These Bones!

After the test showed that my bones now officially qualify as osteoporotic, (bone density low enough to cause potentially serious hip and vertebral fractures) I sat with a nurse to learn my options. I asked many questions, took notes.

Then I walked home, my mind spinning with so many questions. What should I do? How will I treat this new threat to my well-being as I age? Was there a natural way to increase bone density I could trust? Or should I follow the medical model of treatment using powerful drugs? Drugs promise to increase bone density but at such a high cost with their numerous down-sides. On the other hand are my memories of my grandmother in acute pain from spinal fractures, she who did not have drug treatment options for her crippling osteoporosis thirty years ago.

I stayed up late, reading online to learn more. Sleep, when it came, was not restful.

Gratitude abounds for the morning practice of sitting meditation. Once again, out of the silence and stillness: Wisdom. I recognized that I was picking and choosing, my mind adrift in a sea of potential options I must evaluate, eliminate, advocate. The aversion to past and future pains and sufferings fell away. So did the desire to know the perfect strategy that would protect me from harm.

It all let go into the here and now, such a relief. From HERE, I could rest into the great unfolding. I could trust that the next right step would emerge, one that wasn’t up to this picking and choosing “me.” HERE, there is trust that each step in this new journey of osteoporosis is taken without attachment to the outcome, without clinging to any particular direction, every choice, every move emerging from a unique moment in time and space, no static correct treatment to hold on to.

The only unchanging truth is this: these bones and the body that houses them will ultimately fail completely. No treatment options for that medical truth.

We take care of the bodies as well as we can. Our hearts and minds however are where the real work lies. There, the most effective treatment is spiritual truth. We remind the mind over and over to realize the changing nature of all things, to remember its own impermanence and to submit to the light of impermanence. We remind the mind to submit every experience of change, aging and sickness to the wise scrutiny of no picking, no choosing. No right, no wrong. No wanting, no knowing. Trusting each moment to show us the way.

Image Credit: Howie Hearn from Flagstaff, AZ.  Sculpture:  “I Told You We Would Win That War.”