Today, yesterday and most of the last two weeks while going through symptoms of coronavirus there have been two constants - extreme nausea and my internalized mind-made suffering from the symptoms attacking my system.
All of the other symptoms have been then gone, for which I am very thankful. But the nausea, stomach cramps, and other gut symptoms you don't want to know about, remain. Perhaps this is part of the recovery process, which I have read can take between a week and a month. Perhaps the virus lingers in the place where I am most weak, my gut.
To which I say "the gut is the second brain. If I can switch off the thoughts constructing the perception of suffering, I can breath through this point of attack."
This morning, despite extreme nausea, I completed three rounds of Wim Hof breathing with the final round holding my breath for one minute and fifty seconds. I drank a pint of water and then submerged myself in a freezing cold shower for forty seconds - I'm slowly building to the 2-3 minutes research has shown the Wim Hof technique activates the immune system's response. I then cycled to the allotment to water my tomato plants without eating, which I instinctively knew would destroy me for the day due to the nausea.
I then meditated in the park for nearly an hour. Sat by the big fountain in Sefton park watching and listening without judgement or evaluation.
The hoot of moorhen in the eves of hanging willow melded with the excited shouts of children playing in the sun. The ducks and geese seemed calm to my presence as they wandered past me only feet away. The nausea melted away in the timelessness of no thing, no thought. The best way I can describe it is to say I felt like I was the listening and the things I heard all at once.
No separation between myself and the ducks.
I was the warbling of the geese and the distant whisper of breeze over the crest of sycamore trees.
I have no pictures to share of today as I thought to take no pictures.
Below is a short film I made around a year ago called The Nature of Sefton Park. It's pretty sketchy, and represents one of my first attempts at video editing, but it was a sunny day and will give an impression of the park for those who are interested.
It was in this state of meditation, a deep state of separation from thought and ego that I haven't achieved in a while, that I had a realization.
Suffering is a reactive thought pattern in reaction to pain conditions. The suffering isn't rooted in reality, it is a construct of thought and therefore unnecessary.
This isn't to say the pain isn't real. I didn't eat today until I arrived home at around midday for a reason. I knew the nausea would ramp up and make me feel awful once I ate, and true to form it has, and I've been running back and forth to the toilet all day. But despite the pain/symptoms being the same, today is very different than yesterday in how I am dealing with it.
Yesterday was spent mainly trying to catch patches of sleep between meals, pacing around the apartment as my stomach did flip flops and living entirely in a thought induced state of resistance.
How do I make this stop.
When will this be over.
Why this shit again...
and on they can run with no seeming ending in sight. That is the suffering mind at its core. Constantly repeating pointless thoughts in a cycle.
This is different to my actions today, which have been to drink a lot more water (helped a little), try peppermint tea (hasn't helped) and vary my meal spacing (which has provided some small relief). The most important thing that has changed is how I relate to my pain, or in the case of today how I'm not relating to it at all. I am simply acting... trying different ways to ease the symptoms.
My mission for the next two weeks is to see if I can slip into the deep quietening of mind that I described earlier repeatedly, and separate what is happening to me from the reactive landscape constructed by thought patterns.
I may not write as much over the next few weeks. I may even disappear completely for a while. Healing is the most important thing, and I instinctively feel that this realization that I don't have to inhabit this pain in thought, is the first step on that path.
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