Flow: The Illusion of Control
I did it! Last night was my 23rd night shift in 26 days. I survived! It was kind of a half- Iron Man in that I actually had scheduled myself for 42 shifts in 45 days but the Universe intervened (thankfully!) and four of those shifts were taken away from me. Nonetheless, I still feel as though it was an accomplishment.
I’ve been sleeping really well after these night shifts but for some reason could not fall asleep after this shift. I just tossed and turned for awhile and then, rather than continue to do so, sat and meditated for a while until I was finally ready to crash. I then woke up feeling exhausted and despite the protest of every fiber of my aching body, decided to stick to my schedule and swim. One of the greatest benefits of this Locums assignment in Binghamton, NY is that the Doubletree Hilton Hotel has a 20 meter saltwater lap pool that is heavenly.
I started training for a triathlon one month prior to meeting my wife Alexandra who has dedicated her life to the Iron Man competition. She has already completed a bunch of them, placing in first and second place in her age category in the last two half-Iron Man competitions. She recently qualified for the World Iron-Man Competition in South Africa! In addition to carrying the wisdom of the ages, being incredibly intelligent and drop dead gorgeous, she’s physically a power house!
While training during our first trip together in Indonesia, I started to experience what started as an ache in my left foot and then developed to a constant pain and then limping while walking. I went to an orthopedic surgeon who informed me that I had a “Pes Cavus” (a very high arch and instep) and that if I didn’t have surgery, I would be cripple in 10 years. Interestingly, I had developed hammer toes as a child, which totally ruined my dream of being a foot model (haha!), and at the age of 11, my mother took me to an orthopedic surgeon who told me then that I needed surgery. My mother decided against it and although I was aware that my feet were my “Achilles Heel,” I still managed to be a solid athlete for most of my life until that trip to Indonesia training for an Iron Man. The reality is that I could have definitely given up my dream to complete an Iron Man at a drop of a hat, but the idea of never dancing again was inconceivable. I opted for the surgery and had my left foot operated on in June and the right one in early September.
It was quite an interesting experience in that I was completely humbled. It was my very first brush with my own mortality. Up until that moment, I had been super healthy and never had any health issues. I considered myself (from purely a health perspective) to be perfect. Well, this was a wake up call that death was right around the corner. I’ll concede that I was being a bit melodramatic but it never occurred to me that I would ever get sick. So I’ve basically been off my feet since June 6, 2017, graduated to a walking boot a few weeks ago, and then just started walking in my sneakers three days ago. Even while in the boot, working 10–12-hour shifts were too strenuous so I’ve been working in a wheelchair, which stimulated many interesting and surprising reactions from the patients in the ED (emergency department).
I still managed to take a few trips to Ecuador to visit the love of my life, adapted pretty well to my circumstances, but what I really missed was dancing and exercising. I’ve always had really skinny legs but after 4.5 months of inactivity, my leg & butt muscles completely atrophied. When I started physical therapy, I thought it would be for the sole purpose of rehabilitating my feet, but learned that it was for everything from my buttocks down. The simplest exercises felt as though I was running a marathon. I really didn’t expect this and it really depressed me.
In mid-October, I was finally able to start swimming and biking. It felt as though I had never exercised a day in my life! I felt like giving up after the first day. What kept me going was the thought of Alexandra, day in and day out, rain or shine, going out to work out. Something she once told me stuck in my mind: “You are the sum total of every work-out you’ve done in your life.” She pointed out that it wasn’t about killing or over-exerting yourself on any particular day, but rather just showing up. That stuck with me and since 10/18/17, I just showed up and started with alternating daily between just 10 minutes on the spin cycle and three laps in the pool. It was actually more painful psychologically to struggle through those pathetically short workouts and feel as though I was going to die than the actual workouts themselves. Nonetheless, I showed up!
So since I was forced to take these four days off and decided to return to New York City to spend time with my gorgeous 15-year old daughter Paloma and mother, this was my last workout of this four-week block, so there was no way I could wimp out. I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed. There are only two lap lanes that occupy 1/3 of the pool and the remainder is an open area where there are typically a handful of octogenarians doing resistance-type exercises. God bless them!
Once I got in the water, I was ready to go. I jumped in and started swimming. I was always a decent swimmer, but just before my operation in June, my friend Enki was visiting New York learned that he was also a former triathlete. I had the blessing of meeting him at Burning Man and and as serendipidy would have it, he met Nejla Yatkin, a truly gifted and amazing modern dancer (check her out on YouTube!) at one of my “Nights of Sharing” soirées (how cool is that?!) and they just married in August! We went to the pool at Columbia University and he gave me a few tips that revolutionized my stroke. So despite my pathetic state of conditioning, my stroke was actually quite strong and in 18 days since I started to workout on 10/18/17, I made tremendous progress. I was doing sets of 200 meters and had last achieved 1000 meters while exerting a Herculean effort. As I had mentioned above, I didn’t sleep very well and was physically and psychologically exhausted. Nonetheless, I managed to show up, completely let go, and metaphorically dipped my toes into what many refer to as FLOW.
It was amazing! There was no thought and no effort. My arms and legs were being moved for me and all I was doing was breathing. It reminded me of the Shaman Don Diego singing a song during ceremonies whose lyrics included: “Life is so simple, all you have to do is breathe!” There were moments I felt that it wasn’t me that was breathing, but rather, I was being breathed. Before I knew it, I had completed 8 sets of 200 (1600 meters, 1 mile) and felt great!
Afterward, I went into the sauna and meditated. I thought about the great experience I had just had and the concept of FLOW came to mind. I’ve had this experience many times in my life and upon examining these experiences, it always boiled down to letting go, taking my hand off the tiller and allowing the Universe/God/Consciousness- the sober, infinitely better skilled designated driver for my self going through this inebriated human experience.
One of the most significant experiences I had with Mother Vine occurred in 2010. The entire ceremony consisted of a voice, my voice in fact repeating the same thing with different tonalities, inflections, and affectations: “Richard, let go…let it go…just let go…dude, let go…LET GO NOW…JUST LET GO…please, let go.” This went on for five hours and my response was the same: “Let go of what? Can you please tell me what I’m supposed to let go of? How about a hint?” Finally, completely confused and frustrated, I gave up without a clue as what this was all about. It wasn’t until very recently when I had this “ah-hah” moment and it all came together. There were in fact hints along the way. In Jed McKenna’s “Enlightenment Trilogy” (MUST READING!!!), he says that the price of TRUTH is EVERYTHING, but you don’t know what EVERYTHING is until you’re already deep in the rabbit hole. This was a form of saying that one had to let go of EVERYTHING. Another clue was Sri Ramana Maharsi’s prescription for liberation, contemplating on “Who am I?” The I “am” in confirmation that I “exist” (AM= to be) but the trick is to abandon the “I.” This is what ultimately has to be let go.
In any case, it has always been in those moments of inadvertently letting go of the “I” that something else steps in and takes over, and suddenly, I found myself in FLOW. This experience has been most explicit for me in my writing, where I can honestly say that my novel “The Twin Flames, the Master, and the Game,” and as well as my collection of poems “Reflections on the Nature of Love and Sex” were not written through any mental process or effort of mine. I basically showed up and was always incredibly curious and excited to know what would come out on the page. It was great to read Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist Way” (MUST READING!!!) where she describes this very process of letting go and allowing creativity to channel through you. Without realizing it, I had touched on exactly what she described.
I’ve heard many artists and athletes describe these type of peak experiences where they are “in the zone” and somehow manage to get themselves out of the way (take their hands off the steering wheel/tiller, and allow a higher force to take care of business. It’s the retelling of that powerful scene in “Star Wars” when Luke Skywalker is going in to destroy the Death Star and Obi-wan Kenobi’s voice pops into Luke’s head telling him to put his instruments away and allow the Force to guide him. FLOW is another way of asking us to put our instruments down, the illusory “I” that ultimately hinders us, and allow the FORCE to guide us. Can you imagine such a life?! What blinds us is the illusion of control, the idea that we have autonomy and agency. Yet it is this illusion by which we define our very beings, and hence Jed McKenna’s warning that the price of TRUTH is EVERYTHING, but you don’t know what EVERYTHING is until you’re already deep in the rabbit hole. What fascinates me is what can possible inspire someone to go on such a crazy mission, to let go of EVERYTHING, to abandon the illusion of control and ultimately step out of Plato’s cave or the “Matrix.” Maybe it all starts with a little voice in your head repeating “Let go.” Don’t miss it!
I am an emergency physician, writer and a lover of life. The purpose of this blog is to share my ideas, experiences and perspectives as they relate to Consciousness, and as they evolve. Consciousness encompasses everything in my life, your life, the world, the Universe — in other words — EVERYTHING! As the great Shaman Don Diego used to say: “It’s not the most important thing, and it’s not the least important thing…It’s the ONLY thing!”
Check out my novel: “The Twin Flames, the Master, and the Game”! It’s available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Balboa Press.
