last chemo complete

WOW...what a day...

as I embraced my last chemo of one of the most powerful treatments for Ovarian Cancer...my friend's life was celebrated...Beth Wilcox...she lived with Ovarian Cancer for 10 years...so many wonderful things to share about her and others who have passed...brave and courageous women who have been touched at the deepest level of pain and suffering and like the lotus flower who is nurtured by thick oozing mud ...a beauty so powerful emerges and life can begin...even in death...the ultimate transition!

Life hands us twists and turns and the map to our preconceived destination is kind of like map quest...it doesn't always take you on the most direct route...or doesn't it take you there at all...

I guess that's the beauty of life...the mystery keeps us on our toes and adaptable to any circumstance...it's how strong we can remain...how open can we be to the changes and the surprises?

Today the twists and turns have brought a unique motion sickness that has lingered for quite some time...and yet in between...the space in between...something beautiful emerges...so as I continue to truly live with uncertainty...as Pema Chodron continues to remind me that I can be "Comfortable with Uncertainty"...my transition into a healed body and mind can allow me to truly begin to live again...with renewed appreciation for each moment...for each moment...for each moment...without expectations or waiting or hoping for more than what is...with any discomfort...

I have friends who are living with cancer or other diseases and they are living life fully and powerfully...with new experiences...we have a chance to live better...live deeper...live with the wisdom that only comes from difficulties...we can armor ourselves with love or we can use that coat of armor to protect us from life and never really live...we just have to be...to wait for that sound inside that can free us...it's all useful.

Isn't that all any of us really are looking for?

May the sun shine brightly on you and may the darkness feel just as meaningful...

Love from Marley and Diana

last small chemo today...

I'm off to my last chemo today...soon to feel better....still feeling the effects of the last chemo...mixed emotions today...not even sure how to explain it...

friend Beth Wilcox passed away...

...just found out a long time friend passed away from Ovarian Cancer...her memorial is tomorrow and I can't be there due to my treatment...she lived each day with love and a zest for life and because of her spirit and the refusal to let Ovarian cancer define her...I will continue in her honor to live each day fully and find a way to express love at the deepest level for what is this life for other than to find that place in all of us...

although I am sad ...I am also lifted by her example..

To you Beth Wilcox...thank you.

still recovering...

...still recovering from the last chemo...nausea is strong...

sending love...

NEW results and future treatments...

Greetings!

GREAT NEWS!!!!! My ca-125 is now 11...awesome!!!

I just got home from my 6th IP (belly) BIG chemo and next Friday completes the 6th cycle with the small chemo...I have a few minutes before the sofa is my friend again...for a while....it's (the symptoms) coming on as I write...it's ok...I'm still celebrating!!!

I am DONE!!!!!!

I will have a procedure called a saline flush and retraction(not scientific terms) to see if any cancer cells are pulled through from the belly port site. It may or may not be accurate...just a tool.

I will be moving between September 15-30 ...in this general area...good feelings about the move...at least I will be stronger from this last chemo!

Mid-October I will either have surgery just to take the belly port out ...or/ and also have a laperscopic look at the peritoneal cavity ...I will also have a PET Scan before surgery is scheduled.

Much is coming my way but it is also a time to celebrate...the statistics for re-occurrence again are quite high...rather than hope it doesn't happen...I will continue to embrace what is put on my path and work with it rather than try to get away from it...I also figure that statistics are just interesting data and I may be in the percentile that is healed...I am in the percentile that is Healed...I am healed!

I'm working on how my brain relates to cancer or any disease or difficulty...a great book (regular or/and audiobook)
is called :

The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles [AUDIOBOOK] (Audio CD)

by Bruce H. Lipton

Bruce H. Lipton (Author)

› Visit Amazon's Bruce H. Lipton Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

See search results for this author

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(Author)

I may be underground for a while...sending lots of love and thanks to all of you!!!

Much love,
Summer

join me...

The few days before chemo #6...

Please join me for Blend on thursday morning at 9:15 am

and Yoga at Soul of yoga this thursday evening at 5:30 pm

BIG chemo this Friday...almost done!!!

Love to all,
Summer

Sakyong and Pema LIVE

I just participated online "LIVE"...which allowed me to view and hear Sakyong yesterday and Pema today each giving a 90 min plus dharma talk....since I wasn't able to go in person..this was a wonderful gift!!! This was from the retreat from Shambhala Mountain Center...

I am reminded (not that I ever forget) about how Powerful Pema is...she is my true teacher and I am so grateful for her in all of our lives!!!

Thank you thank you thank you!!!!

Have a beautiful day!
Summer

I get to work for 2 weeks....yeah!!!

Yesterday started a 2 week period where I can work ...so grateful for that...

I recovered a bit easier this round and that was not supposed to happen...staying in the moment for what seems easier or more challenging...

Please scroll to the right for current schedule info....

See you soon,
Summer

Recovering faster this time...

...not sure why...but I'll take it...this smaller chemo was a bit easier to recover from...in the moment...at this moment I feel great!

My recent blood work is strong and wonderful and I'll take that too!

I'll be teaching for the next 2 weeks...please scroll to the right for current class info...have a delightful weekend!

love,
Summer

Drala Wisdom from Chogyam

SHAMBHALA - The Sacred Path of the Warrior * Twelve * DISCOVERING MAGIC By Chogyam Trungpa ,,,,,, Any perception can connect us to reality properly and fully. What we see doesn't have to be pretty, particularly; we can appreciate anything that exists. There is some principle of magic in everything, some living quality. Something living, something real, is taking place in everything.

IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY SOCIETY, the appreciation of simplicity has almost been lost. From London to Tokyo, there are problems with trying create pleasure and comfort out of speed. The world is mechanized to such an extent that you don't even have to think. You just push a button and a computer gives you the answer. You don't have to learn to count. You press a button, and a machine counts for you. Casualness has become increasingly popular, because people think in terms of efficiency rather than appreciation. Why bother to wear a tie, if the purpose of wearing clothes is just to cover your body? If the reason for eating food is only to fill your stomach and provide nutrition, why bother to look for the best meat, the best butter, the best vegetables?

But the reality of the world is something more than the life style that the twentieth century world has embraced. Pleasure has been cheapened, joy has been reduced, happiness has been computerized. The goal of warriorship is to reconnect to the nowness of reality, so that you can go forward without destroying simplicity, without destroying your connection to this earth. In the last chapter it was discussed the importance of nowness as a way of joining together the wisdom of the past with the challenge of the present. In this chapter, we are going to discuss how to discover the ground of nowness. In order to rediscover nowness, you have to look back, back to where you came from, back to the original state. In this case, looking back is not looking back in time, going back several thousand years. It is looking back into your own mind, to before history began, before thinking began, before thought ever occurred. When you are in contact with the original ground, then you are never confused by the illusions of past and future. You are able to rest continuously in nowness.

The original state of being can be likened to a primordial, or cosmic mirror. by primordial we mean unconditioned, not caused by any circumstances. Something primordial is not a reaction for or against any situation. All conditionality comes from unconditionally. Anything that is made has to come from what was unmade, to begin with. If something is conditioned, it has been created or formed. In the English language, we speak of formulating ideas or plans, or we may say, "How should we form our organization?" or we may talk bout the formation of a cloud. In contrast to that, the unconditioned is free from being formed, free from creation. This unconditioned state is likened to a primordial mirror because, like a mirror, it is willing to reflect anything, from the gross level up to the refined level, and it still remains as it is. The basic frame of reference of the cosmic mirror is quite vast, and it is free from any bias: kill or cure, hope or fear.

The way to look back and experience the state of being of the cosmic mirror is simply to relax. In this case relaxation is quite different from the setting-sun idea of flopping or taking time off, entertaining yourself with a good vacation. Relaxation here refers to relaxing the mind, letting go of the anxiety and concepts and depression that normally bind you. The way to relax, or rest the mind in nowness, is through the practices of meditation. In Part One, it was discussed how the practiced of meditation is connected to renouncing small-mindedness and personal territory. In meditation you are neither "for" nor "against" your experience. That is, you don't praise some thoughts and condemn others, but you take an unbiased approach. You let things be as they are, without judgment, and in that way you yourself learn to be, to express your existence directly nonconceptually. That is the ideal state of relaxation, which allows you to experience the nowness of the cosmic mirror. In fact it is already the experience of the cosmic mirror.

If you are able to relax - relax to a cloud by looking at it, relax to a drop of rain and experience its genuineness - you can see the unconditionality of reality, which remains very simply in things as they are, very simply. When you are able to look at things without saying, "This is for me or against me," "I can go along with this," or "I cannot go along with this," then you are experiencing the state of being of the cosmic mirror, the wisdom of the cosmic mirror. You may see a fly buzzing; you may see a snowflake; you may see ripples of water; you may see a black widow spider. You may see anything, but you can actually look at all of those things with simple and ordinary, but appreciative perception.

Your experience a vast realm of perceptions unfolding. There is unlimited sound, unlimited sight, unlimited taste, unlimited feeling and so on. The realm of perception is limitless, so limitless that perception itself is primordial, unthinkable, beyond thought. There are so many perceptions that they are beyond imagination. There are a vast number of sounds. There are sounds that you have never heard. There are sights and colors that you have never seen. There are feelings that you have never experienced before. There are endless fields of perception.

Perception here is not just what you perceive but the whole act of perceiving - the interaction between consciousness, the sense organs and the sense fields, or the objects of perception. In some religious traditions, sense perceptions are regarded as problematic, because they arouse worldly desires. However, in the Shambhala tradition, which is a secular tradition rather than a religious one, sense perceptions are regarded as sacred. They are regarded as basically good. They are a natural gift, a natural ability that human beings have. They are a source of wisdom. If you don't see sights, if you don't hear sounds, if you don't taste food, you have no way to communicate with the phenomenal world at all. But because of the extraordinary vastness of perception, you have possibilities of communicating with the depth of the world - the world of sight, the world of sound - the greater world.

In other words, your sense faculties give you access to possibilities of deeper perception. Beyond ordinary perception, there is super-sound, super-smell, and super-feeling existing in your state of being. These can be experienced only by training yourself in the depth of meditation practice, which clarifies any confusion or cloudiness and brings our the precision, sharpness, and wisdom of perception - the nowness of your world. In meditation, you experience the precision of breath going in and out. You feel your breath: it is so good. You breathe out, breath dissolves; it is so harp and good, it is so extraordinary that ordinary preoccupations become superfluous. So meditation practice brings out the supernatural, if I may use that word. You do not see ghosts or become telepathic, but your perceptions become super-natural, simply super-natural.

Normally, we limit the meaning of perceptions. Food reminds us of eating; dirt reminds us to clean the house; snow reminds us that we to clean off the car to get to work; a face reminds of us our love or hate. In other words, we fit what we see into a comfortable or familiar scheme. we shut any vastness of possibilities of deeper perception out of our hearts by fixating on our own interpretation of phenomena. But it is possible to go beyond personal interpretation, to let vastness into our hearts through the medium of perception. We always have a choice: we can limit our perception so that we close off vastness, or we can allow vastness to touch us.

When we draw down the power and depth of vastness into a single perception, then we are discovering and invoking magic. By magic we do not mean unnatural power over the phenomenal world, but rather the discovery of innate or primordial wisdom in the world as it is. The wisdom we are discovering is wisdom without beginning, something naturally wise, the wisdom of the cosmic mirror. In Tibetan, this magical quality of existence, or natural wisdom, is called drala. Dra means "enemy" or "opponent" and la means "above." So drala literally means "above the enemy," "beyond the enemy." Drala is the unconditioned wisdom and power of the world that are beyond any dualism; therefore drala is above any enemy or conflict. It is wisdom beyond aggression. It is the self-existing wisdom and power of the cosmic mirror that are reflected both in us and in our world of perception.

One of the key points in discovering drala principle is realizing that your own wisdom as a human being is not separate fro the power of things as they are. They are both reflections of the unconditioned wisdom of the cosmic mirror. Therefore there is no fundamental separation or duality between you and your world. When you can experience those two things together, as one, so to speak, then you have access to tremendous vision and power in the world - you find that they are inherently connected to your own vision, your own being. That is discovering magic. We are not talking here about an intellectual revelation; we are speaking of actual experience. We are talking about how we actually perceive reality. The discovery of drala may come as an extraordinary smell, a fantastic sound, a vivid color, an unnatural taste. Any perception can connect us to reality properly and fully. What we see doesn't have to be pretty, particularly; we can appreciate anything that exists. There is some principle of magic in everything, some living quality. Something living, something real is taking place in everything.

When we see things as they are, they make sense to us: the way leaves move when they are blown by the wind, the way rocks get wet when there are snowflakes sitting on them. We see how things display their harmony and their chaos at the same time. So we are never limited by beauty alone, but we appreciate all sides of reality properly.

Many stories and poems written for children describe the experience of invoking the magic of a simple perception. One example is "Waiting at the Window" from Now We Are Six, by A. A. Milne. It is a poem about spending several hours on a rainy day looking out the window, watching drops of water come down and make patterns on the glass. Reading this poem, you see the window, the rainy day, and the child with his face pressed to the glass watching the raindrops, and you feel the child's sense of delight and wonder. The poems of Robert Louis Stevenson in A Child's Garden of Verses have similar quality of using very ordinary experiences to communicate the depth of perception. The poems "My Shadow," "My Kingdom," and "Armies in the Fire" exemplify this. The fundamental vastness of the world cannot be expressed directly in words, but in children's literature, very often it is possible to express that vastness in simplicity.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery is another wonderful example of literature that evokes the sense of ordinary, or elemental, magic. At one point in this story, the little prince meets a fox. The prince is very lonely and wants the fox to play with him, but the fox says that he cannot play unless he is tamed. The little prince asks the meaning of the word "tame." The fox explains that it means "to establish ties" in such a way that the fox will become unique to the little prince, and the prince unique to the fox. Later after the fox has been tamed and the little prince must leave him, the fox also tells the prince what he calls "my secure, a very simple secret," which is, "it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye."

Saint Exupery has a different vocabulary here for describing the discovery of the magic, or drala, but the experience is basically the same. Discovering drala is indeed to establish ties to your world, so that each perception becomes unique. It is to see with the heart, so that what is visible to the eye becomes visible as the living magic of reality. There may be thousands or billions or perceptions, but they are still one. if you see one candle, you know exactly what all the candles in the whole world look like. They are all made out of fire, flame. Seeing one drop of water can be seeing all water.

Drala could almost be called an entity. It is not quite on the level of a god or gods, but it is an individual strength that does exist. Therefore, we not only speak of drala principle, but we speak of meeting the "dralas." The dralas are the elements of reality - water of water, fire of fire, earth of earth - anything that connects you with elemental quality of reality, anything that reminds you of the depth of perception. There are dralas in the rocks or the trees or the mountains or a snowflake or a clod of dirt. Whatever is there, whatever you come across in your life, those are the dralas of reality. When you make that connection with the elemental quality of the world, you are meeting dralas on the spot; at that point, you are meeting them. That is the basic existence of which all human beings are capable. We always have possibilities of discovering magic, whether it is medieval times or the twentieth century, the possibility of magic is always there.

A particular example of meeting drala, in my personal experience, is flower arranging. Whatever branches you find, none of them is rejected as ugly. They can always be included. You have to learn to see their place in the situation; that is the key point. So you never reject anything. That is how to make a connection with the dralas of reality.

Drala energy is like the sun. If you look in the sky, the sun is there. By looking at it, you don't produce a new sun. You may feel that you created or made today's sun by looking at it, but the sun is eternally there.When you discover the sun in the sky, you begin to communicate with it. Your eyes begin to relate with the light of the sun. In the same way, drala principle is always there. Whether you care to communicate with it or not, the magical strength and wisdom of reality are always there. That wisdom abides in the cosmic mirror. By relaxing the mind, you can reconnect with that primordial, original ground, which is completely pure and simple. Out of that, through the medium of your perceptions, you can discover magic, or drala. You actually can connect your own intrinsic wisdom with a sense of greater wisdom or vision beyond you.

You might think that something extraordinary will happen to you when you discover magic. Something extra-ordinary does happen. You simply find yourself in the realm of utter reality, complete and thorough reality.

on my way...

on my way to complete treatment #5...small chemo...WHEW...

an opportunity...

This experience...this discomfort...is an opportunity to awaken my heart...
as many of you know...

Pema Chodron is my teacher on so many levels...I have never met her in person...that hasn't seemed to matter...

I was scheduled to go to Shambhala Mountain Center the last week of July and attend a workshop with Sakyong and Pema together...
(my next treatment is scheduled that same week)...

WOW...that would have been something...knowing the transmission of energy as I have come to miraculously witness or so it always seems like a miracle...I have come to accept the energy I will receive without being there in person. As soon as I am able...I plan to visit Pema and study with her in Nova Scotia ...because of her teachings...I have been able to sit with the darkness of this experience and find a deeper opening to my heart...I have been able to find a deeper layer of compassion and love. Thank you Pema for your beautiful teachings and the strength they give me every moment!

...Sharing from Pema...

"Practice the five strengths, the condensed heart instructions.
There are five strengths we can utilize in our practice of awakening bodichitta. There are five ways that a warrior increases confidence and inspiration:

1. Cultivating strong determination and commitment to relate openly to whatever life presents, including our emotional distress. As warriors-in training we develop wholehearted determination to use discomfort as an opportunity for awakening, rather than to try to make it disappear. This determination generates strength.

2. Building familiarization with the bodichitta practices by utilizing them in formal practice on the spot. Whatever happens, our commitment is to use it to awaken our heart.

3. Watering the seed of bodichitta in both delightful and miserable situations so that our confidence in this positive seed can grow. Sometimes it helps to find little ways that the seed of goodness manifests in our life.

4. Using reproach-with kindness and humor-as a way of catching ourselves before we cause harm to self or other. The gentlest method of reproach is asking ourselves, Have I ever done this before?

5. Nurturing the habit of aspiring for all of us that suffering and its seeds diminish and that wisdom and compassion increase; nurturing the habit of always cultivating our kind heart and open mind. Even when we can't act, we can aspire to find the warrior's strength and ability to love."

Pema Chodron
Comfortable with Uncertainty

going to chemo # 5

ON my way to chemo #5...feeling stronger mentally and physically...

I've got my mojo back!

see you all soon!!!!

Bring on the Healing...

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WOW oh WOW oh WOW!!!!!!!!

I just found out my ca-125 is now another 10 points lower.... 15!!!!!!

Which means it's even lower since this treatment gives a high read...


Soooooooooooooooooooo awesome!!!!

Namaste,
Summer