CHAPTER TWO
Sylvia and Sam had been married for 39 years. The last five were, in some ways, the best, like a well-aged wine. They were even sweeter than the early days of their marriage when Sylvia's blue eyes had twinkled with the secret that new life was growing in her womb. They had brought three beautiful children into the world, and four grandchildren. Life was good. Sam's leather business was flourishing. But somehow life had never seemed as precious until Sylvia was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Every day after that, when Sam awakened, he would lift himself up on one elbow and look down at Sylvia. Baruch Hashem, Praise God, he'd utter in Hebrew. We have another day together. Five years after her diagnosis, Sylvia died at home, in their bed. Five months later, Sam had a heart attack and followed his beloved.
All of the old adages about dying of a broken heart, being heartsick, taking heart, and so on, are all based on fact. Many men, like Sam, become ill or die in greater numbers than would be statistically expected following the loss of their wives. Loneliness can truly be a heartbreaker. The sense of separation from life—whether through loss, depression, or protecting our vulnerability through angry cynicism can literally close down our hearts.
Heart disease is the number-one cause of death in the United States. Most of us are familiar with the risk factors—a diet high in saturated fat, high LDL cholesterol, obesity, lack of exercise, cigarette smoking, and diabetes, among others. But did you know that the majority of first heart attacks aren't related to any of these major risk factors? What do you think they are related to? Well, here's a hint. The majority of initial heart attacks occur on a Monday and are clustered between 8:00 and 9:00 A.M.! Some companies call this “parking lot syndrome.” A Massachusetts study found that these Monday morning heart attacks were actually related to two key psychological factors: job dissatisfaction and lack of joy.
Our very dear friend, physician and writer Dr. Larry Dossey, sums up the attitude that predisposes one to parking lot syndrome in one telling phrase—“joyless striving.” In his excellent book, Meaning and Medicine, Dossey speaks of joyless striving as the plight of the mythical figure Sisyphus, perpetually doomed to roll a rock up the hill, only to have it roll back down again.
The difference our attitude makes to the way we approach work is exemplified by an old story about three masons. They were all laying bricks when a man came up to them and asked each one what he was doing. The first one snapped, “I'm laying bricks. What the hell does it look like I'm doing?” The second one sighed, “I'm earning a living.” But the third one gestured toward the sky and said, “I'm building a cathedral.”
Pause and reflect on this story for a moment…. Now try on each of the attitudes that were depicted: angry cynicism, resignation, and inspiration. The best way to do this exercise is to close your eyes and relax yourself with a few deep breaths….Now, bring a memory to mind of a time when you felt angry cynicism. What was happening? Bring back as much detail as you can…. Take a few letting-go breaths, and think of a time when you felt like the second mason—resigned to a Joyless situation. Now once again, take a few letting-go breaths…and now think about a time when you really felt creative and inspired…Can you feel the difference in how your body responds to each of these attitudes?
Perhaps this exercise gave you an inkling of how physical response to our attitudes—which are really a pervasive set of images about life—might predispose us to heart disease. The feeling of joyless striving is a kind of resignation, a withdrawal from life, a turning-off of our very precious life-energy.
Did you feel a little tired, perhaps, when you remembered feeling resignation? Perhaps you felt your life energy surge once again, though, when you recalled a moment of inspiration and creativity. Life energy flows when we create, or when we help another person's creativity flower by encouraging them in some way. Think of the sense of joy and satisfaction that one can derive from the simple act of planting flowers, cooking a meal, writing a poem, solving a problem, painting a picture, dressing with flair, or doing your job to the best of your abilities. Creativity brings us to life, and by using our creativity we help bring the world into being.
While waiting for a plane in Buffalo, New York, recently, I met a young man who really brought creativity to his work. As the cashier at a news concession, he served a steady stream of travelers buying books or other small sundries. I was fifth in line, and feeling a little impatient. Then I heard his bright voice and noticed how “Bob” found something encouraging to say to each customer. He complimented one man on his choice of a book. A young mother's face glowed as he told her how clearly the baby in her arms was thriving from her love. By the time I was standing in front of Bob, I could hardly wait for my dose of what I call “lovingkindness.”The measure of this man's success didn't lie in cashing out his register correctly at the end of the day or in bringing home a paycheck. It lay in how many individual human beings he'd been able to encourage and uplift.
Well, you might ask, what about people who work alone? How can they bring new life to their work? Barbara Dossey, an author, critical care nurse, and the partner of Larry Dossey, has a wonderful slide of a farmer alone in a field. He is bringing in a wheat crop with a harvester that cuts wide swaths through the waving fields of grain. The next slide is an aerial view of his work. The paths he has cut with his harvester have recreated Vincent van Gogh's famous painting of sunflowers! This attitude of playfulness goes hand in hand with creativity. It brings our hearts to life because we feel the inner wellspring of joy that is our birthright as human beings.
While it is often possible to approach our tasks in more life-affirming ways, there are also times when a work environment is so toxic that we are better off leaving. I have often lamented when patients or friends remained in job situations that seemed almost abusive, fearful that no better opportunity would come along. I've certainly done that myself at times. But I've been equally amazed at how a heart attack, a diagnosis of cancer, or in my case, a head-on collision, can suddenly shake us loose from these dead-end situations! When we wake up from the illusion that this lifetime lasts forever, a window of opportunity opens so that we can reassess priorities and make changes in our lives that are most consistent with living joyfully and lovingly.
Let's return to our three masons for a moment. While the joyless striver may be at increased risk for heart attack, the mason who responded with angry cynicism may fare no better. Cardiologist Redford Williams and his wife, therapist Virginia Williams, have written an excellent book, Anger Kills. Throughout many years of meticulous research at Duke University Medical School, Dr. Williams and his colleagues discovered that the toxic part of the Type A syndrome isn't perfectionism, time pressure, or doing many things at once—it's an attitude of angry cynicism, hostility, and judgmentalness. Think about your own attitudes for a minute. Do you curse that jerk who cut you off in traffic? Do you tend to make sarcastic remarks? Is your head full of unkind judgments about strangers that you've never even met? Do you blow little things way out of proportion and look for that stupid so-and-so who is to blame?
Through many years of working with people with stress-related problems, chronic illness, cancer, and AIDS, I've come to believe that letting go of regrets, resentments, and the tendency to be critical is at the very heart of physical, emotional, and spiritual healing—not just from heart disease, but from any illness. The reason for this phenomenon is very simple. When we judge and criticize, we feel instantly separated from ourselves, from the ones we're blaming and from life itself. Our whole body contracts as our heart closes. The life-force just drains away. In the latter half of this book, we will be learning ways to let go of regrets and resentments so that we can open our hearts to the flow of universal love and energy that is always available to us.
Our friend and colleague Dr. Dean Ornish pioneered the first program for actually reversing atherosclerotic heart disease. His fine book, Dr. Ornish's Program for Reversing Cardiovascular Disease, is the only medically documented method of actually clearing the plaque out of blocked coronary vessels. Like all real healing methods, the program requires hard work. For example, there is both good and bad news in the area of diet. The bad news is that if you have heart disease and you follow the American Heart Association diet, you will continue to build up occlusive plaque in your arteries. A diet including animal products—even lean ones-is not consistent with reversing heart disease.
Dr. Ornish prescribes a very stringent vegetarian diet with no dairy products other than a little yogurt made from nonfat milk. There is absolutely no added fat in this diet. Vegetables, for example, are sautéd in a little bouillon or water rather than oil. In addition to very moderate exercise, Dr. Ornish's heart patients learn to meditate and visualize their coronary vessels as clear and open. But just as important, patients work on opening their hearts to themselves and others. When we are able to love and respect ourselves, we project that love to others, and the quality of our relationships changes dramatically.
Dr. Ornish's program is really about making connections, about fostering our sense of belonging to the wholeness of life. Overcoming the separateness that many of us experience when we never feel quite good enough or lovable enough is a three-part process, according to Ornish: personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal. At a personal level, we have to heal the wounds of our past that keep us separate from ourselves. At an interpersonal level, once we have come to respect and love ourselves, then, and only then, are we capable of authentic intimacy with others. At a transpersonal level (that realm which encompasses the Wholeness that we may think of as God or nature), once we are comfortable in our own skins, we will be able to relate in a more meaningful way to that Great Mystery.
Many of the people we have interviewed about their near-death experiences report that feelings of connectedness were central to the event. While I have never been near death myself, I have had two empathetic, or shared, near-death experiences. When my mother was dying, both our son Justin (who was 20 at the time) and I spontaneously entered the light with her. As often as I'd heard other people's light experiences, I realize now that there are no words adequate to describe the kind of love that you experience. Perhaps the most deeply moving aspect for me was the sensation that I was completely known—mistakes and all—and that my soul was pure. This holds true for every person of good heart. Now, what is a good heart? It is nothing more than having the intention to live your life with as much kindness as possible, knowing that you'll still fall short of the mark many times.
When I opened my eyes after sharing the moment of my mother's death, the entire room seemed filled with light. It was as though all the atoms in the air, in the walls, in the bed, in the body of our son Justin, who was sitting directly across from me, were vibrating with life. When you are witness to magnificence of this sort, nothing is separate. Everything is connected with and interpenetrating everything else. As I looked over at Justin, he was weeping, and a look of pure joy suffused his delicate features. He looked like a blond, cherubic angel as he said to me, “Mom, the room is filled with light. Can you see it?”
When I nodded that I could, he whispered through his tears, “Grandma is holding open the door to eternity so that we can have a glimpse.” Evdery so often we may get a peek into a realm so extraordinary that it communicates a reality far grander than any we could ever imagine. Our task, then, is to bring these glimpses down to earth and make them practical. Most people who have had near-death experiences summarize what they learned by saying that we are here, on this earth, where things seem separate from one another, precisely because these are the best circumstances in which to learn about love.
We like to think of love as a verb, rather than a noun. Love consists of words, thoughts, and actions that encourage the potential in ourselves and others. When we are gentle with ourselves, we create the space from which creative possibilities best emerge. And once we can encourage ourselves, we can also give this gift to others. And who, after all, is an “other”? During the “glimpse” I was given by my mother, it was obvious that seen from a slightly different level, there is only one being in the entire Universe, each of us like the facet of a single diamond.
When our youngest son Andrei was a junior in high school, he came upon Chief Seattle's famous speech imploring the white race to care for the land that the American government had just seized from the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. He called the rivers our brothers and reminded us that we are just one strand in the web of life. What we do to the web, we do to ourselves. Our love is shown through every action, not just toward other people, but to the earth upon which we live and to the animals that journey with us. When we choose to recycle our bottles, for example, we honor the connectedness of all things. When we choose to eat less beef because of the serious ecological damage that cattle ranching does, we also honor life.
Love is the basic teaching of every religion, no matter how some groups may have twisted that message out of fear or self-interest. The great first-century rabbi, Hillel, taught that the core of spiritual life was to “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy mind, and to love thy neighbor as thyself.” In practical terms, he said that that meant practicing the golden rule and treating others as you would have them treat you. This message is very familiar, of course, to Christians, as the true heart teaching of Jesus, who we may tend to forget, was also a first-century Jew. When the Dalai Lama was asked about the spiritual beliefs of Tibetan Buddhism, he replied similarly—and with great simplicity—that his religion was compassion.
