because i won't open the box.  the ring might look like one that i gave away once, it might pretend to be the same one i thought i gave away once.

but this batik is here on my lap, and it is beautiful.  I like the way it feels under my hand.  

it doesn't really matter if something is in front of you.  in your hand; in your life.  it might not be there tomorrow.  tomorrow you might wake up in an empty room and maybe the batik will be gone.  it doesn't really matter that the batik is here because maybe it won't be here tomorrow.  its just nice right now.  i believe in the batik.  i don't know if I believe much in tomorrow.

when she was here, i believed too much in tomorrow, and not enough in her.

I believed too much in her words, but not enough in her.  

I believed too much in her.

The great lesson and great confusion are in the fact that there was no warning.  The only memories I have are good ones.  I believed too much.  And in believing, I created.  Something that may not have been there?  I should have felt more what was under my hand.

God writes in such a way as to make it impossible to believe she was evil, was ever anything other than what I saw her to be.

My memory is that she spoke as if the thing happening was as much a surprise to her as it was to me.  maybe she had no warning either she was going to leave me?  Like a package that just arrives on the doorstep...

What can we do but open it up, feel under our hands what we find inside...  and believe in it?

promises cannot be believed in because promises live tomorrow.  and how can we feel tomorrow under our hands?

we should not promise something about tomorrow.  we can only promise about what we find when we open up the package that we got today.

But we should certainly share the package.  if you don't like what you find you may package it back up and put it in the closet and hope to find something different tomorrow.  but never believe in tomorrow.  the package you feel is all there is to believe in.  

There is something of love in the Batik and there was something of the same love in the house God sent it from.  

Inside the package, there is a box, another package.  There is always deeper to go. 

The inner package is supposed to have the more beautiful thing inside it.  Certainly the inner box is more beautiful than the cardboard; it is small, shiny, polished mahogany.  It feels smooth.  But it also feels cold.  Maybe I remember this box from somewhere.

Inner box is shiny, but inside is supposed to be the even more beautiful thing, the really shiny ring.  I feel a little scared to open it.  It could be the most beautiful thing, but it could also be the thing that will kill me.  Who knows how I will feel when I open up the shiny box?   Is that how she felt?  Excited but scared, tempted enough to make plans to open it... but afraid enough to put it off until the last minute?




The ring is inside.  It is beautiful.  Devastatingly beautiful.  And however I hold it, the diamond shines one piercing needle of light into my eyes, into my heart.  It is beautiful.  And it is killing me.

I will close it now.


And I will not open it again.




   

    

 

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God,

thou wilt not despise.

Ps 51:17

 

 

2 - what leads me to respond

 

 

I laid in an empty room of a recently-rented apartment, forty miles from any friends or family.  Instead of furniture, there was the sound of frogs croaking in the backyard pool.  My body pulsed with over-exertion from the walk upstairs.  I laughed.  Even if I had wanted to continue working the breakneck pace of the past three years, my body wouldn't allow it. 

 

Instead of blessings, I counted the wonderful elegance with which things had been taken away from me:  Six weeks before, my car and belongings were stolen.  The day following, our approaching wedding canceled by my fiancee.  Meanwhile, the progressive deterioration of my health that had started nine months earlier.  The tapering of calls from concerned friends and family removed any obligation toward them.  The utter comprehensiveness of loss felt strangely beautiful.  I felt my body pulse and buzz, and peaceably readied myself for death.

 

Hmm, God reminded me.  Hmm, there was one thing that hadn't been taken away, but had been strangely supported where things might easily have failed: the letter for scholarship money covering my expenses; the lucky securing of the last available campus apartment in my price range.  God was opening one door, only one, while all others quietly shut on rooms full of death.  I saw a singular beacon of light beaming through the decay.

 

"All things come of thee, o Lord." And when only one thing is given, there is little question remaining about what God has created for us.  From this stark and unforgettable experience in mid-June of 2005, my priorities were clearly laid out for me.  All things involved in bringing and sustaining me at Harvard, and which God had waiting for me there, were the focus of my life.  Everything else could be left for dead.

 

In that beacon of light, God built for me a bridge past a life that otherwise had ended.  On the other side of that bridge, now, I am His alone, and every action or decision gets weighed in consideration of the work He has shown as laid out for me.  Some involves long-range goals and academic projects; other work involves daily devotionals of ministering to individuals for whom God has found me.  As surely as I can tell, one of those acts is unashamedly declaring myself a servant through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of the One True God.  With or without ordination, when I remember this, my energy is restored to keep on living.  If ever I become sidetracked, death begins to set in again.

 

 

My early struggles as an acolyte against hesitant sermons or stultified congregations first awakened my passion for work within the church.  This led to crises at each major life-path decision that did not honor what felt like the call to Seminary.  After college, responses to a desperate letter to all the pastors who had mentored me through my life assured me that when the call was true, I would be able to answer it without anxiety.  Meanwhile, I pragmatically challenged the idea that a young man, practically untouched by tragedy or the complexity of adult life and relationships, could have anything to offer a congregation.  Secretly, privately, I welcomed such growth experiences into my life.

 

The crash of two jet airplanes into the World Trade Center while I slept in New York preceded by two months the discovery in my blood of a fatal and unknown disease.  In three months, doctors finally confirmed that the source of my profound debilitation, my 14-hour nights of sleep, and my layoff and relocation back to Seattle was a rare bone marrow disorder known as Aplastic Anemia.  For the next three years, I found dependence on my family, practices of yoga and Eastern healing, and a long conversation with God about what I was doing wrong, or how much I should even take responsibility for my illness and its healing.

 

Ironically � some would say � stories from the Bible became more accessible to me from my yoga practices than through Church itself.  Through experiencing and learning to live within the laws of energy, I found principles quoted by Jesus and experiences of the Apostles in Acts to be for the first time understandable.  Over a period of months, every sermon and reading delivered at Bethany Community Church in Greenlake recapitulated a lesson I had experienced in the yoga studio, just the week before.  I began to accept that the One True God was working in all the world, and was recognizable by faithful people through many vocabularies. 

 

The quality of worship exploded tremendously for me while practicing yoga!  At pastors' prompting, I knew now how to let go of my doubt and resistance, and trustfully welcome the Spirit in through my brain, my heart, my complete body as an opening to faith and renewal.  Suddenly, there was no need to question or wait for the proof from God about how to know or believe in Him truly.  I knew plainly from those feelings of grace, deep cleansing, assurance, and inspiration that I encountered at every service!  What before had been a vague affinity for church buildings, community, and attendance now showed herself to be the Holy Spirit, who had been working through my numbed body and brain all along!

 

With thankfulness, I had no doubt any longer about taking up the gauntlet to investigate a call to ministry.  What remained unsolved were only minor questions about the church or denomination to facilitate the inquest.  With fond amazement at the workings of God, I found that God had actually placed me in the right church over 16 years earlier; that my mother's best friend, who had lovingly saved me from a near-crisis by taking me into her home, had recently been ordained as a Priest in the Episcopal Church, and that one of the newest Episcopal congregations in Seattle turned out to be the first church I have ever felt was a home to me.  It is no exaggeration to say that the church home at COTA feels as much like a family as the two beautiful families who raised me and nursed me through my sickness.

 

 

To answer more briefly:  I can never say to know for sure the scope of God's plans or vision through the actions He takes in the world and our personal lives.  Yet I answer my congregation's call to ministry because, to the best of my ability to discern, God has plans for me in this role, and has seemed to be preparing me for it quite intensively over the past seven years.  I accept it happily because it may be the only thing for which He keeps me alive.  

 

I answer the call to ministry in sober acknowledgment of the challenges facing the church today.  Echoes of political struggles destabilize our polity, and a new generation addicted to stimulus, proof, and mistrust finds less of value among church offerings.  Firsthand work managing yoga studios has shown me what people will pay for tangible improvements to their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.  Consistent with my experience, my God-given vision involves creating safe and sane ways to incorporate body-mind practices into liturgies, so we may better minister to societies for whom the disconnection of their souls from God is intimately related to sedentary lifestyles, distraction, and a disconnection between their minds and their bodies; and between the lives they deeply long to create in harmony with the Spirit and what they successfully realize.

 

 

Sincerely,

Andrew Varyu

5 Jan. 2006

 

 

 

 

Prepared for Bishop of the Episcopalian Diocese of Olympia

Statement from Aspirant to Postulancy Andrew R Varyu

Submitted Epiphany, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

 

 

1        -   process of discernment by which identified

 

 

When I came to Church of the Apostles, I was looking for a community and a discernment group.  Two years before, I had answered a call to the task of doing theology, and the process was in motion to bring me to Harvard in less than a year.  Three years earlier, after developing a serious illness, I had started yoga and tai-chi to heal myself, and eventually became an instructor.  Assuming responsibility for 100+ practitioners, their relationship to energy, and physical and emotional well-being, strengthened longstanding suspicions that my vocation might involve tending to others' spiritual lives.  Work in the yoga studio nevertheless left me spiritually hungry; three years of 70+ hour weeks working with "cosmic energy" never brought about the depth of spiritual connection I found each week at church.

 

 Commitment was something I struggled with.  For three years at the yoga studio I resisted their advice to take on greater responsibility and commitment to the spiritual work there. On one hand, I could not sincerely devote my life someplace I did not find my spiritual home.  On the other hand, I knew they spoke some truth: I had avoided commitment my whole life, especially to the church role and seminary education to which I recurrently felt called.  I grew in maturity and spiritual awareness when I embraced the responsibility there to help others grow, while destructive habits threaten both my relationships and survival when I tend only to myself.   

 

With the roadblock of Harvard Divinity firmly planted to detour my future at the yoga studio, I decided that my move to divinity school would not be another escape from doing God's work, but rather a lateral transition to facilitating the right path.  Discernment of a call to the holy orders became integral to the step beyond yoga.  Finally, God had made me ready to place this decision in the hands of a community.  What remained was to find the community.

 

COTA was quite different from other church communities I had tasted.  At the eight churches I attended in different towns over the decade starting in 1993, typically a bond to their overly-busy pastors was the only meaningful connection I would form.  The friendships I felt open to never went beyond church doors or church-proscribed behavior, so my community participation was rarely engaged.  As soon as I shared with COTA that I taught yoga, however, Ryan responded, "Great! How would you like to offer a yoga class around here?"  And, when I told Karen that I wanted to join a discernment group, she said "Great, why don't you start one?" 

 

I believe the COTA music, warmth, lack of judgment, and organic weaving of relationships to each other and Christ would have made it my home anyway.  But I am certain that my commitment and devotion to the COTA community blossomed so quickly precisely because of their unhesitant readiness to embrace my needs, and trust me to organize whatever would meet them.

 

So, I found myself asking Esther Poirier � my 'acting' godmother, with whom I also lived at the time, and who had pointed me toward COTA � how to lead a discernment group. After consulting the ecww.org website, and the library of books Esther loaned me, I decided also to ask God what activities would best help the Apostles discern His message to them.  I had confidence enough in leading groups from my Yoga work, so often I avoided overly-intellectual planning, but rather prayed and let my mind play as I drove to our meetings at the living:room every other Sunday.  Without fail, the Holy Spirit suggested the concepts, the activities, and the structure to fill our two-hour sessions.  Often, I would jot these down while waiting outside the door for someone to open the space.

 

I tried to keep a balance between mind activities (writing, talking, thinking) and other types of activity.  Of the fourteen people who showed up on the first day in January, many arrived with their minds scattered or distracted, not ready to do the deep work of listening for God.  To center us in the space, that first day we took one hand each of two other people across the circle, and then freed ourselves from the human pretzel created without separating hands.  Another Apostle, Ray, also sometimes led group-cohesion activities, such as centering prayer, based on work he had done in a prayer class at school.  In general, we oscillated between partner or group activities, and private contemplation.  Typically, we would share or incorporate the results of this private work back into the group for feedback or support, when necessary.  I placed premiums on sharing from the heart, ensuring everyone was heard, and creating a safe space for this to happen within.  

 

Some of the questions we considered in early sessions were: What is one personal way that I hear from God?  What are my gifts? What keeps me from acting as I want or know I should?  What may God have been telling me that I just haven't done yet?  One activity involved writing to God our most detailed and pressing question or advice needed.  Then, the paper was given to a partner.  After clearing our minds, we listened to our partners read the question as if it was their own.  Then, we gave advice to our partner about how to get unstuck from the dilemma they had described and move forward.  Many people came away somewhat surprised at the wisdom about their own lives that came out of their mouths.  In this and all activities, I followed the premise that God is always speaking to us, but that two major obstacles we face are being too distracted to hear His voice, and failing to act based on what we hear. Sometimes, the work facilitated deep listening and focus, then; other times it involved more banal explorations of lethargy, starting with "what keeps me from doing the laundry that needs to be done?"

 

A principle I have found in my own life is that the more consistently we act in faith to follow God, the more frequent and clear His messages to us become.  Many of the "big" questions - such as "what should I do with my life?" � I found were laden with expectations and pressures that were too pervasive for our group members to simply abandon in order to hear the voice of God.  I sought, therefore, to use the group to cultivate a practice of listening, supported by processes and focal points for listening, so that each might proceed in their own lives from following God's guidance in the little things, to a more consistent and clear sense of being guided and supplied by God in doing His work in all things. 

 

As leader of the group, at times I felt I put more energy into facilitating and helping others than myself.  Aside from the dynamism and sense of life that confirmed my love for helping others meet God, I sometimes felt I should be investigating more my own call to ministry.  I considered this when designing our final meeting before I had to leave for school in August, so I might answer, at least for myself, whether to pursue ordination.

 

My most consistent personal way of hearing God's guidance is through 'feeling the energy.'  A sensitivity that for me was developed through over three years of yoga and tai chi, I came to associate some experiences of what was taught to me as 'chi' energy with the Holy Spirit.  Beginning by simply allowing the energy to move me in the safe space of the yoga class, I later developed the ability to feel which activities were 'supported' by the energy, and which activities I felt drained when approaching.  This awareness first came during a period when my blood numbers had dropped (related to a latent bone marrow condition I have had).  I found that, although my energy was weak, lying down to rest made me feel more drained.  Upon considering a trip for groceries, however, I felt instantly energized.  At the store, my energy sustained as I focused on getting the essentials for that meal; yet, any moment I became distracted toward more superfluous treats, I could have collapsed.  The difference was that drastic.  I interpreted this as God supplying the energy for activities that supported my healing, because my body literally had no energy that could have been supporting that trip on its own.

 

The possibility that God speaks to us by supplying the Holy Spirit for activities He wants us to accomplish informed my final discernment group activity.  At that last meeting, I first described a vision I had had when talking with one of our Apostles the week before.  He had talked lethargically about his life and job, seeming stuck and insistent on the activities that his voice showed to be life-draining.  His voice immediately energized, however, when he spoke of returning to teaching children.  The way his energy drastically shifted when he spoke of different life choices reminded me of my energy changes when I chose healing vs. non-healing activities.  I suddenly felt God may work through supporting us with energy when we near the paths that bring us closer to Him and His work. 

 

The vision that emerged was of each of us trapped within a room with many walls, each with a door.  The walls represent the limits of our awareness, and each door is a possible step we can take from our present place in life.  For those of us who have trouble finding God right now in our lives, God is outside that room.  It is just one room, and God is outside everywhere.  So, any door and any step can lead toward God.  However, some doors are easier to open than others.  When God created us in that room, he gave us each certain keys.  The keys open some doors but not others.  The keys are the energy given by the Holy Spirit. 

 

So, when we move toward a door God wants us to go through, we feel the energy of the Holy Spirit supporting us.  When we rattle the handle of a door God has not chosen for us, our energy is drained. 

 

Each Apostle wrote down on separate sheets of paper all of the major options facing them at the moment: including job or career decisions, relationships, and projects.  Then we all formed a circle as one Apostle passed out his or her papers to us to hold, with the option of holding them so they could be seen or not seen. 

 

The Apostle stood then perfectly at the center of the circle.  I asked her to first feel her body, then slowly move from the center, toward different 'doorways' as she felt called, paying attention to her body as she did so.  (Many Apostles had been attending the yoga class I had been instructing beforehand at the church, and so had some practice at this).  I encouraged her to be interactive with the different sheets of paper, instructing her to move them up, put them down, turn them over, crumple them up � whatever felt right to that Apostle, until she felt a sense of balance in her body about the arrangement she had created.  After each round, we shared � first, what each member of the circle felt as the Apostle neared or interacted with him, and then what the Apostle herself felt during the process.

 

The results were sometimes amazing.  Many Apostles reported that they were surprised at how they interacted with the options � that certain projects they had thought they "should" be doing had very stagnant energy feelings, while other options that had been at the periphery of their awareness were actually sources of inspiration or peace when they neared them in the circle.  Almost without fail, the feeling of the Apostle holding the piece of paper matched the feeling of the Apostle at the center.

 

One or two Apostles experimented with distributing their papers randomly and having the papers held so as to not see what was written on the sheet. When it came my turn, I felt called to do the exercise with maximal faith.  Much was riding on my nine sheets, including studying theology, teaching yoga in churches, various projects to make money, dating (as I had recently begun after my fianc�e left me), and � getting on the ordination track.  I shuffled the papers, distributed them randomly to the group, and closed my eyes.

 

In a strange sort of free-form tai chi I had never quite experienced, I carefully moved around within the circle, sensing streams of strong energy, and areas that felt deadened.  In one direction, I told the person "place this one on a rock;" in another, I said "this one needs to be elevated."  After I struck the balance and felt everything around me in the circle was in harmony, I opened my eyes.

 

The stream of strong energy, to which I had said "I feel like I need to get out of the way of this one," had come from Dating.  This much was true: enough dating options had opened up for me in the past month to leave me feeling overwhelmed, and certainly a bit hesitant.  The deadened areas of energy came from a freelance writing project I would be taking on in August before school started, and the paper on which I had written "Get rich while going to Grad school."  It was true, these things sounded like fun and would have solved some problems, but they were not life-giving paths for me.  This much I knew already.

 

 Affirmation came in the two areas most important to me.  Teaching yoga in churches, to which I had said "put this one on a rock," was a vision that had been brewing in my mind almost the entire three years I had been teaching.  In many forms and variations, during meditations and prayers, this vision kept returning.  I was glad to find this had been reinforced. 

 

   My greatest concern, however, had been around the question of the Ordination Track.  It was the biggest commitment of any of the options, the one about which I had the greatest uncertainty, and the purpose the whole group had been organized in the first place.  I had no idea how a discernment group was meant to come up with any firm 'answers' to questions like this; all I know was that I thanked God when I opened my eyes and saw the paper for Ordination Track being elevated, stretched high above all the others.

 

*   *   *  

 

 

I tried to conduct the discernment group with as much loyalty to the Holy Spirit as possible.  Because the group was for my discernment as much as anyone's, it would not have meant anything if the processes and conclusions came from me.  I tried not to use my brain or ideas too much in planning the activities, but let the plan come to me in prayer, leaving breathing room for any guidance the Holy Spirit might offer in the middle of the meetings.  I would guess it's pretty unorthodox for the aspirant to postulancy to have been the leader of the discernment group, and I have no idea whether my experience comprises the kind of answer about a call to ministry that other groups might produce.  I leave that for my group to determine in the statement they deliver to the Bishop, as it should be.  All I know is that the group did strengthen my conviction and readiness to take up the call to ministry, if that is what the church should decide.

 

 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Andrew Varyu

5 Jan. 2006

 

 

 

Prepared for Bishop of the Episcopalian Diocese of Olympia

Statement from Aspirant to Postulancy Andrew R Varyu

Submitted Epiphany, 2006